Fake Famine Fears at the Collapsed COP30 Fuel Net Zero Fantasy

The UN climate chief Simon Stiell was in fine hysterical form at the start of the COP30 conference in Belém, telling delegates that squabbling would not be forgiven while famines take hold, forcing millions to flee their homelands. “To falter whilst megadroughts wreck national harvests, sending food prices soaring, makes zero sense economically and politically,” he was reported to have said by the Guardian. Fine words, of course, maybe even worth cutting down 100,000 mature rainforest trees so that 50,000 other COP clowns can hear them. Almost a shame to note that over the last 30 years, higher crop yields, thanks to hydrocarbon-produced fertiliser and increases in global biomass caused by a little extra carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, have led to the almost complete elimination of natural famine. Nobody can adequately define a climate refugee but no doubt millions, nay billions, are already on the move in the fevered imaginations of COP attendees and Guardian readers.

Over the last 25 years, natural famine, those primarily caused by environmental factors such as droughts and heat, has become exceedingly rare. In fact, natural famine mortality has been falling dramatically over the last 100 years. Almost all famines are caused by local conflicts or senseless outbreaks of political ideology. Chairman Mao’s ‘Great Leap Forward’ in the late 1950s destroyed traditional farming in China and led to tens of millions of deaths through starvation. Ironically, if the hard-Left Net Zero numpties get their way and abolish hydrocarbon-produced fertiliser across the globe, even higher numbers of people, stretching into billions, will starve and likely die.

According to the latest WHO State of Food Security and Nutrition Report, hunger affected 8.2% of the global population. This was down from 8.5% in 2023 and the peak of 9.2% in 2022. One always needs to see the workings out whenever the United Nations is involved these days but famine classifications are said to be limited to warzones.

Simon Stiell is a major league climate hysteric with plenty of past form. Former Amnesty International Secretary General Kumi Naidoo was also on COP manoeuvres and offered the opinion that “we’ll warm up the planet to the point where we destroy our soil and water, and it becomes so hot we can’t plant food”. The picky might note that it is difficult to “destroy” H₂O – just ask hydrogen fans who have the devil of an expensive job in separating its two constituent parts. Heat can work in separating the individual atoms – 10,000°C near the Sun is a good bet. Meanwhile, World Food Programme Executive Director Cindy McCain claimed that unchecked climate change was already driving millions towards hunger through extreme weather. Checking climate, stopping the temperature, getting rid of all hydrocarbons from a modern society to bring forth a bright new future – Chairman Mao must be quietly chuckling in his Tiananmen Square mausoleum.

Regular readers of the Daily Sceptic will, of course, be up to speed regarding all the twaddle spoken about extreme weather and natural events such as drought. But it seems that however many times it is pointed out that even the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) detects little, if any, change in most extreme weather trends, the scare – the number one scare – is too good to let go to promote the Net Zero fantasy.

Professor Gianluca Alimonti said that in 2022 and an unholy alliance of activists manged to get his widely-publicised paper retracted in Nature a year later. Now he is back with Alimonti 2 noting there have been no statistically worsening trends of climate impacts. On the other hand, there have been many improvements in humans adapting to whatever nature has thrown against them. Alimonti draws attention to IPCC findings that there is “low confidence” in the emergence of drought frequency, “for any type of drought, in all regions”. Similar lack of change is detected in cyclones, floods and wildfires.

Meanwhile, evidence continues to accumulate showing the Earth is increasing biomass at a considerable rate as higher levels of CO₂, partly helped by humans using hydrocarbons, rescue the atmosphere from the near-denuded levels of the immediate paleo past. As the COP clowns travelled down their local ‘Highway of Shame’, built for their comfort by chopping down 100,000 rainforest trees, they would at least have been cheered by the recent news that the remaining mature Amazon trees are gorging on the gas of life. According to a recent paper published in Nature Plants, they are getting fatter by 6% on average every decade.

Hydrocarbon-based fertiliser has been an enormous help in feeding the world, but the role of higher levels of CO₂ is also crucial. More CO₂ in the atmosphere has boosted plant growth almost everywhere, leading to notable de-desertification in marginal living areas in places such as sub-Saharan Africa. Another advantage is that plants growing with more CO₂ need less water and can survive in areas where local droughts occur. More biomass also leads to a healthier planet with massive benefits cascading through the ecosystem.

Promising famines while promoting the ‘Great Leap Forward’ of Net Zero is just one reason why this deluded elite COP30 gathering collapsed under the weight of its own sinister inconsistencies.

Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor. Follow him on X.