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.
@Billy V:
compare price of corn from 2000-2011 and price of oil:
http://inflationdata.com/inflation/Inflation_Articles/Corn_Inflation.asp
http://www.mongabay.com/images/commodities/charts/crude_oil.html
The corn going to ethanol comes from decreasing exports and from increasing production. Note that the price of all grains has almost doubled over the last 5 months as oil prices have risen- the govt EtOH subsidy has remained unchanged durng that time. http://www.aae.wisc.edu/renk/library/Effect%20of%20Ethanol%20on%20Corn%20Price.pdf
This study http://www.aae.wisc.edu/renk/library/Effect%20of%20Ethanol%20on%20Corn%20Price.pdfhttp://www.aae.wisc.edu/renk/library/Effect%20of%20Ethanol%20on%20Corn%20Price.pdf showed only about 11-20 cents/bu increase.
This report called it ~40c/bu http://www.aae.wisc.edu/renk/library/Effect%20of%20Ethanol%20on%20Corn%20Price.pdf
Please excuse the technical problem. This one shows the 40c/bu http://beefmagazine.com/beefstockertrends/0609-ethanol-policies-impact-price/
Use this one to visualize the stable corn prices suddenly rising last July/Aug. Click on the “charts” logo and change the criteria to” 5 yrs”. http://illinoisbeef.com/
Steve, Not only are the grain elevators full, the surplus cheese stocks are full, and vast prime ag land sits idle. Around here (Willamette Valley) farmers mostly grow specialty crops like grass seed, beet seed, and blueberries, but those occupy less than 20% of the land base. Most ag land is growing uncut hay, hobby horses, and the occasional subdivision (that also sit empty and idle).
There is no food shortage. If there was, tractors would be plowing millions of acres tomorrow. It costs more to grow corn than it’s worth. Without the ethanol, cornsyrup, and corn plastic markets, those acres would not be growing corn at all. They’d be growing weeds.
And yes, the ag markets are utterly manipulated. The latest wrench in the gears is S.510 – The FDA Food Safety and Modernization Act, passed by the Lame Ducks a few days before last Christmas. Its main purpose is to put family farmers out of business. The supporters were the mega corp farms like ADM.
I grant that there is a correlation between the price of most ag commodities and oil. That’s because corn etc. is grown on a narrow margin, and fuel and fertilzer costs are a significant portion of costs. It is not because corn is diverted to ethanol and that’s what is driving up the price.
I also grant that there is a connection between virtually every mass produced commodity or manufactured good and oil prices for the exact same reasons: narrow margins and fuel is a significant cost.
The global warming scam is a strategy engaged in by energy producers and/or energy market manipulators (ala Enron). When the mega cartels in collusion with governments drive up energy costs, almost everything becomes more expensive to produce and hence to buy.
That’s why it is such a ridiculous lie when alarmists accuse skeptics of being in the oil companies’ pockets. The actual truth is just the opposite. Big Oil has the most to gain from CAGW alarmism.
John Brookes says:
February 8, 2011 at 4:36 am
“I’m always slightly puzzled when Erlich’s predictions of mass starvation are derided. As far as I’m aware, around 30,000 people a day die of hunger.”
Please source your data. Thanks.
John Brookes says:
February 8, 2011 at 4:36 am
“I’m always slightly puzzled when Erlich’s predictions of mass starvation are derided. As far as I’m aware, around 30,000 people a day die of hunger.”
Give me a free market, honest/moral politicians in the country where they reside, and the energy and concrete and power and truck and rail and car transportation and sewage and silos and fertilizer that the CAGW propagandists DEMAND we deny them in the name of their CO2 political agenda. None will starve.
60 million in China under the Communists? 8-12 million under the Soviet communists? Those now under corrupt sub-African dictatorships? Those under UN-controlled areas in the third world? Yes. Those under socialism do regularly starve. (Those in India starved as well – and may starve yet again – unless energy and their economy can continue to grow. But the UN IPCC apparently wants them to die in squalor and hunger.)
JPeden says:
February 8, 2011 at 12:48 pm
eadler says:
February 8, 2011 at 9:56 am
“Once again this straw man argument is repeated. Krugman never said that crop failures were caused by global warming. You are twisting what he said to make a straw man argument you can refute.”
Then why is Krugman even mentioning “food prices” at all in the context of “climate change”, “extreme weather events”, and climate change “warming”, which moves his whole probability distribution “to the right”?
Without “food prices” mixed in, Krugman’s little lecture on the “obvious” – as he admits it is – is not worth writing about, and he knows it!
If you have a quote by Krugman which you think is wrong, please refer to it in your argument, and explain what is factually incorrect or illogical. He explained the answers to your question in his piece:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/07/opinion/07krugman.html?_r=1&partner=rss&emc=rss
The Russian heat wave was only one of many recent extreme weather events, from dry weather in Brazil to biblical-proportion flooding in Australia, that have damaged world food production.
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.
Krugman isn’t inventing this idea. There is respectable science behind it.
