The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) published an article, titled “Climate Change Is Coming for the Finer Things in Life,” claiming that by causing “wonky weather,” climate change is disrupting crop production for a variety of crops. This story is false on two counts: First, there is no evidence climate change is causing wonky weather or changing weather trends at all; second, the yields and production of each of the crops discussed in the story have grown dramatically during the recent period of modest warming regularly setting records. If anything, climate change has resulted in more grapes (and wine), olives (and olive oil), coffee, and cocoa.
“As the world warms, extreme weather is disrupting the production of some of life’s great comforts—wine, olive oil, coffee, and cocoa,” Jon Emont writes for the WSJ. “Some of these crops are concentrated in one or two regions, which means wonky weather in one part of the world can have a dizzying impact on global prices.”
Real-world data presented in Climate at a Glance, show drought, heatwaves, floods, tropical cyclones, and wildfires, or a variety of other extreme weather events or impacts have not become “wonky.” Such events are no more frequent, powerful, or unpredictable than they have been in the past. And, plants and pollinators are doing well. So, except for the normal ups and downs farmers have always experienced historically nothing strange is happening weather wise. Hundreds of post on Climate Realism confirm that weather trends have not worsened and crop growth has increased, including for the crops and the regions discussed by the WSJ, such as Vietnam and West Africa.
Concerning the crops discussed, agricultural production has always been more or less at the mercy of the weather. So olive production and associated olive oil might decline be down for a year or two, same with grapes and wine, coffee, and cocoa, but to make the case that climate change is causing a decline one must look at long-term trends, One or two year’s weather does not proof of climate change make.
Let’s look at crop data to discern what trends exist, if any, something neither Emont nor WSJ did. The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization maintains a database of global agricultural production and it shows that each of the crops and products discussed by Emont in his misguided WSJ post have repeatedly set new records for yield and production over the past thirty years of climate change. Between 1990 and 2022, the most recent year for which data is available, FAO data show, that olive production increased approximately 138 percent, and yields increased by about 61 percent. Over the same time period, olives set new production records 11 times, with the most recent record set in 2018, with the second highest production year coming in 2020. Olive yields set records eight times since 1990. Although not all olives are used to make olive oil, olive oil trends are similar. Between 1990 and 2021, the last year of FAO data, olive oil production grew by a little over 124 percent. (See the graphic below)
As dozens of Climate Realism posts have shown before, what’s true of olives is true of grapes, cocoa, and coffee as well.
Concerning cocoa and coffee, since 1990:
- Cocoa bean production just set its latest record high as recently as 2022;
- World cocoa bean production has increased 132 percent;
- West African cocoa bean production has increased 167 percent;
- World coffee production set its latest record high in 2020;
- World coffee production has increased 77 percent.
Data shows grape and wine production have increased dramatically since 1990 as well, as detailed in Climate Realism articles, here, here, and here, for example.
Emont and the WSJ tried to hoodwink readers by ignoring production and yield data and using instead price data on these crops as a proxy for availability. It is certainly true price of grapes/wine, olives/olive oil, cocoa/chocolate, and coffee have risen dramatically in recent years, but not due to shortfalls in supply, rather they have been affected by high inflation and supply chain issues as almost every other good and service has been. Inflation has driven sharp price increases in of almost every good and service since 2021. Indeed, rather than climate change President Joe Biden’s climate and energy policies, and the energy and climate policies of other countries, bear a large part of the blame for higher food prices by increasing the price of fossil fuels, which are critical to the fertilizers, pesticides, and transportation fuel used to plant, grow, harvest, and deliver crops to the market.
Nest time, Emont and WSJ, if you want to warn of climate change driven impending product shortages, you should first check to see whether the products in question are actually in short supply. If they are in one year, you should see if such shortfalls are part of an extended trend. Prices are driven by a lot of things. I am unaware of any instance where climate change has caused price spikes. Recent price increases have been driven by government policies not climate change and have nothing to do with crop availability.
What the hell is wonky? This guy needs to find a new job.
Wonky – unstable. Like a wonky chair.
Wonky – unstable. Like the wonky minds of liberal journalists
Wonky, a great word can mean
Crooked/askew
Not functioning properly
Unsteady
must be a UK word 🙂
It’s a term I knew and have used and I grew up in the western US and am in my 70s now. It sounds like its usage is widespread, but spotty.
