Happy 2 greet in Budapest 🇭🇺 & congratulate 🇷🇴 Flaviu Hotopan, t/ Romanian 🇷🇴 who took on t/ extraordinary challenge of solo kayaking 🚣t/ entire length of Danube - from its source in t/ Black Forest🌳 to its mouth on t/ 🌊 Black Sea.
#BlackToBlack
Modest warming since the end of the Little Ice Age in 1850 supports billions of people better than any previous cold era ever did.
Yet, a weird paradox dominates our modern climate discourse: we celebrate ancient warm eras as golden ages, but frame today's mild shifts as inherently catastrophic. History shows that warmth has always delivered prosperity. Look no further than Roman vineyards flourishing in Britain or Viking farms thriving in Greenland.
Conversely, cold spells almost always bring hardship - marked by the Thames freezing over, expanding Alpine glaciers and systemic crop failures during the Little Ice Age (roughly 1300–1850). When you compare the Holocene’s historical rollercoaster, the Roman Warm Period (250 BC–AD 400) and the Medieval Warm Period (900–1300 AD) stand out as eras of booming agriculture and expanding empires.
The Little Ice Age was a harsh, multi-century counterpoint that brought widespread famine and societal strain across Europe. Throughout these dramatic ups and downs, ice core data shows atmospheric CO₂ was remarkably flat, hovering steadily between 270 and 285 ppm.
These profound climate convulsions happened purely on the back of natural variability - solar output, volcanic aerosols and oceanic-atmospheric circulation flips - all without CO₂ needing to budge. On a broader scale, today's blips are superimposed over a gradual, long-term cooling trend that followed the Holocene Thermal Optimum thousands of years ago, when temperatures were frequently 0.5°C to 1°C warmer than today.
Earth’s climate has always been dynamic on multiple timescales, operating independently of any single variable, such as CO₂. Natural precedent proves that warmth isn't inherently destructive. Humans are marvelously adaptive and the biosphere is inherently resilient.
The real challenges ahead aren't dictated by a climate driven panic, but by our astonishing capacity for adaptation.
Image: A recreation of a Viking-age settlement, showcasing the turf-roof architecture that allowed Norse communities to thrive in northern latitudes.
“Bureaucratische uitdijing is géén natuurwet. Onnodige, strenge klimaatregels voor onze industrie moeten worden gestopt.
Landbouw en visserij zijn geen gewone economische sectoren. Ze vormen de basis van regionale gemeenschappen, platteland, landschap en van onze voedselsoevereiniteit.”
Europarlementariër Sander Smit (BBB) @sandersmitwzn vandaag in de Tweede Kamer over de koers van de Europese Unie.
Nederlandse boeren mogen vanaf vrijdag 12 juni jaarlijks extra #stikstof uit bewerkte dierlijke mest, in de vorm van #kunstmestvervanger#renure, gebruiken op hun land. Dat is donderdag bekendgemaakt in de @staatscourant. https://t.co/0kUb5GFOfF
In Duitsland zijn in 2025 naar schatting circa 400 biologische rundveebedrijven gestopt of teruggekeerd naar de conventionele landbouw. Dat blijkt uit een recente position paper van het Deutscher Bauernverband (DBV). https://t.co/qn8Hk3LWea
În urmă cu câteva zile, am desemnat un prim-ministru, care va solicita votul Parlamentului. Fac apel la responsabilitatea partidelor politice faţă de acest moment. Interesul de partid este legitim, însă tot timpul trebuie să aibă întâietate interesul țării.
Mandatul meu este să păstrez direcția pro-occidentală a României și să previn o cădere economică bruscă, care să afecteze fiecare familie din țară. Sunt îngrijorat că aceste chestiuni sunt puse azi în discuție.
Am constatat că partidele nu mai au dialog şi atunci am ales o persoană, cea mai potrivită, așa cum consider eu, pentru a discuta și cu unii și cu alții, pentru a-i aduce împreună să guverneze România, în condițiile în care niciun partid nu a venit cu o soluție alternativă.
De când sunt în politică, văd politicieni care nu fac decât să calculeze alegeri viitoare, în cazul de față, alegerile din 2028. Puțin le pasă românilor de dezbaterile noastre electorale și de toate prestațiile noastre. Românii vor guvernare și guvernarea înseamnă, de fapt, responsabilitate şi până în 2028 se vor întâmpla lucruri, multe lucruri.
Îi sfătuiesc pe români să-și păstreze calmul și speranța și asigur partenerii noștri că România păstrează direcția.
On a hillside this summer, a man will pay good money to take the coat off a sheep, then watch that coat earn him almost nothing at all.
This is the wool trade now. A thing his great grandfather built a life on, worn down to a chore he runs at a loss.
