{"id":428087,"date":"2026-02-26T16:55:53","date_gmt":"2026-02-26T15:55:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=428087"},"modified":"2026-02-26T16:55:55","modified_gmt":"2026-02-26T15:55:55","slug":"tell-the-truth-wcnc-nbc-climate-change-hasnt-harmed-coffee-production","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=428087","title":{"rendered":"Tell the Truth, WCNC NBC, Climate Change Hasn\u2019t Harmed Coffee Production"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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From Climate Realism<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

By H. Sterling Burnett<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

An article posted by WCNC, Charlotte, North Carolina\u2019s NBC affiliate, claims \u201cit’s getting harder to produce,\u201d coffee, blaming a coffee decline on higher temperatures in growing regions. This is false. Data from the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) clearly show that coffee production in each of the top coffee-producing countries has increased substantially during the recent period of modestly warming temperatures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In her WCNC story, \u201cClimate change impacting production of coffee across the globe, data shows<\/a>,\u201d Brittany Van Voorhees writes that \u201cWarming temperatures in the biggest coffee-growing regions are impacting the price of coffee and the ability to grow it.\u201d Van Voorhees cites, Kristina Dahl, Ph.D., vice president for Science at Climate Central, and a study she produced, as the sole evidence for this claim. Climate Central is a climate activist group, not an unbiased scientific organization. Had Van Voorhees or WCNC\u2019s fact checkers bothered to check the real-world data on coffee production before running this story, they would have found that coffee production has increased substantially amid slight warming, not been hampered by it. There is no evidence that climate has harmed coffee production at all. In fact, it is likely that higher atmospheric carbon dioxide levels have contributed to higher production, as it has with other crops globally.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Climate Realism<\/em> has debunked previous media reports that climate change was harming coffee production on dozens of occasions in the past few years, here<\/a>, here<\/a>, here<\/a>, and here<\/a>, for example. One would hope that the media would learn from the exposure that their past false claims have gotten and cease promoting this demonstrably false claim. Sadly, the media seem to never learn, accepting alarming falsehoods from climate activist groups at face value as if they were presenting facts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Data from the FAO show that during the twenty-first century, the period that has supposedly been the warmest in recent history, coffee production has increased substantially, globally, and in each of the five countries WCNC highlighted in its story: Brazil, Columbia, Ethiopia, Indonesia, and Vietnam. From 1995 to 2024, the most recent year for which data is available:<\/p>\n\n\n\n