Reference: Chinese farmers struggle with climate change, Bangkok Post, December 20, 2009

Gansu province is located in the middle of China, the silk road runs through it, and it figures prominently in Chinese history, but throughout history its economic development has been retarded by frequent earthquakes, droughts, and famines. It is a very arid place containing parts of three deserts including the ever expanding Gobi desert. Expanding deserts and desertification of the province has been a long standing problem and is well documented in the historical records that go back thousands of years. It has never been an agriculturally important province. Its recent economic boom is due to mining and not agriculture. The plight of wheat farmers there is best understood in these terms and not in terms of carbon dioxide. The attempt to sell agricultural hardship in this arid land as effects of carbon dioxide emissions (Chinese farmers struggle with climate change, Bangkok Post, December 20, 2009) and the implied offer of agricultural success by emission reduction is dishonest and it is likely part of a strategy to scare China into submitting to the warmist agenda. It will not succeed because Gansu is not important to Chinese agriculture - which has been booming of late with bumper harvests - and because the economic well-being of Gansu itself depends on mining and not on agriculture.

Cha-am Jamal
Thailand