This is an incoherent position. They are literally betting on climate change if they are betting on moving crops. If it was a scam, they’d be doing nothing.
But it isn’t true.
https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2019/03/21/the-market-is-betting-on-climate-change
“The head of one of the world’s largest agricultural commodity trading companies is warning Australian primary producers to take climate change seriously.”
Drought in south-east Australia - CSIRO
Australia has undergone periods of low rainfall and high rainfall that last for decades.
The shift between such periods often appears as a step change. For example, the eastern half of Australia was drier from 1895–1948 and wetter from 1948–1976. Rainfall has been below average across much southeast Australia since 1997, with the Murray-Darling Basin experiencing below average rainfall since 2002.
The Bureau of Meteorology has found in 2009, serious to severe rainfall deficiencies occurred in a narrow band extending along the coast from southern New South Wales through Gippsland to south-central Victoria.
In addition, very long-term rainfall deficiencies persisted across parts of southern and eastern Australia.
Lower rainfall and reduced runoff in the southeast of Australia associated with the current drought is in part due to natural variability as well as to human-induced climate change. The relative contribution of each of these mechanisms remains uncertain.
The moisture deficit associated with drought is also the result of higher temperatures.
Temperatures in Australia have risen by about 0.9 °C since 1910 and there is a high level of scientific confidence that anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions are a major driver of this increase in temperature.
The current drought is unusual in that it is associated with both an intensification of the Subtropical Ridge and a high frequency of positive Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD) events.
Both of these factors are associated with reduced rainfall over south eastern Australia.
Climate change modelling shows that an intensification of the Subtropical Ridge can only be achieved when anthropogenic greenhouse gases are included in the models.
Climate model projections for the coming decades indicate an increasing risk of below average rainfall for southern and eastern mainland Australia, higher temperatures and evaporation, and below average runoff. In particular there is a significant projected increase in frequency of extremely hot years and extremely dry years.
But climate models are wrong. The is still no validated climate model ie one that has been proved to be sufficiently predictive to be trusted. You don’t have to look far to see the multitude of earnest predictions of so-called climate scientists a decade or so ago that have simply been shown to have been laughable. Their predictions didn’t happen, aren’t happening.
Would you trust going to sea in a new ship designed on a new construction philosophy based on an unverified model rather than existing, proven knowledge and experience? Why do you place so much faith in unverified models?
That’s right, Jughead! Always trust the consensus of naval architects! Never trust any new models. I mean, listen to this poor deluded individual:
What a fool, to trust new ideas. And here’s another guy who isn’t wise enough to stick with known facts:
And this guy here must be dim, because he dares to differ from the experts:
and this deluded individual:
and this past Jerry Springer show guest:
Thank goodness we have you, Jughead, our towering Ayers Rock of consistent inconsistency, to set us straight. 
Placing faith in unverified models never profited sailors much.
Official List of Unverified Models that Profited Sailors Much
Fulton’s steamboat
SS Ann McKim (first clipper ship)
SS Savannah (first steam ship to cross the Atlantic)
SS Archimedes (first ship with propellor)
SS Turbina (take a wild guess…)
Gloire (first ironclad)
HMS Hermes (first aircraft carrier)
Holland No 1 (first viable submarine)
SS Great Eastern
USS Monitor
The Higgins land craft
Ideal X (first container ship)
USS Nautilus (nuclear submarine)
Bonus: Pretty much anything with NASA on the pink slip…
So you want me to start on the ship designs that obviously profited the sailors who suffered or sank in them?
Titanic?
Vasa?
Mary Rose?
Novgorod?
Kursk?
But it’s a long list. I won’t bore you with facts. You don’t use them.
Dude, I’m agreeing with you, for Heavens sake! (Or disagreeing with you. Frankly, based on your fluid logic, it’s hard to say, isn’t it?)
By the way, Titanic was nothing new. Just big. She had a near sister ship, Brittanic, which did OK, but was sunk with much loss of life due to enemy action in WW1.
New ideas are fine … once they are verified and validated. Not verified, don’t trust. Build a model and test it. Just like with climate change where NO model yet built has been validated. Don’t trust them. They are not science until they can predict reliably.
Oh, and if it’s consensus it still isn’t science. Ask a scientist. Read the history of scientific consensus fails. Watch the video posted above quoting the most prestigious medical journal Lancet, stating that more than half of published medical “science” is simply wrong. Ask yourself how you know which bits are true.
sounds like its the weather…
Olam, you must be joking…
Cool rebuttal, very fact-y. You brought up
Agri commodity traders— that they don’t believe in climate change.
You say you ‘talk’ to commodity brokers.
