Guest essay by Eric Worrall
A study in The Lancet claims that by 2050, climate change could cause 500,000 extra deaths per year, due to reduced food production. However the study is model based – where is the supporting evidence?
The abstract of the study;
Global and regional health effects of future food production under climate change: a modelling study
Summary
Background
One of the most important consequences of climate change could be its effects on agriculture. Although much research has focused on questions of food security, less has been devoted to assessing the wider health impacts of future changes in agricultural production. In this modelling study, we estimate excess mortality attributable to agriculturally mediated changes in dietary and weight-related risk factors by cause of death for 155 world regions in the year 2050.
Methods
For this modelling study, we linked a detailed agricultural modelling framework, the International Model for Policy Analysis of Agricultural Commodities and Trade (IMPACT), to a comparative risk assessment of changes in fruit and vegetable consumption, red meat consumption, and bodyweight for deaths from coronary heart disease, stroke, cancer, and an aggregate of other causes. We calculated the change in the number of deaths attributable to climate-related changes in weight and diets for the combination of four emissions pathways (a high emissions pathway, two medium emissions pathways, and a low emissions pathway) and three socioeconomic pathways (sustainable development, middle of the road, and more fragmented development), which each included six scenarios with variable climatic inputs.
Findings
The model projects that by 2050, climate change will lead to per-person reductions of 3·2% (SD 0·4%) in global food availability, 4·0% (0·7%) in fruit and vegetable consumption, and 0·7% (0·1%) in red meat consumption. These changes will be associated with 529 000 climate-related deaths worldwide (95% CI 314 000–736 000), representing a 28% (95% CI 26–33) reduction in the number of deaths that would be avoided because of changes in dietary and weight-related risk factors between 2010 and 2050. Twice as many climate-related deaths were associated with reductions in fruit and vegetable consumption than with climate-related increases in the prevalence of underweight, and most climate-related deaths were projected to occur in south and east Asia. Adoption of climate-stabilisation pathways would reduce the number of climate-related deaths by 29–71%, depending on their stringency.
Interpretation
The health effects of climate change from changes in dietary and weight-related risk factors could be substantial, and exceed other climate-related health impacts that have been estimated. Climate change mitigation could prevent many climate-related deaths. Strengthening of public health programmes aimed at preventing and treating diet and weight-related risk factors could be a suitable climate change adaptation strategy.
Funding
Oxford Martin Programme on the Future of Food.
Read more: http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(15)01156-3/abstract
Sadly the full study is paywalled, but like a lot of model based studies, in my opinion this one doesn’t pass the smell test.
For starters, global warming, or more likely CO2 greening and improved agricultural techniques, are causing agricultural production to soar. There is no reason to think this trend will end anytime soon.
If substantial global warming occurs, vast regions of Canada, Siberia, Northern Europe, even Greenland, which are currently too cold for reliable grain production, will become more agriculturally viable.
Even if global warming causes an increase in extreme weather (note there are substantial thermodynamic limits to this possibility), the increased land surface available for agriculture, combined with 34 years of genetic research and agricultural science, would surely ensure there was plenty for everyone.
Assuming some staples for whatever reason are no longer viable, genetic engineering will ensure proper nutrition. A lot of work has been performed producing nutrition enhanced crops such as golden rice. There is every reason to think this promising line of research will continue to improve the nutritional content of staple foods.
If all else fails, we could simply grow extra food in storm proof greenhouses. Greenhouses are already used extensively in Northern Europe, to produce year round crops of tomatoes and other vegetables, which require a warm growing environment. In 34 years, even at a modest global annual growth rate of 2%, the global economy will still be almost twice as productive as today’s economy – more than enough spare capacity to produce whatever agricultural infrastructure we need, to ensure food production keeps up with demand.
