Climate Change Finally Impacts Important Industry 405
Socguy writes "According to a New Zealand scientist, Jim Salinger, the price of beer in and around Australia is going to be under increasing upward pressure as reductions in malting barley yields are experienced as a side effect of our ongoing climate shift.
"It will mean either there will be pubs without beer or the cost of beer will go up," Mr. Salinger told the Institute of Brewing and Distilling convention."
Climate change, guess old buzzword wasn't working (Score:4, Insightful)
Its always worse for those of the current generation, we conveniently forget the previous ones. I have some grandparents who can tell you about the real hell they faced in Kansas during those drought days way back when, makes the pansy crap we complain about today just that.
I guess with all the stories about the earth having not warmed recently, taken a year or two dive, that the lead off words must change to fuel this engine of profit for certain groups and businesses. How much barley production is lost to other more cash ready crops? With the current increases in the value of corn and wheat because of the misguided ethanol production in the US would it not make sense that other areas shift to fill the gap?
Putting climate change in the same story as beer either points out the hypocrisy of it all or just shows how silly we are willing to become
Still a skeptic. (Score:2, Insightful)
There's nothing in the article about reduced yields... just shortages of barley and aluminum and sugar and sugar (sic).
Ms. Read said that in addition to climate change, barley growers are grappling with competition from other forms or land use, such as the dairy industry.
And don't forget these fine proofs of global warming... (ooh sorry, Climate Change)
"The price of beer is likely to rise in coming decades because climate change will hamper the production"
"He said climate change could cause a drop in beer production within 30 years"
More GW BS (Score:4, Insightful)
The article is very light on details, but it is just today's 'Everybody panic' story about global warming (climate change, or whatever). He is full of it. He says it 'may' cause a drop in barley production in au in the next 30 years. Oh crap. As if droughts and floods never happened before the ICE.
Meanwhile, (Score:5, Insightful)
No peer-review necessary as long as you agree... (Score:2, Insightful)
When it comes to belief in global warming, the scientific method is completely unnecessary, as long as you agree with the mythical "consensus" dogma.
Where is the peer-reviewed article documenting the cause of the diminished barley harvest as being "climate change?"
I get it. No peer-reviewed article is required to PROVE AGW, only to disprove it.
On a TV near you... (Score:3, Insightful)
First Inventor: How do we make more money at this?
Second Inventor: I know--we'll tell them that barley is more expensive due to climate change!"
First Inventor (tapping bottles with the second): Brilliant!
Uh ? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Going on two years (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Climate change, guess old buzzword wasn't worki (Score:2, Insightful)
It's not climate change that is causing the problem. It is what we are doing to combat climate change that is the problem. When corn prices go up for ethanol, more farmers switch from whatever they were growing to corn, because it makes more money. This means less of everything else and causes the price of everything else to go up as well!
It's simple supply and demand. Economics 101!
Wait a second.. (Score:2, Insightful)
I mean, if you push the temperate zones toward the poles, the amount of land under them actually increases. Plus, since the left has been claiming since the 1970s that we're exhausting our arable land by overfarming, won't this open up NEW arable land not so pressured?
Granted the article is SPECIFICALLY talking about NZ/Australia, which don't really have many options if the best temperatures move poleward.
Finally, from the article: "New Zealand and Australian brewer Lion Nathan's corporate affairs director Liz Read said climate change already was forcing up the price of malted barley, sugar, aluminum and sugar."
Aluminum? ALUMINUM is becoming more expensive due to climate change? Pray tell, please tell me how much harder it is to grow THAT?
This whole global warming^H^H^Hclimate change thing is so confusing. What am I supposed to be thinking this week?
Re:Climate change, guess old buzzword wasn't worki (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Trying to regulate every little thing is stupid (Score:5, Insightful)
They're not trying to regulate every little thing, they're trying to say "don't do anything that harms the environment". After all, it's illegal to take out your johnson and pee on a public park bench, polluting the environment is the same, only its effects aren't as immediately recognisable as the wet patch on the seat of some unsuspecting parkgoer's pants.
Aside from the enormous harm that taxations place upon the economy (taxation leads to what is known as a deadweight loss, which must be offset against the benefits of whatever is being taxed), carbon sinking is not even possible given the engineering capacity we as humans have. Furthermore, even if it *were* possible, there is no way to know what damage the CO2 does in the meantime while it is being sinked.
