Roger Pielke Jr. has a nice, short post in reaction to Paul Krugman’s opinion in the NY Times blaming climate change for the unrest in Egypt…
Go read –> Roger Pielke Jr.
Addendum comments by Dr. Ryan N. Maue
Based upon this quote from Krugman:
But the evidence tells a different, much more ominous story. While several factors have contributed to soaring food prices, what really stands out is the extent to which severe weather events have disrupted agricultural production. And these severe weather events are exactly the kind of thing we’d expect to see as rising concentrations of greenhouse gases change our climate — which means that the current food price surge may be just the beginning.
There is no other way to interpret this than “I told you so” from Krugman directly linking climate change and the disparate weather events of the past year or two to food prices and the crises in the Arab world. To various commenters who are defending Krugman religiously, do you doubt that Krugman is linking the events implicitly or explicitly? Remind you, this is the same Nobel prize winner that less than a few hours after Congresswoman Giffords was shot blamed conservatives for the so-called “Climate of Hate“. How does he have ANY credibility at all — especially with anything related to physical sciences?
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For the moderators,
http://noconsensus.wordpress.com/2011/02/07/wrong-is-wrong-a-reply-to-the-real-noise-at-real-climate/
This is going on at CA and tAV, you may want to do something with it. I’ve sent Anthony an email but he’s a busy guy and may miss out on the fun.
Not intended for this thread.
Maybe if policymakers hadn’t subsidized “bioethanol” and “solar farms” farmers could have grown more grains.
Roger, I always appreciate your articles and clear framing of issues.
Excellent! We need more manic Krugamans out there screeching about CAGW during one of the coldest and snowiest winters in recent memory [LOL].
If you think AGW drove up the price of food, just take a look at what it did to copper! Who knew?
Anthony wrote:
Roger Pielke Jr. has a nice, short post in reaction to Paul Krugman’s opinion in the NY Times blaming climate change for the unrest in Egypt…
This is a simplistic distortion of what Krugman wrote in his column. He said that climate change is likely to be a contributor to this problem, along with natural cycles.
The first part of his column discusses the rise in consumption of food in the rapidly developing countries in Asia, partly due to increased meat consumption. Then he switches to the crop failures due to weather creating a shortage of grain, pointing out that the stockpiles are low.
The question then becomes, what’s behind all this extreme weather?
To some extent we’re seeing the results of a natural phenomenon, La Niña — a periodic event in which water in the equatorial Pacific becomes cooler than normal. And La Niña events have historically been associated with global food crises, including the crisis of 2007-8.
But that’s not the whole story. Don’t let the snow fool you: globally, 2010 was tied with 2005 for warmest year on record, even though we were at a solar minimum and La Niña was a cooling factor in the second half of the year. Temperature records were set not just in Russia but in no fewer than 19 countries, covering a fifth of the world’s land area. And both droughts and floods are natural consequences of a warming world: droughts because it’s hotter, floods because warm oceans release more water vapor.
As always, you can’t attribute any one weather event to greenhouse gases. But the pattern we’re seeing, with extreme highs and extreme weather in general becoming much more common, is just what you’d expect from climate change.
REPLY: Your might want to look carefully at the post author before launching rebuttals – Anthony
[RyanM: sounds like climateprogress in here]
I am hard pressed to name a more consistently wrong-headed “public intellectual” than Paul Krugman. Even those on the left are finding his offerings tough to swallow.
Urederra says:
February 7, 2011 at 10:21 am
“Maybe if policymakers hadn’t subsidized “bioethanol” and “solar farms” farmers could have grown more grains.”
Here’s an article from 1975.
Russia had an abnormally warm June and a poor grain harvest resulted.
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,947184,00.html
The fickleness of Russian weather has created no shortage of historical food security problems. Of course we used to blame it on communism, now we blame it on climate change. Personally I blame it on the weather.
FWIW, Krugman is a former advisor to Enron.
We all know how that worked out.
I am not sure who Mubarak’s Paul Krugman is but, to follow this example I would expect them to declare that not only is the catastrophic C02 buildup causing the planetary fever and the food price increases and thus the social unrest, but that the protestors are accelerating it by all their exhaling while shouting and marching.
So, to save the planet all the protestors must go home and shut up.
Tis the usual Watermelon extortion argument – Do what I say or the planet will die!
