Guest “no it isn’t” by David Middleton
Food under threat: Struggle to harvest
Climate change pushing the world into hunger?
PUBLISHED NOV 11, 2018
As South-east Asia’s population grows rapidly, decreasing rice yields as well as the increasingly erratic weather brought by a warming world will place ever more stress on a region where millions still do not have enough access to food
Jose Hong
South-east Asia is the world’s rice bowl. But climate change, with its unpredictable rainfall and warming seas, is causing harvests to dwindle.
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I stopped reading right there and went here: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, FAOSTAT and downloaded rice yield and production data for Southeast Asia.
Dwindle…
Climate change, with its unpredictable rainfall and warming seas, is causing harvests to dwindle.
No it isn’t.
2016 marked the sixth hottest most productive year on record for Southeast Asia rice harvests, 97% of the record harvest in 2013.
Thailand’s rice production has fallen off since their record-high 2012 harvest; however nothing has “dwindled.”
If Southeast Asia rice harvests are dwindling, global temperatures are plummeting…
Just returned to my home in Subic Bay from a trip to Thailand. Plenty of rice there and here in PI. I know a rice farmer in the Pampanga Province who has had great crops for the past 4 years, so much so the family has built a new house. The airplane flew back over Cambodia and Vietnam and the rice crop looked vast from 30K feet.
Just returned to my home in Subic Bay from a trip to Thailand. Plenty of rice there and here in PI. I know a rice farmer in Pampanga province who has had great crops for the past 4 years, so much so the family has built a new house. The airplane flew back over Cambodia and Vietnam and the rice crop looked vast from 30K feet.
From Clark to Subic the highway passes through the rice bowl of PI. Rice looked fine.
There! Anecdotal evidence that the world is not ending.
(obviously duplicate posts, but both are are released. Mod.)
Thank you for your excellent post David. I wrote a letter to the editor of the Straits Times, though I would be very surprised if they decide to publish it, given that the paper is completely sold on the myriad claims of the climate industrial complex. They have running a weekly series of “special reports” in their Sunday Times, full of alarmist claims. Here is the content of the letter that was sent to the editor on Friday:
Straits Times recently published an article (“Climate change pushing the world into hunger?”, November 11, 2018) which claimed that “South-east Asia is the world’s rice bowl. But climate change, with its unpredictable rainfall and warming seas, is causing harvests to dwindle”.
Having checked the authoritative data provided by UN FAO (http://www.fao.org/faostat ) on rice yields in Southeast Asia (1961 – 2016), even a cursory examination does not support the claim that rice yields are “dwindling”. Simple statistical analysis will show that nothing of that sort is apparent from the data.
In these days when concern over “fake news” is at the top of public discourse and government concerns, one hopes that your journalists be extra diligent in fact checking and avoid making unsupported or false claims which are alarmist and do your readers a disservice.
I will be happy to provide your journalists and fact-checkers the original data and simple applied statistical analysis if ST editors wants to pursue this further.
Your response, and information on any proposed action if any, will be much appreciated.