Global warming, climate change, all these things are just a dream come true for politicians. I deal with evidence and not with frightening computer models because the seeker after truth does not put his faith in any consensus. The road to the truth is long and hard, but this is the road we must follow. People who describe the unprecedented comfort and ease of modern life as a climate disaster, in my opinion have no idea what a real problem is.
Forbes posted an article, titled “What You Need To Know About Climate Change In 2025,” which claimed that global warming is causing an increase in severe weather conditions around the world, citing NASA as the source. This is false. Data do not show that severe weather is becoming worse or more common, computer models are just predicting that they may.
Forbes posted an article, titled “What You Need To Know About Climate Change In 2025,” which claimed that global warming is causing an increase in severe weather conditions around the world, citing NASA as the source. This is false. Data do not show that severe weather is becoming worse or more common, computer models are just predicting that they may.
After a pretty mild introduction explaining that there is a need for a “new American narrative for talking about climate change,” Forbes makes this set of claims:
“Global warming has consequences for weather. According to NASA, global warming “is impacting extreme weather across the planet. Record-breaking heat waves on land and in the ocean, drenching rains, severe floods, years-long droughts, extreme wildfires, and widespread flooding during hurricanes are all becoming more frequent and more intense.” If global warming continues, these effects will be even more severe, such as rising sea levels which could put many U.S. cities underwater by 2050. The year 2050 is often cited by those who study climate change, trying to anticipate its effects and how to mitigate and adapt to global warming. The general scientific consensus is that in order to avoid the most serious consequences of global warming, the temperature rise should be kept to around 2°C or 3.6°F by 2050.”
Climate change by definition has effects on the weather; climate is a statistical construct based on weather patterns over a certain period of time, usually 30 years, but the NASA declaration that Fobes cites is not supported by data that even NASA themselves collect and make public.
This paragraph mentions six extreme weather-related threats, and sea level rise.
While 2023 and 2024 were hot, largely due to the effect of a natural El Niño in the Pacific, there is quite a bit of uncertainty as to whether or not the number and severity of heatwaves are actually increasing.
From a birds’ eye view, looking at the number of 95+ degree days in the United States, most of the country is actually seeing a decline in those very hot days, not an increase. This dataset from the National Climate Assessment indicates that much of the change in average temperatures are driven by a decline in “very cold” days, and warmer nighttime temperatures. (See figure below)
The warming nighttime temperatures are particularly interesting, because this suggests that the urban heat island effect is a factor influencing the temperature readings recorded at surface stations, as described in this Climate Realism guest post.
Regarding rains and flooding, this is again too vague and broad a claim to really drill down on, as increases in flooding could mean something different from one place to another, like an increase in urbanization and problems with local water handling. It is true that the northern hemisphere, especially the mid-latitudes, appear to be seeing higher average precipitation. However, as discussed in this Climate Realismpost, the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) does not link rising precipitation to flooding, saying that no connection has emerged from the data. Also, the IPCC doesn’t forecast any flooding signal will emerge in either 2050 or 2100 under even the most extreme climate modelling scenario.
Paradoxically, Forbes also cites NASA to assert that years-long droughts are becoming more frequent and intense, but data specifically refutes this claim. There have been several different regions over the last few years that the media claims have suffered unprecedented droughts, but each time, historical data proves these claims false, showing that more severe and longer lasting droughts have occurred well before modern warming. For example, here are a few different locations Climate Realism discussed: here for the Amazon, here for the American west, and here for the horn of Africa.
Finally, we get to wildfires, which is a particularly perplexing claim coming from NASA, considering their own datasets on global wildfires show a decline in global burned area since the early 2000s, as discussed in Climate Realismhere. The decline in global wildfires has been recorded and reported by the European Space Agency, as well. (See the graph, below)
Figure 2. Historical and Satellite data on wildfire acreage burned. Blue curve, global wildfire area burned reconstruction. Orange curve, global wildfire area burned measured by satellites. Graph plotted by Bjorn Lomborg, Ph.D.
Concerning hurricane induced flooding, since data clearly show no increase in the number or severity of hurricanes or tropical storms amid the modest warming of the past century, it is simply a misleading to claim changes in hurricanes are resulting in more flooding. Attempts to determine whether or not recent storms have persisted longer over land than in the past are fraught with uncertainty and unanswered questions, as noted by a variety of expert scientists in the field.
Floods are exacerbated by human habitation and landscape alterations, yes, primarily as a result of infrastructure and land use changes. Poor water management, displaced wetlands, increased subsurface water withdrawal, and increasing amounts of impervious surfaces result in flooding from rainfall amounts that in the past would not have resulted in flooding. Attribution to climate change is unwarranted, with such claims often relying entirely upon climate modelling based on many questionable built-in assumptions, rather than real world data and trends. On the question of flooding, once again the IPCC finds no changes in pluvial (surface water) flooding related to precipitation.
Climate Realism has covered the complex issues concerning rising sea levels on multiple occasions, here, here, and here, as a few samples. Seas are rising, but not at historically unusual rates. Any increase in coastal flooding is, once again, due to land compaction and subsidence, ground water withdrawal, and increased development being put in harms way.
Late in the Forbes article, its author admits that the climate issue is “an extremely complex one and it has become highly politicized in the U.S.,” and that there is “substantial variance in opinion about how serious of a problem it is now and will be in the future, what and how much should be done about it, who is responsible for dealing with it, and what costs should be incurred and by whom to address it.” Gone is the certainty portrayed earlier in the article, and rightly so. That there is an active debate concerning the causes and consequences of climate change is true and the author is right that each person will have to decide for themselves how seriously to take the threat and what the appropriate response might be.
