The UK’s Independent newspaper blamed “climate change” for lower potato yields in 2018 resulting in pommes frites one inch shorter on average as compared to prior years.

Tuesday’s article, titled “British chips shrink by an inch as climate change slashes potato yields,” cited an analysis by the Climate Coalition network and scientists at the University of Leeds who claim that rising global temperatures are causing diminishing crop production that will make British-grown produce “harder to find.”

Josh Gabbatiss, science correspondent for the Independent, wrote further that potato yields had been “slashed by a fifth” in England and Wales during 2018 and production of carrots and onions had suffered even more, falling by 30 percent and 40 percent respectively.

“To be able to enjoy our mash, chips or jackets for years to come, we need to take measures to tackle climate change urgently,” said Gareth Redmond-King, head of climate change at the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF).

“If we don’t, then the impact on both growers and consumers is just one of the ways our lives will change in a world of climate breakdown,” he said.

Potatoes were so much smaller this year because “extreme heatwaves robbed them of much-needed water over the summer months,” the article states, while adding that “climate change made this summer’s heatwave 30 times more likely.”

More than 50 percent of UK farmers reported being affected by severe flooding or storms over the past 10 years, Gabbatiss wrote.

Not only has climate change intensified winter rainfall in recent decades, increasing the chances of major downpours, it may also “bring new pests and diseases to British shores” as a result of milder winters and warmer summers, the article asserts.

In recent years, “climate change” has been blamed for countless ills, including everything from a slump in coffee production to devastating hurricanes to a drop in the population of Hawaiian monk seals to the decimation of migratory songbirds and even colder winters.

Anthropogenic climate change — the idea that human emissions of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere are significantly driving global temperatures upwards — has become the scapegoat for problems ranging from the mass deaths of reindeer to the creation of “ghost forests” along the U.S. Atlantic seaboard.

“I think ghost forests are the most obvious indicator of climate change anywhere on the Eastern coast of the U.S.,” said Matthew Kirwan, a professor at Virginia Institute of Marine Science who studies ghost forests. “It was dry, usable land 50 years ago; now it’s marshes with dead stumps and dead trees.”

Last year, Stevie Wonder said that climate change had caused the cancer that killed legendary soul singer Aretha Franklin in August, while suggesting that climate change skeptics share the responsibility for her death.

In 2008, veteran Loch Ness monster hunter Robert Rines gave up his search for Nessie after 37 years.

Abandoning his quest at the age of 85, Mr. Rines said that the trail had gone cold and he believed that the monster had probably been killed by global warming.

Politicians are not above blaming world problems on global warming, either.

Former U.S. President Barack Obama famously said that climate change was partially to blame for the rise of Islamic terror group Boko Haram in Nigeria as well as Syria’s civil war.

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