Spot on, Urederra. The ethanol subsidies and mandates have diverted farmland from food to ethanol feed-stocks and pinched the international food supply. The Feds “qualitative easing” (AKA printing money) and the increasing prosperity in Asia have amplified the effect.
Krugman is NOT, as you write “blaming climate change for the unrest in Egypt.”
What he actually wrote is:
“While several factors have contributed to soaring food prices, what really stands out is the extent to which severe weather events have disrupted agricultural production. And these severe weather events are exactly the kind of thing we’d expect to see as rising concentrations of greenhouse gases change our climate.”
And:
“As always, you can’t attribute any one weather event to greenhouse gases. But the pattern we’re seeing, with extreme highs and extreme weather in general becoming much more common, is just what you’d expect from climate change. ”
“The kind of thing we’d expect to see” and ” extreme weather in general becoming much more common” are not the same as blame.
I await noted Fields Medal finalist Krugman’s proof that every number that is greater than 2 is the sum of three primes.
Then the nominee for the Nobel Prize in physics can explain why the universe appears to have one time and three space dimensions.
Noelle says:
“The kind of thing we’d expect to see” and ” extreme weather in general becoming much more common” are not the same as blame.
Did you not read the Op-Ed? I admit, Krugman didn’t say the words “global warming is causing the unrest in Egypt.” But his basic premise is that we’re seeing the beginnings of CAGW, and its going to get a lot worse. There really is no reasonable alternate reading of it. That’s what he said. Oh, and he threw in a little ad hom in at the end.
To paraphrase the whole op-ed,
“You can’t attribute to climate change things like weather variation, severe weather events, or food price fluctuation. But I’m going to do it anyway, to argue that the unrest in Egypt in just the beginning, and things are going to get a lot worse. Those crazy deniers are going to say I can’t prove that AGW is causing food prices to spike and in turn flaming the fire of unrest in the Middle East. And they’re right, I can’t. But don’t listen to them. They’re crazy conspiracists.”
Over the last few years there have been several quasi-convincing arguments that the worlds grain reserves have been growing smaller, pimrarily for political economic reasons, not because of any decline in production. Countries have traditionally held grain in reserve for periods of poor weather and political uncertainty. It seems strange that in a time of purportedly increasing weather uncertainty, several countries have (apparently) chosen to severely diminish their grain reserves. Why am I not surprised that food prices have become more volatile.
Noelle says:
February 7, 2011 at 11:30 am
“The kind of thing we’d expect to see” and ” extreme weather in general becoming much more common” are not the same as blame.
###
BS ……….
Mr Krugman blames high food prices on lower crop production, and that in turn on weather extremes caused by “global warming”. Therefore, we need to do something about CO2 production. The majority of the NYT comments seems to agree. What a fantastic chain of beliefs, most of which are unproven at best! I’ve talked to farmers from wheat growers in N. Dakota to wineries in central CA. They all tell me that yields are down a bit because of the shorter growing season due to COOLER temperatures. I understand this is not a global survey, but I want to see actual data supporting Mr Krugman’s statement that weather extremes actually do account for lower food availability. And how those weather extremes are caused by “global warming”. And how official adjusted government temperature data is better than actual temperature observations.
I feel sorry for the farmers affected by weather extremes, but weather extremes have been happening since long before people were planting crops. They’re just better reported now.
“Extreme weather events…” Another phrase that pegs my BS meter.
Noelle….the quotes you gave show very much that Krugman is trying to blame, at least in part, the unrest in Egypt on climate change. It was a shameless plug for one of his favorite topics and it was embarrassingly unsubstantial!
Krugman:
[T]he evidence does, in fact, suggest that what we’re getting now is a first taste of the disruption, economic and political, that we’ll face in a warming world. And given our failure to act on greenhouse gases, there will be much more, and much worse, to come.
Imo, Krugman is again purposefully postulating alleged facts not in evidence, just as he did in the case of Lochnor’s Tucson, Az., assault; where what Krugman immediately blurted out as something that “could” have been the case, was not the case; while it was also evident fairly early on that Lochnor was psychotic enough for that alone to explain his actions; so that Krugman did not care about the facts at all, but rather only about spreading a propaganda meme ASAP, specifically before the facts had any chance to appear!
But which then actually made Krugman look as delusional as Lochnor!
So in this case of alleged CO2CAGW climate disruption, Krugman merely continues true to form, postulating as alleged fact propaganda memes, when he obviously doesn’t really care if they are factual or not. And he’s therefore still only intending to appeal to the delusional.