All in all, the Forbes piece is pretty vague and innocuous outside of the false confidence projected of increasing severe weather based on some claims made by NASA that the author cites as authoritative. The conditions that they say are getting more frequent and severe are not in fact doing so, at least if one believes the available historical and modern data. While Forbes’ writers and editors may feel unqualified to disagree with claims the cite from NASA, they should at least have the journalistic integrity to ask the right questions and check the available data for themselves.
Forbes’ recent article, “Climate Change Threatens Food Security—Can Data Be the Real Hero?” pushes a familiar but misleading claim: that climate change poses a significant threat to global food production. This narrative is not only false, but it also implies just the opposite of what is true. Real-world agricultural data, and the sciences which study plant growth and food production, show that the modest warming and rainfall improvements thus far have benefitted plant growth in general and crop yields, more specifically.
Forbes’ recent article, “Climate Change Threatens Food Security—Can Data Be the Real Hero?” pushes a familiar but misleading claim: that climate change poses a significant threat to global food production. This narrative is not only false, but it also implies just the opposite of what is true. Real-world agricultural data, and the sciences which study plant growth and food production, show that the modest warming and rainfall improvements thus far have benefitted plant growth in general and crop yields, more specifically.
Agricultural yields continue to reach record highs, and multiple scientific analyses show no evidence of imminent climate-related threats to farming. In fact, a recent peer-reviewed study published in Scientific Reports found no significant global climate-related risks to food production. Yet, Forbes and other media outlets continue to promote an alarmist view that doesn’t align with observed trends.
The study published in Scientific Reports explicitly contradicts Forbes’ fearmongering. Researchers found that climate variability has not led to a global reduction in agricultural productivity. Instead, technological advancements, better farming methods, and increased atmospheric CO₂ levels (which enhance plant growth) have more than offset any minor regional climate fluctuations. The study states:
“There is no clear trend indicating a decline in global agricultural output due to climate change. Instead, yields have continued to rise, supported by improvements in irrigation, genetics, and farming techniques.”
This aligns with broader research that shows human adaptation continues to far outpace climate-related challenges, both real and theoretical. The notion that climate change is an existential crisis for agriculture simply does not withstand scrutiny.
If climate change were truly devastating agriculture, we would expect to see declining yields and widespread crop failures. Instead, the opposite is happening. Global production of staple crops—corn, wheat, rice, and soybeans—has been consistently increasing. The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) both report record-setting agricultural production year after year.
For example:
Global wheat production is at an all-time high, despite claims that climate change is making farming more difficult.
Corn and soybean yields have continued their upward trend, benefiting from improved technology, CO₂ fertilization, and better farming practices.
Even in regions often cited as “at risk,” such as Africa and South Asia, crop production has been increasing steadily.
Forbes’ claim that food security is under threat is debunked by the reality of the greening Earth and record crop yields. The truth is that food abundance has grown dramatically over the last century, and there is no data suggesting a reversal of this trend.
Forbes’ article follows a long line of exaggerated claims about climate change and farming, many of which have been debunked. For further evidence, consider these reports from Climate Realism, which highlight real-world agricultural success despite alarmist claims:
These fact filled rebuttals, informed by government and industry data, completely refute Forbes’ claims about food security being threatened by climate change, suggesting that its speculation about the future is politically motivated. Data clearly show that agricultural productivity is increasing, not declining, and scientific research finds no significant global climate threats to farming. Instead of pushing unfounded fear, we should recognize the continued success of modern agriculture, driven by technology, adaptation, and CO₂ fertilization.
Global warming lengthens growing seasons, reduces frost events, and makes more land suitable for crop production. Also, carbon dioxide is an aerial fertilizer for plant life. In addition, crops also use water more efficiently under conditions of higher carbon dioxide, losing less water to transpiration.
The benefits of more atmospheric carbon dioxide and a modestly warming world have resulted in 17 percent more food being available per person today than there was 30 years ago, even as the number of people has grown by billions. Indeed, the last 20 years have seen the largest decline in hunger, malnutrition, and starvation in human history. These facts should have informed Forbes’ analysis of the impact of climate change on food security – instead the media outlet ignored declining hunger and malnutrition to flog the catastrophic climate change narrative.
The real threat to food security isn’t climate change, rather it is flawed reporting being used to encourage and provide cover for bad policies. Restrictive environmental regulations, misguided carbon reduction schemes, and anti-modern-agriculture policies pose a far greater danger to global food production than natural climate variability ever has.
Forbes, as usual, has chosen narrative over nuance. The data tell a much different story—one of resilience, progress, and record-breaking harvests. Readers deserve facts, not fear.
Within a day of ex-President Trump’s announcement of “climate denier” Mr. J. D. Vance as the Republican Vice Presidential nominee, the climate industrial complex and supportive mainstream media had the knives out.
An article I wrote for Forbes about J.D. Vance published on July 18th began as follows:
Within a day of ex-President Trump’s announcement of “climate denier” Mr. J. D. Vance as the Republican Vice Presidential nominee, the climate industrial complex and supportive mainstream media had the knives out.
Little did I know that within a day of publishing that article, the knives would come out for me.
The editors of Forbes deleted my article, stating that “we had to take down your latest Forbes article about J.D. Vance because it did not meet our editorial guidelines which we take seriously”. This was followed by a short note stating that I was sacked as a contributor. Similar complaints of not abiding by the magazine’s guidelines were made by an editor on a couple of previous published articles.
What editorial guidelines? “Avoid advocacy, opinion, polemic and rumour-mongering.”
I have yet to read any Forbes piece that avoided opinion, given that Forbes contributors are opinion columnists and not journalists who are hired to merely report the news. The contributor’s role, one would have thought, is to offer opinions and advocate certain lines of argument about current affairs or topics of interest based on a reasonable reading of verifiable data. Otherwise, what is the contributor’s purpose?
