Yet again we’re told that the population of Somalia is threatened by drought and starvation. Almost seven million of the east African nation’s population of 17 million are facing acute food shortages. And some 1.8 million children are thought to be at risk of malnutrition, according to the United Nations. It has been reported that six Somali children have written an open letter to world leaders calling for action on climate change to end the drought ravaging their country.
I don’t mean to be hard-hearted, but as long as I can remember there have been droughts and food crises in Somalia.
So let’s briefly check whether the latest drought actually has been caused by anthropogenic global warming or climate change or the climate crisis or whatever it’s called this month.
Here’s a chart of rainfall in Somalia.
And here’s chart of atmospheric CO2 levels, which are supposedly causing global warming and thus Somalia’s droughts.
There really doesn’t seem to be much of a correlation between Somalia’s rainfall and atmospheric CO2 levels. In fact, at a quick glance one might get the impression that Somalia’s rainfall has been consistently above average since around 2000.
So, if it’s not human-caused global warming which has led to so many Somalis being in danger of starvation, what else could be the reason? We could look at the size of Somalia’s population. After all, you wouldn’t expect the population of a country hit by so many droughts to grow very fast.
Until about the 1940s, Somalia’s population was relatively stable at just under two million. In the last 80 years, it has shot up to around 17 million and by 2050 will probably be close to 40 million.
So, the question we can all ponder is: what is really causing drought, poverty and starvation in Somalia? Is it a supposed lack of rainfall due to rising atmospheric CO2 levels, as the climate catastrophists and the mainstream media keep claiming? Or could it have something to do with the fact that the country simply can’t support its fast-growing population?
I think I know the answer. But no doubt our useless Government will give hundreds of millions of our money to Somalia’s lucky rulers for ‘climate reparations’ to apologise for us supposedly causing the seemingly never-ending series of droughts and famines in Somalia.
Unfortunately, facts seem irrelevant when it comes to the climate catastrophist cult.
David Craig is the author of There is No Climate Crisis, available as an e-book or paperback from Amazon.
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Life in an arrid dust bowel is not conducive to human beings, they just don’t have a choice! Corrupt govanance and squandered western help has just exacerbated the already terrible situation, war and pestulance has done the rest.
There is no NHS or pension fund for their old age so, having many children in a country with a high infant mortality rate is your only insurance that you will be cared for in your later years, all tragic but true!
If you where born in a western country then you have already hit the jackpot!
There are lots of countries with less rainfall than Somalia.
We all have choices, but of course how attractive the realistic options are varies enormously depending on where you live etc. We in England are benefiting from the choices of all those people who came before us, going back to the humans that left Africa whenever that was.
Those “choices” you refer to were the use of fossil fuels, but now those fuels are to be removed for political purposes and I reckon 90% of the public think that is entirely for the purposes of “saving the planet”. But fossil fuels empower people. They free people from a life of misery, which until we started using them was the default situation for the people of the world. You can see even today that the one billion who have no electricity and the other two billion with only enough to power a operate a fridge only start to come out of that medieval existence when they get access to coal oil and gas. But global politics tries to stop them doing so. ———The western world has become prosperous by using fossil fuels, and our life expectancy has doubled, but UN Sustainable Development politics insist we must stop doing that and instead use wind and sun. We can afford to dabble in such fanciful technologies, but already we see energy prices rise and living standards fall. I am afraid “saving the planet” does not come cheap, and that would not be so bad if it were really about the planet.
Indeed
The insistence of the climate change folk to not just ignore population changes as a contributing factor to ‘climate issues’ but to actively steer the discussions in the opposite direction is truly weird. It is quite possible that most ‘climate problems’ of current years are simply the impact of normal climate fluctuations (normal flooding, normal droughts) on higher population densities.
Correct, blaming this on climate change is totally destructive to the true causes that need immediate attention, not constant liberal hand waving towards the net zero monster!
Absolutely. Another factor which often seems to be ignored (and I am talking about the UK here) is the failure to update, or even maintain, drainage. New houses are built, for example, and the rainwater drainage is just tacked on to what already exists, similarly with sewage. Ditches and culverts are not cleared, rivers are not dredged. Hey presto, we get heavy rain followed by flooding and its the fault of ‘climate change’, nothing to do with penny pinching by developers and local authorities.
Spot on.
The current situation in Somalia, tragic though it undoubtedly is, is the future we are facing if we do not stop the Davos Deviants.
Judging from the graphic, the population of Somalia has been growing exponentially for about the last 70 years, ie, roughly since the former British Somaliland became an ‘independent’ recipient of so-called aid money. Consequently, the situation for humans there can’t be too tragic. Otherwise, they wouldn’t keep multiplying so fast.
Actually, it is the world’s poorest who have the highest birthrates. It is only when people become wealthier, with better education, affordable energy, contraception, proper sanitation and generally living more organised lives that birth rates fall to levels of the wealthy west. ————Poor people can only do that by the use of fossil fuels, but climate politics stops them doing that and instead fobs them off with some money and bribes for turbines, keeping them forever poor and birthrates high.
Someone wrote this letter, then travelled (by jet, obviously) to Somalia in order to find six children from fairly wealthy families(!) – they wouldn’t be in school otherwise, they’d have to work – who agreed to put their names onto it. One would hope that the families at least got decently paid for this disgusting publicity stunt by the very people who plan to make their lots a lot worse to combat their own, irrational fears about the weather in 100 years (as if they stood any chance of ever experiencing it).
Rather like the “unprecedented” floods in Pakistan ….. which weren’t unprecedented at all.
But they did affect more people since Pakistan’s population, which was 32.5 million in 1947, is now 240.5 million and growing. And most of these people are poor, are living a subsistence existence and have built their “houses” on flood plains.
And the Pakistani Government is doing nothing about the population explosion …. and won’t since they believe it is acceptable for a man to have four wives and keep them permanently pregnant.
Leaving the monogamy vs polygamy issue aside, why wouldn’t it? It’s normal for people to get children. The Sex is fun but kids suck so much! faction will eventually die out for the better. Contraception is just a self-imposed reproductional disadvantage and will have the usual evolutionary effects. And no, immigration laws won’t help against this, as 500,000 catankerous OAPs can’t defend any border against anyone.
Using standard GangGreenLogic™ and looking at the charts, it is quite clear that CO2 is causing the population of Somalia to increase.
Unsure of the mechanism. But that’s always the case with GangGreen SettledScience™.
Perhaps that’s why our own and kindly Beloved Leaders are so keen to import boat loads of them to Blighty. Alleviate Somali droughts and increase our own (rather paltry) CO2 output whilst maybe even reducing our occasional floods? What’s not to like?
On any claims, or articles or pronouncements about climate change from bureaucrats and the mainstream media, people need to realise that they have entered a FACT FREE ZONE. Almost nothing we hear is true and is mostly a tiny smidgeon of the truth elevated into a planetary emergency, but with NO EVIDENCE. In the real world there is no increase in the frequency or intensity of any type of weather events, so therefore claims of a “Climate Crisis” are a total fabrication for political purposes. It is very easy to insist that every single bit of extreme weather, every flood and every drought is caused by human activity, but it is impossible to disprove, which is why the proponents of climate change get away with their misinformation. When claims cannot be falsified, they are not science, and when everything that happens is claimed to be caused by our industrial activity then you are not indulging in science. Even the IPCC admit that they see no human signal in the data at this time ——-Did that information appear on BBC or SKY???? No, it certainly did not. All of the climate hysteria emanates from the UN IPCC, but it grows arms and legs like an Octopus on mainstream media. No wonder people glue themselves to the road.