Poverty and a heavy reliance on annual rains are the key factors behind the devastating food crisis in southern Madagascar not climate breakdown, a new study finds.
A million people in the region are struggling for food following the worst drought in 30 years. But the scientific analysis did not show a convincing link to global heating, despite the World Food Programme describing it as the “world’s first climate-induced famine”.
Certain people have been lying through their teeth then, no?
There have been famines throughout human history, most of them caused by the climate. Droughts, floods, the little ice age. Much food waste is caused by crappy logistics too and communists taking over farms can’t be ignored. However, the vast majority have been caused by the natural variations in the climate.
Is Carrington looking for a new job? Is the climate scam finished?
I’ve just finished listening to the History of Rome podcast, for the second time. All 84 hours of it.
There are many reasons for the fall or the western empire and I’m sure everyone has their favourite, but the inability to respond to natural disasters, especially famines, towards the end certainly played a part.
By the late 4th and early 5th centuries the west had become so poor and disjointed that it was struggling to collect taxes and the emperor was effectively bankrupt and couldn’t respond as they had when the empire was at its peak. This led to further fragmentation with the regions having to look out for themselves, entrenching the power of land owners. Some argue that was the start of the feudal system.
There’s also an argument that there was a great deal of climate change in that period, but of course correlation v causation. There’s no doubt there was an increase in famines and other natural disasters.
So why didn’t it effect the eastern empire? That region was much more politically stable and wasn’t wasting money in pointless wars, civil or external. Well not as much money anyway. The podcast tells of one story of a grain famine in 409 in which the emperor Theodosius II recognises that its a supply problem and pays merchants more for the grain and orders more ships built. His counterpart didn’t have that luxury. (I haven’t verified the story but his work is usually well researched)
Of course that’s a simplified telling of complicated events, but the point that famines are a scourge or poor countries holds true even now. Impoverishing ourselves in the name of climate change will lead to more famines.
There’s always the traditional Chinese way of dealing with famines. Supplement the food in province A by stripping all food from province B. The people of A are immensely grateful and loyal, the people of B don’t complain because they’re dead. When things improve use excess population from A to re-inhabit B.
People whose livelihood depend on the alleged existence of something have a vested interest in promoting that thing; whether it really does exist or not.
Weren’t the Maldives supposed to be submerged by now?
BiND, link?
I thought people were catching and getting diagnosed with climate change now. Causing professional sportspeople to collapse to the ground clutching their chests, isn’t it?
I always thought that the root cause of Madagascar’s problem was deforestation and the subsequent soil erosion.
“I always thought that the root cause of Madagascar’s problem was deforestation and the subsequent soil erosion.”
This is the main cause of most “climate change issues” when you dig deep enough.
The Marxist Green freakshow is after kids and the young, dumb and socialistically conditioned. Who are family well-off from the states thieving. A pack of mugs who will be set straight by life. Even more so if they actually have to exist under the socialist BS they dream about.
Given that they have had decades and a shite-stupid population to work on the Greens have done a very bad job. Even dummies like the Krauts have vast wholes in their Marx-filled empty heads.
You’d save yourself a lot of time, oh blogger, if you just covered the stuff in the Guardian that’s sensible, accurate, and honest. The football scores, maybe?
The tale I liked was where Borlaug was going to apply the ideas in Africa that’d worked first in Mexico and then in Asia. The Greenies stopped him. All that awful inorganic fertiliser and hideous mechanical cultivation was just too, too horrid.
I suspect that Eck’s ideas of what should happen to those drongos are much the same as mine.
It’s global heating now, is it? I suppose that makes it sound worse than just warming.
The tropics haven’t been warming. Most of the warming is from higher minimum temperatures in urbanising environments plus cyclical ice melt in the Arctic(the Arctic convoys could not have kept the Soviets going during WW2 without low ice pre satellite to document it)
There are many reasons for the fall or the western empire and I’m sure everyone has their favourite . . .
Mine is that it was us Britons. The force required to subdue us was also a suitable size for the governor to make a play for the top spot in Rome. Chaos ensued. Sure, they fucked us up but we took them down with us.
*Historical accuracy not guaranteed; your mileage may vary; terms and conditions apply.
There’s some great data on all sorts of topics on the “our world in data” website such as deaths from natural disasters, hurricanes, heat waves and so on.
Take the annual heatwave index in the USA for example. Run that from the 1960s onwards and there looks to be an upward trend. Trouble for the ecofreaks is that the records go back to 1895 and when you look back that far the picture changes completely. The worse time, by far, for heatwaves in the US was the 1930s. Periods either side of that -back to 1895 and on to the 1960s show that the picture 1980 to present is about the same as those earlier periods.
You get similar stories for most other natural weather events. If you pick the right starting date, you can make things look bad. If you look at all the data, there isn’t much to see.
Although one thing is that the number of people dying in natural disasters has plummeted from a peak in the 20s and 30s. We can deal with them so much better. Because of all that nasty world development.
Jonathan,
Link to what? I said I hadn’t verified it.
You can find the History of Rome on all the podcasts. He discusses the economic collapse and possible climate change causes in the very last episode. (Not the last episode in the feed.
One guy’s lockdown project:
https://climatescienceinvestigations.blogspot.com/2021/11/80-lateral-thoughts-4-cop26-and-keeping.html?m=1
BiND: he’s asking for a link to the podcast.
@BiNK
Do keep up, heart attack deaths of athletes definitely, definitely not due to CoVax
Canadian becomes world’s first patient to be diagnosed as suffering from ‘climate change’
https://www.independent.co.uk/climate-change/news/canada-climate-change-diagnoses-patient-b1958749.html
New Zealand responds
https://www.independent.co.uk/climate-change/news/new-zealand-auckland-climate-tax-b1967640.html
PS Fourth free hit for CoVax drug addicts coming soon, supply order confirmed