(1 + 0.02) ^ 34 = 1.96
Finally, there is simple experience. I’ve grown vegetables in Britain, on the cool Southern coast of Australia, and on the edge of the tropics. The occasional severe tropical storm does damage my veggie patch, say by knocking some of the fruit off my pepper plants. Yet the tropics are still far more productive than any other region I’ve tried; despite occasional storm damage, the growing season lasts longer, and produces a much greater quantity of produce, for a given area of land. Tropical land experiences ridiculous plant growth rates – you literally have to mow your lawn every few days at the height of wet season, as soon as you get a break in the rain. If more of the world experiences a tropical climate, simple common sense dictates that more agricultural land will be able to sustain tropical levels of food production.
Q) How many CAGW The Lancet articles can dance on the head of a pin?
A) As many as it takes.
I’ll draft Norman Borlaug for my team over the Lancet every time.
I went to Texas A&M at College Station
(1980 for a 6 day Marine Fire Fighting course. Since I graduated, I have been assured that I am an Aggie).
In talking with other Aggies, most of them can tell you who the football coaches and star players have been for the last 20 years. But not one has known what Norman Borlaug did. Sad, but I am trying to change that one Aggie at a time. http://borlaug.tamu.edu/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_Borlaug
I like to remind people that in the 1960’s the US put a man on the moon with slide rules. Today, we can’t seem to repeat the feat, much less take the next step, with super computers in everyone’s pocket.
Norman is credited with saving more lives than any person in history. Most important, he did this before GMO. Today, people don’t necessarily starve because of a lack of food. They starve because corruption, economic policy and poverty. Necessity breeds innovation. When we need food, agronomists and farmers will produce it. Production of food crops has historically increased to match global population. It’s simple economics…supply and demand, only backwards. Produce excess and prices are depressed. The US, and much of the world, has been paying farmers not to farm for nearly a century in an effort to control food prices. Seed manufactures have not produced super-yielding varieties of corn, wheat, rice, etc. because doing so would put farmers out of business and destroy their market.
Commenters on this site don’t necesssarily like the ethanol industry, but it does provide a valuable lesson. In the past 15 years the annual capacity of the US ethanol industry has grown from 1.6 to 14.8 billion gallons. During this time period the US average corn yield has increased from 130 to 170 bushels per acre, with 200 bushels per acre US averages predicted in the near future. Today, ethanol production consumes approximately 40% of the corn crop, yet we are still able to keep the market supplied with hogs, poultry and beef. (FYI – people don’t eat much No. 2 yellow dent corn. We eat things that eat corn.)
So, “if you build it they will come.” When the demand for more food arises, technology will supply the demand.
Despite what Wikipedia thinks, the Apollo on-board computer in the capsule was only a four-function basic calculator. Those I saw in the capsule were about 9 inch x 9 inch by 12 inch! Some of the biggest gains from the space program were in the “how to build computers” and “how to program computers”. But they did go to the moon on slide rules. Only the most critical aerodynamic/orbital/cryogenic gas flow problems were approximated by computers. And even then, testing proved most of the time that the initial calculations and initial assumptions used in the calculations were badly wrong.
The flight control box in the photo is a simple pre-programmed ROM-type box: signals in + time = signals out.
The guys who designed the rockets used slide rules extensively.
Spot on Dam 1953.
The only way you stop the advancing yield trend is to get the epa involved, regulate how the private farmer uses his private land and stifle agricultural innovation and progress. Think Zimbabwe. Government redistribution of land from whites to blacks resulted in the production of wheat dropping by 2/3 in 2 years and the wheat production now stands at 7% of what it did before government involvement.
I am not suggesting that the EPA is that stupid (there are shades of grey between black and white), but their policies to date have them not many shades away from riding the short bus.
So (1.02)^34 =1.96(0676)
And 1.001 ^ 1000 = 2.7169
and 1.0001 ^ 10,000 = 2.71846
I think I have discovered a pattern here ! mebbe not.
Better question: How many heads of pins can get CAGW articles published in The Lancet?
Seems that they haven’t learned from the Club of Rome debacle: they predicted millions of hunger deaths at the year 2000. Only to have less hunger deaths at that year, because crop yields increased faster than population increased…
Agreed, Ferdinand. And, there would have been even few deaths if food was not used as a political weapon in some 3rd world areas. (and the wars did not help any)
Well in this case they may be right.
