Agricultural News
Farm Bureau President Bob Stallman Takes a Swing at Climate Change "Happy Talk" at AFBF Meeting in Seattle
Sun, 10 Jan 2010 21:35:03 CST
More than 40 scientists with expertise in climate, agriculture, soil, and entomological science sent a letter on Friday to American Farm Bureau Federation President Bob Stallman requesting a meeting to discuss his group's "inaccurate and marginalized" position on global warming. This letter comes as the AFBF meets in Seattle today through Wednesday morning. Click here for a copy of the letter from the scientists that believe in global warming.
Two scientists from Oklahoma schools were included in the list of those who claim the Farm Bureau is wrong in their position on global warming. Those professors are Dr. Michael Palmer, Regents Professor in Botany at OSU in Stillwater, and Dr. Rebecca Sherry, Research Assistant Professor in Botany and Microbiology at the University of Oklahoma in Norman.
At the group's convention in Seattle, President Stallman took on those groups who are promoting climate change without regard to its impact on production agriculture- and he talked about what he told Farm Bureau members during his annual speech to the membership on Sunday morning later in the day during a News Conference with the media gathered in Seattle for the annual meeting. We have his reaction to those who want Farm Bureau to support the House passed Climate Change bill- calling allegations a lot of "happy talk" about saving the world, without considering how pulling millions of acres of US Cropland out of production would hinder efforts to feed a growing global population. CLICK ON THE LISTEN BAR BELOW TO HEAR STALLMAN'S COMMENTS.
The Farm Bureau maintains that "there is no generally agreed upon scientific assessment on - carbon emissions from human activities, their impact on past decades of warming, or how they will affect future climate changes." According to the scientists' letter, that assertion ignores the overwhelming scientific evidence of climate change, a problem that puts Farm Bureau members at risk.
"As scientists concerned about the grave risks that climate change poses to the world and U.S. agriculture," the letter states, "we are disappointed that the American Farm Bureau has chosen to officially deny the existence of human-caused climate change when the evidence of it has never been clearer."
The letter then points out their claim that scientific institutions worldwide have concluded that human activity is causing global warming. For example, 18 U.S. science organizations, including the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Meteorological Society and the Crop Sciences Society of America, recently issued a statement declaring that "human activities are the primary driver" of climate change and "contrary assertions are inconsistent with an objective assessment of the vast body of peer-reviewed science."
The letter also stresses the threat that global warming poses to agriculture. It cites a 2009 federal report that found any agricultural benefits of climate change would be more than offset by the drawbacks, including more frequent heat waves that would reduce crop yields and stress livestock, more extreme rainfall that would prevent spring planting and flood fields, and more widespread pest and weed infestations that would require costly pesticides and herbicides to keep them in check. That report cited by the scientists has been challenged by others in the scientific community as being "junk science."
"This letter is a wake up call to the American Farm Bureau of the importance for them to take the concerns about climate change seriously," said Don Wuebbles, a climate scientist at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and one of the letter's three co-sponsoring signatories. "We think it's important to share our knowledge directly with Mr. Stallman and hope he agrees to meet with us."
Stallman says those who are taking swings at the Farm Bureau over their Climate Change position need to understand the math of enough food for the world to eat. He says of those who would like to see a huge rollback in US cropland to suit their Climate Change agenda that they need to deal with the hunger they will be advocating. "The world will continue to depend on food from the United States. To throttle back our ability to produce food at a time when the United Nations projects billions of more mouths to feed is a moral failure."
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