Guest essay by Eric Worrall
According to Photo journalist Gethin Chamberlain, crop failures force third world farmers to sell off their kids.
Why climate change is creating a new generation of child brides
As global warming exacerbates drought and floods, farmers’ incomes plunge – and girls as young as 13 are given away to stave off poverty
by Gethin Chamberlain (words and photographs)
It was the flood that ensured that Ntonya Sande’s first year as a teenager would also be the first year of her married life. Up to the moment the water swept away her parents’ field in Kachaso in the Nsanje district of Malawi, they had been scraping a living. Afterwards they were reduced to scavenging for bits of firewood to sell.
So when a young man came to their door and asked for the 13-year old’s hand in marriage, the couple didn’t think about it for too long, lest he look elsewhere. Ntonya begged them to change their minds. She was too young, she pleaded. She didn’t want to leave. But it was to no avail. Her parents sat her down and spelled it out for her: the weather had changed and taken everything from them. There was not enough food to go around. They couldn’t afford another mouth at the table.
That night she lay down in bed for the first time with the man she had never seen before and followed the instructions of her aunt, who had coached her on the important matter of sex. Ten months later, she gave birth to their first daughter.
Everyone has their own idea of what climate change looks like. For some, it’s the walrus struggling to find space on melting ice floes on Blue Planet II. For others, it’s an apocalyptic vision of cities disappearing beneath the waves. But for more and more girls across Africa, the most palpable manifestation of climate change is the baby in their arms as they sit watching their friends walk to school. The Brides of the Sun reporting project, funded by the European Journalism Centre, set out to try to assess the scale of what many experts are warning is a real and growing crisis: the emergence of a generation of child brides as a direct result of a changing climate.
…
Leaving aside the rather tenuous link between climate and weather, can anyone imagine selling your kid rather than selling the farm if the money runs out?
There is no circumstance under which I could imagine selling a family member to pay the bills. You sell stuff, not people, if you are short of cash.
Farmers in Malawi might have had a hard time lately – the nature of primitive subsistence farming with minimal help from fossil fuel powered farm equipment is regular periods of extreme hardship. But my sympathy is tempered with utter disgust at the Guardian’s efforts to rationalise a backward misogynist culture which considers daughters to be just another chattel to sell to the highest bidder if the money runs out.
He knows nothing of Africa, not even been there I suspect. Just his opinion from his armchair. Total rubbish!
Often people want to put guilt on Westerners. This is an example.
when you exceed the carrying capacity of your land it is time to change what you are doing.
Fact: Climate change is producing more claims about the effects of climate change.
The effects are anything you can imagine.The better your imagination, the more effects you detect.
Somewhere, a venal academic is rushing to complete a scholarly paper in which he shows a substantial correlation between dandruff and climate change. He’s already selected a correlation coefficient; now he need only make up some underlying (waka-waka) data. Onward to junkets, fame and glory and endless grants!
Fact:
The Grauniad is producing more child like minds in adults.
It’s more like the lack of climate change is stimulating more claims of the effects of (nonexistent) climate change. They are trying to prove climate change is happening by claiming that anything they notice is due to climate change.
The hidden code here is that their definition of “climate change” is “global warming due to human activities.” In the real world, of course, climate change is always happening, getting warmer or getting cooler, so their ingenuous definition is the key to their hidden meaning and agenda.
In Islamic societies it is custom to arrange for a wedding when your daughter reaches puberty. This has been the custom in these parts of the world for hundreds of years. One only knows this if you’ve lived in African or MiddleEastern cultures for many years. Come on folks. We’re more intelligent than this article/author. I challenge you to get educated on how the rest of the world lives on a day to day basis. This is the polar opposite of the Western world’s values and ideas system
As Don Rickles said with a wicked leer, “Child brides? Nuttin’ wrong in that!” The more, the merrier, hey?
Yes. Child marriage is a question of culture, education, and tradition. Coal coukd provide the energy to increase productivity so these countries had better conditions for women. The Guardian has it upside down.
My wife is Malawian by citizenship, Zimbabwean by birth, frequent resident of South Africa. And now she lives with me here in Sydney, Australia.