I present an on the record statement by commodity trading company in agri, that buys into climate change (Olam is a company with S$30B sales, end of 2018).
One of these is a better supported reference for a ’debate’ then the other. Why can’t you get some on the record info from them, what companies, what traders? You think, ‘I talk to traders’ is rationally supportive evidence of your position? You are the one who must be joking.
sorry, its Olam, its a debt laden ponzi scheme so I couldnt believe anything news from them
What a tired method of debate… you make an assertion, no evidence, someone posts that your position was inherently contradictory (traders moving crops because of climate change and all that) provides two links on how traders are betting on climate change, including the conservative and widely respected Economist and you can’t be brought to even google some fake news in your defense but want to impugn one of the articles and can’t even bring any evidence to that.
I wouldn’t draw generalized conclusions from the actions of commodity traders, because they play a game with rules few of us understand. Nassim Nicholas Taleb (the Black Swan guy) is circulating a new paper in which he discusses that:
There can be considerable mathematical and statistical differences between the following two items:
1 (univariate) binary predictions, bets and “beliefs” (expressed as a specific “event” will happen/will not happen) and, on the other,
2 real-world continuous payoffs (that is, numerical benefits or harm from an event).
And illustrates this difference with an anecdote from the “Black Swan” book:
[A] trader, is asked by the manager “do you predict that the market is going up or down?” “Up”, he answered, with confidence. Then the boss got angry when, looking at the firm’s exposures, he discovered that the narrator was short the market, i.e., would benefit from the market going down.
The trader had difficulties conveying the idea that there was no contradiction, as someone could hold the (binary) belief that the market had a higher probability of going up than down, but that, should it go down, there is a very small probability that it could go down considerably, hence a short position had a positive expected return and the rational response was to engage in a short exposure. “You do not eat forecasts, but P/L” (or “one does not monetize forecasts”) goes the saying among traders.
So a trader could believe that climate change was real, but still bet that it wasn’t because by the time its effects were felt he would have taken his profits; or he could believe that it wasn’t real and bet that it was because, like the trader above, he thought that was a safe hedge. So as Taleb notes, his actions tell you essentially nothing about his beliefs, because his beliefs are not, in Taleb’s terms, a “proxy” for his actions.
Cheers,
Earl
So ‘talking to traders’ is inherently dubious when offered as evidence as of course may be stated statements. I don’t think anyone is particularly surprised. Earl, you’ve managed to spend a few paragraphs to come down on no side except the side of treating such ‘evidence’ as dubious due to likely self-interest–but that was my point as well.
Obviously the relative worth of the invisible commodity brokers Powerabout offered was meaningless as to actual content of true beliefs or actions of any who did talk to him. It was an evidence free assertion and I chose to place a more affirmative-positive statement from an actual trader to counter and challenge the relative worth of what was indifferently offered as ‘evidence’ in support of the position he advances. Also of course he was describing behavior that was brokers acting on climate change as a principle but he doesn’t seem to see it.
Only one person is suggesting the pronouncements of invisible traders matters. But the markets—they don’t lie—and the Economist article backs up that smart money says ‘change’ exists and they are betting on it to continue. That means more than ‘trader talk’.
Anyone that believes a word stock or commodity traders say is foolish. Stock “analyst” are even more dubious. There are any number of books one can read written by former traders and and analysts where they confess that a large part of their success depends upon them convincing the public of one thing so they can take advantage of the opposite. A prime example is what the mega banks like JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs and the rest did in 2008-09. They sold bundles of crap mortgages while shorting those same bundles [made bets the investment would go down] to pension funds, or anyone else dumb enough to believe anything they said. Sure enough those bundles of mortgages went down to junk status. Those that held them lost billions. Those that sold that crap to naive buyers got rich. Homeowners lost everything as most could not refinance. The bankers who were behind this fiasco almost went insolvent but the US taxpayers gave them trillions of dollars under the table so they could keep gambling and paying multi million bonuses. The 15 trillion dollars given to the money guys would have paid off everyone in the USA’s mortgage BUT it was deemed more important to support the banks. The same thing is going on today only it is worse now
Your argument is with Taleb, and not me; it is his paper that argues there is no inherent relation between belief and action in markets. But I have to say, if I were forced to bet, my money would be on him 
Cheers,
Earl
The point isn’t a debate between me and Taleb—I’m agreeing that there is no inherent value in taking a traders word as evidence of intent and action. Performance of markets? He agrees with me, and the economist graphs presented.
Your comments should be directed to Powerabout—Who is taking traders at their word.
OK, sorry. I confuse easily.
Cheers,
Earl