We Americans may be inadvertently killing her infant son. Climate change, disproportionately caused by carbon emissions from America, seems to be behind a severe drought that has led crops to wilt across seven countries in southern Africa. The result is acute malnutrition for 1.3 million children in the region, the United Nations says.
Trump has repeatedly mocked climate change, once even calling it a hoax fabricated by China. But climate change here is as tangible as its victims. Trump should come and feel these children’s ribs and watch them struggle for life. It’s true that the links between our carbon emissions and any particular drought are convoluted, but over all, climate change is as palpable as a wizened, glassy-eyed child dying of starvation. Like Ranomasy’s 18-month-old son, Tsapasoa.
Southern Africa’s drought and food crisis have gone largely unnoticed around the world. The situation has been particularly severe in Madagascar, a lovely island nation known for deserted sandy beaches and playful long-tailed primates called lemurs.
But the southern part of the island doesn’t look anything like the animated movie “Madagascar”: Families are slowly starving because rains and crops have failed for the last few years. They are reduced to eating cactus and even rocks or ashes. The United Nations estimates that nearly one million people in Madagascar alone need emergency food assistance.
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The immediate cause of the droughts was an extremely warm El Niño event, which came on top of a larger drying trend in the last few decades in parts of Africa. New research, just published in the bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, concludes that human-caused climate change exacerbated El Niño’s intensity and significantly reduced rainfall in parts of Ethiopia and southern Africa.
The researchers calculated that human contributions to global warming reduced water runoff in southern Africa by 48 percent and concluded that these human contributions “have contributed to substantial food crises.”
Climate Depot Response:
Unfortunately, the New York Times does not have science on its side. Droughts are not worse during the age of “global warming.” Not only are global droughts not increasing, but the notion that you can attribute them to “global warming” is not valid.
Climatologist Dr. Roy Spencer in 2016: “Global warming and climate change, even if it is 100% caused by humans, is so slow that it cannot be observed by anyone in their lifetime. Hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, droughts and other natural disasters have yet to show any obvious long-term change. This means that in order for politicians to advance policy goals (such as forcing expensive solar energy on the masses or creating a carbon tax), they have to turn normal weather disasters into “evidence” of climate change.”
Climate Depot’s Drought Reality Check:
New Research Confirms Human CO2 Not Causing A Global Drought Increase
New Study: Megadroughts in past 2000 years worse, longer, than current droughts – A new atlas shows droughts of the past were worse than those today — and they cannot have been caused by man-made CO2. Despite the claims of “unprecedented” droughts, the worst droughts in Europe and the US were a thousand years ago.
Even the recent California’s drought is not related to climate change. Much more severe California droughts occurred with lower allegedly ‘safe’ CO2 levels. According to the data, “past dry periods have lasted more than 200 years.” “Researchers have documented multiple droughts in California that lasted 10 or 20 years in a row during the past 1,000 years – compared to the mere 3-year duration of the current dry spell. The two most severe mega-droughts make the Dust Bowl of the 1930s look tame: a 240-year-long drought that started in 850 and, 50 years after the conclusion of that one, another that stretched at least 180 years.”
Flashback: Experts Blamed ‘Global Cooling’ For The Widespread Droughts Of The 1970s
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Tony Heller at Real Climate Science had this response to NYT OpEd:
Forty years ago, the New York Times blamed global cooling for the drought and famine in Africa.
FORECAST FOR – The New York Times
This is the same New York Times which proposed poisoning Africans to keep their population down. The biologist was Paul Ehrlich, prominent climate alarmist and close associate of Obama’s science czar John Holdren.
The black population understood at the time that greens and progressives wanted them dead.
The Evening News – Google News Archive Search
China had 1,800 famines over the past 2,000 years, which killed hundreds of millions of people.
15 Jun 1931, Page 6 – Montana Butte Standard at Newspapers.com
As China has increased their CO2 emissions, famine and poverty has greatly declined.
Climate Goals Pledged by China and the U.S. – The New York Times
Fossil fuels keep people alive, and end famine. Progressives are the enemy within. They must be exposed and rooted out in the next eight years under President Trump.
