Climate Change > And the atrocious reporting on AFP - Child marriages spike due to climate change!!!

Lock Up Your Daughters! Climate Change Causes Rise in Child Marriages

by Chris Morrison, The Daily Sceptic, August 18, 2024:

Heavier and longer summer monsoon rains are said to be fuelling a rise in child marriages in Pakistan, reports Agence France-Presse (AFP). Human rights workers are warning such weddings are on the rise “due to climate-driven economic insecurity”. Great story since it holds out a small hope that banning hydrocarbon use can help solve a problem of forced and under-aged female abuse that has been endemic in many cultures since time immemorial. It is just a shame about the facts. According to the World Bank climate change knowledge portal, monsoon rains in June, July and August in the period 1991-2020 were marginally less in Pakistan than fell during 1961-1990.

In an error-strewn article reproduced in many publications around the world, the French State-owned agency claimed that flooding in Pakistan in 2022 plunged a third of the country under water. Looking at a contour map would show this is unlikely – impossible even – and the true level of inundation was around 8-10%. Even the BBC’s statistical programme More or Less confirmed the much lower figures. AFP claims that “scientists say” climate change is making the monsoons heavier and longer, “raising the risk of landslides, floods and long-term crop damage”. This is said to have led to a new trend of “monsoon brides” as families give away their female children in exchange for money. But massive flooding in low-lying parts of Pakistan is not new. In the recent past – in 1950, 1992, 1993 and 2010 – it killed more people than it did in 2022.

The AFP nonsense story is just the latest in a tidal wave of mainstream fear-mongering designed to boost Net Zero. It takes an emotional theme and tacks on unprovable claims of climate damage caused by humans. The emotion is obvious, but false claims about the volume of rainfall and the inundation of a recent flood are made. Do the people who write this stuff think that nobody will check their facts and sources? Apparently not….

Not enough do, Chris, they know that. But that's why we need people like you. Good job.