Much, indeed most, of the legacy media and activist Democrats (but I repeat myself) are all in on anthropogenic climate change being the existential crisis of our time. Of course, as I've written many times and have been pointed out many times in the comments by our well-informed readers, the climate has always changed and it always will, and through most of the earth's history, it has been warmer than it is now.
But the legacy media and climate activists (and again, I repeat myself) don't let geological history get in the way of a good scare-mongering. In the latest such, we see that a major outlet is warning us that climate change is driving up the price of coffee.
There's a problem: They're wrong. An article by Anthony Watts at Climate Realism has the data.
NBC News recently published an article asserting that climate change is driving up coffee prices by adversely affecting production titled Your daily cup of coffee could get more expensive because of climate change. Production data proves this claim blatantly false.
NBC News writes:
The price of arabica coffee beans, the high-quality beans found in most restaurants and shops, spiked this month, recently jumping to $3.50 a pound.
…
And today, experts say, climate change is to blame.
Coffee is more expensive than it was, say, four years ago. But the scolds have been shouting "OMG MUH CLIMATE" for far longer than that, and coffee prices are only spiking now? Could it be, that the rise in coffee prices is part and parcel of some other phenomenon - like the inflation that has been hammering us since 2020?
There are several problems with the NBC News claims, not least of which is that their assertions don't really have anything to do with climate. See, there's a difference between climate and weather - the former is, broadly speaking, much broader and longer-lasting; climate is generally accepted to mean continent-spanning, long-term trends, while weather is much more localized and transient.
And it is weather, not climate, the NBC cites.
NBC’s article attributes recent coffee price increases to climate change by pointing to specific weather events. This approach wrongly conflates short-term weather phenomena with long-term climate patterns. As discussed at Climate at a Glance, weather refers to short-term atmospheric conditions, while climate denotes long-term averages and trends. Attributing isolated weather events directly to climate change without considering broader climatic data is misleading and scientifically unsound, especially when long-term weather trends show no worsening conditions in coffee growing regions.
But that's not the real clincher. The issue that really stamps the brakes on NBC's climate scoldery.
NBC’s story also ignores substantial data demonstrating that global coffee production has increased significantly over the past four decades, a fact that Climate Realism has addressed multiple times, highlighting the fact that coffee production has been resilient and even thriving despite concerns over climate change.
Repeated analyses show that both coffee and cocoa have set production records multiple times during the recent period of slight warming, contradicting assertions that climate change is driving price increases.
So, the supply is increasing; along with, I hasten to note, the price of almost everything else, including energy - like the fuel required to transport coffee from the famous mountain fields of Juan Valdez and his colleagues.
Predictably, the NBC article doesn't mention Bidenflation. It doesn't mention the trillions of fiat dollars that have been created out of thin air and dumped into the economy - a program that, fairness prompts me to note, began in the initial response to the COVID panic. It doesn't mention the rise in energy and the concomitant rise in transport costs.And it mistakes climate for weather.
See Related:
With Climate or Anything Else, the Science Is Never Settled
Fear Not the Rising Tide: Sea Levels in Alaska Are Dropping - and It's Not Climate Change
Personally, I never saw the appeal of coffee. I know that makes me something of an outlier, especially among people my age. Even in my days in Uncle Sam's colors I never touched the stuff, which prompted some remarks from my fellow soldiers; the Army, after all, runs on diesel fuel and coffee, and I was only in the habit of expending one of those. But coffee nevertheless is a beverage enjoyed by millions, and raising prices of coffee, among other things, makes people unhappy. So it's a convenient target for climate scolds and the legacy media (again, I repeat myself) to try to get up our concern.
Don't buy it. This claim by NBC is pure falsiloquence. This, honestly, is yet another reason why the legacy media's approval ratings among the American people rank somewhere between cockroaches and fungal infections.