If the current (interrupted) pause finally turns down to a colder future, then Canada and Siberia could be removed from the food producing regions of the world, and the mid USA could also be reduced in capacity.
The reduction in snow fall, that a northern Finland resident told me yesterday (at a lighting conference in Santa Clara) is a consequence of insufficient evaporation, not a lack of cold Temperatures. It’s the Snows of Kilimanjaro all over again, but at lower altitudes.
G
There are lots of nations that can’t produce enough food to feed their populations and rely on carbon intensive industries of fertilizer, processing, and especially transportation, etc. If the Greens are all in on carbon reduction by 2050, they’ll need to account for all the ones starved to death by their policies. Under their plans, by 2050 all the nations populations will have shrunk to “sustainable”. For example, Egypt’s population will shrink by half.
cedar old soul,
I read – over many moons – that the watermelons’ plans involve a Global population of 500-700 million.
For our own benefit.
To a simple sailor, it looks like some 90% (+) of our present global population needs to expire, pretty quickly.
And the watermelons are pretty happy with that.
I guess they guess they and theirs’ will (not will probably) be in the ‘lucky eleventh;
Auto
There is a word for that. Genocide.
In natural systems, when food supply falls, population falls off proportionately. And this is a bad thing, why? The absurdity of trying to link CAGW to the weight-loss meme (“obesity” is 100% culturally constructed) shows just how far they’re reaching. Plain nonsense all the way.
I was looking forward to digging up my North Eastern England garden and planting vines 15 years ago. I am afraid i am still buying my wine from the supermarket and the plans for my vineyard are on hold at least until the snow and frozen soil thaws.
As for UK doctors they are still telling us that saturated fat is bad for us and there is no safe level of alcohol consumption, one glass of wine a day can do untold damage.
The misery intensifies!!!!
“As for UK doctors they are still telling us that saturated fat is bad for us and there is no safe level of alcohol consumption, one glass of wine a day can do untold damage.”
I think you’ll find it’s UK Government “scientists” – an oxymoron if ever there was one.
Here is a far more credible paper on Alcohol Dosing and Total Mortality in Men and Women covering 1,015,835 subjects and 94,533 deaths.
Results A J-shaped relationship between alcohol and total mortality was confirmed in adjusted studies, in both men and women. Consumption of alcohol, up to 4 drinks per day in men and 2 drinks per day in women, was inversely associated with total mortality, maximum protection being 18% in women (99% confidence interval, 13%-22%) and 17% in men (99% confidence interval, 15%-19%). Higher doses of alcohol were associated with increased mortality. The inverse association in women disappeared at doses lower than in men. When adjusted and unadjusted data were compared, the maximum protection was only reduced from 19% to 16%. The degree of association in men was lower in the United States than in Europe.
http://archinte.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=769554
Figure 1 is particularly informative, it seems Saint Paul had it right.
Cheers!
Exactly. Club of Rome using sophisticated MIT and Harvard professor created models of the ecoomy and future predicted unless we immediately all went on communist like rations and drastically changed our society that in 20 years we would be either polluted and all die, be starving from overpopulation or suffer from massive resource shortages and face financial collapse. They predicted this in 1980. By 2000 the world was cleaner, more populous, had more resources, fewer starving and in general vastly better off than ever before in history by following the exact OPPOSITE policies the global warming,…ugggh i mean club of rome models predicted. These models simply are a reflection of what the authors of them want to happen. The same is true of climate models. You have to understand these models are agenda driven build specifically to achieve a policy end result. They have no correspondence to anything in the real world which is proven in study after study.
In this report they suggested all kinds of things could be done to prevent the disaster but they all involved reducing fossill fuels or simply adapting to more deaths and starvation. It never occurs that things might get better or that there are simple solutions to everything they think might happen which won’t happen anyway. These are bogus models built on bogus models. It’s not worth spending time on stuff like this ot the money unless you are talking about a political party who wants to push an agenda.