Eish! Born in Harare for Malawian parents? We have some connections Zimbabwe and South Africa, where I visited only three months ago. I can’t speak Shona though.
This is actually funny. The two furst commenters have family from the area. Not what you expect from this site, eh?
But … But … Only old white males comment on this blog!
Yes, born to Malawians in Zimbabwe, Bulawayo. Bit like New Zealanders in Australia. Their children are New Zealanders. Her daughter, 10, speaks 4 languages. Shona, Zulu, another native language I forget the name of and English.
My other half is in Harare right now.
She says the weather is a bit cool and rainy, but the people are happy.
“…Only old white males comment on this blog” (I’m sure Dave didn’t need to include “sarc” tags in that crack.)
Can’t speak for the rest of us, but female person of color / red here. I admit to being post menopause, but I don’t think I’m really all that old.
question for you two….does it ever go the other way?
….I mean someone here selling someone to Africa?
If so, I’ve got a sister in law……..
…and a lot of live-in mother-in-laws are complaining about the cold weather this time of year…
Well my now late father-in-law got interesting offers when he was in Saudis. You’d be paid in camels, but I read the situation such that you would not mind if they just keep the change.
I know I would prefer the camel………
…and walk a mile for it…
There must have been a lot of ‘Climate Change’ in the Seventh Century A.D. when Mohammed married a nine-year-old Aisha and established the practice of child-marriage firmly in Islam. Perhaps ‘Climate Change’ also forced Muslims to marry up to four wives….yet another study needs funding!.
won’t happen
NASA may have funding for that.
I thought the UN was supposed to be protecting against child abuse such as child brides.
The UN has accomplished so much for us.
We should give them more money and authority! /SARC!!
(
The UN. What a worthless blight on humanity! (No sarc)
The UN is “multicultural”, meaning they only hate white males in America. Everyone else is okay and all lifestyles are accepted.
Child brides( &husbands)were not unknown among European families in medieval times .mainly to effect dynastic&or family property/land entitlements. Largely confined to aristocratic or royal families
As an example ,lady Margaret Beaufort was widowed at thirteen&pregnant..she was the mother of Henry vii,1485, ,father of better known Henry viii
But the climate change we have been experiencing is caused by the sun and the oceans over which Mankind has no control. So if you need to blame anyone for what is happening the real culprit is Mother Nature. You can go to court over this and sue Mother Nature for damages caused by climate change. Lots of luck collecting on a judgement against Mother Nature.
With respect and without wishing in any other way to support this execrable piece by the Guardian, that simply betrays a complete lack of understanding of the Non Western mindset: Without a farm, the whole family is dead. Sacrificing one child is the lesser of many evils.
There is no social security, no government ready to bail out failure – deserved or otherwise.
Meanwhile in the UK, apparently British born women are having less children than ever. Immigration is the main source of population increase.
“Leo Smith November 26, 2017 at 1:53 am
With respect and without wishing in any other way to support this execrable piece by the Guardian, that simply betrays a complete lack of understanding of the Non Western mindset: Without a farm, the whole family is dead. Sacrificing one child is the lesser of many evils.”
Very true. My wife came with a “debt”, a “price” almost for westerners, to the family. That “debt” was 8 cows. Jokingly I keep saying it was cheaper to pay her airfare home. *It’s ok, I pay for that every time I wind her up about it lol*
How soon we have forgotten the whole western ‘dowry’ business.
I have to agree. Plus, they aren’t selling the girls into slavery, but marrying them off into other families.It makes a big difference.
Have you ever heard the original story of Hansel and Gretel? The reason that they were abandoned in the woods is because the family was starving. That was considered acceptable, if unfortunate, at the time. It was only later that the parents were framed as evil to justify the plot.
test of hypeetext markup
There is a test page, see the menu at the top, but it loads so slowly I don’t even try it these days…
It is all about controlling through guilt. It is are fault. We caused the bad weather so we must take responsibility. The blacks in Africa are not as advanced and capable of doing anything about it themselves. The great white weather gods, that is us are acting irresponsibly. We the great white gods must change are ways.
