Paul Krugman has caused quite a stir with his claims that the riots in Egypt are the result of:
global warming > causing bad weather > causing crop failure > causing increased food prices > causing riots.
It’s rather circular logic IMHO, and one that isn’t supportable by the data at hand.
First, there is a piece, Debunking Krugman: NYT’s “Soaring Food Prices – Blame the Weather”. The author, who is open to the possibility that global warming might be problem, shows that Krugman knows not of what he speaketh. As she says, “This is so far off base, Paul Krugman, I hardly know where to start.”
Andrew Bolt has a very good piece in which he reminds us that “food production is in fact at near-historic levels and the Egyptian regime actually keeps food prices pretty stable through massive subsidies.”
So food prices probably did not trigger the problems in Egypt. In fact, because of subsidies that keep bread prices constant at low levels, many poor folk are favorably inclined toward the current regime.
Also, on Pielke, Jr’s website, Richard Tol reminds us that IPCC reports tell us that for modest global warming (of the order of 1 to 3 degrees C, I believe) , global food prices may decline. And this is despite the fact that, as shown at WUWT, negative Socioeconomic Impacts of Global Warming are Systematically Overestimated, while positive impacts are underestimated. (This is in two parts; Part II is here).
Pielke Jr. has this graph on his website to speak to the issue:
Note the spike in prices 1972-1976. The food crisis in the 1970’s wasn’t driven by weather either.
During that 70s food crisis, many of the same arguments were made that are being made today:
“We’re running out of food! People in (enter random developing country name here) will starve! There’s unrest in the third world!”
Remember this? From Wiki:
Erlich’s The Population Bomb was a best-selling book written by Paul R. Ehrlich and his wife, Anne Ehrlich (who was uncredited), in 1968.[1] It warned of the mass starvation of humans in the 1970s and 1980s due to overpopulation, as well as other major societal upheavals, and advocated immediate action to limit population growth. Fears of a “population explosion” were widespread in the 1950s and 60s, but the book and its charismatic author brought the idea to an even wider audience.[2] [3] The book has been criticized in recent decades for its alarmist tone and inaccurate predictions.
Well we all know how those predictions turned out.
Thanks to Indur Goklany, who contributed to this article.
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Consider the possibility that food prices are escalating because we are burning food in our automobiles. Being unable to digest oil, myself, I have chosen to burn it to make the machinery go round-and-round. I recognize corn as precious food and avoid burning it in my car because I’ve heard half the world goes hungry each night. Call me old fashioned!
Mubarak must be loving this. It’s nothing to do with his failing regime, it’s all down to climate change. It’s particularly annoying that complex social phenomenon such as protest and war are reduced to a simple correlation with climate metrics. For me these are the hardest pieces of ‘science’ to swallow. Every politician in the world must be loving this ‘get out of jail free card’ that takes responsibility for corruption and failure from them and piles it onto the weather. Climate scientists as excusniks for autocrats, that must be satisfying for their liberal consciences.
BTW Antony one mans riot is another mans vigorous democratic protest.
I saw this news article, and whilst I usually tip of WUWT that about breaking news stories, I thought this one was just so outlandish that it didn’t merit inclusion on a serious blog like this.
There was nothing more to this story than a presumption of connection, I know in climate “science” that’s enough to get you a (ig)Nobel prize but … well really even by their standards this argument held together like a wet paper bag.
Some people believe firmly that in the process, their oracle statements make it so. Such arrogance manifests itself in such logic that Krugman I suspect really believes it himself. Very sad. We had food price riots in Mexico ultimately because of the effect of diversion of corn to ethanol instead of Tortillas. Look elsewhere for causes Paul.
There may in fact be a connection between “Global Warming” and high food prices, but not the way Paul Krugman thinks: The culprit is not the warming, but the scare, which has such undesirable political consequences as the biofuel lunacy, which in turn may be partly responsible for some of the soaring prices, at least for corn and palm oil.
May be people will pay attention when rising Global Food prices escalate even further caused by GLOBAL COOLING as is only too likely in the coming decades.