This silly CAGW model-driven propaganda asserting increasing CO2 will have an adverse effect on food availability is the complete opposite of reality…
First of all, according to World Bank’s crop yield/country data, global crop yields have increased by 60%+ in most countries just since 1980!
http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/AG.YLD.CREL.KG
A lot of this is from GMO advancements (which Leftist hate), increased use of cheap petrochemical fertilizers (which Leftist hate) and increased CO2 levels (which Leftist hate) leading to beneficial CO2 fertilization effects.
It’s estimated that crop yields and forest growth have increased 25% just from CO2 increasing from 280ppm to 400ppm. Additionally, higher CO2 levels make plants more drought resistant by shrinking leaf stomata, which reduces plant water loss.
Think of overwhelming positive benefits higher CO2 levels have has had in helping feed the 2.8 BILLION people that try to survive on less than $2/day…. How the Left can demonize CO2 is completely insane and unfounded by the empirical evidence.
Even IPCC’s 2013 AR5 report admits NO discernible increasing global trends of severe weather frequency or intensity over the past 50~100 years (depending on weather phenomenon): hurricanes, typhoons, cyclones, droughts, floods, tornadoes, thunderstorms, tropical storms, sub-tropical storms, etc…
Although the jury is still out, there has perhaps been some increase in global precipitation from CO2’s tiny GHG forcing effect, but, again, this is a good thing….
How much longer with these highly inaccurate and bogus CAGW models be taken seriously?
They are absurd and don’t come close to reflecting reality.
You beat me to it.
This article is very disturbing because public money seemed to be used in its preparation. This paper is of so low quality I cannot believe we american and british taxpayers pay for this crap. There should be a revolt. The two big firings of global climate change researchers in the last couple months should be accelerated massively. This study shows that the vast majority of the researchers are incredibly stupid and politically driven drivel that the rest of us shouldn’t have to pay for.
Lancet- a publication that most doctors dismiss. I wonder why.
That publication deserved to die with its foundational and wrong antivaccine piece.
Yes, no longer a scientific publication, reliably; now it’s activist.
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They also produced those absurd articles that first claimed that the sanctions against Iraq (prior to the 2nd half of the Gulf war) were killing thousands of children per month, then after war managed to claim that everyone in Iraq had been killed twice by the bombing.
These authors should read their own journal.
Far greater mortality is associated with cool and cold weather than warm and hot weather. Excess Winter Deaths total about 100.000 per year in the USA, up to 50,000 in the UK and several million worlwide.
See this Lancet study for details:
http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(14)62114-0/abstract
or our paper below:
Cold Weather Kills 20 Times as Many People as Hot Weather
September 4, 2015
By Joseph D’Aleo and Allan MacRae
https://friendsofsciencecalgary.files.wordpress.com/2015/09/cold-weather-kills-macrae-daleo-4sept2015-final.pdf
[excerpts]
Cold weather kills. Throughout history and in modern times, many more people succumb to cold exposure than to hot weather, as evidenced in a wide range of cold and warm climates.
Evidence is provided from a study of 74 million deaths in thirteen cold and warm countries including Thailand and Brazil, and studies of the United Kingdom, Europe, the USA, Australia and Canada.
Contrary to popular belief, Earth is colder-than-optimum for human survival. A warmer world, such as was experienced during the Roman Warm Period and the Medieval Warm Period, is expected to lower winter deaths and a colder world like the Little Ice Age will increase winter mortality, absent adaptive measures. These conclusions have been known for many decades, based on national mortality statistics.
…
Canada has lower Excess Winter Mortality Rates than the USA (~100,000 Excess Winter Deaths per year) and much lower than the UK (up to ~50,000 Excess Winter Deaths per year). This is attributed to our better adaptation to cold weather, including better home insulation and home heating systems, and much lower energy costs than the UK, as a result of low-cost natural gas due to shale fracking and our lower implementation of inefficient and costly green energy schemes.
…
When misinformed politicians fool with energy systems, innocent people suffer and die.
****************
Allan
Your quote
” When misinformed politicians . . . . . . . .” could serve as a requiem for a generation.
Thank you.