The Guardian is a white supremacist web site.
Africans can create modern infrastructure, can use modern water management, can build reservoirs etc. Australia has droughts and I do not see white farmers selling their kids in Alice Springs.
As always, the real racists are on the Left.The Guardian simply doesn’t consider Africans capable of doing anything for themselves.
No, it is the anti-human, far-left Agenda that creates child-brides, man-brides, goat-brides…. etc etc.
Volcanoes in Indonesia caused by Global Warming causes destruction of crops, which causes poverty of farmers, who need to sell their daughters as child brides to make ends meet. See, it happens in Indonesia too.
http://joannenova.com.au/2017/11/your-car-causes-volcanoes-and-volcanoes-release-co2/
Don’t muddy the ideological waters with plate tectonics. The advocacy lords won’t have it.
More proof that climate change causes volcanoes.
This is definitely a cultural issue, some cultures find it acceptable to sell their kids.
Some cultures see it totally acceptable to buy a minor. This is the key.
At least the guy in the story didn’t ask to trade-in his present wife for a newer model, that’s expensive in any society. /sarc
The Graudiad are certainly into the soft bigotry. “we cant expect black people to not know they should not sell their children”
and the BBC also show soft bigotry, “we cant expect black people to speak proper English so lets provide a pigeon english service”
Mark – Helsinki
Pidgin.
Err, that one hurted.
Hugs
Wetin dey happen? – (What’s going on?)
🙂
I’m dyslectic, but not on the letter level. I just can’t put the little friends called morphemes in the right order. Must be because I read fast but don’t produce English at the same pace. It is as if all the words appeared at the same time, not left-to-right. To, a, the, and is are the most common ones just lost. But any other error, even hopelessly funny ones, may pass my parser with the return code zero.
Pigeon English is really difficult for Americans. You have to keep bobbing your head as you speak.
squiggy9000
Coooo.
Yet another freelance journalist, desperate for money, writing nonsense only the failing Guardian would print.
Has anyone read Monbiot recently? His hysterical shrieking is getting more painful by the article. And Toynbee…….Ugh!
Fake news and disgusting lies. Child brides have been the way in Africa for ever. And once the custom is established it becomes entrenched because there are few potential brides if you wait as a man.
What is undeniable fact is that it is poverty which is the problem, and the way to alleviate poverty us to do the opposite if everything the Guardian suggests, economically, socially and in terms if energy.
The Guardian bears some responsibility for the continuation of child brides because it has consistently supported policies in Africa that entrench and spread poverty.
“There is no circumstance under which I could imagine selling a family member to pay the bills. You sell stuff, not people, if you are short of cash.”
Eric, that’s very easy to say from the comfort of a full belly & knowing that you wont starve within the next 12mths, on a computer that would have cost more than some family’s earn in a year.
Circumstances will change your perception on life, survival instincts kick in; I am not a thief BUT if I had no means other means of getting food I would steal some,
Sorry to correct you – but from the piece-
1. they didn’t have enough ‘stuff’ to sell.
“the water swept away her parents’ field” “they were reduced to scavenging for bits of firewood to sell.”
2. they didn’t sell her, they gave her away.
“girls as young as 13 are given away to stave off poverty”
Watch commercials for “Save the Children” and other similar ads for “African relief”. The children are wasting away but the parents aren’t. Too bad they didn’t “give her away”. Maybe she would have been taken care of.
At most, drought may have an effect, not global warming, but we all know that CO2 promotes crop growth, not retard it. So we should criticize this article for stupidly pushing for CO2 reductions, right?
Is there any evidence that “climate change” or increased CO2 in the atmosphere is causing an increase in crop failures in Africa, or increased flooding, or increased drought? Did Gethin Chamberlain provide such evidence in his article, or did he just assume it?
Louis November 26, 2017 at 1:22 pm
Is there any evidence that “climate change” or increased CO2 in the atmosphere is causing an increase in crop failures in Africa, or increased flooding….”
Almost certainly, no. Probably all the global data (e.g. average lifespan, food produced per head of population) show increases over recent decades.