But here is the catch. It depends on whether you are “on message”. Are you with or against the accepted narratives? If against, you are cancelled. That is how the establishment operates – within Forbes and in the mainstream media – as I found out.
“Avoid Advocacy”
Here is the lead paragraph of a recent article in Forbes entitled “GOP Platform: Back To The Carbon Age” in the weekly column “Current Climate” by two “Forbes Senior Editors”:
Ahead of the Republican Party’s National Convention that kicks off today in Milwaukee, the GOP released its official platform of key priorities for a second potential Trump Administration. As with any such political document, it’s long on platitudes and slogans, but very short on detail. But there’s at least one clear takeaway in the document: it prioritises increasing energy from fossil fuels while ignoring the carbon-fuelled climate crisis that’s triggered record-setting heatwaves and earlier and more intense hurricanes.
The authors assert that the GOP official platform “prioritises increasing energy from fossil fuels while ignoring the carbon-fuelled climate crisis”. They further claim that the “carbon-fuelled climate crisis” has “triggered record-setting heatwaves and earlier and more intense hurricanes”. By these leading statements, the reader is led to believe that both constitute “settled science”.
Here is another example of writing from another recently published Forbesarticle that allegedly does not constitute advocacy or opinion:
Imagine not being able to get the warning about the approaching hurricane or tornado. How would you know when to evacuate to stay safe or board up your home or business? Or make sure your staff is protected? It’s not a bad dream, it could be the reality if Donald Trump takes office again.
My suggestion that the policy positions of J.D. Vance in support of fossil fuels and sceptical of climate alarmist claims are consistent with the verities of physics and economics got me cancelled. But arguing that if Donald Trump takes over, it would be “a bad dream” is perfectly fine in a Forbes world allegedly devoid of advocacy or opinion.
Settled Science
To suggest that fossil fuels have “fuelled the climate crisis” is, we are led to believe, neither an opinion nor advocacy. Forbes’s readers are told to accept “the carbon-fuelled climate crisis” as established science, though it is nothing of the sort. There is no “settled science” – an oxymoron to begin with – regarding climate change. It is apparent that Forbes would have cancelled John Clauser, a Nobel Laureate, for Physics in 2022 – like the IMF did – since he does not give obeisance at the altar of climate change as Forbes staff evidently do along with their preferred contributors and senior editors.
Indeed, if Dr. Clauser were to write, as he did, that the climate emergency narrative is “a dangerous corruption of science that threatens the world’s economy and the well-being of billions of people”, he would have received a termination letter pronto from the senior editors of Forbes. And if he had said, as he did, that “climate science has metastasised into massive shock-journalistic pseudoscience”, that would certainly have sealed his fate.
The Forbes editors seem oblivious to the fact that the latest IPCC assessment report, by finding little support for the much-proclaimed link between climate change and extreme weather events, “is badly out of step with today’s apocalyptic zeitgeist” as Roger Pielke Jr. puts it.
What is even more remarkable is that Forbes’s senior editors seem out of step with their own Editor-in-Chief and grandson of the magazine’s founder, Steve Forbes. Mr. Forbes said in his column last month that some $6 trillion had been spent on “so-called renewables” such as solar and wind over the past two decades which “barely made a dent” in the use of fossil fuels in the global economy. Yet in the linked Forbesarticle above, the authors criticise the GOP platform for not making specific references to solar and wind (along with geothermal and hydropower). Perhaps they should have checked with their own Editor-in-Chief before indulging in “climate groupthink”, which Mr. Forbes warns his readers against.
Au RevoirForbes
My first Forbes article was published more than five years ago in April 2019 entitled ‘The World Bank’s Misguided Green Energy Policies To Persist’. Since then, I have published a range of pieces on climate, energy and public policy. Readers often remarked in personal comments to me that they found it surprising that a mainstream business magazine such as Forbes allowed such contrarian and sceptical writing to be published. My response was to say that Forbes was exceptional in providing a broad range of informed opinion to their readers.
Alas, that is no longer true, and climate groupthink has captured yet another media outlet. Newer hires at the Forbes editorial office from a younger more “woke” generation of journalists may well have tipped the balance in support of the climate alarmist narrative. Gone are the days when informed analysts such as Roger Pielke Jr., Michael Schellenberger, Diana Furchtgott-Roth graced the pages of Forbes.
Dr. Tilak K. Doshi is an energy consultant, member of the CO2 Coalition and an ex-Forbes contributor.
Below is the article that Forbes memory-holed.
Trump’s VP Pick Is A Climate Sceptic And the Knives Are Out
By Tilak Doshi
Within a day of ex-President Trump’s announcement of “climate denier” Mr. J. D. Vance as the Republican Vice Presidential nominee, the climate industrial complex and supportive mainstream media had the knives out. A few headlines of the past 24 hours are an indication:
New York Times – “J.D. Vance Is an Oil Booster and Doubter of Human-Caused Climate Change”
Independent – J.D. Vance: “Climate Activists Alarmed by Trump’s ‘Dangerous’ Pick for Vice President”
Guardian – “Climate Advocates Fear Picking J.D. Vance for VP Is ‘A Dangerous Step Backward’”
The umbrage taken by media commentators is familiar. CNBC laments that “the former venture capitalist though is a known critic of climate change and renewable energy [italics added].” U.K.’s the Independent newspaper reports that “[c]ampaigners are responding with alarm to the selection of climate denier and Ohio senator J.D. Vance as Donald Trump’s Vice Presidential nominee, with activists warning he represents a “dangerous” voice for the U.S.” Mr. Vance’s “eagerness to please Donald Trump” adds to the image of the Vice-Presidential nominee as an unprincipled politician seeking office.
