The Daily Mail posted an alarming Easter themed story saying climate change has caused the price of chocolate Easter eggs to increase. This is false. Chocolate Easter eggs and other chocolate candies have seen prices increase; however, data prove it isn’t due to a shortage of cocoa beans since cocoa production has risen as the Earth has warmed. If climate change isn’t harming cocoa production, it can’t be behind the rising prices.
“With Easter fast approaching, you might have already begun to notice that Easter eggs are more expensive this year,” opens the Daily Mail’s article, titled Chocolate Easter eggs have risen in price by 50% or more in the UK – and scientists say climate change is to blame. “But this isn’t just due to inflation, as scientists say climate change is a key reason your chocolate is costing more.”
“According to researchers from the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit (ECIU), a combination of wet heatwaves and drought have battered this year’s cocoa harvest,” writes the Daily Mail.
The ECIU’s claim is false on a number of counts. First, across the region making up West Africa, it is common, not rare, for it to have heatwaves and heavy rains, interspersed with periods of drought. Those conditions are known as typical weather there. Hot weather is the norm across West Africa. While the northern part of West Africa is semi-arid Sahel, a transition from the Sahara to the savannah grasslands, much of the region is tropical forests where rainfall is common and commonly heavy. So, a “wet heatwave” is not uncommon and cocoa production, in fact, requires and thrives in hot wet conditions, which is why most global cocoa production comes jungles and forests near the equator, where much of West Africa lies.
The rains are interspersed with periods of intense drought, especially in the arid northern part of West Africa. As the U.S. National Science Foundation wrote recently, “West African droughts are the norm, not an anomaly … some droughts lasted centuries in the past ….” So a single year’s drought after heavy rain is not proof or even an indication of climate change. Indeed, history indicates that West Africa cycles periodically from wet periods to dry periods lasting multiple decades each. Multiple studies, here, here, and here, for example, confirm the region’s climate history. Since 1991, the Sahel region in West Africa has been in a rainy period recovering from an extended dry period from the early 1970s to the 1990s. As has been pointed out repeatedly at Climate Realism, here and here, for example, scientific bodies recognize climate change as indicated by a shift in average weather recorded over a 30-year period, not the weather happening in a single year or couple of years. There is no trend for either drought or extreme rainfall which would indicate climate change is impacting normal rainfall patterns in West Africa, rather recent weather has been well within the historic cyclical norms for the region.
While weather hasn’t changed much in West Africa’s cocoa production region, cocoa production has, increasing dramatically even has the weather has varied from year to year. Like most other crops, cocoa production has grown substantially during the recent period of climate change in response, in part, to increased atmospheric carbon dioxide. During the period when climate alarmists claim warming has been most severe, data from the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization show that between 1992 to 2022 (the latter being the most recent year for which data is available): Cocoa bean production in West Africa increased by more than 158 percent. West Africa set records for production 17 times during that period, most recently in 2022. (see the figure, below)
Globally the story is much the same. Global cocoa bean production from 1992 to 2022 grew by nearly 120 percent, setting records for production 19 times, with each of the last six years setting new records for production. (see the figure, below)
Because the climate in West Africa isn’t changing and cocoa production is setting records, one can hardly blame climate change for the higher costs of chocolate Easter eggs in the United Kingdom or anywhere else.
Interestingly, in its story the Daily Mail pointed to two other more likely candidates for the price increase: El Niño and inflation. Sadly, the Daily Mail promptly downplayed these two tangible factors to play up the false climate change angle.
The past two years wide weather swings across the globe have been dominated by the shift from a La Niña to a “strong El Niño year,” as the Daily Mail admits.
Then there is the dramatic increase in inflation affecting most of the world, complicated by supply chain issues. It should be noted that inflation is being driven, in part, by developed countries’ climate policies that have raised the costs of fossil fuel production and use which has contributed to higher costs for the energy used to process and the fuels used to transport cocoa and finished chocolate products.
To conclude, there is no evidence climate change has played any role in the U.K.’s chocolate Easter egg crisis. Rather than publishing one more “climate change is causing everything bad” fairy tale, the Daily Mail, would better serve their readers by checking the facts and publishing them. Doing so would reduce its readers’ climate anxiety and in the process direct their attention to a more likely cause of higher chocolate prices: government climate policies which increase energy costs.
Mainstream media should face mandatory fines and sanction for blatantly lying and misleading.
Put to one side….
“when [Marianna] Spring was in her early twenties, trying to get work as a Moscow stringer for US news site Coda Story, she flat-out lied about her past experience, claiming to have worked closely with then BBC Russia correspondent Sarah Rainsford. In truth, she had never worked with Rainsford at all. In correspondence seen by the New European, Coda Story chief Natalia Antelava checked with the BBC and then confronted Spring, who fessed up on the spot.