The example given was Malawi. It just happens that, a couple of years ago, I had a brief email conversation with a Church of England bishop. When I asked him for a specific event made worse by climate change, he cited the floods in Malawi, in the previous January. Here’s my WUWT post from two years ago:
*******************************************************************************************************************
This summer I exchanged two emails with a Church of England bishop, and it is relevant to this thread.
A few months ago the Daily Telegraph printed a letter from a group of religious leaders, including the bishop. The letter claimed that already the poor were suffering from a changing climate.
I emailed the bishop, asking what his justification for that claim was.
To his credit, the bishop did reply. As evidence he gave a link to the NOAA, a list of recent storms and floods. In my reply I pointed out that a list of storms proves nothing, as there have always been storms. Some of the storms were tornadoes and hurricanes. I pointed out that the data showed no increase in tornadoes and that average hurricane intensity has been falling for decades.
I then asked him to give me a concrete example of how the poor are suffering from a changing climate.
Again, to his credit, the bishop replied and gave a concrete example: the storms and floods that had occurred in Malawi in January of this year. But of course he gave no justification for thinking it had been made worse by global warming.
I managed to locate data for a Malawi weather station (Chileka) that had almost unbroken precipitation data from 1930. You can see the plot here:
What a surprise! There is no trace of any long term trend that could remotely be linked to global warming. Ironically, the data for 1930 (the first group on the left, multiply the number by ten to get the year) showed slightly greater rainfall. According to the data, in 1967 there was more than 2 meters of rainfall in one day, an event of biblical proportions. The data clearly shows that the bishop’s claim is nonsense. I doubt if he ever looked at the data to see if there was a trend. Obviously, if there’s no trend it isn’t happening.
It will be interesting to look at rainfall data for Zambia.
I would suggest that, if anyone makes alarming statements about climate change and specific storms, and if there is no supporting data for the claim, then it is close to a criminal act. It is the moral equivalent of shouting fire in a crowded cinema.
The bishop makes a big thing about the poor. What sickening hypocrisy. It is precisely the policies, of which the bishop no doubt approves, that is the biggest threat to the poor countries of the world.
Mount Agung
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-42126284
Bali volcano activity prompts ‘red warning’
These are smaller ash cloud eruptions coming from Agung. Common enough in Indonesia. The last time Agung erupted in 1963, it was a few months of this kind of low level activity before the VEI 5 eruption happened. So, we still have to wait.
Interesting to see this pic from yesterday of a guy ploughing his field with oxen while Agung erupts in the background. This is exactly the problem this article is about. This guy can not compete with modern farming. He should give up and do something else and trade his labour for the efficiently produced food done by someone else.
Modern farming is done like this.
Bill,
I disagree on your economic perspective of that man plowing his field.
Outside (off shore) fresh food is expensive. It requires hard currency. It requires air transport from thousands of miles.
Meanwhile his land is his. The sun is free. The rain is free. The oxen eat local grass and poop fertilizer.
So yes, that would make no sense in the developed world, with an easily connected transportation to commercial markets.
But on Bali… the outside fresh vegetables and expensive food goes to the resorts where foreign tourists readily pay in hard cash.
Go New Holland.
I only buy blue.
The only good green tractors are antiques.
If any dogmatic idea or otherwise half-assed hypothesis has been made adequately simplistic so that it can be easily understood with no one having to have any of the pertinent knowledge then it can be made into a “wagon” that can be loaded up with virtually endless amounts of simplistic bullwash that can be sold.
You are too polite.
According to the short info in google maps there were 14 million inhabitants in Malawi in 2010. In 2016 the number had risen to 18.9 million. The same quantitiy of food and 35 % more mouthes to fill makes the difference.
Rank Country Birth rate
(births/1,000 population)
1 Niger 46.12
2 Mali 45.53
3 Uganda 44.17
4 Zambia 42.46
5 Burkina Faso 42.42
6 Burundi 42.33
7 Malawi 41.8
8 Somalia 40.87
9 Angola 38.97
It is only gong to get worse with those birth rates. And the Left will still blame an atmospheric trace gas increase as the cause of their misery.