You really have no understanding of the problem, do you? The complete commodification of the rights to pollute simply mean that companies will simply find a way to price in the dollar value of pollution credits to get away with whatever they are doing now. Pollution and environmental issues are *the* classic economic textbook example of market failure. It takes a real fundamentalist (or a complete idiot) to attempt to solve market failure by the application of more market instruments.
Beer lovers get the shaft either way (Score:2, Insightful)
_GP_
Ethanol (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Wait a second.. (Score:4, Insightful)
Global warming is causing changes in ecosystems ,and changing ecosystems can major disruptions in flora and fauna. And just because it gets warmer doesn't mean that the new ecosystem is going to be more optimal for agriculture. Raising the temperature a few degrees changed the Sahara from lush vegetation to desert.
Stable ecosystems are about balance: Enough vegetation for herbivores. Enough carnivores to keep the herbivores from stripping away all vegetation: Enough scavengers to clean up after everything, etc. So when change happens too quickly (decades and centuries instead of millenia) ecosystems cannot adapt, and the land might not be good for any agriculture.
You already see this in man-made disturbances like Easter Island. Easter Island once was a tropical rain forest. Over a few hundred years, the natives stripped the forests to make it the grassy plains that it is today. But due to these changes, the island's soil is very poor and cannot sustain much flora other than the grasses that exist there today.
Bad Title (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:home brewers (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Uh, not due to climate change though... (Score:3, Insightful)
Calling it "fiction" is being rather hopeful and is quite an assumption unto itself. If we can punch a hole in the ozone layer with a couple decades' output of CFCs, what makes you so certain that we cannot also affect greenhouse gas levels enough to bring out an average temperature change of a few degrees? Especially in light of the actual science, which currently supports the anthropogenic hypothesis?
That said, things like this story -- falsely attributing the result of market forces (namely, ethanol production and the higher price of corn) to global warming -- are fiction. It detracts from the scientific debate, and it only serves to give the dogmatic global warming deniers fodder ("See, this one scientist was being alarmist; ergo, the entire scientific community is incorrect about anthropogenic climate change.").
Re:Global warming, or global cooling? (Score:0, Insightful)
As for global warming, even the BBC has been forced to admit reality, and admitted that global warming ceased in 1998. Although they've since modified the article, wiping that portion out. Not at all ethical journalism. So if anyone knows how to retrieve the original version of http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7329799.stm [bbc.co.uk]...
Re:Trying to regulate every little thing is stupid (Score:2, Insightful)
First the tax issue. All this policy would require would be that the REAL cost of fossil fuels be paid. If this means that fossil fuels remain competitive, great. If this means that fossil fuels are no longer competitive, also great. As long as the real cost is paid (an not just spewed out by the few for the many to deal with) then any equilibrium that the market find is a good thing. If this means change, then yes, change is scary, but change is also opportunity, so the economy can do fine. Some particular individuals may find their position altered, but that is not important and should not be an issue for economic planning.
The GP didn't suggest pricing pollution credits by fiat, but by actual cost to mitigate. If funny games are played with the dollar on the production side, those same games would affect the mitigation side and it would all even out. (tax based on actual cost + manipulated devalued dollar = higher cost to mitigate => automatic increase in tax (The only way to win is not to play))
Now the carbon sinking.
Grow grass. Bury it (deep (perhaps in an abandoned coal mine (or maybe we could liquefy it and pump it down into a depleted oil field))) Done.
Re:Trying to regulate every little thing is stupid (Score:3, Insightful)
- Reduce the human population by 90% (preferably using a humane manner; like fewer babies). Instead of 6 billion, you'll have 600 million. There will be plenty of resources for everyone to go around, and pollution will be decreased by 90% of current levels.
- or -
- Wait for mother nature to do it for us (disease or starvation).
The overpopulation of human animals, and their gradual destruction of the environment, will be fixed one way or the other. If we don't do it, some other mechanism will take care of the problem.
Re:Beer lovers get the shaft either way (Score:3, Insightful)
Cheers,
_GP_
Re:Trying to regulate every little thing is stupid (Score:0, Insightful)
They're not trying to regulate every little thing, they're trying to say "don't do anything that harms the environment"
Not really. For one thing, they're going after one subset of that (CO2 emissions), and they're NOT going after everything that emits CO2(which would include breathing and campfires!) , even though all CO2 emissions are equal per unit. The real criterion is the imagined *inefficiency* that they're targeting. Which I consider fundamentally pointless since one factor in determining efficiency is utility to people, which exists only in their minds. That's why it makes much more sense to accept their judgment of how much utility these activities provide, and simply charge them the *cost* that is imposed on others.
