Beam me to Planet Gore !
Posted on 02/02/2011 8:09:49 PM PST by lbryce
The craziest part of the uprising in Egypt is how it caught us all by surprise. After all, it was predicted — three years ago. Unfortunately, nobody was paying attention. It sounded too weird. The warnings weren’t coming from political analysts, but from climate and crop experts. Which means — what? Climate topples dictator? No way, right?
Way. Let’s walk through it. Consider those warnings in the spring of 2008. It was a time of worldwide food shortages. Wheat prices had doubled from the year before, and other crops weren’t far behind. Hunger became critical, and riots exploded from Bangladesh to Yemen and points in between.
Some of the causes were economic: use of grains for biofuel instead of food, derivatives trading that raised prices artificially, free-market reforms that set food prices free to float. The biggest culprit, though, was a string of natural disasters hammering wheat production that year: unseasonable drought in southern Australia, torrential rains in India and more.
As food riots spread, the world press was filled with predictions of developing-world governments tumbling like dominoes. Most worrisome was Egypt, the world’s largest wheat importer. Britain’s Guardian newspaper warned then that the shortages would bring down Hosni Mubarak’s three-decade rule sooner or later.
How soon? The first real clues appeared last fall. In September 2010, commodities traders began warning of a major wheat shortage this winter. The reasons were all weather-related. The Russian drought and wildfires in the summer of 2010 had halved the wheat crop and prompted a government ban on exports. An early frost in September had badly damaged crops in Canada and China. Prices were soaring.
(Excerpt) Read more at forward.com ...
I can say, with utter certainty, that no one ever starved to death before climate change. Nor were there riots, inflation, deflation, oil shortages, or anything else prior to climate change.
Al Gore Responds To Bill O'Reilly on Snow Climate Nexus
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2667412/posts
I think if you take a look at several of the lengthy discussions of CPI, et al, on the internet you will come away with a different sort of understanding ~ as it is you can stand there and talk about core inflation or real inflation or the price of tacos ~ and none of it will relate at all to perceived inflation.
Those poor schnooks, one has to wonder how far they had to walk after abandoning their cars.
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