I remember an episode of a Tigger video tape my kids used to watch where Tigger repeated the word “wonky, wonky,” I am not sure why.
Multiple definitions but few fit the sentence.
Most below fit.
One not listed is:
“turned or twisted toward one side”
Which given the nature of the beast may actually be the most correct.
— due to the context of biased reporting
I upvoted since is was the NYT that used the word.
That NYT guy needs to find a new job.
In case anyone corrects your “NYT guy” characterization, before the WSJ hired him, per his Linked In profile, he was a “NYT guy.” And it shows.
It’s a factory that produces odd types of chocolate and other candies.
(I think it was owned by some guy named “Willy”.)
Change the red label to climate catastrophe reporting, blue to climate anxiety in children, and yellow to climate reality and you have a better picture of the so-called environmentalists
‘My wife had a headache last night’ = ‘breeding crisis for the USA…’
Or, the alternate headline = “upsurge in prostitution…”
… given ones inclinations of course.
Our planet has become 40% greener since 1980, due to the increased level of atmospharic CO2! How do we know? Back in 1979, a satellite system has been covering the whole earth. Nasa has since then photographed the earth so it has been a simple matter of measurement.
And all that green has less reflectivity than arid wasteland and Tundra, so we’ve warmed a bit, also good for plants, somewhat detrimental to ocean absorption of CO2….
All that green actually has good reflectivity and the benefit of shading the earth below causes cooling.
The temperature at ground level under a forest canopy is lower than out in the sun.
That’s why people rest in the shade.
The Sahara desert has greened almost as much as Germany and France combined.
Data? We don’t need no stinkin’ data…
I’ll give you a badge for that post.
The underlying fallacy of tying weather events (even if they WERE due to climate change) to crop production assumes a static analysis – that if the climate changes, nothing else will change, and so we are stuck with permanent reductions in resource availability, especially agricultural products. The average fifth grader knows far better than that.
The ignorance of such thinking is obviously uninformed of the history of agriculture stretching back roughly 10,000 years during a general warming trend over those millennia since the end of the last glaciation. As if agricultural products and practices had never changed or evolved.
Most if not all of the agricultural products that we rely on today did not exist at all in their present forms 10 thousand years ago. The “natural” varieties of these plants bore little to no resemblance physically or biologically to their current varieties. That is because humans cultivated plants and practiced selective breeding, and also changed the growing environments of those original plants.
What we call corn or maize today is a large ear crammed with hundreds of fat kernels. The original corn plants prior to human domestication were simply small grasses with small seed heads. But humans discovered that by carefully cultivating these grasses and selectively breeding them and providing artificial irrigation, fertilization, and – eventually – weed and pest controls, over the millennia corn became one of the most calorie dense easily producible food grains in the world. Ditto with wheat, barley, rice, and all the other common food grains today.
Similarly other staples evolved – through human domestication – from minimal sources of calories into not only major sources of calories, but also massive contributors to the cuisine of cultures all over Earth. Like the lowly forebears of today’s tomatoes and potatoes. Ditto with livestock and the evolution thereof.
Nothing is static. If cocoa beans truly cannot tolerate a warming climate, then long before today’s varieties fade away, breeders will develop multiple hybrid varieties that not only tolerate a warmer climate, but will actually thrive better than the varieties they replace. This can be called “unnatural selection”, in contrast with Darwin’s theory of evolution. And this ain’t new – it’s the story of mankind for the last 10 thousand years and the development of civilization as we know it.
Duhhh!!!
The climate alarmists totally disregard human resilience and ability to adapt.
How cold is it above the Arctic circle? Certainly below 15C.
How hot is it at the equator? Certainly above 15C.
Do people thrive in those environments?
We know the answer.
In the US people live happily from Alaska where it is cold to Hawaii or Florida where it is warm.
In the warmer climates, you need fewer clothes on, in the cooler climates you need more clothes on. Big deal, almost everyone spends most of their time indoors anyway.
It’s certainly not enough of a problem to raise my electric rates from $50 per month to around $3000 per month which is what electrifying the whole world will cost.
Bloomberg estimates $US200 trillion, figuring that there are 2 billion households in the world and ninety percent of the households can’t afford anything additional, which works out to a million US dollars per household in the developed world.
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2023-07-05/-200-trillion-is-needed-to-stop-global-warming-that-s-a-bargain
apparently nobody at the WSJ reads this site, the “The world’s most viewed site on global warming”?