Here is one study that explains the increase in drought in the Southwestern US as a result of AGW.
http://climatesignals.org/2010/10/droughtflood-pattern-in-southeast-u-s-linked-to-climate-change/
Here is one Australian expert who says the extreme events, Cyclones and floods, are in part a result of record Pacific Ocean temperatures:
http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/43560.html
And things are likely to get worse, if you believe respected scientist and 2007 Australian of the year, Professor Tim Flannery.
“The individual severe weather events you point to are the kind of thing climate modelling predicts will become more frequent as greenhouse gas concentrations increase,” he told me.
Finally the high temperatures which destroyed a large fraction of the Russsian wheat crop broke the record by a lot. Russia is on of the areas where global warming will occur the earliest.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_Northern_Hemisphere_summer_heat_wave
This is a small fraction of the information and statements by respected scientists that are out there on the blogosphere and in the peer reviewed literature. You may not agree with all of this, but there is ample evidence to support what Krugman says in his column.
“As far as I’m aware, around 30,000 people a day die of hunger”
Global Death rates remain steady at 100 Percent in spite of global warming!!
http://www.theonion.com/articles/world-death-rate-holding-steady-at-100-percent,1670/
Food prices are rising for the same reason all commodity prices are rising. The world’s central banks are flooding the world’s economies with fiat currency. Are we also running out of gold, silver, palladium, copper, cotton, coal, oil, etc, etc etc? The late Milton Friedman won a Nobel prize for pointing out this simple truth.
I have a simpler model for Egypt.
November 2010 elections (their parliament) —-> Feb. 2011 protests
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egyptian_parliamentary_election,_2010
Steve says:
February 8, 2011 at 2:16 pm
James Sexton, I’m not flabbergasted at your ignorance. I’m all to familiar with the approach. It is like climate science – reject the ground truth and believe the models. That is what you are doing.
You also didn’t read very carefully what I wrote. I did NOT defend any notion of using wind power as -baseline- power, except as what would be tested as always available across a large grid. I think I made that clear. So you attack me personally for saying something I didn’t say.
You’ve now had multiple first person witnesses on ethanol. You choose not to believe them. You should work for Mann or Hansen.
======================================================
Nice twist sis. You were the one that mentioned ignorance. Did you bother to read my post? I didn’t read yours carefully????
Yes, yes I did. Are you going to try now and state that you when you stated “I also live in wind farm country and am often infuriated with the ignorance demonstrated here about wind power (and by the ignorance of the more fanatical of its proponents as well. It has its place.that it wasn’t a better alternative to the past electric generation mix that we had? Let me be clear wind generation is more expensive and less reliable than nuclear, coal, gas, and hydro. We have the ability to create more nuclear, coal, and gas generation plants. And in some cases hydro. To create wind farms, knowing they lack the reliability of the previous mentioned alternatives and knowing it is more expensive is insidiously stupid. I’d welcome a reasoned argument that supports creating these monstrous whirligigs, but I haven’t seen one yet, and your vapid response seems to confirm that there isn’t one.
You said, “So you attack me personally for saying something I didn’t say.”????? Really? I didn’t realize I had. Please point out the personal attack in my previous post. Just so you know, you should feel personally offended and then later you should feel the need for a greater expanse of your knowledge of wind generation and the cost, because this is intended. I do try to be clear, but I fail sometimes.
Next, you state, “You’ve now had multiple first person witnesses on ethanol. You choose not to believe them. You should work for Mann or Hansen.
1/3 goes to ethanol? Where? Certainly not in southern Minnesota, northern Iowa. Where is this supposed to be happening? The price of corn went up, then went down, by quite a bit. And that isn’t the price of wheat or rice.”
You know, I haven’t been to Minnesota in a long while. I’ve been to Iowa more than I wish. Here’s a question for you. Did you read my links to the USDA? I’m quoting factual statistics. You’re giving me an opinion based on the region in which you live. See the word right before my sentence that starts…..”I’d welcome….” or the word right before my words of “…response seems..” You wish to speak of reality denying? Really? “…first person witnesses on ethanol.” RU freaking kidding me? Every time I fill up with ethanol I’m a first person witness to ethanol. I make the stuff for Christ’s sake! You think I should work for Mann? You are the one trying to convince me the reality I see isn’t real. BS.
To quote you, “But what do I know? I grew up on an upper midwestern corn and soybeans farm. My father not only farmed, but provided technical and financial consultation for around 110 other farmers.”
Yeh sis, but what do I know….. My grandpop was a farmer/cattle rancher, too. Oh, Dad was a poultry rancher………me? I work for a Rural Electric Coop……. and live on the line I serve…….the same line my grandfather helped build.
Read the damned links I provided. Those are facts. Then talk your BS.
Some above have argued that the 30,000 daily deaths due to starvation are not caused by lack of food, but by corrupt regimes.
Of course there is not a lack of food, its just that the poorest can’t afford it. If there is less food produced next year, then rather more of the poorest won’t be able to afford it. If a corn grower can get a better price selling their corn for ethanol to use in the 1st world, rather than selling it as food to the 3rd world, they will. If a farmer can make more growing strawberries for sale at Wimbledon than they can get growing wheat, they will. In the lush Margaret River region of Western Australia we grow grapes to make wine, which is very nice. Wheat growing happens in the more marginal land.