Auto
Lower implementation of inefficient and costly “Green” energy schemes? Your obviously not from Ontario where electricity prices have increased by 70% over the last 10 years and are forecast (by the Liberal government) to increase another 40% over the next 5 years. From the lowest electricity prices in Canada to the highest was primarily due to windmills and solar. Another cost has been the building of 19 additional gas-fired generating plants, mainly “peaker” plants, designed to “kick in” when the wind doesn’t blow or the Sun doesn’t shine. In other words if there were no windmills most of these gas-fired plants wouldn’t exist. However, consumption is down from 10 years ago mainly because of the loss of 300,000 manufacturing jobs. Heinz, Kellogg and Caterpillar, all longtime residents of Ontario, have either left the province or have severly curtailed production. We will see what happens when these fools implement their “Carbon” tax. Yet the Liberal government plans to build more of these white Elephants (215m tall) even though the province already has 10,000 MW of unused capacity from Nuclear, Gas and Hydro.
No argument 3¢worth.
Ontario energy policies have been a disaster. Similar to the UK and Germany. Fortunately the rest of Canada has not been so foolish, but that may soon change with the new governments in Ottawa and Edmonton.
There is no good solution for the intermittency of wind power, unless you have lots of spare hydro. Gas-fired “peaker” plants to augment wind power are unlikely to be economic. Better to just run the gas plants and never build the wind farms..
A study in The Lancet claims that by 2050, climate change could cause 500,000 extra deaths per year, due to reduced food production. However the study is model based – where is the supporting evidence?
Well I believe that at least 500,000 might die from climate change. If the average temperature drops back to that of the little ice age we could all be in danger of a food shortage. Cold Kills is just knowledge of human experience. (I don’t have data or evidence to pick exactly 1/2 million people, but with over 7 billion souls on the planet now it seems reasonable in a cold catastrophe.
Wait. What? They are talking warming?!? Holy Cow, warming is good. We should all pray for another 4 degrees of warming at least, maybe more. How warm was it in the days of the dinosaur? I have been told that the temperature varied, but it was hotter than today, with only a little snow in some polar places once in a while. Growing wheat in Canada! Damn that sounds good to me.
+ 1
Ditto
Auto
Someone here touched briefly on the use of greenhouses to produce vegetables in Northern Europe. Actually, greenhouses are being brought on line all over the world in places you wouldn’t expect. The reason is simple: they can produce vegetables year round at competitive prices that are as good or better than traditionally grown veggies, even in the United States. Yields are typically six to ten times that of growing them out in the dirt. Most of the varieties are non-GMO. Most of them are experiments on what happens with elevated CO2 levels.
Green houses can also help to protect your crop from birds and insects.
Agree Mark – and I think we are due for global cooling, probably starting before 2020. I hope to be wrong..
The one possible mitigating factor is the ~40% of the USA corn crop devoted to biofuels and the ~36% devoted to animal feed – one assumes this land could be seeded in sweet corn suitable for human consumption.
Don’t their ilk intend to force us through state coercion to use more food as fuel?
All of that Russian real estate in greater food production would be awful.
Typing error…” Sadly the fully study is paywalled “…….Oops !….FULL ?
No Marcus….”Sadly the foolish study is paywalled” ……fixed.
..Aaaahhh, that’s better !
No Glenn… “Fortunately, the foolish study is paywalled” ……fixed.
in the next 35 years, if UN supported fiefdoms in Africa continue to withhold food from their peoples, like they have done since the dawn of time, then there will be more government sanctioned democide megadeaths.
sociaism = hunger and tyranny eg Ethiopia, Rwanda, Darfur, South Africa etc etc
Russian famine of 1921/1922 6 million. The Bolsheviks believed peasants were actively trying to undermine the war effort. The Black Book of Communism claims that Lenin ordered the seizure of the food peasants had grown for their own subsistence and their seed grain in retaliation for this “sabotage,”
Soviet Union in the Ukraine, 1933/1934 “The Holodomor (Ukrainian: Голодомо́р, “Extermination by hunger” or “Hunger-extermination”, about 4 million.”
