to the editor: Climate change involves billions of changing variables, changes that threaten life as we know it on our beautiful blue and green planet (“Climate change is not about taking food off the table” July 14). However, guest contributor Bjorn Lomborg once again selects contradictory facts related to a very small number of these variables and effectively says: “Don't worry about this, folks. Let the fossil fuel industry rake in huge amounts of money while it continues to burn down your atmosphere. Climate change is actually good for you!”
Every one of his “facts” is almost comically misleading. Lomborg explains that, like all sciences, agriculture continues to improve. Thank God this is true, but it constitutes a historical study in Nature Climate Change found that climate change has reduced global agricultural productivity by a whopping 21% since 1961.
Lomberg certainly knows that the alarm about coffee and climate change comes from future modelingnot the current production. And you surely know that the production of olive oil involves one of the most climate-sensitive crops on the planet and the recent droughts in Europe and the Mediterranean have caused catastrophic crop losses (more than 50% in Spain).
Perhaps Lomborg's most egregious sleight of hand is how he proposes that CO2 is good for plant growth, ignoring the obvious fact that no plant likes the extreme heat, severe droughts, fires and floods that accompany it.
All we, as humanity, have to do to save ourselves is to reduce the consumption of fossil fuels and at the same time move towards renewable energy sources. The technology is here, it is cheap and it is getting cheaper.
JJ Flowers, Dana Point
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to the editor: Lomborg proclaims: “Climate change will ultimately harm agriculture, but its impact is dwarfed by increased productivity.” Furthermore, he says that “today food is more abundant and cheaper.” He then selected examples of commercial coffee farming and olive oil production.
But it is their biased interpretations of the “greening” of the planet that alarm me most. Yes, plants grow due to higher levels of CO2 in the atmosphere. But studies are showing that larger plants have less nutritional value. Major staple food crops such as wheat, oats and rice. have shown a reduction in protein, iron and zinc content and a decrease in micronutrient concentrations. We'll need to eat more to stay healthy, and the herbivores we depend on for bacon, burgers, and nuggets will need to eat more, too. That will mean our food ecosystem of plantations, land use and water availability will be affected.
The arrival of more innovative plants does not mean that we should ignore the CO2 we are emitting. No food grows on land that is flooded, parched or destroyed by constant winds. That's what climate change ultimately means for our tables.
Suvan Geer, Santa Ana
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to the editor: Here's how Lomborg dismisses concerns about agriculture and climate change: “This year, global coffee production is expected to set another record: more than doubling global production from 50 years ago.” Guess what else has more than doubled in those same 50 years? The world population! And on top of that, global revenues have increased; The per capita demand for coffee has surely grown. So to keep up with demand, coffee production must perform better than keeping up with population growth.
Given Lomborg's own abuse of statistics, it's a bit rich when, later in the same article, he blames journalists for “inexcusably ignoring inflation” when comparing past and present coffee prices. But Lomborg is not confused by statistics: he knows very well when and how to misuse them when it is convenient for him to do so.
Nick Moschovakis, Bethesda, Maryland.