Climate advocacy group Fossil Free Media spokesperson Cassidy DiPaola asserted that “This [VP] choice signals that a potential Trump-Vance administration would likely double down on fossil fuel expansion at a time when we desperately need to transition to clean energy.” Communications Director Stevie O’Hanlon of Sunrise Movement, a climate activist organisation, said that “Like Donald Trump, J.D. Vance has proven that he will make it a top priority to roll back climate protections while answering to the demands of oil and gas CEOs.”
Does Mr. Vance have a principled stand and is his stance on climate and energy policy worthy of consideration?
Climate Denialism
As the highly polarised debate over climate change over the past few decades has amply demonstrated, the discourse often descends into ad hominem attacks and name calling. “Climate denier” is a charge that is often used by proponents of climate alarm to shut down critical debate and to deplatform climate sceptics. Lena Moffitt, Executive Director of the environmental advocacy group Evergreen Action, said this of Mr. Vance: “Donald Trump has chosen an avowed climate denier as his running mate who has used his time in Congress to vote against the environment and shill for fossil fuel corporations at every opportunity.”
The “denier” accusation is among the more pernicious if popular epithets used to denigrate sceptics of the so-called “consensus science”. It invokes a comparison to those who engage in Holocaust denial. To be sure, most observers would consider it ludicrous to suggest that questioning the accuracy and predictive power of scientific models is like questioning the historical fact of the genocide of Jews in Europe.
What Is Mr. Vance’s Position on Climate?
Putting aside epithets and journalistic hit-pieces, it seems a fair question to ask just what do politicians sceptical of the climate alarmist narrative believe? And what are their policy positions regarding the Paris Agreement’s “Net Zero by 2050” target? This policy target is an imperative, at least nominally, for most current governments in North America and Western Europe.
Mr. Vance – lawyer, businessman, former Marine and writer of the bestselling memoir Hillbilly Elegy, arisen from the humblest working-class background – places himself firmly in the populist Right movement. It now looks very likely that Mr. Trump will be the next U.S. President. The assassination attempt on Saturday, his miraculous split-second turn of the head which saved him and the iconic picture of his raised fist with the U.S. flag in the background seconds after being injured make him almost irresistible. Thus Mr. Vance will likely join the Donald Trump next year as his VP in an administration that will seek to rapidly unwind the myriad policy and regulatory constraints that the Biden administration has imposed to shackle the U.S. oil and gas industry at every turn.
Vance has also criticised the “green energy fantasy” of the Biden administration, pointing out that “solar panels can’t power a modern manufacturing economy” and “that’s why the Chinese are building coal power plants”. He has similarly called out wind power turbines. At the Turning Point Action conference last year, he said “they’re hideously ugly. They kill all the birds. And they’re mostly made in China.” The Biden administration’s all-out support for EVs comes in for the same critique. In a July 2022 radio interview, he said: “The whole EV thing is a scam. If you plug it into your wall, do these people think there are Keebler elves back there making electricity in the wall? It comes, of course, from fossil fuels.”
Mr. Vance’s climate scepticism goes beyond encouraging U.S. oil and gas dominance in global markets once again – a strong theme of Trump’s first term in office – if the Republicans get elected to office. He has come out fiercely against the ESG (Environmental, Social and Governance) movement. In an interview with Breitbart in 2022, he said: “ESG is basically a massive racket to enrich Wall Street and enrich the financial sector of the country, at the expense of the industries that actually employ a lot of Ohio’s workers for middle-class jobs.” The push against ESG occurring through the red states in the U.S. and the increasingly evident lack of success of ESG-focused firms and investment advisors suggests that Mr. Vance has probably got a better finger on the pulse than his critics would care to admit.
Who’s More Credible?
As a climate change sceptic, Mr. Vance stands in good company. For instance, the 2022 Nobel Laureate in Physics John Clauser exposed in a recent lecture how the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) models and analyses do not meet basic standards of scientific enquiry. IPCC models have been used as “proof” of scientific consensus by politicians and activists to support claims of a “climate crisis”. Another example would be Richard Lindzen, an American atmospheric physicist and Emeritus Professor of Meteorology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who published an assessment of the global warming narrative in 2022. Prof. Lindzen finds climate alarmism “a quasi-religious movement predicated on an absurd ‘scientific’ narrative. The policies invoked on behalf of this movement have led to the U.S. hobbling its energy system.” Whatever one’s views on climate science, it is apparent that Mr. Vance is not a wild-eyed outlier in his scepticism of the claims of climate policy advocates, as asserted by his many critics.
J.D. Vance’s criticisms of subsidy-supported renewable energy and EV sectors accord with the empirical evidence emerging in the current context of higher inflation, higher interest rates and a deep slump in renewable energy stocks. For instance, an Associated Press report last November described the travails of the Biden administration’s ambitious plans for offshore wind: “The cancellation of two large offshore wind projects in New Jersey is the latest in a series of setbacks for the nascent U.S. offshore wind industry, jeopardising the Biden administration’s goals of powering 10 million homes from towering ocean-based turbines by 2030 and establishing a carbon-free electric grid five years later.” This news was preceded by earlier reports of developers cancelling three offshore wind power projects in New England. They said their projects were “no longer financially feasible” despite the ample subsidies on offer.
The news on the EV front, called out as a “scam” by Mr. Vance, is just as dire for green technology enthusiasts. As David Blackmon, a keen observer of the renewable energy space, notes: surveys show that the vast majority of U.S. car buyers will not purchase an EV even at “bargain basement” prices (and despite Government subsidies); the overall growth in private EV sales in the U.S. has slowed “to a trickle”, just as is happening in the U.K. and EU; and the market for used EVs is practically non-existent. “Pure play” EV maker Fisker recently declared bankruptcy while Rivian approaches the same fate. Giant U.S. automakers GM and Ford have turned to gasoline-powered vehicles to sustain their profits as the global EV sales slowdown force them to delay investments and cut costs in their EV production lines.