Of course, to be fair, it’s also possible that Krugman, enc., really couldn’t tell that Lochnor is psychotic, because their thinking is too much like his.
Noelle says:
February 7, 2011 at 11:30 am
Krugman is NOT, as you write “blaming climate change for the unrest in Egypt.”
Not quite true, he is trying a classic conflation trick here. He takes what we do know and mixes in his own conjecture based on his beliefs in CAGW. What he is trying to do is present a carefully selected and exclusive set of unrelated events and tying them together while forgetting to use facts and figures like total food production and charts showing these proclaimed “extremes”.
“As always, you can’t attribute any one weather event to greenhouse gases. But the pattern we’re seeing, with extreme highs and extreme weather in general becoming much more common, is just what you’d expect from climate change. ”
Here we see the bait and switch trickery, its telling us nothing about facts and figures and evidence, we are supposed to take the bait and take it for granted. Where is the evidence that weather is actually becoming more extreme and happening more often?
Extreme highs? High what, rain cold warm dry snow? Where is the evidence that extreme weather is “much more common”?
You see none because there really is none, no really, there is no evidence to suggest anything of the sort so in the absence of evidence we are led on a journey. This journey needs us to forget about real evidence and rely instead on the actual increase in hysterical MSM reporting of weather events, we are led away from actual facts and figures and asked to accept the emotional case instead. Its a clever artifice to lead you away from the land of factual evidence to the fairy land of wishful thinking make believe and the further down the road you travel the less reality you wish to see, its a sickness infecting a large part of the CAGW belief system.
No, the trick is of course that the normal ebb and flow of weather events that have been occurring since time began is being picked on and reported as evidence of CAGW and the more it is reported the firmer the ‘evidence’ appears but it is not real evidence at all, it is a fabrication with no substance, an emotive fable and modern folklore, repeat a fabrication often enough and people start to accept it as fact.
What we would expect from climate change is for the climate to change just as it always has since the dawn of time, the same events, the same floods and droughts and heat and cold and snow and rain but these are now being used to promote CAGW, so where are the facts to go with the statement? No proofs and no figures of this supposed increase in extremes? They of course do not exist and that is why we are asked to believe the central narrative without proofs because there is no proof. If humanity just climbed back in the trees there would still be the exact same amount of weather and climate events as before.
Its a very crafty presentation and one which lawyers use in a courtroom, if you have no actual evidence just pretend it exists, conflate knowns with uncertainties and hope nobody notices. What we see is a blatant attempt to mislead and confuse because that is all the CAGW narrative has left.
Green policies are hurting world food production, eco green insanity and selfish trade protectionism by the EU for example which has enacted many green policies is a major culprit as it puts selfish self interest and insane green policies into effect, a disastrous combination of cynical selfishness and naive eco stupidity. Biofuels and trade barriers and food dumping in Africa and corruption and anti third world development practices and stone age farming techniques are the real threats. Climate change is real and its natural and cyclic, we live with its effects and we prosper in spite of its effects but we cannot hope to prosper with the utterly disastrous green eco anti humanist anti progress theologies acting as a dragging anchor.
Well, if you look at Pielke’s graph then food prices have been going down for 100 years. Can we blame that on climate change too since CO2 increases crop yields?
Also, I believe I recall Krugman implying that meat prices were going up, when AFAIK they have been flat – probably due to the fact that unlike the grains mentioned they aren’t involved in biofuel production.
Doh that damn logic again…I’ll never get a Nobel prize at this rate.
Is there a unit of catastrophe which plots scale of events in lives and property? I suppose there ought to be, but not knowing it I will invent one for this post – ‘OMGs’. Given that history and pre history are littered with weather (and climate) catastrophes of all sorts and those eras represent a variety of global temperatures, what global temperature produces the lowest OMGs? Do anyone really think that that temperature equals 0ºC on the anomaly scale?
Dan in California says:
February 7, 2011 at 12:56 pm
Indeed! I say we increase CO2 production dramatically to help plant growth (or do those who run greenhouses for a living augment CO2 just out of spite?)
And the point of the article you linked is? What is the causation you are claiming? Since warm weather caused poor grain harvest in 1975 then fewer land area dedicated to grow cereals shouldn’t produce grain scarcity? I don’t follow your logic.
Of course we blame communism.
http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/archives/ukra.html
Nuff said.