I read both the WSJ and WUWT, and I noticed as soon as that article came out, that the WSJ approved of that writer hopping onto the doomsday bandwagon. “Uh-oh! No more wine, yummy salad dressing or candy — because of climate change.
Faddish thinking appears early in the story. “Wonky?” What’s “wonky” supposed to mean?
I was a career farmer, and battled “wonky weather” all along. Wonkiness = weather. Always has; always will.
After I sold the farm, I got a part-time job writing a weekly column for my local newspaper. Farmers tend to know something about weather & climate. Besides that, geology, geography and natural history have been major interests of mine all along. That’s why I got into farming in the first place. I was not born into it. Sailing has been a lifelong passion as well. Sailing is as weather-dependent as farming.
With all that career history, my thoughts rested on solid ground.
To no avail, I’m sorry to report. Eventually, my editor forbade me mentioning skepticism towards global warming, or climate change, or the idea that change = impending disaster. The alleged “97% consensus” was the rationale.
I argued with my editor, and with the general public that the “97% consensus” was inaccurate, and even if it were true, science is not determined by voting percentages. If 2/3rds of the world’s people believed the moon were made of green cheese, that proves nothing. Whether the moon really IS cheese is the main thing. Nor does a 2/3rds vote prove that the moon is 2/3rds made of cheese.
This reasoning went nowhere.
Fortunately, I’m not the only writer thinking for himself. WUWT offers many more. PLEASE, keep up the good work!
“I was a career farmer, and battled “wonky weather” all along.”
I was a field forester for 50 years. Forestry is just as dependent on weather as farming. It’s frustrating when you’re feeling ambitious and the weather doesn’t cooperate. Of course the government foresters don’t mind- they’re on salary. The weather is seldom cooperative here in New England. And often when the weather is OK, it’s bug season!
I guess its time to relegate WSJ and its nitwits to the dustbin of propagandists worldwide. They have proven themselves to be purveyors of leftist BS. There was a time when WSJ was semi believable. Now it doesn’t take much digging to find the flaws in their “reporting”. Just like so many other MSM outlets. RIP, WSJ and Emont.
Many of their articles, though, seem fine to me and some don’t. I’d subscribe to it but it’s way too expensive. It’s not nearly as bad as most of the MSM.
After my deceased wife’s subsidized subscription ended, I got a digital-only one for just a few $. It will last a year. After that, I don’t know. Maybe a weekly trip to a library.
I used to give credence and benefit of the doubt to WSJ. After all, their primary audience are big money people who, if given bad/fake news, lose big money.
WSJ with this out of balance, non-centric BS is putting themselves out of business.
Talk about wonkiness….
As a long-time subscriber to the Wall Street Journal it has been sad to see the steady deterioration of a once-credible news source. Having seen over the past several years the descent of WSJ “journalists” into the mire of climate alarmism. Such a sad state of affairs that the editorial staff of the Journal has allowed this journey to mediocrity and disinformation. There is nothing in this article that is supported by the empirical evidence readily available to any simpleton who wishes to delve into this subject. Contrary to the alarmist “reporting”, production of the “finer things of life” is actually on the rise in a warming world. Shame on you Wall Street Journal. Hang your head in shame.
it has been sad to see the steady deterioration of a once-credible news source.
That’s the case across the board (although there are also several that were never credible to begin with)
The Simon Abundance index shows how human technology allows us to find more, cheaper, as demand grows. When population begin to fall, which it must as the LDCs develop and the reduced birth rates feed through as the population bubble caused by improved infant mortality works through as the surplus unneeded births reach end of life, we will have a massive surplus of capacity, and the established elites worst Malthusian fears will be realised, as they will no longer control the price and quantity of the resources the mass of people can buy, so will lose their power as we become prosperous enough to demand our freedom from the control and exploitation of their exploitative systems of government.
https://humanprogress.org/the-simon-abundance-index-2024/
The Simon Abundance index shows how human technology allows us to find more, cheaper, as demand grows. When population begin to fall, which it must as the LDCs develop and the reduced birth rates feed through as the population bubble caused by improved infant mortality works through as the surplus unneeded births reach end of life, we will have a massive surplus of capacity, and the established elites worst Malthusian fears will be realised, as they will no longer control the price and quantity of the resources the mass of people can buy, so will lose their power as we become prosperous enough to demand our freedom from the control and exploitation of their exploitative systems of government.
https://humanprogress.org/the-simon-abundance-index-2024/
As a regular reader of The Wall Street Journal, I can say unequivocally there is no left turn.
