A story on NBC News cites worst-case scenarios to claim that climate change threatens global wheat production. This is false. conjecturing
Hard data shows wheat production has grown dramatically during the recent period of climate change, and agronomy explains why the world should expect such increases in production and yield to continue for the foreseeable future. [emphasis, links added]
The NBC News story, “World’s wheat supply at risk of a dangerous shock due to heat and drought, study warns,” cites the results of a single study recently published in npj Climate and Atmospheric Science to warn that, “[n]ew research outlines a worst-case scenario in which extreme weather hammers winter wheat crops in both the U.S. Midwest and northeastern China in the same year.”
The researchers used a unique set of climate models, the UNprecedented Simulated Extreme Ensemble (UNSEEN), to simulate what they write are thousands of “plausible unprecedented events”, some of which included simultaneous collapses of wheat production in both China, the world’s top wheat producing and consuming country, and the United States, the world’s fourth largest wheat producer and among the top exporters.
The fact that the events simulated are “unprecedented” in history suggests that they are not actually that “plausible,” or likely to be driven by the present modest climate change, in terms of the Holocene, much less in the geologic history of the earth.
That should have been NBC News’ first clue not to make too much of this study.
Concerning the fact that the scenario is implausible in the extreme, Erin Coughlan de Perez, the study’s lead author and an associate professor at Tufts University, told NBC News, “We’re suffering from a failure of imagination in terms of what this could look like.”
Lack of imagination, indeed.
In a world of limited resources, Coughlan de Perez would have us plan for exceedingly unlikely unprecedented catastrophes, rather than focusing laser-like on more realistic possible outcomes of a changing climate.
The second clue that the study’s “worst-case scenario” claims were exceedingly unlikely to ever occur should have been the fact that contrary to what the study claimed, “climate change is [not] causing unprecedented events globally.”
As explored in Climate Realism and Climate at a Glance, climate change is not causing an increase in the number or severity of droughts or heat waves.
What about wheat yields and production? Data from the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization show that even as the Earth has modestly warmed since 1990, global wheat yields and production have both increased dramatically. (See the figure, below).
Agronomy explains that a large part of the reason for the wheat increase is due to the improved fertilization effect of rising carbon dioxide levels, a decline in late-season frosts, longer growing seasons, generally improved moisture conditions in the world’s major growing regions, and the plants’ improved abilities to use water efficiently.
There is no reason to believe any of these conditions will worsen should the Earth continue its modest trajectory of warming in the foreseeable future.
A variety of occurrences, including drought, war, economic collapse, pandemics, or other events over a single or string of years combined could disrupt wheat production for a short time.
But outside of unrealistic extreme computer models simulations or science fiction-type scenarios produced by the minds of Hollywood scriptwriters for “The Day After Tomorrow”-type movies, there is little reason to believe that wheat production could be significantly retarded long-term—unless politicians intervene to prematurely end the use of fossil fuels.
Data shows extreme weather events are not increasing. No realistic global warming scenario indicates either that such an increase is in the offing or that in the future extreme weather events will erupt simultaneously in some unprecedented fashion across the far-flung wheat-producing regions around the globe, causing a significant long-term decline in wheat production.
NBC News should quit scaring its audience with stories based on “worst-case scenarios” that in the real world are exceedingly unlikely to arise.
Read more at Climate Realism
The chart from the UN gives world wheat production in tonnes and yield in hg/ha. I assume that’s hectograms per hectare? No one uses obscure units like that except weirdo eggheads.
More fake news from the Lying Peacock News they just never quit lying to us
The science is proving daily that the Climate Crisis scare is a scam going back 50 years. The STARS constellation (NOAA) shows the earth warming at half the rate used the the video gamers, erm, computer modelers. The so called positive feedback (clouds disappear with rising temperatures) was disproven by scientific measurement. The models use a flat earth with a flat atmosphere. Oops. The sun is warming despite the models assuming a constant sun and mean earth orbit. Evaporation of the ocean, 73% of the planet surface, is understated. And the primary sources of CO2 estimates come from Antarctica (ice melting gives off CO2) and Mauna Lau which sits atop a volcano surrounded by vents and that recently erupted. The estimate of human activities related to CO2 are based on guesses based on averages, based on assumptions. It is not measured.
So what we have is an artificial crisis pushed by people who stand to make millions while impoverish the world.
He who controls energy controls the economy. He who controls the money controls.