So look at the maths square in the face. It costs him around two pounds to shear one ewe. The fleece that comes off her, even now, in the best year for a decade, brings back about a pound and a half if she is a fine crossbred. If she is a hill sheep, a Welsh Mountain or a Swaledale, he might get thirty pence for the whole fleece. British Wool says the price would have to nearly double again just to cover the shearing.
So every sheep he clips, he loses on. And he has to clip every one.
A sheep left in her fleece overheats, cannot walk right, and gets eaten alive by maggots. The wool has to come off, for her sake, whatever it is worth. He pays, quite literally, for the privilege of being kind to his own animals.
Now feel the weight of what we have let go.
Wool once made this country rich. Whole towns were built on the back of it, and the great wool churches still standing across the Cotswolds were paid for with it. To this day the Lord Speaker of the House of Lords sits on a woolsack, set there centuries ago so nobody in the room would forget where England's wealth came from.
A fleece was worth fourteen pounds a kilo in the 1950s. The wool cheque, in his father's day, paid the rent for the year.
Today it will not cover the diesel to deliver it.
And so, in farmyards across the country, men who would rather not are quietly burning the fleeces off their own sheep, because a fire is cheaper than the trip to the depot. A material so fine that a kingdom was built on it, going up in smoke in the yard because nobody will pay a pound for it.
And what did we reach for instead. Plastic. Most of our clothes are now spun from oil, polyester and acrylic and nylon, shedding tiny threads into the sea with every wash, into the fish, into our own blood. It will not rot for generations.
So here we stand. A fibre that grows back every spring on nothing but grass and rain, that warms a child and then feeds the soil when its work is done, burning unwanted in a field.
While we dress ourselves, head to foot, in the very oil it was meant to spare us.
The sheep on that hill is still growing the finest coat in the world. We simply stopped being worthy of it.
De natuur is de laatste jaren fors verslechterd. Dat rapporteerde Nederland onlangs aan Brussel. Hoe komt NL tot deze dramatische rapportage? De feiten checken blijkt onmogelijk. Zowel de meetmethode als de gebruikte natuurdata zijn niet beschikbaar.
https://t.co/t5tTLSIY8L
🇷🇴 Despite all the obstacles, Romania’s development since joining the EU is still a miracle.
Imagine what we could achieve with a political class that truly supports the necessary reforms.
• 2.1x GDP per capita
• €100B+ EU funds
• +1.8M jobs
• 2.6x higher wages
• +1,000 km of highways
• EU convergence: from 47% to 77% of EU average
Warm congrats to Romanian diplomat Cosmin Dinescu for being appointed Head of Mission for the newly established EUPM Armenia!
Best of success in this new mission!
We now find the intermittent energy harvested from wind and sun is physically unable to replicate the dense, reliable power of hydrocarbons.
Trying to force wind and solar to deliver baseload power has failed. McKinsey Global (2022) estimates the full cost of a net-zero transition by 2050 at $275 trillion—running at an astronomical $9.2 trillion every year.
This utopian experiment has already squandered trillions in global capital, triggering an economic shockwave that has sent Western nations into a general decline.
There is no climate apocalypse in sight. In fact, NASA satellite data confirms the world has been steadily greening for two decades, driven by a CO₂-led global vegetation recovery.
There was never a reason for such destructive haste to dismantle coal, oil and gas energy, because there was no urgent crisis. Geologists have already mapped vast, proven reserves of untapped hydrocarbons that offer a natural bridge to the future:
* Coal: 1.06 trillion tonnes (approx. 132 years remaining).
* Natural Gas: 7,299 trillion cubic feet (approx. 143 years remaining).
* Crude Oil: 1.65 trillion barrels (approx. 53 years remaining).
The actual volume of untapped hydrocarbons could easily be two or three times as much—enough to power humanity for another three centuries. This abundance allows ample time for adequate forward planning until truly viable, next-generation alternatives are invented.
Image: Two decades of satellite-verified biomass expansion. Source: Stocktrek Images / Getty Images
Sinds 1970 is de natuur in Nederland enorm verbeterd. Enorm: je kon in een enkel natuurwater zwemmen, overal smog en slechte lucht.
Dus: bestrijding milieuvervuiling is uitstekend en noodzakelijk maar daarna doorslaan door “natuurwaarde” te gaan “creëren” is Mao’s mussencampagne in t oneindige. Want wanneer is de natuur dan af en het doel bereikt?
#Senegal 🇸🇳 is losing large volumes of onions, potatoes, and vegetables because storage and processing still lag behind production. Dutch solutions are helping reduce losses, improve stability & strengthen the agrifood sector.
#Agrospecial16 | #Foodloss
🔗https://t.co/kNKfRske8w
De USA heeft onder Bush en Obama gekozen voor schaliegas. Europa deed het anders en vertrouwde op Rusland.
Daarbovenop kwam Europa de ETS CO2-heffing voor bedrijven (en toeleveranciers).
Elektriciteit is hierdoor in Europa ook veel duurder dan in USA (en Azië).
#grafiekvandedag