Delicious irony doesn’t even cover it. Delectable? Sumptuous? Finger-licking good? No superlative quite captures how hilarious it is that Spring, poster girl for the elite-media crusade against online disinformation, tried – and failed – to disinfo her way into a journalism job. “
https://www.spiked-online.com/2023/09/08/the-misinformation-of-marianna-spring/
BBC Falsify is a running joke…
“Yesterday the BBC’s “Disinformation Correspondent” Marianna Spring and Panorama revealed their top scoop: that “Donald Trump supporters have been creating and sharing AI-generated fake images of black voters to encourage African Americans to vote Republican“. Spring boasted that she had “discovered dozens of deepfakes portraying black people as supporting the former president. There’s no evidence directly linking these images to Trump’s campaign.” The revelations were enough to warrant an investigation piece and a special podcast episode…
On second glance the nefarious deepfakes may not be the conspiracy Spring was looking for. The clearly-watermarked AI images of Trump with black Americans are the creations of a joke account whose Twitter bio states: “Documenting the history of the 45th President of the United States, Donald J. Trump (parody)“. The BBC’s disinformation team must have been horrified to learn that American voters might be duped by tweets saying “Donald Trump was in fact the 4th wise man who brought Jesus gifts after he was born“, or he was “the first person to circumnavigate the Earth” in 1522, as well as starring in Ben-Hur.”
https://order-order.com/2024/03/05/bbc-panoramas-disinformation-scoop-just-photos-from-twitter-parody-account/
“The BBC used an anti-Israel journalist bankrolled by Iran as a key source in its reporting on the Gaza conflict, it has emerged. In a report over the weekend, the BBC analysed video and eyewitness accounts of a rush on an aid convoy in Gaza that led to the deaths of more than 100 Palestinians.
The report cited an eyewitness account from Mahmoud Awadeyah, who was described as a journalist on the scene. But it has emerged that Mr Awadeyah works for Tansim News Agency, an Iranian outlet with links to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, which has vowed to destroy the Israeli state.
In social media posts, the activist praised violence against Israelis and posted photos of himself dining with militant leaders. Danny Cohen, the former director of BBC Television, accused the corporation of “failing in the most basic of journalistic practices” by not checking one of its key sources.
Writing in The Telegraph, he said: “The BBC has a habit of accepting at face value what they are told by people who present as Palestinian civilians or officials from civic authorities and either don’t understand or don’t care that they are representatives of terrorist organisations.
“Our publicly-funded broadcaster seems to believe that ‘balance’ and objectivity means treating a genocidal terrorist group and a democratically-elected government in the same way.”
Mr Cohen said the failure to verify the source was further evidence of inherent bias in the BBC’s coverage of the conflict. He added: “It also appears evermore the case that stories BBC reporters receive from Palestinian sources align with their negative assumptions about Israel, meaning that the corporation’s journalists don’t challenge or robustly investigate accounts that come from highly flawed and disreputable sources.”
The report was published by BBC Verify, an investigative arm of BBC News aimed at fact-checking information and countering fake news.”
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2024/03/04/bbc-journalist-working-iran-backed-news-palestine-article/
Fronted by a known liar.
NB “”BBC Verify is transparency in action – fact-checking, verifying video, countering disinformation, analysing data and explaining complex stories in the pursuit of truth. “
https://www.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/bbc-news-transparency-bbc-verify
No! Censorship leads to dictatorship. It is up to critical minds to discern the truth. It is not for others to decide that,
With the censorship of dissenting voices on climate change, that’s exactly where we’re heading.
One man’s misinformation is another man’s contrarian point-of-view. Remember, the media thinks climate dissenters are liars, deniers and profiteers.
We’re all getting big big checks from the ff companies! Every time we post another comment- they send us another thousand bucks. No wonder this site is so popular. 🙂
Yes but the cheques are always ‘in the post’ unfortunately!
Actually, they are just reporting what the “Climate Scientists” tell them.. Sloppy journalism, but the mandatory fines and sanctions should be imposed on the “Climate Scientists”, if only the article named them.
Good work, keep those Reality Checks coming! Here’s another Easter egg-related Reality Check: Biden is so senile he hides his own Easter eggs.
“Chocolate Easter eggs have risen in price by 50% or more in the UK – and
scientistslogic says climate change policy is to blame.”FIFY
Transport hasn’t got any cheaper – taking difficult areas like the Red sea into account. Energy in general certainly hasn’t got any cheaper. It’s the green economics, stupid; that is making things worse than ever need be. Arresting or even backwardising development and calling it sustainable.
Typically, (here at least) when costs go up the manufacturers surreptitiously reduce the size of the product, not necessarily the wrapper, and hey presto: no price increase at the point of sale. But people aren’t fooled. They notice it – obviously.
Meanwhile at the 6th form college known as the Grauniad…
“Extortionate Easter eggs and shrinking sweets: fears grow of a ‘chocolate meltdown’
A popular revolt against the shrinking chocolate bar? No, it’s ‘extreme weather’
“Poor harvests in extreme weather conditions have led to a tripling of cocoa prices – but farmers have seen no benefit”
…
The poor harvest has left chocolate producers scrambling to secure their supply, with many warning of more price rises and potential reductions in the size of bars and sweets. “
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/mar/29/easter-eggs-chocolate-cacao-harvests-cocoa-prices-aoe
No market increase in demand for cocoa, then?