Aside from the enormous harm that taxations place upon the economy
Compared to what exactly? Your other mythical option that doesn't impose enormous harms on the economy?
The consensus among economists is that *given* a harm to the economy, carbon taxes get you the most CO2 reduction. Any other option will, for a given net CO2 reduction, do more unnecessary harm to the economy, since they're just crude approximations to what we really want.
carbon sinking is not even possible given the engineering capacity we as humans have.
So all the design plans [wikipedia.org] certified by real engineers are ...
Furthermore, even if it *were* possible, there is no way to know what damage the CO2 does in the meantime while it is being sinked.
This just sounds like rationalization. Somehow, it's possible to find a human CO2 emission + CO2 atmospheric concentration + global warming + global weather pattern shift link ...
but there's no way to approximate what damage if any is done in the intermediate time.
I could debunk this, but the real barrier is that you don't WANT CO2 sinking, under any circumstance, to be a valid option, because protecting the planet is only one goal you're targeting, but you want to slip in policies targeting other goals on the way.
You really have no understanding of the problem, do you?
Er, for someone who doesn't understand the differences between carbon credits and carbon taxes, that's a pretty unreasonable thing to say.
Under a carbon tax, no rights are bought or sold. You emit CO2 from fossil fuels, you pay a tax. That obligation cannot be bought or sold, nor would anyone be made better of by doing it.
The complete commodification of the rights to pollute simply mean that companies will simply find a way to price in the dollar value of pollution credits to get away with whatever they are doing now.
Great! (aside from the minor nitpick about how they're pricing in a tax rather than a credit)That's exactly what we want them to do: whatever's profitable, *after* paying to undo the negative externalities they're throwing off onto others.
... was ... the problem we were trying to solve ... right?
That
Pollution and environmental issues are *the* classic economic textbook example of market failure. It takes a real fundamentalist (or a complete idiot) to attempt to solve market failure by the application of more market instruments.
I'm almost shaking at how ridiculous you're being now. You're making a blanket dismissal of all market solutions to market problems on the grounds that "type X approaches can never solve type X problems"??? So, problems of regulations can't be solved by regulations? So no loophole in regulations can ever be closed? That would be the implication of what you're saying.
You're also not quite showing an understanding of what exactly the market problem *is* that we want to solve. The market problem is that (unjust) costs of an activity, which are im
Re:Somebody please!....AHEM (Score:3, Insightful)
Self-contradicting (Score:3, Insightful)
I remember reading a Newfoundland drug enforcement police officer's comment once to the effect that beer and spirits stores profits were up whenever the police managed to put a big dent in the illegal drug market.
If people are using beer (i.e. ethanol) to get a drug high, they're going to pay whatever the price is. You don't see too many addicts quitting due to cost.
That's not to say they're going to buy Sam Adams over Beast, but they'll still buy.
Re:Climate change, guess old buzzword wasn't worki (Score:4, Insightful)
First Human Sacrifices (Score:4, Insightful)
Same old nonsense. (Score:3, Insightful)
I find it impressive how the media has so effectively shifted the terminology from "global warming" to "climate change". So now any time weather deviates from some arbitrary norm we're feeling the effects of climate change. And don't forget to add that it's man-made!
In fact, on NPR recently a NASA scientist stated that the Argo satellite has shown slight cooling over the past five years. Another thing is that scientists are starting to find that CO2 doesn't quite provide the positive feedback that causes a rise in temperature, instead it acts as a sort of damper. If I could find where I read that I'd link it here but inevitably any search on global warming and climate change results in a flood of propaganda.
Inevitably, the climate change supporters will claim that these findings aren't statistically significant or that local temperature findings aren't relevant. Basically, if it doesn't reinforce the climate change agenda it's dismissed. Any anyone with disputing data is biased.
And nevermind the fact that we've had climate change since the Earth has first existed. And furthermore, history has shown that increased global temperatures have lead to human prosperity. Idiots like Ted Turner seem to believe that rising temperatures will somehow lead to drought and widespread famine but as far as I know no scientist has made that claim yet.
