Contrary to wide-eyed speculation and fearmongering, coffee is not going extinct. Coffee bean production is up, and prices are down.
climate change
Recently, in a room full of microbiologists, this question was posed: "How many of you believe climate change is the world's #1 threat?" Silence. Not a single person's hand was raised. Were they all rejecting science? No, not at all. They just didn't see it as threatening as antibiotic resistance, pandemic disease or geopolitical instability.
"Every night on the television news now is like a nature hike through the Book of Revelation," lamented the former vice president in his opening remarks for the Climate & Health Meeting. After all these years, he still has a warped penchant for apocalyptic exaggeration.
There's little doubt why the CDC shelved the meeting. The Trump Administration is skeptical of anthropogenic climate change, so somebody – perhaps President Trump himself – made a call and that was that. Journalists will surely go berserk, but they shouldn't, because climate change falls well outside the CDC's area of expertise.
Ben & Jerry's wants us to believe that global warming, while catastrophic enough in its own right, could also deprive us of some of our favorite dessert flavors. Immediate action is necessary, the company implores us, or the chocolate, nuts and coffee used as ingredients could vanish from the Earth. By rolling out this disingenuous marketing gimmick the ice cream maker must think its customers are dimwitted rubes with no ability to engage in critical thinking.
People prefer to ignore scientific reality in favor of politically correct myths. Specifically, we incorrectly interpret (positive) statements that describe the world as it is to be (normative) statements that prescribe the world as it ought to be. This confusion impedes scientific progress.
As a society, we never grew up beyond high school. Not being smart continues to be cool. Rejecting the collective wisdom of scientists, economists, academics, and journalists is applauded. Spurning the "establishment" has become the new national pastime.
The scientific enterprise is something of a paradox. Science moves incrementally, and the status quo is preferred to radical new ideas. Yet, simultaneously, creativity is encouraged, but scientists who become too creative can become outcasts. Let’s consider a few of those here.
Implementation of proposed fossil-fuel restrictions aimed at mitigating unhealthy climate change could weaken the global economic system, increase the incidence of poverty-related illness worldwide and fail to affect climate. So concludes a panel of scientists and physicians in a groundbreaking report, Global Climate Change and Human Health, released today by the American Council on Science and Health (ACSH).
A Position Paper of The American Council on Science and Health
According to some forecasters, adverse impacts on the health of the human population may result from anthropogenic (human-induced) climate change specifically, rises in the average temperature of the Earth's surface due to human actions that increase atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse (heat-trapping) gases.