So a simple definition of a “lack of food”, is a price at which a fraction (say 10%) of the worlds population can’t afford to adequately feed itself. By that definition, we have a lack of food. A lack of food which is only made worse by an increasingly uncertain climate.
Thanks for the links. I used that same graph of Krugman above in my critique of his ideas, “When Krugman becomes climate paranoid”, http://funwithgovernment.blogspot.com/2011/02/when-krugman-becomes-climate-paranoid.html. Thank you.
Many here seem to think there will always be enough food. We’re just one good drought away from catastrophe. Our reserves aren’t nearly as large as some seem to think.
“The adequacy question is especially important this year with extreme adverse weather in several important foreign grain and oilseed producing countries, and with low beginning stocks of U.S. soybeans as well as only slightly over a 5-week reserve supply of corn for the start of the new marketing year.” http://www.agmrc.org/renewable_energy/biofuelsbiorefining_general/corn_and_soybean_availability_for_biofuels_in_201011.cfm
The last significant drought in our MidWest was in 1988 (23 yrs ago) and tree-ring studies show we average one major drought every 19 yrs over the last millenium. We’re overdue and LaNina usually brings less rain here.
Must Read:
Chinese weather on Tahrir Square
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/MB10Ak02.html
“The last significant drought in our MidWest was in 1988 (23 yrs ago) and tree-ring studies show we average one major drought every 19 yrs over the last millenium. We’re overdue and LaNina usually brings less rain here.”
Drought cycles coincide with the 18.6 year lunar orbital cycle. Mainstream climate science remains unable to predict even this most basic aspects of climate due to its obsessive fixation on human beings and CO2 as the main driver of climate variability.
Rising food prices are caused by global printing of money as a means of solving the current debt crisis. Same amount of food, more money to spend on food pushed into the system means higher food prices (and higher oil prices, gold silver etc etc).
Mubarak is in trouble because unemployment is at 25% and in Egypt that means a lot of people living below the poverty line.
eadler says:
“Here is one study that explains the increase in drought in the Southwestern US as a result of AGW.”
The SW USA has been arid to semi-arid for millenia. Droughts have happened. Mega-droughts have happened. Whether there has been an increase is subject to debate. I suppose you could take this topic up with the Anasazi, Hohokam, and Sinagua peoples except that their civilizations were wiped out by climate change and drought. AGW then???? I think not.
Ryan says:
February 9, 2011 at 8:06 am
Rising food prices are caused by global printing of money as a means of solving the current debt crisis. Same amount of food, more money to spend on food pushed into the system means higher food prices (and higher oil prices, gold silver etc etc).
Mubarak is in trouble because unemployment is at 25% and in Egypt that means a lot of people living below the poverty line.
Are you claiming that doubling of wheat prices in 2010, which began rising in June of 2010, when it became clear that there would be a drought in Russia, and rose more intensely after Russia announce that they wouldn’t export any wheat this year, was purely a result of printing money? If this is what you are claiming, it is clearly wrong.
Taphonomic says:
February 9, 2011 at 9:31 am
eadler says:
“Here is one study that explains the increase in drought in the Southwestern US as a result of AGW.”
The SW USA has been arid to semi-arid for millenia. Droughts have happened. Mega-droughts have happened. Whether there has been an increase is subject to debate. I suppose you could take this topic up with the Anasazi, Hohokam, and Sinagua peoples except that their civilizations were wiped out by climate change and drought. AGW then???? I think not.
No climate scientist is arguing that there is only one possible cause for drought in the Southwest. The fact that it happened previously, without being caused by CO2, does not show that increasing atmospheric CO2 cannot be the cause of drought in the future.
You didn’t say what we should make of the fact that drought had other causes in the past. Are you implicitly arguing that this proves CO2 cannot be the cause of droughts in the future, or are you saying that since the Anasazi’s had to suffer a decline in their civilization it doesn’t matter? What is the point you are trying to make here?
As the USDA graph shows, food prices have been falling for the past 60 years. At the same time CO2 has been rising. This shows that CO2 is a benefit.
Obviously because CO2 is a natural fertilizer, and plants grow better when it is
warmer, more CO2 => warmer => more food => lower prices => less starvation.
The reverse must also be true. Less CO2 => cooler => less food => higher prices => more starvation.
So tell me again, why do we want to reduce CO2? Is it because someone thinks this would be a good way to reduce the population of the planet? Surely that will be the result.
eadler,
Obviously, micro-economic supply and demand issues, or perception of supply and demand, always play a role. However, the supply and demand of fiat currency also matters. There is nothing controversial about this with anyone who has studied monetary theory. There is a lot of money out there right now looking for something to buy. Quite a bit of that money ends up pursuing physical assets like grains and precious metals since people are worried about the declining value of the currency itself.
Tom_R says:
February 8, 2011 at 6:00 am
Starvation is being used as a means of killing off of internal enemies when it’s cheaper than other means (and also less likely to be recognized as genocide by UN bureaucrats).
Ah, so that’s how they plan to decapitate the population at 9.2 billion.