Banana prices to go up as temperatures rise, reports Matt McGrath of the BBC. What a magnificent story – adding to the fake climate emergency narrative and helping out Big Banana all in one go. Alas, the uncharitable might note that the story is slightly spoilt by banana output having doubled over the last 20 years, helped, almost certainly, by a little extra warmth and atmospheric carbon dioxide.
Bananas are set to get more expensive as climate change hits a much loved fruit, says Pascal Liu of the World Banana Forum, a UN umbrella group promoting the banana business. ‘Experts’ are reported to be concerned about the growing threats from a warming world and from the diseases that are spreading in its wake. McGrath helpfully adds that last week saw shortages in several U.K. supermarkets due to “storms at sea”. There are reported to be concerns about a relatively new strain of Fusarium Wilt, a plant disease that has been widespread in commercial banana plantations for over 100 years.
McGrath quotes the Big Banana spokesman as observing that climate impacts pose an “enormous threat” to supply, compounding the impact of fast-spreading diseases. Prices in the U.K. “are likely to go up – and stay up”. Which would appear to be very good news for those in the banana business. As the UN Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) graph below shows, they have also enjoyed staggering high rises in recent yields.
In common with other large scale makers of agricultural produce, the last few years have had difficulties with disruptions from Covid and the war in Ukraine leading to rises in the price of fertilisers and transport. More normal conditions seems to be returning with the FAO reporting that the outlook for 2024 “looks more positive than in the previous two years, provided that price variations in real terms will continue to be favourable”.
As we can see, British taxpayer-reliant McGrath is not just doing his bit to help push up banana prices for U.K. consumers, but he combines this noble work with his usual day job nudging citizens to accept the insane collectivist Net Zero policy. The new variant of Fusarium Wilt can be spread by flooding and strong winds, it is said. M.r Liu notes that the disease will be spread much faster “than if you have normal weather patterns”. It is surprising that McGrath didn’t point out that in its latest assessment report, the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) observed that estimates of the impact of human involvement in severe storms outside natural variation remained of “low confidence”. In addition to severe storms, the IPCC found little evidence of human involvement stretching out to 2100 in tropical cyclones, heavy rain and pluvial, and river and coastal flooding.
No doubt a small lapse in rigour at the BBC’s multi-staffed climate desk, given that McGrath is usually a keen student of the IPCC as a “sound scientific source”. Accepting €100,000 from the green foundation of the large Spanish bank BBVA in 2019, he noted that the media landscape was awash with ”fake news” stories. He defended the “primacy” of specialist journalists that draw on sound sources such as the IPCC. The green foundation, meanwhile, fawned all over him, noting “his extraordinary capacity to communicate complex environmental issues and science to global audiences”.
Of course, the McGrath article is just one of many that appear in legacy media outlets that attempt to insert alleged human involvement in the continually changing climate into general news stories. As regular readers of the Daily Sceptic will be aware, these stories do not appear totally by accident. Green billionaire cash floods into operations seeking to influence journalists, politicians, scientists and even Hollywood scriptwriters to catastrophise information promoting the climate collapse scare and the need for a Net Zero solution. Fake news is now endemic throughout the mainstream media. This despite signs that in the wake of the Covid experience, the general public across many Western countries is starting to lose faith in top-down controlling narratives.
Speaking of tropical fruit, the BBC’s amusingly described ‘disinformation’ correspondent Marco Silva is currently enjoying a six-month sabbatical with the green billionaire-funded Oxford Climate Journalism Network (OCJN). To “hit closer to home”, course participants are told to pick a fruit such as a mango and discuss why it wasn’t as tasty as the year before due to climate change. This will allow the subject of climate change to become “less abstract”. In a recently published essay, two OCJN organisers said their course was designed to allow climate journalists “to move beyond their siloed past” into a strategic position within newsrooms, “combining expertise with collaboration”.
Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor.
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It’s a bananas prediction with no timeline.
If climate change ‘hits’ bananas then prices will go up. I can understand that; if anything ‘hits’ bananas we will have fewer bananas. More to the point if transport costs for bananas increase due to abandoning fossil fuels, prices will go up. Net zero essentially demands that we stop importing bananas and all other non-domestic produce via shipping or flying by 2050. Maybe Aunty Beeb thinks that will reduce the price of the ‘much loved fruit’.
All about creating a sense of jeopardy, but with so few details that it cannot be refuted, especially if they keep inventing the facts. I’m reminded of the theme of a Joe Jackson song, which was essentially ‘What causes cancer.? Everything.’
What causes cancer? Getting old, mostly.
And genetics.
Genetics is the Truly Scientific™ term for “We have no friggin’ clue, either!” Nice recent example of that: The release of millions of male mosquitos gene-engineered to be sterile in Brazil which have since then created a whole population of genetically sterile mosquitos by happily reproducing nevertheless.
A good old German word “friggen”.—-What’s the translation?
That’s Swedish and the meaning has never really been revealed. It’s conjectured that it’s close to throwing blocks of wood at each other in the streaming rain as overture to some more direct and involved physcial encounter.
Doesn’t exist in modern Swedish. The closest is fryggan meaning the fear.