Partisans may criticise the man all they want, but the realities of thermodynamics and economics support J.D. Vance. He may prove to be the best Vice President in a Republican administration geared towards supporting the country’s oil and gas industries and ‘Making America Great Again’.
A recent article in Forbes, titled “Climate Change’s Toll On Global Agriculture: A Looming Crisis,” claims that climate change is “wreaking havoc” on cocoa, olive oil, rice, and soybeans. This is false. Certain regions, like those the author Monica Sanders focuses on, are seeing bad seasons for these crops, but it is not indicative of long-term trends at those locations or globally. Thus it cannot be attributed to the modest warming of the past hundred-plus years, and certainly not due to human CO2 emissions.
A recent article in Forbes, titled “Climate Change’s Toll On Global Agriculture: A Looming Crisis,” claims that climate change is “wreaking havoc” on cocoa, olive oil, rice, and soybeans. This is false. Certain regions, like those the author Monica Sanders focuses on, are seeing bad seasons for these crops, but it is not indicative of long-term trends at those locations or globally. Thus it cannot be attributed to the modest warming of the past hundred-plus years, and certainly not due to human CO2 emissions.
Sanders claims that important crops “such as cocoa, olive oil, rice, and soybeans are particularly vulnerable, and their declining yields due to climate-induced stressors have far-reaching implications.”
Beginning with cocoa, Sanders focuses on West Africa, which she says “has been hit hard by dry weather conditions exacerbated by El Niño,” and quotes a climate scientist from Ghana who claims that the frequency and intensity of droughts are increasing and it’s making “cocoa cultivation increasingly untenable.”
Agricultural data for the region suggest that this claim is false.
This year and 2023 have seen some reduced cocoa yields, but it is an outlier for the overall trend. If climate change was making cocoa production “untenable” one would not expect the record production to have occurred as recently as 2022. According to the latest data from the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) covering the last three decades of climate change:
West African cocoa production has increased 167 percent;
West African cocoa yields have fluctuated, but overall increased 8 percent. (See figure below)
Climate Realism has gone into greater depth about the alarm surrounding cocoa beans and climate change here, here, and here.
Next, regarding olive oil, we see a similar story, and again, Climate Realism has already debunked these claims here, here, and here. FAO data discussed in those posts show olives set production records 11 times between 1990 and 2022.
Rice is a particularly puzzling crop to become alarmed about. Saunders writes that it is “under threat from climate change,” citing Italy, which produces half of the European Union’s rice, and India.
Italy is an interesting case, their rice production and yield has fallen off significantly since at least 2020, and their last yield record was set in 2017, production record in 2012. Though from the FAO data, production through 2020 was within normal Italian rice seasonal fluctuation ranges. 2022 represented the big drop off due to the year’s drought. (See figure below)
There is no reason to believe the present drought is permanent and there is no long-term trend for increasing droughts in Italy, nor as the Earth has modestly warmed, has Italy displayed a consistent rice crop decline. Rather, rice farmers in Italy are experiencing what farmers around the globe have always experienced, seasonal crop declines and failures tied directly to short-term weather fluctuations. This is a temporary, though for the farmers painful, phenomenon.
As importantly, Saunders fails to acknowledge that part of the reason for the decline in rice has nothing to do with weather but rather reflects a nearly 12 percent decline in the land devoted to growing rice over the past 14 years.
That Sanders claims rice in India is likewise threatened is absurd. Rice production in India has broken records nearly every year since 2015, and since the 1990s has done nothing but trend upwards overall.
Since 1990, Indian rice has:
Seen production increases of 75 percent;
Seen yield increased of 61 percent. (See figure below)
Soybeans in both the United States and South America have likewise seen increasing production and yields over the past three decades of climate change, with no indication of stopping. Climate Realism discussed United States soybean production, here, and in South America, FAO data show that the most recent all-time soybean production record was set in 2021, the most recent record for yield was set in 2017. In short, production and yields have increased during the three decades that climate alarmists have claimed to be the warmest period on record.
Since 1990, South American yields have increased 47 percent, production has increased an incredible 424 percent. (See figure below)
Each section of the Forbes article also gives examples of weather resilience strategies which are worthwhile for farmers to undertake whether or not climate change impacting the weather. In any case, overall crop production is increasing across the board with no climate signal visible.
These facts took only a few minutes to verify using publicly available databases, which should be the minimum for good journalism, but apparently for Forbes, pushing the climate change crisis narrative is too important for facts to get in the way.
A recent online article, “Here Are The Foods Hit Hardest By Climate Change In 2023,” claims that grapes and wine, blueberries, olives and olive oil, rice, and potatoes, are uniquely threatened by climate change, and suffered declines in production this year because of it. This is false.
A recent online article, “Here Are The Foods Hit Hardest By Climate Change In 2023,” claims that grapes and wine, blueberries, olives and olive oil, rice, and potatoes, are uniquely threatened by climate change, and suffered declines in production this year because of it. This is false.
All crops have good and bad production years in different regions of the world, and data shows that each of these crops have increased dramatically as the planet has modestly warmed.
Senior contributor Daphne Ewing-Chow writes that recently, “global food security has been impacted by an increase in climate change related extreme weather.” She claims that extreme weather has lately been “characterized by hotter, prolonged, and more frequent heatwaves, and when coupled with associated consequences such as droughts, wildfires, and subsequent floods following rain, they have had severe impacts on food production.”
Ewing-Chow lists grapes and wine, blueberries, olives and olive oil, rice, and potatoes, as particularly threatened, each getting its own section. Ewing-Chow’s claims about extreme weather are false, as Climate Realism has shown repeatedly, so for brevity’s sake this post focuses on her false crop production assertions.