The reporters on the paper come from the same stock as the reporters on other newspapers and media organizations. They attend the same schools with the same activist indoctrination as journalists elsewhere.
The Editorial Board at the WSJ, however, is different from the news sections. The EB often dares to ask ‘is it true’ before writing its opinions.
They get an F grade on this one.
For some of the commenters here – WSJ is not going “left.” They don’t actually have an ideology. They do have a mission – the mission to advise their subscribers on the best ways to make piles of money.
Right now, the best way is to get in on the sweet, sweet cash being bilked from the taxpayers for “green” subsidies and guaranteed “loans.” To manage that, their subscribers must be able to recite the Approved Catechism of the Church of Climate Disasters.
So this article is in perfect alignment with their mission.
So cocoa is disappearing due to warming?
https://www.kakaoplattform.ch/fileadmin/redaktion/bilder/inhalt/statistik/2023/2.3_Grafik_3_EN.svg
As a part-time chocolatier, I can say that there IS a current cocoa shortage – but it’s probably more due to supply-chain and political issues.
The world population may be growing faster than cocoa and coffee production, so demand may grow faster than supply.
Then intelligent producers will produce more, because prices will be higher. Just as when large surpluses happen, prices dive and producers produce less.
The warmunists and advocates of government managed everything simply do not comprehend that the markets essentially control everything, because while some people maybe dumb, the significant players aren’t dumb. People naturally respond to supply vs. demand, and that is what markets are and do.
All crops have their ups and downs from one year to the next. Just like weather events go up and down from year to year. The trend is not downward, per the data I linked to. Indeed the obvious trend is towards increased production.
Only one that I am aware of a weather cycle in is a drought in Vietnam – where most of the coffee for instant coffee is grown.
Just about all of the rest is from political problems. Africa and South America. Hyper-regulated leftist places like California and France.
The WSJ’s Left Turn …. I call foul! 🙂
Have a look at the writer’s bio: Jon Emont — Reporter at The Wall Street Journal (wsj.com)
He is a reporter whose words are NOT reflective of the editorial folks of the Journal, some of whom appear to be mild-luke-warmers.
Readers of newspapers need to be aware of the difference of editorials, opinions, articles, commentary, and advertisements.
Frequently the WSJ has pieces by Bjørn Lomborg; a luke-warmer – I think.
Senate Majority leader Chuck Schumer gets his say in the Journal.
If the reporters did not write about what they see and hear in the real world it would not be a “news” paper.
“If the reporters did not write about what they see and hear in the real world it would not be a “news” paper.” You’re right, it would be another “Pravda”, “Izvestia”, “Washington Post”, or “New York Times”. Where they write about what they imagine they heard or wish they saw or what their friends told them.
Mr. Burnett’s excellent exposé has a fundamental flaw: there is no data showing that meaningful “climate change” (neither natural, nor, much less, human-caused)* is happening.
*”climate change” in common useage means: meaningful shifts in the climate zones of the earth caused by human CO2 emissions. Burnett’s adopting the term (with no clarification or qualification) promotes the conjecture about human CO2.
Perhaps, that was his main goal: with a little truth (about crops, etc.), get the reader to swallow a BIG LIE (about “climate change”). 🤨
Yes, commenters need to be a lot more careful that they are not buying into the fallacies of the AGW-meme. !
“Climate” has also been redefined by the UN World Meteorological Organization to mean only 30 years of weather. I guess that all the IPCC models could hope to handle and they don’t even handle that.
The WSJ news section is not much better than the rest of the MSM. The editorials are entirely different and typically vastly better. Recent op-eds from Steve Koonin and Bjorn Lomborg, are two examples.
The price of most luxury goods is going up because the world is getting richer and demanding more luxury goods, hence the higher prices for wine.
Coffee has had large swings in price since I started buying it 50 plus years ago. Bugs, fungus and weather will always be around, not to mention political stuff like export bans when supplies get tight.
I just cancelled my subscription. The Oped page is still good but the news “reporters” have the same biases as their brethren at Wapo and NYT. To their credit they do at least cover stories that those other DNC newsletters completely ignore. As in any story that throws shade on anything Donkey.