These high birthrate countries are the targeted recipients of the massive redistribution of wealth that the IPCC/UNFCCC and World Bank want to achieve. Mandatory birth control would be a better solution to their poverty while enriching the elite with absconded western wealth will only make things worse.
@co2isnotevil
Education is the best birth control.
The Climate Liars have no shame, alighting on any disaster, any human misery in order to tug at people’s heartstrings and blaming it on “climate change” (by which they mean CAGW). They are without a soul. Perhaps we should call them Climate Ghouls.
Everyone has their own idea of what climate change looks like
Personally I see a lot of snowflakes melting. Everywhere.
It’s interesting how so many folks have forgotten that indentured servitude was common in the west and only disappeared with the formal abolishment of slavery in the British Empire and later after the Civil War in the U.S.A. Selling of services and selling offspring is a matter of degree given how indentured servitude really worked.
Egypt is exports annually a great deal of food including US$150+ canned and frozen vegetables. India exports annually more than US$5bn worth of rice and US$400 worth of onions. Developing nations are doing better at feeding their own and even creating an exportable surplus. Some nations, especially in Africa have inadequate access to fertiliser, pesticides and farming machinery, all dependent on the “fossil fuels” which the Guardian and its ilk want to abolish. Subsistence farmers everywhere are benefiting from rising carbon dioxide levels. We may hope that atmospheric carbon dioxide will continue to increase,
The false-flag fear-mongering hasn’t worked as planned, so now they’re tugging at our heartstrings.
The PR types are getting desperate.
Maybe if we didn’t burn our corn in our cars these people could afford to buy food. Check out the price of corn since ethanol became a great idea. Third world always pays for the unintended consequences of our “feel good” policies.
“As global warming exacerbates drought and floods, farmers’ incomes plunge…”
The author starts out with this supposition so the objections should be he assumes facts not in evidence.
Judges?
Throughout human history is has been common to marry kids off shortly after puberty, and the smarter moms and dads in town would often arrange amongst themselves which sons or daughters went to which families, with little concern about how the kids felt about things. The article betrayed as deep a lack of perspective on human history as it does on basic climate science.
The article doesn’t mention the religion (if any) of the couple. I wonder how child marriage is looked at among Malawi Christians? It seems to be normative among Muslims (30-35% demographic).
The Guardian is conflating two issues. 13 is young to be a bride nowadays although the age of consent is as low as 12 for females in some countries (including perhaps surprisingly Canada). The second element is the custom of lobola / lobolo or bride price. Dowry (money paid to the groom by the bride’s family intended for her upkeep) was a common practice in Europe until recently and still is in some parts. (Wiki, sorry, seem OK)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lobolo#Lobola_and_the_Law
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dowry
Of course it goes without saying that there is likely to be no connection at all between any climate change and the reported devastating flood.
Perhaps someone ought to send this article to the sites that do ‘fact-checking’?
I guess that they have no evidence of increased ‘child-brides’, and there is an official that there is no increase in ‘extreme weather’. So it ought to be a fairly simple job to get it officially debunked by a left-wing ‘official’ debunking site….
And, of course, if they refuse to consider it, that tells us something as well….
It’s British news. Move along.
Malawi has lots of problems …
The International Monetary Fund (IMF), World Trade Organization (WTO), and Group of Eight (G8) were all actively interested and involved with the Malawi case. To create a stable economy and a government which the first world can work with the IMF employed SAPs (Structural Adjustment Polices) to restructure the country. This interjection by so many global organizations show how the period from 1990 – 2012 was one of neo-colonialism. These global institutions primarily follow the guidance and objectives of the first world. Malawi demonstrates the “economic imperialism” which these institutions created.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agriculture_in_Malawi
This story encompasses all of the modern leftist thinking. It is anti-white and anti-male. It is anti-white because they tell us that the rich white people in Europe and America are causing troubles in Africa. The implication being that if we didn’t use fossil fuels then the climate would always be perfect and thus no droughts or floods or famines would ever occur. It is anti-male in that it is men who are buying child brides. Notice they aren’t buying child husbands. In other words, men are treating women like property.