Forbes claims that grapes and therefore wine production are suffering from climate change.
Ewing-Chow writes that “[t]he International Organization of Vine and Wine (OIV) estimates that in 2023, global wine production was at its lowest in more than 30 years— with a reduction in grape yields of approximately 7% over 2022.”
It’s important to note that wine production is complex and doesn’t always translate directly to how many grapes are grown, it also depends on markets and demand, which is clearly the driving force behind 2022’s low wine production, because while OIV reports that grape yields were down in 2022, the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization data show the long term trend is positive. (See Figure below)
From 1990 to 2022:
Grape yields rose 48 percent;
Grape production rose 25 percent;
The highest value on record for yield and production was set as recently as 2018.
Wine production, on the other hand, varies wildly from one year to the next, with no clear trend. (See figure below) Data for 2022 and 2023 are not available from the FAO at the time of writing, but even if OIV is correct and the recent year was the lowest wine production year in the last 30+ years, it still doesn’t indicate a climate signal.
A narrow focus on production data, like comparing one year to the year prior, is not useful for indicating an impact climate change on agriculture, only long-term trends might suggest such impacts, yet there is no sustained trend of declining grape or wine production.
Forbes mentions Chile, Australia, and Spain as particularly effected, but strangely France is absent from the list. It’s notable France is left out of the discussion. The reason is that French winemakers saw such massive yields that they had to pay hundreds of millions of dollars to dispose of the excess, as discussed by Climate Realism, here.
The next food covered in the Forbes article is blueberries, which Climate Realism has covered previously when discussing American blueberry production, here, and here, for example.
Ewing-Chow writes that the world’s top blueberry producing country, “Peru was significantly impacted by 2023 heat waves,” and “Peru’s blueberry exports declined by more than 50%.”
FAO data on Peruvian blueberry production and yields only goes back to 2010, but what it shows is a massive takeoff for the blueberry industry starting around 2015. (See figure below)
World data show a similar trend. (See figure below)
Since 1990:
Yields rose 130 percent;
Production rose an amazing 822 percent.
Next, olives and olive oil were likewise fingered as threatened by climate change, with Forbes reporting “low rainfall for over a year, leading to severe drought resulted in a 50% reduction in Spanish olive oil production.”
Climate Realism already has a few posts on this subject, including one from 2021 when similar claims were being made in the media. Back then, the International Olive Council reported that global olive oil production had more than doubled since the 1990s, and tripled since 1960.
More recently, in “Bloomberg Falsely Says Climate Change is Harming Crop Production, Reality Says Otherwise,” FAO data shows that Spanish olive production has increased 343 percent since 1961, and all-time production records have been set as recently as 2018, and records have been set four times since 2010 alone, during the decade that many mainstream media outlets have cited as the hottest on record.
Ewing-Chow also claims that rice production is threatened by climate change, writing “[g]lobal rice supplies tightened in 2023 due to climate impacts experienced across the United States, Asia and the European Union.”
However, once again, as documented numerous times by Climate Realism, rice continues to set records, the last world record set by rice production was in 2021. As explained using UN FAO data in “MSN Pushes Rice, Sugar, Tomato Crises – Despite New Crop Records,” every one of the five largest crop years occurred during the past five years, and “[a]ll 10 of the 10 largest crop years occurred during the past 10 years.” In other words, rice production continuously sets records amid climate change.
Last but not least Ewing-Chow discusses potatoes, citing a study published in the journal Climate, which “indicates that potatoes face a significant threat from climate change, with global yields potentially declining by 18% to 32% within the next 45 years in the absence of adaptation.” She points to recent poor yields in the UK, Belgium, and France, as well as Bolivia as proof that the study (all based on computer modelling) is likely correct. This is false reasoning. First, there is no reason to believe that adaptation will not be part of agriculture going forward, as it has been for all of history.
All of those countries may have seen recent lower production, however their contributions to the world’s potato production are utterly dwarfed by countries like China and India. (See figure below)
Worldwide, potato production is doing well. (See figure below)
Since 1990:
Yields have risen 39 percent;
Production has risen 40 percent;
The most recent all-time record was set in 2022, second-highest in 2021, third highest in 2020.
Ewing-Chow is a senior contributor at Forbes, the website describes her coverage as “stories about food and agriculture through the lens of climate change.”
Maybe Ewing-Chow and her other climate-alarmed colleagues at Forbes, and elsewhere in the mainstream media, should remove the climate change goggles for a second and take a more holistic approach towards investigations into agriculture stories. To repeat, one year’s crop decline is neither proof of, nor necessarily a signal of, climate change, such cycles being normal throughout agriculture’s history. Only a declining trend would suggest climate change might be harming crops, but instead the trends for all the crops Ewing-Chow writes about are positive. Ewing-Chow is doing Forbes’ readers a disservice by inaccurately portraying food availability trends which are generally positive.
Africa’s poor will be hardest hit not by ‘climate change’ but by the policies pushed by the West’s green lobby. African forests and drinking water will diminish further.
It would seem straightforward that resolving the “climate change” problem would serve the poor the most, given that they are the hardest hit. But, by a tragic turn of irony, moves to “fight climate change” are precisely what is hurting the poor most. It is not “climate change” but the policies adopted in response to it that are the problem afflicting the poor the most.
…
Most of us who take affordable electricity ‘24/7’ supply for granted are unaware of the existential constraint on people’s daily lives that a lack of electricity implies. This was brought home brilliantly by Geoff Hill at a talk in House of Lords in Westminster on Monday. Geoff is Africa correspondent for The Washington Times, the first non-American John Steinbeck Award winner and has published with the Mail & Guardian(Johannesburg), The East African (Nairobi) and across the African continent.
