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Google Promotes Maine Shellfish Scare – As Production Sets Record

By James Taylor | ClimateRealism | October 20, 2020

Google News is promoting claims that global warming is killing off Maine’s shellfish. However, objective data show that Maine is producing a record aquaculture harvest and Maine’s lobster catch is also setting records.

At the top of search results today for “climate change,” Google News is promoting a Sci Tech Daily article titled, “Iconic Food Web Threatened by Climate Change.” The article cites a dubious new study asserting a decline in Maine shellfish during the past 20 years.

“A dataset collected over two decades, including numbers of five species of mussels, barnacles, and snails, shows that all have been experiencing declines,” claims the article.

As the title of the article makes clear, the article blames the decline on climate change. Nevertheless, the authors speculate many factors may be causing the asserted decline, including invasive crabs that feed on shellfish, pollution, and overharvesting.

Data from the Maine Department of Marine Resources (DMR) throws cold water on the assertion that global warming is killing off Maine’s shellfish. The Maine DMR reports that Maine’s total aquaculture harvest value set a new record last year. The same is true for blue mussels, which were featured in the Sci Tech Daily article. The same is true for Maine oysters.

Some people may argue that aquaculture harvests are not necessarily an apples-to-apples comparison with the number of wild marine animals. However, if global warming were imposing stress on wild marine-life populations, that same temperature stress should show up in marine aquaculture production. Instead, Maine aquaculture production is setting records. Indeed, Maine mussel production is currently double what it was just a decade ago. Maine oyster production is quadruple what it was a decade ago. That is not what one would expect in increasingly temperature-stressed conditions.

Also, while the study promoted by Google News and Sci Tech Daily relies on a speculative assessment of shellfish numbers, Maine’s wild lobster catch is also setting records. The Maine DMR reports that each of the 10 highest annual lobster catches occurred during the past 10 years. Lobster catches in Maine are presently double what they were just 20 years ago.

If global warming is decimating Maine’s shellfish and other marine life, Mother Nature sure has a strange way of showing it.

James Taylor is Director of the Arthur B. Robinson Center for Climate and Environmental Policy at The Heartland Institute.

October 22, 2020 Posted by | Deception, Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Science and Pseudo-Science | , | Leave a comment

Sorry, Google News, Climate Change Is Helping End World Hunger

By H. Sterling Burnett | ClimateRealism | October 19, 2020

At the top of search results today for “climate change,” Google News is promoting an article claiming climate change is causing world hunger. However, data from the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) clearly show global crop production and food stocks have increased significantly and steadily during recent years and decades as the Earth modestly warms. Climate change is helping end world hunger, not making world hunger worse.

The Google-promoted article, published by InkStick Media, is titled “Climate Change Is Hampering Our Ability to Combat World Hunger.” The article claims there has been an increase in world hunger since 2014, the article blames this on human-caused climate change. The author quotes Swedish diplomat Jan Eliasson saying the world needs to “make peace with nature.” Unless we do so, the author warns, “Today, without a global effort we will certainly lose the battle for survival.”

Even if it were true that there has an increase in world hunger since 2014, the blame would be on political instability and corrupt centralized governments in Third World countries [among other factors], not crop production or climate change. The FAO’s recent “Cereal Supply and Demand Brief” clearly shows both cereal crop production and cereal stocks have steadily increased since 2014, and have increased dramatically since 2010 (See the figure Below).

FAO Cereal Supply and Demand Brief, August 10, 2020.

Cereal grains include the Big Three food staples of corn, wheat, and rice, as well as some similar crops. Corn (maize), rice, and wheat comprise 66 percent of global human food consumption. Also, just 15 crops provide 90 percent of the humanity’s food energy intake. Cereal grains make up nine of those 15 crops. As shown above, the FAO reports cereal grain production set new records seven of the past 10 years.

Looking ahead, the online agriculture news service World-Grain.com recently published a story, “IGC projects record output for corn, wheat and soybeans,” highlighting the International Grains Council’s findings that it expects global yields of corn, rice, soybeans, and wheat to set new records again in 2020, despite the pandemic.

Global warming lengthens growing seasons, reduces frost events, and makes more land suitable for crop production. Also, carbon dioxide is an aerial fertilizer for plant life. These factors combined have resulted in the largest decline in hunger, malnutrition, and starvation in human history.

Although 700 million people worldwide still suffer from persistent hunger, the United Nations reports the number of hungry people has declined by two billion people since 1990.

To the extent hunger has increased some over the past few years, poor infrastructure, political corruption, internal conflicts, and war – not long-term human-caused climate change – is to blame.

As much as the media and climate alarmists may try to equate climate change with crop failures and hunger, the fact is global crop yields set new records virtually every year in response to beneficial ongoing warming.

H. Sterling Burnett, Ph.D. is managing editor of Environment & Climate News and a research fellow for environment and energy policy at The Heartland Institute.

October 21, 2020 Posted by | Deception, Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity, Science and Pseudo-Science | | Leave a comment