No, CBS News, Global Warming Did Not Create Taliban Victory
CBS News published an article a few days ago claiming global warming was a major factory in the Taliban overrunning Afghanistan and creating murderous chaos throughout the country, rather than political ineptitude.
CBS News argues that global warming created horrible weather conditions that decimated crop production during the past 30 years in the country, and the Taliban fed off the misery experienced by Afghan farmers.
The objective truth is entirely the opposite.
According to the CBS News article, titled “How climate change helped strengthen the Taliban,”
“Rural Afghanistan has been rocked by climate change. The past three decades have brought floods and drought that have destroyed crops and left people hungry. And the Taliban — likely without knowing climate change was the cause — has taken advantage of that pain.”
The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (UN FAO) keeps meticulous crop production data for nations throughout the world, including Afghanistan.
In the graph below, the information website The Global Economy presents the UN FAO data on cereal crop yields (corn, wheat, and rice) in Afghanistan, with the left axis showing kilograms per hectare:
Afghanistan crop production, by year
CBS News claims that climate change in Afghanistan during “the last three decades … have destroyed crops and left people hungry.”
As you can see, however, Afghanistan has fully doubled its crop yields during the past three decades. Also, Afghan farmers have set new production records on a regular basis, especially during the past few years.
It may be convenient for CBS News to divert attention from the current deadly debacle in Afghanistan by blaming it on climate change.
The objective truth, however, is that Afghan crop production has tremendously benefited from a modestly warming world.
If global warming has had any impact on Afghan farmer sentiment throughout the country, it has clearly been to make farmers happier, more prosperous, and less vulnerable to the Taliban.
See more here: climaterealism.com
About the author: James Taylor is the President of the Heartland Institute. Taylor is also director of Heartland’s Arthur B. Robinson Center for Climate and Environmental Policy. Taylor is the former managing editor (2001-2014) of Environment & Climate News, a national monthly publication devoted to sound science and free-market environmentalism.
Header image: Wikimedia Commons
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Lunatictoctarian
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Amazing satire…
Here is one of my favourite pieces from the NEARLY ENTIRELY WORTHLESS ADVERTISING AND POLITICALLY DRIVEN SITE NAMED PHYS.ORG:
Could COVID-19 have wiped out the Neandertals?
by John Hewitt , Phys.org
https://phys.org/news/2020-12-covid-neandertals.html
Speaks VOLUMES about his allegiances and how distant from science that site actually is.
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Lunatictoctarian
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Btw, every time Afghanistan struggled (temporarily) with crop production was because of military involvement, govt policies.
Afghanistan wasn’t just attacked for opium, you know. In the 70s (iirc), America happened to be involved with attacking their Marijuana industry there. And I doubt it was just America.
But hell, they’ve been helped attack countries like Swaziland.
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Lunatictoctarian
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“The objective truth, however, is that Afghan crop production has tremendously benefited from a modestly warming world.”
To say the crop production is attributable to warming is a bit of a stretch, imo. I mean it’s conceivable, but you’d also have to consider they’ve had enormous amounts of financial, socioeconomic, infrastructure, trading, manufacturing changes.
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richard
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Afghanistan: Empowering farmers to rebuild war-torn irrigation
Search domain adb.orghttps://www.adb.org/results/afghanistan-empowering-farmers-rebuild-war-torn-irrigation
Afghanistan’s agriculture is heavily dependent on irrigation but their irrigation facilities have been degraded both by the passing of time and the brutality of war. As conflict continued, more and more infrastructure, including the irrigation facilities, get destroyed. The loss of these facilities was a major blow to farmers.
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Lunatictoctarian
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I gotta joke about this.
“The world’s largest solar PV farm uses 200,000 litres of water each day to keep the panels clean. Yet some people think that we are soon going to source all our electricity from solar farms in deserts.”
Btw, if you have solar farms in deserts, you could retain more moisture, if you actually like consider what you’re doing, you could turn it into a jungle.
Here’s another “co2 free” thing (excluding mining, processing, radiation damage, contamination…and remember, liability, just like vaccines…is yours):
“The Nuclear Information and Resource Service notes that a typical once-through cooling system draws into each reactor unit more than one billion gallons (3.8 billion litres) of water daily, 500,000 gallons (1.9 million litres) per minute.[5]”
How difficult is it to explain to people that if the sun shuts down, they have no energy whatsoever, because the function on …ant-like timescales. Of course oil, fossil fuels are renewable. And all of it is enabled by the sun, at least, from my understanding of existing, so far.
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Lunatictoctarian
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The problem is, when you try to homogenize, for stagnant, monolithic “science”-enabled industry, peddled by state…you will lose, over and over.
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Glori
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“CBS News published an article a few days ago claiming global warming was a major factory ”
not a FACTORY a factor spelling and grammar editors impact credibility
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Lunatictoctarian
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Perhaps global warming is a major factory, of homogenized religiously militant industrial “science” zealot slaves.
I mean, how else would you invoke the abyss?
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Dr. John H
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Well, if it wasn’t global warming, then it is obviously Trump’s fault.
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Lunatictoctarian
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Well, trump peddled HCQ, Remdesivir, Regeneron, Operation retardedlatency vaccines. He’s associated with uh, well, you go figure that out. That would include rothschild accountants abusing brankruptcy to rip tax payers off (as one of the minor offenses). Subsidized agriculture monopolies. Shit like that.
So yeah, Trump, and Obama, and Bush…and pretty much anything you see peddled.
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Lunatictoctarian
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Oh also, supported Fauci, funding, etc. AND, as a special bonus, aside from instantly providing liability exemption. HE ALSO happened to be involved with the CARES act, which shields pharma from any concerns you may have and makes pretty much any sort of treatments, including actual essentials sort of “forbidden”. For your health.
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Lunatictoctarian
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A theme song seems appropriate.
https://alotlikebirds.bandcamp.com/track/orange-time-machines-care-instrumental
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Dr. John H
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I was joking, but you have shown me that I was right! 🙂
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