…
This leads us to the third striking feature of the climate finance data collated by CPI. Within the 92% of the $640 billion spent on climate finance directed to climate mitigation in 2020 (as opposed to the 8% spent on adaptation), 91% (or $536 billion) was spent on solar and wind power. Yet no country in the world has developed without the dense energy available from fossil fuels. Asking Africans to leave their fossil fuels resources in the ground in return for “climate finance” from Western governments and multilateral agencies to invest on unreliable solar and wind power is plainlyunworkable. Dilute, unreliable and intermittent power from the wind and the sun will not meet the continent’s quest for higher standards of living, to save the forests and to have clean water to drink.
I don’t have a link to Geoff’s speech, if anyone has a link please post it in comments.
I really hope this Forbes article is more than a one off glimmer of sanity. If mainstream media news outlets were to start consistently acting like real journalists again, investigating and discussing real world problems caused by climate policy, instead of uncritically cheering on every ridiculous green idea which crosses their desk for the sake of the cause, the world would rapidly become a much better place.
Where Aspirations Meet Realities…Well, COP28 President-Designate Dr Sultan Al Jaber is also chief executive of ADNOC, the national oil and gas company of Abu Dhabi.
In a recent article by Tilak Doshi on Forbes, the convoluted saga of climate negotiations is meticulously unraveled, shedding light on the dichotomy between rhetoric and reality as the world gears up for COP28 in Dubai. Doshi’s article, rich in analytical insights, serves as a beacon of clarity amidst the fog of climate alarmism that often shrouds such global congregations.
Doshi begins by questioning the tangible outcomes of nearly three decades of COP negotiations, a pertinent inquiry that echoes the sentiments of many who seek objective assessments over alarmist narratives. He states,
Another year will soon pass, another ‘Conference of the Parties’ to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (“COP”) will convene. This time the 28th COP will meet in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates during 30 November – 12 December. Doubtless, the legacy media will soon be inundating us with wall-to-wall coverage of yet another attempt at the UN concert of nations to ‘save the planet’. Now that we are three years short of three decades of COP negotiations to handle an asserted “climate emergency” allegedly caused by human-driven greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, what progress have we made?https://www.forbes.com/sites/tilakdoshi/2023/10/16/cop28-in-dubai-climate-negotiations-at-a-crossroads/?sh=1a84ad00562b
The article delves into the intricacies of the “settled science” narrative propagated by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), highlighting the demonization of fossil fuels and the oil and gas industry that has been a recurring theme in previous COP meetings. Doshi meticulously outlines the palpable rhetoric against fossil fuels, citing instances such as the exclusion of oil and gas industry executives from climate talks and the vilification of the industry by climate activists and certain sections of the media.
Since the first COP was convened in 1995 in Berlin (and held annually since, except for 2020), the rhetoric against fossil fuels has ramped up. The demonization of the oil and gas industry at COP26 held in Glasgow in 2021 was palpable. Oil and gas industry executives were ‘not invited’ (coal, of course, being beyond the pale). Royal Dutch Shell’s CEO stated that the company would be absent from the climate talks after being told it would not be welcome. Teenage climate icon Greta Thunberg, whose tirades always go viral on social media, tweeted “I don’t know about you, but I sure am not comfortable with having some of the world’s biggest villains influencing & dictating the fate of the world.”
In a striking revelation of the complexities and contradictions that characterize climate negotiations, Doshi highlights the leadership role of Dr. Sultan Al Jaber, the COP28 President-Designate, who is also the chief executive of ADNOC, the national oil and gas company of Abu Dhabi. This, he notes, has elicited criticism and expressions of concern from various quarters, underscoring the contentious nature of the discourse surrounding the involvement of fossil fuel industry stakeholders in climate negotiations.
In August 2022, the UN Secretary-General António Guterres slammed the “grotesque greed” of oil and gas companies and their financial backers. “It is immoral for oil and gas companies to be making record profits from this energy crisis on the backs of the poorest people and communities, at a massive cost to the climate.” And again, last month, Mr. Guterres – no stranger to hyperbolic rants, from “code red for humanity” to “an era of global boiling” — warned that humanity had ‘opened gates to hell’ by letting the ‘climate crisis’ worsen. In a ‘lacerating attack’, he blamed “the naked greed of entrenched interests raking in billions from fossil fuels” which are “embarked upon a ‘shameful’ attempt to stymie the [energy] transition.”
What could go wrong? Well, COP28 President-Designate Dr Sultan Al Jaber is also chief executive of ADNOC, the national oil and gas company of Abu Dhabi. In a long article published last week on Dr. Al Jaber’s appointment to lead COP28, Fiona Harvey of The Guardian asks how can the man — an oil and gas guy, and hence the root cause of the problem — even attempt to deliver humanity’s salvation from the climate crisis? Furthermore, Dr. Al Jaber’s company, the world’s 11th largest oil and gas producer, announced late last year that it plans to invest $150 billion through 2027 to expand the emirate’s oil and gas production capacity.
Doshi’s article also brings to the fore the evolving political landscapes in various countries, noting shifts in political alignments and policy stances that reflect a recalibration of priorities and approaches towards climate policies and fossil fuel use. He observes,
As COP28 gets underway next month, much has changed within the political establishments in the West that have been leading the charge on the “decarbonization” and “net zero by 2050” imperatives at the UN COP negotiations. Political cracks have begun appearing across ‘environmental left’ governments in Europe and the UK, and “peak green” is much in evidence.
Over a third of the EU’s member states have witnessed “right wing” political forces gaining influence, hewing towards a common agenda against uncontrolled mass immigration and “putting the brakes on those pesky EU laws that demand radical changes in lifestyle to achieve net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050” as put by Alessandra Scotto Di Santolo of UK’s Daily ExpressEXPR+1.8%. Among the countries where the environmental left has lost political advantage are Sweden, Italy, Finland, Germany, the Netherlands and Spain. Just this past week, the populist backlash against green-left policies played a role in the fall of incumbent governments in Luxembourg and New Zealand.