Re:Uh, not due to climate change though... (Score:2, Insightful)
Now we know that sunlight is responsible for the Ozone, it is created when the very same radiation particles that it protects us from gets atached to oxygen in the upper atmosphere. It also explains why the hole grows and shrinks in correlation to the angular position to the sun (different seasons). The Ozone hole is effected more by increased levels of oxygen in the upper atmosphere then by CFC particles in the air. Almost all of the countries in the world have banned the use of CFCs except under specific controlled situations and the hole hasn't disappeared.
Calling human contributions to global warming as anything significant or even close to a primary factor of it is more or less speculation at this point. Yes, I understand that decades of research inflated by political agendas and redistribution of wealth schemes support man made global warming, but we had centuries of evidence and studies showing the white race as superior to other races which we know is bullshit. I'm not trying to say that global warming isn't happening or that we don't influence it. But there is defiantly reasons to question the idea of being behind it. The last thing you want to do in science is to stop questioning things and just start believing with blind faith in those telling you the X means Y but doesn't equal Y in practice. Almost every single prediction that doesn't mirror historical trends have been off and they have had to modify something in order to explain it.
And no, it isn't just one scientist being an alarmist. It is several scientist along with entire political groups backing scientist being alarmist. Even if we are behind global warming, the solutions have been hijacked by self serving politics and political agendas. That in and of itself should be reason to question it.
Re:Trying to regulate every little thing is stupid (Score:5, Insightful)
This might be a difficult concept to grasp, but there is no objective "good environment" as far as the planet is concerned. There is only the question of how good the environment is for whatever particular life to thrive. Even if your "modest proposal" wasn't HIT-MY-HEAD-AGAINST-THE-WALL-TO-RESTART-MY-BRAIN-CRAZY, to say that in order to achieve a "good environment" we would have to lose 90% of the human population, means it's NOT a good environment for humanity.
Seriously, that line of reasoning will kill braincells of rational people trying to follow it. It's the same thing as saying that because the current global ecosystem is unable to sustain the current population of white rhinos, what we should do is "humanely" drop their population to 10% of today's so that they can each have plenty of resources.
It only takes one datapoint... (Score:4, Insightful)
The trouble is that some of the data [mcgonigle.us] doesn't support some of the theories. It used to be that scientists would be happy to falsify their theories or modify them when presented with new data. Lately it seems people are starting with theories and trying to find data to support them, which is fine to that extent, but then discounting data which is found that contradicts their theories.
This is a non-story because (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:home brewers (Score:5, Insightful)
The beer issue being discussed has nothing to do with ACTUAL climate change. In reality it doesn't have anything to do with climate change. Corn is being used to create E85. E85's primary goal isn't reduction of greenhouse gasses and stemming climate change (although there may be some of this), it is designed to reduce the US dependence on foriegn oil for economic/political reasons. Subsidization of E85 has resulted in higher Corn prices. Farmers, most of whom barely eek out a living, obviously plant more of the crop that is bringing the highest price at market.
Once the wholesale price of barley increases adequately, the farming industry will switch back to barley and beer production will resume.
Re:Trying to regulate every little thing is stupid (Score:3, Insightful)
"The problem is - there is no 'real' cost to be levied. The 'real' costs so beloved of the greens isn't determined by accounting - they are instead a collection of wishful thinking, assumptions, biases, and a general desire to punish anyone who uses fossil fuels."
Now let me quote the above post, so everyone can clearly see what you are attempting to do:
"I never claimed they were made up. I merely point out that there isn't a rational and equitable way of accounting for them, and that the belief that such a method exists is wishful thinking. There is a difference."
Please by all means, reconcile those two statements in a logical and coherent fashion.
Now, you also claim there is no rational and equitable way to account for negative externalities and resource depletion. This is patently absurd. Of course we can, some people just don't want to. They want us to pay for these things.
How about we keep a balance sheet of natural resources and those extracting the resources in a non sustainable way must pay for the privilege? We can easily measure pollution and habitat destruction and assign a cost to that, then impose that costs on the ones creating it.
You insult and slander those of us concerned by the fact that we are paying costs incurred by other people as "wishful thinking, assumptions, biases, and a general desire to punish anyone who uses fossil fuels." You are siding with the powerful against those who would seek redress for wrongs committed against us, and belittling our rightful complaints. When called on your behavior, you attempt to backtrack and rewrite your own statements so they seem less supercilious. The honorable thing to do would be to admit you were wrong and apologize, but I hold little hope of that ever happening.
Suffice it to say, I see you for what you really are. You haven't fooled anyone.