Communist China, 1958/1962, “The Great Leap (forward)….tens of millions of deaths,[3] estimated from 18 million to 32.5[4] or 45 million”
Ethiopia between 1961 and 1985, 400,000 were in large part created by (Communist) government policies,
The North Korean famine, 1994 to 1998.[5] Economic mismanagement and the loss of Soviet support caused food production and imports to decline rapidly. . Out of a total population of approximately 22 million, somewhere between 240,000 and 3,500,000 North Koreans died from starvation or hunger-related
(Quotes from Wikipedia.}
262,000,000 deaths in 1900-2000 all due to socialism in some form.
https://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/20TH.HTM
The way things are shaping up the radical islamists will kill more people than that this coming year.
How many extra deaths will occur this year because we are funneling so much of our grain production into ethanol production to replace fossil fuels, which are, by the way, then used in the production of ethanol. Net gain in energy = 0. Net gain in $$$ for the alarmists = BILLIONS.
The last time I saw the maths worked out on that, the “net gain in energy” was more like negative 200 percent. It actually takes more energy to grow, harvest, and process the grain into fuel than you get out of said fuel by nearly a factor of two.
Bah, the greening from AnthroCO2 is already feeding an extra billion people. These people are so intent on sustaining the alarm that they’ve completely lost their minds.
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…but not their wallets.
Whether they have lost their wallets or not, I have no way of knowing. The problem is that they don’t need their wallets, since the government has given them mine.
plus 1
I have run a model with the same data.
Mine shows that, IF we succeed in stopping climate change (!) then the weather will be much more predictable.
Farmers will then be able to increase production phenomenally – bad weather is a major problem for agriculture. This will cause a glut in food availability, and falling prices. That means people will eat a lot more, and so we will have a huge increase in Obesity. And Obesity, as we all know, is a killer second only to holding a nuclear war in the middle of a ‘flu epidemic.
Why isn’t the Lancet advertising my findings? I predict a lot more people being killed…
While humorous, this is true. Our obesity problem is this: obesity combined with low levels of physical activity. This is a combination that leads to death.
This is all a problem of wealth. If you look at epidemiological data showing the relation between body mass index and early death, there is not much of a relation to worry about in “underdeveloped” nations – that is because everyone, especially the poor, have lives of great physical activity – cooking, cleaning, gathering food, etc.
Here in the U.S., we as a nation are so wealthy that our poor people are able to enjoy the bounty of our wealth – the poor can live lives of low physical activity. How? The poor do not have to expend a lot of calories in order to gather their daily meals, and they are able to have fairly sedentary lives, including entertainment from television – provided universally at an utterly low cost – when we switched from rabbit ears to our upgraded over-the-air TV, we subsidized the new antenna needed!!!!!
So, data show our poor people are not thin; they are heavy. Also, relative to “underdeveloped” nations, for our poor, increasing BMI is associated with increasing risk of early death.
As science suffers (your), logic prevails!
The Daily Telegraph unquestioningly printed this nonsense yesterday. I shot off this email, though the probability that they will print it is probably even lower than the probability that these fantasy predictions will come true:
.
*******************************************************************************************
Email to the Telegraph:
We’ve heard a lot about exaggerated fears in the EU in/out debate, but Project Fear is even more dominant in much of climate science. You report that “more than 500,000 extra adult deaths could be caused globally in 2050 due to the impact of climate change on diets”. This is fear-mongering, pure and simple, and it can be very profitable for the scientists concerned.
.
After 150 years of global warming mankind has never been more well-fed, prosperous and healthy. History shows that mankind has always prospered during the warm periods such as the Medieval period. Because the climate models have spectacularly failed to predict future warming, the underlying theory is clearly wrong, and yet government policy driven by Project Fear has pushed up the price of energy, increased destruction of the rain forests and, courtesy of Volkswagen, actually increased deadly pollution.
.
Of course, carbon dioxide is natural, clean and completely harmless and it is the very thing that makes our planet green. It is not climate change that will kill millions during this century. It is the climate scientist’s own version of Project Fear that is the true killer.