In conclusion, Tilak Doshi’s article serves as a profound exploration of the crossroads at which climate negotiations find themselves, marked by a confluence of rhetoric, reality, political dynamics, and the enduring question of the tangible impacts of decades-long deliberations and declarations. It invites a discerning evaluation of the narratives, actors, and agendas that shape the global climate discourse.
According to the UAE government, COP28 in Dubai will welcome “over 140 heads of state, senior government leaders, over 70,000 participants and more than 5,000 media professionals.” One can imagine the carbon footprint of the international travel of the delegates involved, although Britain’s UCL has made available a handy calculator for this. Will the grand jamboree prove to be a farce, as many of the delegates from the West now report to new governments that are backpedaling from their own previous net zero commitments?
With what conviction can the chief German representative at the conference instruct his counterparts from around the world to pursue “net zero” policies as his or her own government approved earlier this month putting lignite-fired power plants back online for German households to keep warm this winter? Will the Netherlands and New Zealand delegates be holding up their anti-agriculture climate policies for emulation by the world’s nations, now that such policies have likely been consigned to the dung-heap of history by their own citizens?
The economist John Kenneth Galbraith once remarked, “meetings are indispensable when you don’t want to do anything.” It is likely that apart from grand-sounding communiques, more breast-beating by the climate NGOs and alarmist headlines by the legacy media, nothing much of practical significance will come out of the 28th Conference of the Parties in Dubai. And Dr Sultan Al Jaber, President Designate of COP28 and CEO of ADNOC, will do just fine.
A recent Forbes article claims that the recent shortage of the popular hot sauce “Sriracha” is likely due to climate change. This is false. Natural weather patterns in the region of Mexico Sriracha’s chili peppers are grown are not due to the modest warming the earth has experienced over the past decades. Furthermore, a few years of poor production in one region is not evidence of a long-term impact.
A recent Forbes article claims that the recent shortage of the popular hot sauce “Sriracha” is likely due to climate change. This is false. Natural weather patterns in the region of Mexico Sriracha’s chili peppers are grown are not due to the modest warming the earth has experienced over the past decades. Furthermore, a few years of poor production in one region is not evidence of a long-term impact.
The article, “Why Sriracha Prices Are Surging, And Why Climate Change Might Have Something To Do With It,” claims that a production shortage of the chili peppers used by the Hoy Fong company to make sriracha hot sauce is due to “an ongoing drought exacerbated by human-caused climate change,” as well as “back-to-back La Niña events that prolonged it in northern Mexico, where the chilis are grown.”
The recent drought in the southwestern United States and northern Mexico has been held up as proof of the impacts of climate change by many alarmists. The Forbes article repeats the claim that the drought, which has now abated according to the U.S. Drought Monitor, is part of the “the driest 22-year period in more than 1,200 years,” quoting a popularly cited study in Nature Climate Change.
In the first post, Watts explains that the study authors narrowly defined “megadrought” in order to compose the narrative that the recent 22-year dry spell was the worst in 1200 years.
Other studies that also use tree ring data, like the Nature Climate Change paper, show much longer and more intense dry periods in the southwest in the past, especially in the Middle Ages. (See figure below)
Since the recent drought is not outside of natural variability, what about the triple-dip La Niña events?
La Niña is also a natural event, not due to climate change. It is the cool-phase counterpart to the warming phase of the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO), a naturally-occurring sea surface temperature pattern in the Pacific. La Niña involves cooler-than-normal water temperatures, and usually causes unusually dry weather in the southwestern United States and Mexico, and unusually wet weather in Western Pacific areas like Australia. While the three La Niña events in a row is a rare situation, it’s not unprecedented. La Niña is not getting more intense due to climate change, as covered by Climate Realism, here, for example. (See figure below)
The Huy Fong sriracha sauce got its start on a small scale in the mid-1980s, meaning the company should have been around for previous extended La Niña events, but it is unclear the company was producing such a volume of hot sauce, or even getting peppers from the same region, during that period.
On the agricultural side of the claim, publicly available data from the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) for chilies and other peppers grown in Mexico show indeed there has been a recent decline in production, since about 2019 through 2021, and presumably into 2022, which corresponds with the recent La Niña events. (See figure below)
Chili pepper production in Mexico hit an all-time production record high as recently as 2018, and in fact saw production records broken fifteen times between 1990 and 2020, a timeframe which has supposedly seen warming which alarmists claim is “catastrophic.”
Fortunately, with the forecasted return of the warmer El Niño this year, the issues hindering Huy Fong’s chili source in northern Mexico should decline, if indeed La Niña conditions were to blame instead of some unmentioned agricultural issues.
Regional weather patterns and agricultural shortages are not proof of impacts from climate change, nor can climate change be blamed for those shortages.
Data does not indicate that the regional weather in Northern Mexico since 2019 is more extreme because of the modest warming of global average surface temperature, nor are chili pepper crops in general in any danger. If they were, one would expect evidence to show up in agricultural production data over time.
In fact, crop production woes of a single hot sauce company are not indicative of any kind of widespread climate chaos, or weather issues. Even if Huy Fong sriracha sauce is not currently on shelves, other companies’ similar sriracha chili sauces that have the same ingredients are still widely available, and Forbes would have been wise to point that out, instead of doom-peddling over a particular brand.
Linnea Lueken is a Research Fellow with the Arthur B. Robinson Center on Climate and Environmental Policy.
While she was an intern with The Heartland Institute in 2018, she co-authored a Heartland Institute Policy Brief “Debunking Four Persistent Myths About Hydraulic Fracturing.”
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