Crocodile tears from the den of iniquity.
Food prices will more than double and the number of malnourished children spiral if climate change is not checked and developing countries are not helped to adapt their farming, food and water experts warned on Tuesday at the UN climate talks in Doha.
As the UK energy secretary, Ed Davey, and ministers from 194 countries arrived for the high-level segment of the talks, the UN’s Committee on World Food Security said the world would need a 75-90% increase in food production to feed the extra 2 billion people expected to be alive in 2050. But climate change could reduce yields worldwide by 5-25% over the same period.
Food production has been steadily increasing, but Obama’s skyrocketing energy prices should be able to fix that.
The claim appears to be based on this paper:
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/333/6042/616.short
Which looks suspiciously like a modelling study. (As they claim to be able to calculate crop yields with and without temperature rises occurring between 1980-2008.)
The remainder of the claims found in:
http://www.oxfam.org/sites/www.oxfam.org/files/20120905-ib-extreme-weather-extreme-prices-en.pdf
Rest on assumptions about “extreme whether event” – which, at least at this stage, remain junk science.
Side note: It should be noted that the claims in the Lobell et. al, paper are contradicted in part by the claims in the S Peng, J Huang et. al. paper. (Lobell finds no changes in rice yields, Peng finds warming causes a decline.)
I’m not confident we should hit the panic button because of the claims of this one paper, largely based on a large number of theoretical assumptions (computer modelling), and itself resting on even more suspect extreme weather event claims.
Per capita production is of some concern.
How many people have died between 1970 and 2012?
How many would have died between 1970 and 2050? None? wtf
Climate change isn’t the cause of the potential malnutrition, it’s the governments policy of forcing up energy prices and pissing taxpayers money up against the wall. There’s a price to pay for the climate shenanigans and the tipping point of poverty has been achieved by these morons.
Droughts, floods, political instability, corrupt government, incompetent government, war…
Even if the claim that AGW would cause a 5% decline in crop fields were true, addressing the above issues could potentially offset that with increases in crop yields by 2 or 3 percentage digits. It doesn’t help anyone when eco-worriers divert attention away from real problems to those of imaginary ones. In fact, for all the well meaning behind it, it causes harm.
Reblogged this on Gds44's Blog.
More CO2 = more biomass.
Problem solved.
Why would we need a 75-90% increase in food production for a 30% population increase in the first place?
The globalization of Kentucky Fried Chicken uses up a lot more calories.
Yes, Curt. its a 28.5% population increase actually (2/7 billion) and a large part of that increase will be old folks living longer and eating less. But we always new that number facts were never a climate bedwetter’s strong suite, didn’t we.