Then controlling CO2 will not be an answer, if it ever was.
AGW is responsible for the world’s ills. Speaking from personal experience, I have noted that ever since AGW started I have gotten older every year. No point graphing it, it is a direct linear correlation with 100% confidence levels. I would suggest, if you check your records, you have probably been affected in the same way. Something must be done, and quickly, before it is too late!
Even in todays western world, it is difficult to find similar extremist views.
That puts Krugman and the New York Times into one league with folks from North Korea or worse.
We have a phrase in English English for the Krugmans of this world. We call them “barking mad”. And if you want to stop food crises, action number one has to be preventing the gamblers of the international stock markets from playing their games with people’s nutrition – food is far too important to allow that sort of thing. Plus, maybe, a little more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and a little more warmth, to help the supply. 😉
Great. They gave the hobbit a nobel prize in economics. Now we have to endure this puppet yabbing in every news outlet about… global warming?
I have no problem with people speaking on the topic, but Krugman is trying to promote himself as an AGW-economist by “making up” climate science to support his thinking. His comments on Egypt are, not only wrong, but they give us a shallow and very dumb, narrow look at a conflict which deserves much better.
can some body tell him he has to contact his doctor and tell the doctor that I am not taking my medication for what reasons nobody knows he dose,t know also and nobody else . now that dose not make any sence and either dose he or any body else
Economist Don Boudreaux on Paul Krugman’s paper:
http://cafehayek.com/2011/02/hot-to-jump-to-conclusions.html
Food riots among the dirt-poor look very different from plump middle class political uprisings organized using sophisticated telecoms and media relations.
Rising food prices are a factor! The riots last year were caused by the rising cost of bread. This is caused by the rising production of biofuels caused by alarmist policies of governments not climate change.
Mubarak has been in power for 30 odd years. He is an autocratic President with the backing of the Egyptian Army and when he first came to power he was good for Egypt and his pragmatism brought peace to the region after his deal with Israel. This has helped Egypt to gain prosperity but they have not gained any freedom. It is this that has sparked the problems. The internet has also been instrumental in showing the Egyptians what lies outside their boundaries and what is possible when oppression is removed. Let us hope that the new government is western styled not fundamentalist.
Why do people such as Krugman put such odd information together then, by some magical process not available to mere mortals, read some causality into the mix?
The next question, of course, is why such illogical conclusions actually get publicity… sorry, I forgot the general lack of reasoning in the MSM.
Altough I underwrite all the arguments that destroy the insane claims from from Paul Krugman, I am missing the most important argument why food prices went sky high.
Have a look at this graph here:
http://climategate.nl/2011/02/04/niet-climate-change-maar-co2-beleid-oorzaak-islamitisch-oproer/fao-300×180-2/
This graph shows that it wasn’t climate change that caused the price hikes but CO2 policies, the grand scale conversion from food crops into bio-fuels.
Webster Tarpley – Egypt – A Post Modern Coup
I think the ever growing world population is a contributary factor, and far more
damaging to the world than the myth of global warming. Governments should
spend our taxes on population management sooner rather than later.
The information at the FAO website clearly shows the moment we started to convert food crops into bio-fuels. Here is the site: http://www.fao.org/worldfoodsituation/FoodPricesIndex/en/
The moment we stop the bio fuel scam, prices will drop to normal levels again.
A man of vision, Dr Krugman, able to see the Big Picture and make connections that ordinary men of lesser intelligence would find ludicrous. As would men of greater intelligence.
arthur clapham says:
February 8, 2011 at 2:22 am
I think the ever growing world population is a contributary factor, and far more
damaging to the world than the myth of global warming. Governments should
spend our taxes on population management sooner rather than later.
Not according to the facts and arguments set out in The Rational Optimist , a fantastic read that I highly recommend. I have not quite finished but he make a lot of sense.
Everything is caused by Global Warming.
Except Global Warming, that’s caused by man.
So why don’t the alarmists save the planet and find a skyscraper to jump off.