“The global cocoa market size was approximately USD 26.709 billion in 2023. The market is further projected to grow at a CAGR of 4.71% between 2024 and 2032 to attain a value of USD 36.426 billion by 2032.”
…
The implementation of sustainability initiatives by private companies, non-profit organisations, and governments against climate change serves as an important market driver.
https://www.expertmarketresearch.com/reports/cocoa-market
It’s the green economics, stupid.
Why let facts get in the way of a good story?
Far to many of today’s “reporters” don’t.
It’s an ill wind that blows nobody good
Over the last few years, a peculiar change has taken place in Papua New Guinea’s north-west.
Remote, traditional villages separated by dense jungle and the mighty Sepik River have long been cut off from the rest of the world, unable to access electricity or medical offices.
But now these communities are modernising at a rapid pace.
Newly installed solar panels are providing access to power far from the grid, while construction gets underway on vital health facilities.
And it’s all thanks to the soaring price of cocoa.
Story Tip:
Melting Polar Ice is Changing the Earth’s Rotation
https://www.nbcnews.com/science/environment/melting-ice-slowing-earth-rotation-may-affect-time-rcna145009
https://abcnews.go.com/International/melting-polar-ice-changing-earths-rotation-affecting-measure/story?id=108609137
https://www.cnn.com/2024/03/27/climate/timekeeping-polar-ice-melt-earth-rotation/index.html
Time must have all but stood still during the Holocene Optimum, when there was far less sea ice and sea levels were 3+ m higher. 😉
I have posted the Western Africa graph via X to my local CBS news that reported about the idea of climate caused production loss.
Thanks.
“developed countries’ climate policies that have raised the costs of … ” . . . everything!
But blame this on CO2 and the politicians don’t have to take the responsibility.
Tangential, but one store in England has taken to calling the Cadbury’s proudct “Gesture Eggs”.
WTF is a “gesture egg”?
Easter is a Christian religious holiday. Fewer and fewer people identify as Christians every year and others oppose anything religious. A “gesture egg” is just a rebranding to sell more and avoid possible controversy.
A “gesture egg” is just a rebranding
Ok, so a “chocolate egg” or something like that I would get. but “gesture”? That doesn’t make any sense unless the entire point is to SOUND like “Easter” without actually saying it. (which i’m pretty sure is the case)
“gesture” egg? gesture of what? the term just seems nonsensical.
(just realized that may come across a bit ranty – it’s not directed at you!)
What is a “gesture egg”?
The one you don’t throw at somebody?
The one that doesn’t leave egg on your face?
The one that melts in your mouth and not in your hand?
The one that you don’t ram up someone’s backside as a ‘gesture’?
Next year.. with be a “virtue” egg..
…and all the inner-city greenie *ankers will be seeking them.
According to a recent Reuters article:
https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/westafrica-cocoa
the west African crop has fallen greatly due to illegal gold mining and disease. Since this is the source of cheap cocoa, the big players are now forced to source from more expensive (IMO higher quality) areas.
Raising cocoa prices has nothing to do with climate change but with corrupt and incompetent government in third world countries. Something the leftists are completely okay with as long as they get their cut.
FJB
“…. inflation is being driven, in part, by developed countries’ climate policies….”
BINGO!
Global Warming (aka “Climate Change”) is causing chocolate Easter eggs to become hard boiled?
The eggs are getting blown… …out of all proportion.
(Just in case anyone else spent some childhood Easters blowing and decorating real eggs)
Boiling a chocolate Easter egg.. ??
… sounds like a very messy thing to do !!
Real Easter eggs are in a short supply in Norway.
What chocolate Easter egg crisis? There were loads in my local Waitrose yesterday. Expensive, though. If people can’t afford Easter eggs this year, that isn’t down to “climate change,” but to bad policies designed to avert such a thing (if it exists).
The … uh … “chocolate egg” was laid buy those promoting the solutions to “Climate Change”.
(How much fiber is in a tree ring?)
There is only one sort of “chocolate egg” laid by the climate scammers.
It stinks like dog ****, and I’m not buying it. !!
Mandatory minimum wage increases results in higher chocolate prices.
This is not saying minimum wage increases are bad, just every decision has consequences that may be good or bad, but hopefully the sum of the consequences is better.
My hypothesis is that while inflation is making more or less everything more expensive for western nations, lowering our standards of living, significant parts of the other 80 some percent of the world are striving, with some success, to raise their standard of living. This brings more competition for luxury goods that, at least in many cases, outruns increases in production. Our loss is their gain.
West Africa had some heavy rains that spread a fungus by splashing that fungus up on the plants. There was a 50% decrease in yields, cocoa prices have quadrupled. Of course, nothing to do with climate change
The huge increases in prices, now $2000.00 a ton, was due to manufacturers aggressively trying to secure their supply.
You are correct that it had nothing to do with climate change. It had everything to do with social responsibility. This is the first year that EU is requiring chocolate manufacturers to report their source of cocoa. It is not cheap to keep track of the source for your inputs. That is what is driving up the cost of chocolate.