Sorry if that is a bit bizarre for you, but perhaps you should stop making things up.
https://www.backseatmafia.com/premiere-we-interview-swedish-producer-friggen-plus-reveal-video-for-miljoner-stjarnor
BTW, jokes are usually made up. That’s what makes them jokes.
Friggen is a name. A key requirement of a joke is to be funny.
Courtesy of Lord Bill of the Gates of Hell.
And so-called “vaccines.”
More the foods we eat than genetics
So when large swathes of the country have been ‘rewilded’, fertilizers are banned, and we have no imported vegetables, what exactly is the population supposed to live on? No, don’t answer that, because I think I know the answer…we don’t (live, that is.)
Plenty of bananas in climate change Loonydom.
Since UK is already almost tropical, we shall soon be able to grow our own. Oranges and lemons too – said the bells of St Clement’s.
In related news desperate polar bears from the Climate Change ravaged Arctic have been sneaking rides on ships down to the Carribbean to stave off starvation using their second favourite food (after baby seals), bananas.
Unfortunately the Climate Change induced diseases currently infecting the crop are causing a rare brain condition in the bears which leads them to seek out Jamaican coastal high-points then fling themselves off Attenborough walrus-style. So man-made Climate Change continues to wipe out these beautiful creatures in every possible manner.
The above information derived from a peer-reviewed paper in The Journal for Anthropogenic Planetgeddon Studies, 100% AI and computer modelling generated.
Perhaps they should carry on down to the Antarctic where they can supplement their diets with penguins. You never know, a few centuries of bear predation might cause them to redevelop their wings into instruments of flight.
No. Polars bears don’t like penguins. They can’t manage the wrappers.
(OK. Yes. Sorry. But somebody had to do it.)
I now have visions of a Polar Bear singing ” P Pick up a Penguin”
Perhaps the alarmists will help the situation by frefusing all imported, out of season fruit and vegetables and limiting their diets to home grown produce.
I look forward to BBC Food on-line publishing their recipes for turnip smoothies.
I rather like cooking beef stews with turnip if I can get it. White turnip is crazy expensive in the supermarkets. I find swede is is too sweet.
From what I have seen of turnips in supermarkets they only sell baby ones, not the monsters I recal from greengrocers when I were a lad. No wonder they are dear.
Take a turnip, peel and cut up. Put in liquidiser and make smooth liquid. Drink.
Now that is the standard of BBC cookery. Bring back Dehlia!
Pigs are to fart a semi tone higher by 2100 and a whole tone and half above pre Industrial times because of global warming. —WE MUST ACT now. —-Ok this is silly isn’t it? —But is it really any sillier than some of the pseudo science garbage in support of Climate Policies that have been getting massive airtime all over mainstream media for the last 20 years. —-Remember 10 years ago when the climate establishment were confronted with the fact that there had not been any warming at all for 15 years and they had to jump through all the imaginary hoops and come up with dozens of fanciful evidence free excuses why this was happening. Like, “The heat has all vanished into the deep ocean”. The pseudo scientific fraud emanating from the UN IPCC has vast resources and a bought and paid for media all over the western world keeping the evidence free nonsense in our minds day and night. No stone is unturned and no crisis can ever go to waste. But here is the thing, when everything that happens in the world is because of your theory you are not indulging in science. ——Almost all of the “science” we hear about on TV News and from the mouths of politicians is modelling of the climate. —–Modelling is NOT science, and it is NOT evidence of anything. Bananas will be just fine. —-What is going to destroy us is climate policies not the climate.
This will be caused by selective breeding to tighten their sphincters in an attempt to limit their emissions. The retained gas will cause the pigs to float and achieve the long awaited outcome of pigs flying. This may cause the occasional detonation but it’s worth it – but maybe not for the pigs.
I let out a loud guffaw when I read your joke. ——My wife said “What are you laughing at” ? So I read it out to her and she had a good snigger as well.
I loved this. Much needed levity after reading this Banoffee toffee. Yes, I too emitted an involuntary guffaw. Thank you.
I suggest picking avocados, an essential vegan women’s fashion food, as they’re extremely fatty and have basically no taste at all. Due to climate change, that’s obviously getting worst and worster all the time. Soon, it’s even going to become worstest and wortester.
What’s the difference between Jim Dale, that other TV activist idiot McCarthy and a plank of wood? —–The Grain.
At the risk of the Conservative party asking for my donation back (no, of course I didn’t), I don’t think I would enjoy punching a plank.
Just use a plane then to tear a few strips off them.
Every person that continues to pay the TV licence tax is complicit in the BBC’s propaganda.
How do we not pay it? ——-Give me a tip.
I stopped paying the telly tax, disgusted with their coverage of Brexit. Iget regular threatening letters which get binned. In October ’22 I got a visit from one of Capita’s so called enforcement officers, I just said ‘no thankyou’ and closed the door because they have no legal authority above that of a private citizen. Just refuse to engage with them in any way, there’s nothing they can do.
I’m told they can get a court order, It’s been 6 years and I’m still waiting
When we were young, we used to pass mental asylums and point at them. Then they closed them and the inmates are now running the country. Lord help us!!!