A new report tells us that man-made global warming is driving up prices. Please tell us this is parody. It’s far too risible not to be.
Oh, but no. We’ve been assured that it’s a serious paper. “Global warming and heat extremes to enhance inflationary pressures,” was published last week in the peer-reviewed journal Communications: Earth and Environment. Axios tells us the study “incorporated more than 27,000 observations of monthly price indices across 121 countries in the developed and developing worlds during the 1996 to 2021 period, along with high-resolution weather observations.”
From that, the authors were able to determine that “human-caused climate change” is likely to worsen inflation. But it seems as if they had one eye closed as they reached that conclusion. Had they had both open throughout, they’d have to agree with H. Sterling Burnett, director of climate and environmental policy at the Heartland Institute, who said “climate change has nothing to do with it. It doesn’t print money, nor create new programs and policies spending it.”
Our friends at the Committee To Unleash Prosperity noted that “what’s especially pathetic about this story is first you have a bunch of nitwit academics writing the study.” It’s a fair point. But we also wonder just who were the peers who reviewed it.
Scientist-activist James Hansen, who is more the latter than the former? Insufferable hypocrite John Kerry? Maybe King Charles III, who told us 56 months ago that we had only 18 months to “decide our ability to keep climate change to survivable levels“? Or maybe Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the New York Democrat who must wonder why Miami isn’t under water and wants to weaponize the global warming scare to change the entire economy.
We sure hope that sainted prophetess Greta Thunberg wasn’t asked to give her approval. But given how she’s been awarded an honorary doctorate in the field of climate hysterics, it would not be a surprise.
Despite the frightening rhetoric about a warmer Earth threatening price stability, the data actually show that since 1996, and going back even further, to 1960, worldwide rice, wheat and corn production have increased dramatically, because, as our friends at CTUP point out, “plants and vegetation grow more rapidly in warm weather.”
While the researchers tracked prices from 1996 to 2021, they seemed to have been fixated on 2022, a year in which “the summer heat extreme in Europe” served as “a prominent example” of how “combined heat and drought had wide-spread impacts on agricultural and economic activity.” They referenced it nearly two dozen times.
Others see it differently. Eric Worrall, a regular contributor to Watts Up With That?, says “citing 2022 in Europe as an example of climate disruption caused food inflation is absurd. The problems being experienced by Europe are because of EU incompetence, not climate change.”
Rising food prices in Europe are a problem, he says, because farmers there “are under attack by radical greens.” Worrall also cited European restrictions on fertilizer and chemical use, as well as the “insane attempts to cut the number of farmers, by coercing farmers to sign agreements to never farm again.” He even reminds us that “Dutch police shot live ammo at farmers protesting climate rules in 2022.” These policies and events are “probably not encouraging farmers to invest in upgrading their land.”
At this point, there is no weather event, war, famine, viral outbreak, terrorist attack, crime spree, bumpy flight, grumpy mood or dog fight that the climate cranks won’t blame on human emissions of greenhouse gases. It’s been obvious for years that they’ve become desperate. We hope this means that their racket is close to its expiration date.
— Written by the I&I Editorial Board
