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 ...
Some story brought me to this site, read through the article and then as I was about to move on, an article sitting there among other featured stories caught my eye in a way I would describe as striking. My eyes scanned the title of the story "How Global Warming Felled Mubarak" certainly enough but did a double-take when thinking Naw! it can't be, reading, re-reading, re-reading again, in a way that my brain could not cope with what my eyes were telling it's seeing.
At first, I thought it was some optical illusion, that would create the sense in which I was seeing "How Global Warming Felled Mubarak". Each time confirming the words "How Global Warming Felled Mubarak", for the first in my life my brain refusing to accept what my eyes were saying it saw, each time my brain responding with the neural equivalent of WTF?, for awhile the process repeating itself along my my brain's neural pathways, stuck in an infinite loop seemingly unable deal with the apparent dichotomy to was trying to resolve. I then clicked on the link, going through the story word by word with exceedingly greater trepidation the further along I read becoming increasingly more bizarre, waiting breathlessly to have it finally reveal itself to being some huge, ineffective joke, prank.
But no. I continued reading every few seconds looking at the author's head shot displayed at the top, every time concluding he looked normal enough of which I became increasingly more skeptical the further along I read, wondering what sort of set-up he was using to make the article "work".
But no matter how hard I tried I could not make it work as comedy, parody, sane, sober commentary, until concluding it was none of the above soon after which I breathed a great sigh of relief to find myself free, having somehow escaped the horror of the outer-dimensionality "Zone of Bizarre Surreality" seemingly without any apparent side-effect, damage.
Food prices have been rising dramatically as a result of Quantitative Easing(money printing) by Ben Bernanke. Starve the world so bondholders don’t take a loss.
Glad you made it through unscathed.
Grasping at straws is the only answer to such sophmoric logic.
LOL. A list without end! Thanks. :-)
Contrary to the Western imagination Chinese do eat wheat ~ that's what most of their noodles are made from.
There's also this "rust" making its way out of SE Africa into Sudan and the upper reaches of the Nile ~ >http://scidev.net/en/news/deadly-wheat-disease-a-threat-to-world-food-secur.html
This year, 2011, 90 some experimental stations in Egypt are trying out a newly bred variety that may beat the rust and save the world ~ again.
Rust is the eternal enemy, and the better and more nutritious we make wheat the hungrier the rust gets for it.
Losses from this rust are the rough equivalent of losing something like Kansas, and probably the red-wheat crop in Ohio and Indiana.
How does increased warming, increased carbon dioxide and increased precipitation cause crop failure? Ever notice all the plants in a hothouse dying from the heat while outside in the snow, vegetables are prospering like weeds? Me neither.
Yes, I am familiar with the points you made, but that doesn’t explain soybeans, corn, and more recently rice. Not to mention copper, gold, silver and almost any other commodity you care to name. All these started to go parabolic after Bernanke signalled QE in late August.
Stupid title, stupid logic, stupid article conclusion.
Yes, weather variability has affected crop production.
It was first observed over 200 years ago that Sunspot minimums and maximums were correlated with crop production (specifically wheat).
It has been know for about 100 years that weather variability is more noticeable during sunspot minimums and maximums.
We appear to be coming out of the longest sunspot minimum in my lifetime, and yes we have had crop production problems in some areas. Too much rain or too little rain depending on where in the world you were. Nightime temperatures in some crop areas too cool to allow normal crop yields.
None of this should surprise anyone. This is not about “GlowBull Warming” it is about weather patterns determined by activity on our Sun.
In Egypt, remember reading in the bible about Joseph’s vision of the 7 fat cows followed by the 7 lean cows? Interpreted as 7 fat year followed by 7 lean years. No one wants to talk about that....
—
“And the seven years of plenteousness, that was in the land of Egypt, were ended. And the seven years of dearth began to come, according as Joseph had said: and the dearth was in all lands; but in all the land of Egypt there was bread.”
“And when all the land of Egypt was famished, the people cried to Pharaoh for bread: and Pharaoh said unto all the Egyptians, ‘Go unto Joseph; what he says to you, do.’ And the famine was over all the face of the earth: And Joseph opened all the storehouses, and sold unto the Egyptians; and the famine waxed sore in the land of Egypt. And all countries came into Egypt to Joseph for to buy corn; because that the famine was so sore in all lands.”
Genesis 41:53–57
—
Arrogant man is really stupid.
The Chinese were buying gold ~ they have a lot of pent up demand for that sort of thing, and money is just lying about ready to be spent.
How Bong Warming Felled JJ Golberg
Idiotic editorial. #1, the planet is cooling, not warming. #2, Mubarak is still in power.
That's normal. Particularly when they try to invest their money in this country ~ to escape the coming disasters in their own countries.
There is inflation here. Food and energy are both up over 10% in the past 12 months. Neither is included in the CPI index the fed keeps crowing about. Other sectors are experiencing deflation.
In the U.S. we have a lot more danger of being hungry because of the passage of HR2748/S.510/HR2751 FDA Food Takeover Bill, than from crop failure.
If you are hungry here in the U.S. in the next few years, don’t blame a farmer blame the POLs who have sold out to Global AG for a buck.
It was sold in the name of “food safety” but it is about eliminating the competition of the small producers. There is real danger here now....
Wish I thought of that!! :-)
Housing is still going down, and is way, way down from 2007.
1. All wrong. The turmoil in Egypt was caused by... Al Gore, the Peace Prize winner, who was in favor of us turning a good percentage of corn into ethanol.
2.So, why don’t the US and other grain-producing countries (there aren’t that many!) form a cartel? I’d start pegging the price increases of food/grain to...DOUBLE oil price increases...for a start.
I get a bang out of people bitching that OPEC is “illegal”...get the best price you can for what you have.
“There is inflation here. Food and energy are both up over 10% in the past 12 months. “
You mean, the VOLATILE food and energy prices, that aren’t included in the CPI for that reason, right? :)
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