Secretary of State John Kerry is currently in India as advance guard for President Obama’s visit later this month. The president is going there to try and get some commitment from India (or the illusion of a commitment) to reduce its emissions of dreaded greenhouse gases. Until now, India, along with China, has resisted calls for major reductions, effectively blocking any global treaty limiting fossil fuel use. The president is very keen on changing this before this December’s United Nations confab in Paris, where such a treaty is supposed to be inked. 

Kerry’s mission is to get India ready for the president. Speaking at a trade conference in the state of Gujarat, Kerry said, “Global climate change is already violently affecting communities, not just across India but around the world. It is disrupting commerce, development and economic growth. It’s costing farmers crops.”

In reality, global climate change is exerting no detectable effect on India’s main crop production. 

As shown below the jump, the rate of increase in wheat yields has been constant since records began in the mid-1950s, and the rate of increase in rice yields is actually higher in the last three decades than it was at the start of the record.

Further, if Kerry was saying that climate change is reducing crop yields around the world, that’s wrong too. The increase in global yields has also been constant for decades.