By James Taylor -August 20, 2021
File: Taliban insurgents turn themselves in to Afghan National Security Forces at a forward operating base in Puza-i-Eshan -a.jpg
Created: 23 April 2010
CBS News published an article today claiming global warming was a major factory in the Taliban overrunning Afghanistan and creating murderous chaos throughout the country, rather than political ineptitude. CBS News argues that global warming created horrible weather conditions that decimated crop production during the past 30 years in the country, and the Taliban fed off the misery experienced by Afghan farmers. The objective truth is entirely the opposite.
According to the CBS News article, titled “How climate change helped strengthen the Taliban,” “Rural Afghanistan has been rocked by climate change. The past three decades have brought floods and drought that have destroyed crops and left people hungry. And the Taliban — likely without knowing climate change was the cause — has taken advantage of that pain.”
The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (UN FAO) keeps meticulous crop production data for nations throughout the world, including Afghanistan. In the graph below, the information website The Global Economy presents the UN FAO data on cereal crop yields (corn, wheat, and rice) in Afghanistan, with the left axis showing kilograms per hectare:
Afghanistan crop production, by year
CBS News claims that climate change in Afghanistan during “the last three decades … have destroyed crops and left people hungry.” As you can see, however, Afghanistan has fully doubled its crop yields during the past three decades. Also, Afghan farmers have set new production records on a regular basis, especially during the past few years.
It may be convenient for CBS News to divert attention from the current deadly debacle in Afghanistan by blaming it on climate change. The objective truth, however, is that Afghan crop production has tremendously benefited from a modestly warming world. If global warming has had any impact on Afghan farmer sentiment throughout the country, it has clearly been to make farmers happier, more prosperous, and less vulnerable to the Taliban.
James Taylor is the President of the Heartland Institute. Taylor is also director of Heartland’s Arthur B. Robinson Center for Climate and Environmental Policy. Taylor is the former managing editor (2001-2014) of Environment & Climate News, a national monthly publication devoted to sound science and free-market environmentalism.
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Well, they tried blaming Trump; that didn’t work.
Then they tried blaming the Afghans; that didn’t work.
Then they tried blaming the Americans working for the charities/NGOs for not leaving; that didn’t work either.
So now they are down to blaming CO2 ‘cause it is to blame for everything. That won’t work either.
The problem is Democrats; everything they touch they make worse. Wish there was a solution for the problem of Democrats.🤨
Abolish political parties. Establish a draft for political positions, sort of like a draft for the military. Anyone who wants to hold office is eliminated from the potentials. Do a random selection from the remaining population. Anyone picked is required to fulfill the duties of office for a set (short) number of years. Those persons get an official, no-holds bared, audit at the end of their mandatory term and will suffer the consequence of any malfeasance.
Zis, I am liking!
Actually, in the USA you have a suitable platform for this. In the mother of all parliaments (the uk), the party system is embedded because one party, or a coalition, effectively elects a leader who is Prime Minister.
I actually prefer the idea of 3 potentially conflicting ruling platforms. In the UK, the House of Lords (a sort of senate) doesn’t actually have the power to veto anything the House of Commons (House of representatives) passes. They can only delay it. The Queen still theoretically has final veto, but I don’t think it’s been used for a while.
One interesting point is that every PM ends up in the House of Lords. It seems silly to just chuck out anyone who actually knows the system so well that they got to the top. In Australia we give ’em a fat pension and let them go, unless we lose them first.
One interesting point is that every PM ends up in the House of Lords.
Not quite. Ted Heath didn’t.
Nor Major, Blair, Brown, Cameron or May. So none in the last thirty years.
My mistake. They are only invited to join, apparently.
Better to just get rid of professional politicians! There is something inherently wrong with wanting to be nothing but a politician as a career path. Term limits would be a big step in the right direction but as long as the foxes are in charge of the hen house this is not going to happen.
First line “global warming was a major factory“
…churning out bullsh@t agenda driven propaganda to create a regime of fear so that globalist megalomaniacs could more easily control the proletariat.
Climate Disinformation from CBS News.
I’m shocked.
It just keeps getting crazier and crazier.
The science of it all boils down to this: (1) find something bad and (2) attribute it to climate change.
This is the consensus science of it all and to question it is the stupid, unscientific, and Exxon funded act of climate denial.
C’mon man!
At least they try to find a tenuous link first…
What, no mention of poppies ? Isn’t that the largest cash crop in Afghanistan?
With the GIs who were guarding their fields gone and Taliban vowing to stop narcotics trade ( as they had already done in 2001 ) I would have thought that was more pertinent than small climate variability.
Climate change doesn’t seem to have harmed poppy production. Funny that.
Shameless rascals.
‘Afghanistan: Over 80% of country in serious drought’
Where?
Afghanistan has a fairly regular drought cycle – every 10 years they get a few years of drought together. Most of the time it’s dealt with locally without too much trouble. This year the troop withdrawal and Taliban takeover complicated matters enormously. The president of Afghanistan declared a drought emergency (as presumably calling it a military disaster might be premature) and few aid agencies have been able to get in to precisely verify it. The numbers have been greatly exaggerated by most sources – some regions to the north and west are likely affected, with under 30% of the population in any harm from drought.
Less vulnerable? Are THOSE guys (not WUWT) NOT seeing the chaos in Kabul and the desperation that leaves women and children behind while the useless men escape by overcrowding a plane? They won’t be able to send for their families later, y’know.
I have been awash in incoming photos and info on the debacle that is the Britsh/French/US departing the ‘Stan. For CBS to post something like this is not just bad reporting, it is as heinous as they can get. They need to be left behind with the families who are being deserted by their own husbands and fathers.
They are even dumber and more obnoxious than griffypoo, and that’s something I never expected to find.
Thanks for that article, WUWT.
Amazing isn’t it? Every time you find the lowest form of life imaginable, one even more loathsome turns up.
I noticed the other day when Biden was giving his last speech, that he bragged about getting the people who worked for the New York Times and the Washington Post in Kabul, out of danger.
I guess he was trying to ingratiate himself to the Leftwing Media. “Look guys, I saved some of your colleagues from Taliban hell!”
Similar thing happened with the Germans – they rescued several thousand bottles of beer and wine before bringing out the refugees. It hasn’t gone down well (unlike the beer and wine, I expect).
I would argue climate change did help. Bygone introduced climate change, CRT, gender studies to Afghanistan. Then when they flew the rainbow flag over the embassy, that was the signal it would be a walk over.
I used to joke that everything the MSM prints is a lie.
It’s no joke any more. And it’s not funny any more.
“farmers happier, more prosperous, and less vulnerable to the Taliban.” This would be true if the Taliwackers were not destroying crops in order to punish the people they are now torturing, raping and murdering. UN and USAID will supply the Taliwackers with all the food and medicines they could possibly need, and American tax payers are going to pay for it all. Just as we paid for all their new weapons, vehicles, ammo and explosives. Why buy when their good friend Joe Biden will just give it all to them.
Oh, and they are lying about destroying opium crop, they are the ones primarily profiting from it.
Apparently the schools created in Afghanistan were too much like American schools.
Why would Afghan parents send their girl to a school to be taught that there is no such thing as a girl?
Global Warming: The universal excuse for everything.