Climate Depot’s reality check on Agriculture:
Climate change hits coffee yield? It’s a load of froth, say scientists
CLIMATE CHANGE HITS COFFEE YIELD? IT’S A LOAD OF FROTH, SAY SCIENTISTS
Matt Ridley: Global Warming Versus Global Greening
‘Global Warming’ be Damned: Record Corn, Soybeans, Wheat
Study: ‘Recent increase in tree growth that has been unprecedented since the year 1760’ – ‘These result demonstrate that under a specific set of conditions, forests can respond positively to human-induced changes in climate.’
‘Record hottest year’ means record high bumper wheat crop — opposite of crop models
Warmists Choke On Record Wheat Crop
Another Required Climate Prediction Do-Over: Researchers Admit More CO2 Means Plants Need Less Water
BBC: Rise in CO2 has ‘greened Planet Earth’ – ‘Plant boom’ – Nic Lewis, an independent scientist often critical of the IPCC, told BBC News: “The magnitude of the increase in vegetation appears to be considerably larger than suggested by previous studies
UN Scientist: Carbon dioxide emissions are making the Earth greener and more fertile
2014: World food production at record levels
CO2-induced global starvation update: ‘Almost a third of the world is now fat’
Study: Increased CO2 enhances the nutritional quality of food crops
Prior to claims global warming would destroy food crops, global cooling was said to impact food production and agriculture.
‘Global cooling is causing erratic weather changes…early frosts from Texas to the Dakotas, typhoons in India, drought in Siberia…are evidence of the unfavorable shifts in the Earth’s climate’
Extreme Weather:
New 2015 paper finds global warming reduces intense storms & extreme weather – A paper published in Science contradicts the prior belief that global warming, if it resumes, will fuel more intense storms, finding instead that an increase in water vapor and strengthened hydrological cycle will reduce the atmosphere’s ability to perform thermodynamic Work, thus decreasing the formation of intense winds, storms, and hurricanes.
Study in Journal Climate: Climate change does not cause extreme winters – Cold snaps like the ones that hit the eastern United States in the past winters are not a consequence of climate change. Scientists at ETH Zurich and the California Institute of Technology have shown that global warming actually tends to reduce temperature variability.’
Link to full testimony of Roger Pielke Jr. to Congress: ‘It is further incorrect to associate the increasing costs of disasters with the emission of greenhouse gases’
“Globally, weather-related losses ($) have not increased since 1990 as a proportion of GDP (they have actually decreased by about 25%) and insured catastrophe losses have not increased as a proportion of GDP since 1960.”
‘We never hear the absence of extreme weather analyzed.’ Is ‘global warming’ causing less ‘extreme weather?!’
How Do They Explain ‘The Extreme Weather Events That Did Not Happen’
Climate Astrology: Flashback CIA 1974: Moscow Drought And Midwest Floods Caused By — Global Cooling
Flashback 1974 – CIA blamed extreme weather on global cooling and expanding Arctic ice
Global Cooling Causes More Extreme Weather–World Meteorological Organisation 1975
CIA 1974 National Security Threat: Global Cooling/Excess Arctic Ice Causing Extreme Weather
Extreme weather used to be blamed on ‘global cooling’ in the 1970s and early 80s!
Flashback 1981: Climatologists blame recurring droughts & floods on a global cooling trend that could trigger massive tragedies for mankind’ – Flashback 1981: Climatologists now blame recurring droughts and floods on a global cooling trend that could trigger massive tragedies for mankind’ – Chicago Tribune – Nov. 25, 1981 http://archives.chicagotribune.com/1981/11/25/page/27/article/perspective …
Flashback NOAA 1974: ‘Extreme weather events blamed on global cooling’ – NOAA October 1974: ‘Many climatologists have associated this drought and other recent weather anomalies with a global cooling trend and changes in atmospheric circulation which, if prolonged, pose serious threats to major food-producing regions of the world’
Also see Climate Depot’s new 44 page consensus busting ‘State of the Climate Report’