The simple fact is if Africa has access to cheap fossil fueled powered electricity and cheap fossil fuel powered farm equipment then they would be more well fed and life would be easier. It isn’t strange how crop yields keep increasing in countries with tractors and fertilizer and GMO crops. The world has produced enough food to feed every person alive with billions be able to get seconds. Imagine how much better it could be if all the world had fossil fuel powered tractors! We don’t have a food problem, we have a political problem.
Crops are failing, leading to record harvests.
how is the national debt not selling your children into indentured servitude?
females in some countries (including perhaps surprisingly Canada).
≠========
the age of consent was lowered in Canada after 3 politicians were caught with underage girls. the law was changed by a show of hands on the last day of Parliament so they could avoid criminal records and so they would not rat out the other members of Parliament that had been making use of the girl’s services.
Fake news ferdberple. The Tackling Violent Crime Act raises the legal age of sexual consent in Canada to 16 from 14, the first time it has been raised since 1892. But the law includes a “close-in-age exception,” meaning 14- and 15-year-olds can have sex with someone who is less than five years older.
May 1, 2008 Canada’s age of consent raised by 2 years – Canada – CBC News
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/canada-s-age-of-consent-raised-by-2-years-1.754941
In June 2006, the Canadian government proposed a bill to raise the age of consent from 14 to 16, while creating a close-in-age exemption for sex between 14-15 year olds and partners less than 5 years older, and keeping an existing close-in-age clause for sex between 12-13 year olds and partners less than 2 years older. The initiative also maintains a temporary exception for already existing marriages of 14 and 15 year olds, but forbids new marriages like these in the future.
http://www.justice.gc.ca/eng/rp-pr/other-autre/clp/faq.html
There is also a “close in age” exception for 12 and 13 year olds. A 12 or 13 year old can consent to sexual activity with a partner as long as the partner is less than two years older and there is no relationship of trust, authority or dependency or any other exploitation of the young person. This means that if the partner is 2 years or older than the 12 or 13 year old, any sexual activity is a criminal offence.
Child marriage has been endemic to Malawi for a long time, but warmer air due to climate change will make them intensify at a faster rate.
This was my first attempt at being a climate scientist by just pulling something out of my b.utt and making it sound authoritative. Since I’m just a climate scientist in training I can admit that I plagiarized it from climate scientists who ignored 12 years of major hurricanes hitting the US (after predicting major hurricanes would increase) and then segued into the claim that due to climate change hurricanes were intensifying at a faster rate after the pause ended (which they just pulled out of their b.utts)..
The Grauniad has no shame (and of course it is the go-to fake-newspaper of the BBC).
I would be willing to bet real money that the plight of small African farmers and ranchers has been reduced by the global greening currently being observed because of human CO2 emissions. Nomadic or quasi nomadic owners of cattle, goats, sheep, small farms, individual families that own a milk cow are all equally receiving the benefits of rich Americans driving, especially those big gas guzzling Ford F150s and Cadillac Escalades. How fracking ironic is that? “Save the children.” Drive a couple of extra miles today.
In any biblical (or other religious document) account of Evil, simply substitute “global warming” for “Satan”, and you are mimicking
climate “science” and modern pseudo-journalism.
Biblical? See Biblical news:
http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/3/11/e1700954?utm_campaign=toc_advances_2017-11-24&et_rid=317830289&et_cid=1684726
WAIT, “the most palpable manifestation of climate change is the baby in their arms”
So…sex had nothing to do with it? So young women are having babies because of climate change? Conception because of climate change! QUICK! Go grab the rocket from that Flat Earther and head into space folks! This planet is toast..time to find another one to screw up!
*head meet desk* this is nothing more than bird cage lining.
Soiled at that.
Well, you guys failed to notice the biggest bit of hokum in that news story from the Guardian.
“That night she lay down in bed for the first time with the man she had never seen before and followed the instructions of her aunt, who had coached her on the important matter of sex. Ten months later, she gave birth to their first daughter.”