Just would note that there are tens of millions of boats or more operated daily by fishermen and transporters sporting 6-12 cylinder or larger truck engines with open headers and few tune-ups. Meanwhile, Volkswagen makes excellent products and is simply under attack by European and North American controllers, posers, and regime media who feel slighted their controls on some folks did not capture all scenarios. Apologies by that firm are just to avoid capital punishment by states.
They want the Black Death to return.
As with all things modeled, they take a current state and extrapolate forward in time for the variables they are interested in. Problem is there are many, many variables in the current state that are not modeled and assumed to be the same. Oh, perhaps like the human propensity to innovate in the face of a challenge.
Much like the earlier study that simulated grain production at CO2 levels expected in 2030. The result. Grains that grow faster and require less water. BUT…bread baked from those grains were “flatter”. Oh, the horror.
I don’t know. If I was a wheat geneticist I would take the first two as a plus and fix the third. Same if I was a baker. If I have LOTS more flour, I would find a way to make it rise.
Where do these guys come from?
This is what Wheat Corn and Rice does : when the cultivation of grains allowed the advance of civilisation, early settler populations (for example, in the evidence found in Egyptian mummies) immediately showed many of the same symptoms of metabolic disorder (decaying teeth and atherosclerosis) as we see today. Adding sugar and processed foods has simply accelerated the march towards obesity, diabetes and other diseases. Unfortunately, the evidence for this common sense has remained largely covered up through the efforts of the food and pharmaceutical industry.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nsI6oQN8fdE
Big Food and Big Pharma have us suffering nearly to 80. It’s a dastardly coverup.
“Flatter” is better. I bake my own bread. I deliberately rise it less than “shop” bread, because I regard “shop” bread as hopelessly lacking in substance. Most “baker” bread too. I get my best results from the cheapest flour.
Same here – it also doesn’t have the additives that baker’s bread and all bakery products have, which makes a huge health difference in this household.
The study is paywalled, and so is a black box to us. But, like many boxes, if we shake it, maybe we can get some clues as to what is inside.
First they claim lower food intake, but in a peculiar way: (reductions)
So, in aggregate, food consumption is down. But the proportion of high protein, high fat, red meat is up relative to fruits and vegetables. In a starving population, this is the last thing you would expect, as red meat is the most expensive food out there. In a hungry population, you would expect to see a dramatic drop in red meat consumption, and rise in grain and vegetable consumption.
So there must be two separate sub-populations, one getting fat, and one which truly does not have enough to eat.
Now let’s look at the risk factors the study considers:
The Lancet has been pushing a Vegan lifestyle for as long as I can remember. They have really taken in the lesson of climate science though: Form a conclusion (people should be more like vegans), write a model that shows what you want (people should be vegan and will die if they aren’t), run said model, run to the press with “proof” that your position is the only thing that will save humanity (eating red meat is bad).
The joke of all that is that just one hamburger contains more “anti-oxidants,” more Omega 3, more vitamins and vital building blocks of every single bodily system than a whole pickup-truck load of “fruits and vegetables.” Fruits are about 90% sugar and water, the rest being indigestible fiber. Most vegetables are almost entirely indigestible fiber, and come out about like they went in since humans lack the fermentation abilities (lacking a cecum) common to herbivores. No “activist” or ideology can change the body that evolution gave us; unequivocally that of a carnivore. OTOH, veganism explains why liberals’ brains are shrinking.
The only cravings that my wife had when she was pregnant was that she wanted red meat. Lots of red meat.
Sooooo…. bottom-line, AGW makes us fat? 😉
The Lancet long since lost it’s credibility. This confirms it is merely a statist organ of propaganda. We welcome you Pravda!
Seriously, how can anybody publish such stuff …
Like CAGW, all this “health” “risk factor” BS has become white noise to the man in the street. Those of us who actually understand statistics just dismiss it altogether. It’s become just one more way to carpet-bomb us with PC propaganda, and little do they know it’s being tuned out by most of the population. There’s really only one thing you need to know–a BMI between 26 and 32 actually gets you the BEST longevity and resilience. So enjoy what you eat and don’t let these morons rent space in your head!
