Less food for more people on a hotter, drier Earth. How can we work to avoid this future?
That's the standfirst on the Guardian's editorial on food security this morning, introducing a more-than-usually daft dose of apocalytic predictions from the once-great journal. You know the kind of thing:
The big heat has yet to arrive. It will be catastrophic.
I'm struggling with their idea that the world is going to get drier. I thought it was supposed to be basic thermodynamics that greenhouse warming is going to produce more water vapour and therefore more rain? Anyone would think that the Guardian was just making up fairy stories for the entertainment of their readers.
This impression is confirmed elsewhere in the editorial, which makes it fairly clear that it is written as a trailer for the Paris climate conference. Also as part of the apparent push is a new paper cited by the Graun that claims to find a link between recent temperatures in Europe and stagnation of grain yields. Doug Keenan will no doubt be interested in its claim that there has been statistically significant warming in Europe in recent years. Watchers of the scientivist movement will be intrigued to see that the paper is edited by Ben Santer. Quite what a climate modeller is doing involved in a statistical analysis of crop yields is anyone's guess.
I also noted the use of "business as usual" with respect to the concentration pathways underlying the predictions of 4 degree warming. This is of course not true, but that has rarely concerned the Guardian. Tim Worstall is similarly unimpressed with the treatment of emissions and CO2 concentrations, but for different reasons.
So in summary, Guardian editorial is drivel.
It's not really news is it?