Sorry, Guardian, but the human gestation cycle is (9) NINE months, not TEN, and if you’re going to make stuff up, if the 13-year-old girl was fertile enough to produce a child so quickly, she was probably pregnant before the end of that first night.
My sister was born 9 months to the HOUR after my mother and father got together that very first night that they were married. It only takes one time, you know.
Sara: Gestation is 39 – 40 weeks. If you count “months” as 4 weeks, it’s 10 months. If you count “months” as 4.35 weeks, it’s 9.2 months. I guess it depends on the definition of “months”. I’ve seen many articles saying pregnancy is 10 months, so the Guardian is not offbase with the statement.
Sheri, I agree.
I believe the correct gestation is 10 months because…. A woman is actually pregnant when she isn’t. Each month, she is, until the egg drops and dies. If the egg is fertilized the pregnancy continues. If not, it dies.
Okay, Sheri. My father married my mother on March 24th. My mother went into labor at a Christmas Eve party at midnight, December 24th. My sister was born on December 25th, a few hours later. That’s only one of many examples.
So, no, it is not 10 months. In primitive societies, “months” are based on 28-day lunar cycles, not man-made calendars. You do know what a leap year is, right? It’s a bogus excuse for ignoring a natural cycle.
Sorry Sara, it is 10 months. Every egg is in the stage of waiting for the fertilization. Pregnancy starts as soon as the egg is there. If there is no fertilization, the pregnancy stops.
Your parents having a child exactly on that date is mere, coincidence.
In Ethiopia their year is 13 months long, and 6 years behind the rest of the world.
You want real biblical insights? Check this out: Rapture Index
Malawi problems with agriculture relate to low levels of male labour due to the high death toll from aids. Mass deforestation has led to soil erosion and rivers changing flow patterns. Much of the terrain is difficult to cultivate.
It is interesting that a Google search on climate for Malawi reveals lots of information, but I could find no mention of climate change. A search on Malawi agriculture also failed to mention climate change but listed other problems.
But then, it is a Guardian article.
Expensive energy leads to child brides. The climate alarmist are the people most willing to force everyone into costly renewable power. The more slowly we make the world economy grow the harder it will be for poor countries to pull themselves out of poverty and the need for a kokamany custom like child brides and six kids per family. Really cheap nuclear energy that is safe is the only answer. In my opinion thorium liquid salt technology holds the greatest promise of prosperity for everyone on the planet.
WUWT Readers, I need your help. I’m trying to create a list of the most ridiculous slimate clience research. This article made the list, but I’m looking for more. If you have a favorite waste of money research article, please post a link in the comment section. Thanks in advance.
Slimate Clience Nonsense; “The List” Continued
https://co2islife.wordpress.com/2017/11/26/slimate-clience-nonsense-the-list-continued/
I call BS on this fabricated story. You can get lead to whatever answers you want interviewing these poverty stricken people. The BS parts are girls in Africa are commonly child brides younger than this – it’s cultural. When I was in Nigeria in the 1960s, 50% of children didn’t even reach the age of 12! Bride price could be a few or many cattle or goats in an agricultural area. The “tell” is ’13’. A white, middle class lady photo journalist wouldn’t want the child to be ‘indecently’ a sub-teenager.
Second the tropics don’t change particularly, the Arctic warming anomaly is triple and the tropics show little difference. Finally, Malawi’s average rainfall is variable, <1000mm to over 2000mm, 95% of which falls May to November Floods an droughts have always been a problem. I'll bet the photo tourist interviewed some poor fellow in Lower Shire Valley or in Salima where flooding is common. I have a project in southern Katanga Province, DRC not far from Malawi and having the same climate. The compromised photo journalist has been a hyperbolic tool of the left since the he camera was invented.
Dearie, you didn't happen to share the 50k
or so for your exploitation of these poor people for your political masters or perhaps rethink the policies being made to make their lives worse. Parasite Accord, indeed.
Forced marriage by underage girls is a big problem within the moslem minority in subarctic Sweden, so I suppose it must get very cold to stop it.
Q: How cold was it?
A: It was a three wife night.
Story gets re-hashed every year…just like climate change forcing women into prostitution.
Ahhh! Climate Change!