OK, what’s the deal with higher prices when the chart shows prices dropping?
Easy, note that the chart says “prices deflated”…
Governments all around the world are printing nice paper money by the superfreighter load (no, wait, that’s too small a metaphor…) in an attempt to keep all the bubbles from all the prior overprinting of money from imploding into a recessional black hole.
This doesn’t work.
So they print more money.
The folks who get all these pretty pieces of paper try to turn them into something real with real value as quickly as they can. That’s why everything from sugar, cotton, and wheat to corn, soybeans, and coffee, to iron, copper, and coal, to oil and … you get the picture. Basically just about EVERY commodity is shooting up.
This “puts the lie” to any explanation based on turning corn into fuel (why, then, is it also hitting copper and aluminum? Coal and sugar?) or based on weather (which does what to Uranium and Tin (also spiking like crazy)….
The simple fact is that inflation starts with commodity inflation. It then takes a while to work into product inflation. Eventually, at the far end, it turns into wage inflation and real estate inflation. To quote Microsofts web site when researching a bug in their product “This behaviour is by design.” The Fed wants real estate inflation to cure the incipient deflation that everyone is scared bat-shit about. The Government wants a loverly load of inflation so they can inflate away the $14 Trillion and rising debt they have (and maybe even inflate away some pension obligations with poor Price Index inflators…).
There is a trivial weather component, but that component is tied to COLD and WET and is not tied to HOT and DRY. Floods in Australia and snow in the USA Midwest are impacting wheat. (Russian wheat impacts were long gone. Ag commodities tend to run in seasonal cycles, not over multiple years… as inspection of the chart up top shows. There is a secular decline, but each spike runs about a year, sometimes two at most, then ends. NEVER overstay an ag commodity trade… it WILL return to the mean…)
So the “food cost” problems in Egypt are simply the result of the prices in dollars rising due to the devaluing of the dollar (and the Egyptian pound) not any significant increase in Real Costs. But the problem is that poor folks don’t pay Real Costs, they pay present currency prices, and when the currency is being trashed, that is sucky.
So what’s going on is pretty simple: “Helecopter Ben” is dumping dollars on the world as fast as he can to prop up housing prices, and those dollars are going into all sorts of things NOT houses…
It will take a while for the world to figure this out, and longer for Mr. Ben to figure it out, and even longer for the Politicians to realise this was A Very Bad Idea (if ever… some folks, like Barney Franks, will never get it…)
It’s about 1973 again (though we’ve got the moral equivalent of the S&L Resolution Trust already happening a bit early this time), and you need to start preparing for the “war costs” to come home to roost as an oil shock hits and just hope that there isn’t another “oil embargo” (though this time I’d expect it to be caused by something more subtile than an actual OPEC vote… say an Iranian Bomb or an EPA ruling…)
Though this time we don’t need Tricky Dick to take us off the Gold Standard to print boatloads of currency; Old Ben is already at it.
So give it about a decade to get inflation to the intollerable level, prop up housing prices (while letting real value drop) and repudiate the debt in real terms while paying every nominal dollar. Then we’ll be ready for 18% interest rates (again…) to put the inflation monster back in its cave…
Until then: Buy “stuff”, things with real value to them. Buy assets in countries with a stable currency and low propensity to print money like crazy. Avoid countries with a Socialist Sovereign Risk Penalty (like, presently, Brazil, Venezuela, Greece, and The USA) and generally avoid US Bonds at all costs.
Oh, and stock up on sugar, coffee, noodles, canned goods,…
Only climate hippies seem to blame a somewhat peaceful revolution on climate rather than the more simple stuff like the common folks being feed up with getting subjected to torture by their own ant-democratic government and probably not wanting their country to be a torture hall of fame for hire by other countries (which apparently is rather bad for tourism.)
John Marshall says February 8, 2011 at 1:49 am …
Youth unemployment (accentuated by global economic downturn) is probably the biggest factor. See:
http://www.moneyweek.com/blog/merryn-somerset-webb-egypt-youth-unemployment-and-britain-00311.aspx