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Continent of Gigantic Problemsinstance, through the book “The Incoming Famine—The Global Food Crisis and What WeCan Do to Avoid It” by Julian Cribb. 79Most Africans have no formal job and survive through subsistence living, living on whatthey can grow themselves—the same method which was also common in Europe andelsewhere in the world just a few centuries ago. Any excess is sold on the market and themoney generated serves to meet their other needs. This kind of agriculture is outdated,inefficient and requires a lot of hard physical work. The poverty of most African farmersprevents them from increasing profitability or even their own food security: withoutmachinery they cannot cultivate more soil, without fertilizers they can only reach lowyields, without the capacity to capture rain and to irrigate their crops they are at the mercyof frequent droughts. Without education and knowledge they often grow unsuitable crops,or only a limited selection, increasing their vulnerability. The results are frequent hunger,malnutrition, and millions of Africans dependent on food aid—or dying.Climate ChangeAll the factors mentioned in the title of this chapter will not only worsen the abilityof Africans to grow enough food for themselves, but unfortunately also the ability ofAmericans and Europeans to save lives by providing food assistance to hungry people inthe case of famine. Agricultural productivity in both developing and developed countrieswill be severely hit by rapid climate change in the coming years and decades. Data fromclimatologists are merciless: the earth’s climate is warming at an unprecedented pace and“the train” is already moving with such force and speed that it cannot be stopped nor wecan jump off. Since the beginning of the systematic measurements of temperature, theaverage temperature of the planet’s surface has risen by 0.8 degrees Celsius—the majorpart of this increase occurred in the last 40 years. The past decade was the warmest decadesince the measurements began.If you think an increase of 0.8 °C in average global temperature is insignificant, 80 you maystart to perceive things differently if you consider that the difference in average global temperaturebetween the ice ages and interglacial periods (in the latter our civilization evolved)was on average only 6 °C . In other words, when the Earth was on average 6 °C cooler thantoday, Poland, northern Germany, Scandinavia, United Kingdom, but also northern Russia,Canada and northern United States were covered by hundreds to thousands of meters ofice. The freezing tundra and steppe winds battered much of Central and Western Europe79 Julian Cribb, The Coming Famine—The Global Food Crisis and What We Can Do to Avoid it, University ofCalifornia Press, Berkeley and Los Angeles, 201080 A well known “joker” in this respect was former Czech president Václav Klaus, who became famousthrough his naive statements pointing to the fact that the temperature differences between day andnight are usually much greater than 0.8 °C. To compare circadian rhythm of weather with global climatechange is, of course, “profound misunderstanding” of a man who compensate serious deficit in his scienceeducation by blissful ignorance and massive ego.93