More deaths will be caused by the malinvestment of climate change policy.
How many lives would be saved if the money was allocated to providing electricity, modern medicine and modern agriculture?
How many people died from malaria as a result of environmental policy and depraved indifference?
Dengue and Zika may likely soon be added.
Ah yes, the Lancet, the same publication that published a ‘study’ after the first 6 months of the Iraq war that showed that coalition bombing had killed more civilians than the allied combined bombing offensive did in all of WW2. It is just possible that the Lancet is not as credible as it once was.
The most biologically productive eras on earth had CO2 concentrations much higher than at present. What CO2 does is to flatten the equator-to-pole surface temperature profile. With higher CO2 concentrations the equator remains at a fixed temperature while the poles warm. This expands the growing region, suppresses hurricanes and tornados (by reducing equator to poles temperature difference) and in general makes the earth a more habitable place for humans and animals.
Booklet (free download) on the warmism issue :- http://tempsend.com/53F4F9F767/C511/Issues_Concerning_the_Earth_with_Regards_to_Warmism.pdf .
Another one? I tip my cap to you.
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Found a ‘typo’, made a correction and a couple of minor additions – http://tempsend.com/3FB455C62D/29E9/Issues_Concerning_the_Earth_with_Regards_to_Warmism.pdf .
I’ve been basically adding to it over the last 3 months – filling it out. It’s about complete at the moment.
Speaking of 34 years into the future, the Commodore 64 was introduced 34 years ago.
The Commodore 64 was my first computer, and I still trip over it once in a while. Sadly one day my Sony Betamax machine fell over in storage and broke one of the keys.
Anyway, flash forward 34 years to today and I am a software developer working on future projects with some wonderful inexpensive hardware. A screenshot sneak peek of my 5 monitors connected to my Surface Pro (first gen) computer developing for project Wattson:
Yep, people totally underestimate the impact AI will have over the next few decades.
Sorry, but out of all the claims on the thread, the claim that you can have that many things open on a Microsoft Surface without getting a blue screen of death is the least likely to be plausible.
5 monitors? You dog. I’m still trying to convince my employer to give me a 4th.
Between now and 2050 one-half a million people in Venezuela will die from malnutrition and disease because a corrupt dictator and his progeny socialized all the oil production, and failed to leverage that vast natural resource for the good of the country.
That’s a big part of it. Another part is that the same corrupt regime seized large productive farms in a land redistribution scheme, and in the process destroyed the infrastructure that made them productive. The result: Venezuela is now heavily dependent on food imports, which they can no longer afford. Immediate symptoms:
long lines at grocery stores, and empty shelves inside:
https://www.google.com/search?q=food+lines+venezuela&tbm=isch&imgil=rF5NO6RTpqHilM%253A%253B5LP1PdFtDYLMYM%253Bhttp%25253A%25252F%25252Fwww.businessinsider.com%25252Flong-food-lines-are-in-venezuela-2014-2&source=iu&pf=m&fir=rF5NO6RTpqHilM%253A%252C5LP1PdFtDYLMYM%252C_&usg=__UFvAxXWeNdPeK3fKR7ANucCqanE%3D&biw=1024&bih=603&ved=0ahUKEwjmwurmlKfLAhXEeCYKHXsoCrEQyjcIJg&ei=AZHZVqa-FMTxmQH70KiICw#imgrc=rF5NO6RTpqHilM%3A
The impending food riots will not be caused by climate change.
Sounds a lot like Zimbabwe. Once the bread basket of Africa. Thanks to socialism, there is now mass starvation there.
‘a detailed agricultural modelling framework, the International Model for Policy Analysis of Agricultural Commodities and Trade (IMPACT)’
Looks like they spent too much time on a catchy acronym and too little on thought.
(tInPoT would have been a better choice)
If there is a shortage of food, do you think for a moment anyone would decrease the amount of corn being turned into ethanol?