Is there nothing that it cannot do?
Nothing we have found yet.
Graft and incompetence are made much worse in their effects by a lack of despatchable energy.
She was with the ‘husband’ the same day he called at the door asking for her hand in marriage. So when did the Aunt do all the sex coaching? Reading between the lines it sounds as if there had been a long running expectation that this sort of thing would happen, rather than it being an emergency response to a crisis. More a story of shocking cultural differences than climate change.
See my next comment.
With a high child-bride rate you are right to suggest “a long running expectation”
Looks more like the social climate is the cause, not the weather-based climate.
The bigoted imperialistic ignorance of climate hypesters is no longer surprising but is always disgusting.
This article highlights this aspect of “climate communication” quite well.
Droughts and floods are part of natural variations in climate change. This was there in the past, it is there now and will be there in future. We need to adapt to them. It is nothing to do with the so-called global warming. During drought, temperature & evaporation goes up and during flooding temperatures & evaporation come down. In India and as well in Africa the farmers traditionally adapted to the natural variability in precipitation. With the western based mono crop-chemical inputs technology this has changed and the negative impact gone up and with the growth in population it further amplified. This international organisations attribute to global warming.
Dr. S. Jeevananda Reddy
Dr. Reddy,
With all due respect your argument us not at all clear.
India suffers less, nit mire, hunger now despite a still growing populationThis is apparently coinciding witj land use reform allowing more farmers to benefit from their efforts as well as the wide spread adoption of Western farming techniques.
Or are there still massive famines in Indua that are suppressed in the news?
The Grauniad is a hot-bed of embittered left-wing hacks who hose this sort of pig swill all the time. If it wasn’t for the money supplied to them by ‘AljaBeeba’, they would have gone up the swanny years ago.
Condensed review of article: “Halfwit writes nonsense.”
You could add, “Again.”
For the kicks.
Auto
More likely child marriages are common there, and the reporter just threw global warming into the mix.
How to be a climate scientist:
Step 1: Collect a 2 data point time series of anything you want.
Step 2: Whether it is increasing or decreasing, posit that the claimed trend is bad, ignoring any and all other factors.
Step 3: Since there has also been moderate warming between point A and point B, claim that climate change must be the cause, without any proof whatsoever.
Step 4: Profit.
There is a very thin line between selling a daughter into slavery versus the “bride price” paid to the daughter’s family in many cultures.
Te abuse of young girls is best understood via the history of the age of consent, which was traditionally the age at which a girl reached puberty. This had nothing to do with climate or CO2 or whatever crazy notion alarmists try to connect to climate change
From wiki:
The first recorded age-of-consent law dates from 1275 in England; as part of its provisions on rape, the Statute of Westminster 1275 made it a misdemeanor to “ravish” a “maiden within age,” whether with or without her consent. The phrase “within age” was later interpreted by jurist Sir Edward Coke as meaning the age of marriage, which at the time was 12 years of age.[5]
The American colonies followed the English tradition, and the law was more of a guide. For example, Mary Hathaway (Virginia, 1689) was only 9 when she was married to William Williams.[6] Sir Edward Coke (England, 17th century) “made it clear that the marriage of girls under 12 was normal, and the age at which a girl who was a wife was eligible for a dower from her husband’s estate was 9 even though her husband be only four years old.”[3]
In the 16th century, a small number of Italian and German states set the minimum age for sexual intercourse for girls, setting it at 12 years. Towards the end of the 18th century, other European countries also began to enact similar laws. The first French Constitution of 1791 established the minimum age at 11 years. Portugal, Spain, Denmark and the Swiss cantons initially set the minimum age at 10–12 years.[7]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_consent
Just when you think these climate creeps can’t stoop any lower they limbo back under their rock.
Missed in this “analysis” is the fact that the unnamed young man is somehow now prosperous enough to seek a wife.
I guess climate-change-induced famines and hardship only affect subsistence-level farming families with photogenic girls?
Duty of care – nothing to do with Climate Change. UN useless as the rest of the do gooder brigade.
Culturally unacceptable to me but a way of life to them.
Sad but facts are facts.