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."
home brewers (Score:5, Informative)
Re:home brewers (Score:5, Funny)
(though I'm not terribly sure it was origionally his)
Pub with no Beer
It's lonesome away from your kindred and all
By the campfire at night where the wild dingos call
But there's nothin' so lonesome, so dull or so drear
Than to stand in the bar of a pub with no beer
Now the publican's anxious for the quota to come
There's a faraway look on the face of the bum
The maid's gone all cranky and the cook's acting queer
What a terrible place is a pub with no beer
The stockman rides up with his dry, dusty throat
He breasts up to the bar, pulls a wad from his coat
But the smile on his face quickly turns to a sneer
When the barman says suddenly: "The pub's got no beer!"
There's a dog on the verandah, for his master he waits
But the boss is inside drinking wine with his mates
He hurries for cover and he cringes in fear
It's no place for a dog round a pub with no beer
Then in comes the swagman, all covered with flies
He throws down his roll, wipes the sweat from his eyes
But when he is told he says, "What's this I hear?
I've trudged fifty flamin' miles to a pub with no beer!"
Old Billy, the blacksmith, the first time in his life
Has gone home cold sober to his darling wife
He walks in the kitchen; she says: "You're early, me dear"
Then he breaks down and he tells her that the pub's got no beer
It's lonesome away from your kindred and all
By the campfire at night where the wild dingos call
But there's nothin' so lonesome, so dull or so drear
Than to stand in the bar of a pub with no beer
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Re:home brewers (Score:5, Informative)
The "Mini Ice Age" of 1400-1800 destroyed the Wine Industry in Britannia. For 1400 years Romans and their descendents had been growing vineyards and producing wine in the warm England climate. Then suddenly the earth grew cold, and the vines stopped growing.
England seemed to survive this catastrope, and I'm sure Australia will too.
Re:home brewers (Score:4, Interesting)
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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.
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Where are you getting this "eek" assumption from? Farm subsidies are very generous in the US. I don't think it's an "eek", it's no 7-figures, but it's certainly sustainable.
From personal experience. I've watched my Father quit farming and go to work at the USPS because he couldn't make a living. I've watched my sisters and I all enter different career fields because the lack of opportunity in agriculture. I've seen many of the local farms that I grew up with be sold off either because the operation wasn't profitable or because the children of the farmers didn't think it would be in the future.
Take a look at historic corn prices [inflationdata.com]. When adjusted for inflation the price
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According to the History Channel, this is not the first time climate change has destroyed an industry. The "Mini Ice Age" of 1400-1800 destroyed the Wine Industry in Britannia. For 1400 years Romans and their descendents had been growing vineyards and producing wine in the warm England climate. Then suddenly the earth grew cold, and the vines stopped growing. England seemed to survive this catastrope, and I'm sure Australia will too.
Wonder what Bush equivalent caused THAT catastrophe?
I know, I know, Troll.
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Indeed, the hop shortage is really bad. The place where I get homebrew supplies won't sell the hops by themselves, only as part of a complete recipe, to prevent people from hoarding.
If the barley problem gets worse, I can only imagine that it could get harder for homebrew shops to stay in business, which would be a shame.
Re:home brewers (Score:4, Interesting)
Besides, prices don't seem that high. A little high, sure, but not overwhelming:
http://www.northernbrewer.com/hop-pellets.html [northernbrewer.com]
Re:home brewers (Score:5, Informative)
I get my barley for about $2 a pound, regardless of the variety/malt.
I get my hops for about $2.5/ounce, in pellet form. It's available as cones, but they are more expensive.
it takes between 5-10 pounds of barley for a 5-gallon batch of beer and about 2 ounces of hops (more or less to taste, the hops have 3 functions, they add a spicy flavor, a bitter flavor, and they help preserve the beer. some beers I have seen take 4 OZ of hops, some only require
The yeast sachets are about $2 each for beer yeast and about $.60 each for wine yeast.
These are local prices in Stafford, VA. northern brewers tends to be cheaper.
So, we are looking at $17 minimum for a batch of beer, more if you add the malt extracts (barley sugar) as it tends to be about $4/pound or you can use more grain. It is technically possible to use corn sugar (about $1/pound) to increase the alcohol content, but that tends to give a thin-feeling beer.
Pure beer (accourding to the germans) cannot contain anything but barley, hops, water and yeast.
A 5-gallon batch of imperial stout uses about 10 pounds of grain and 3 ounces of hops.
The cost of barley has gone up for me in the last 2 years, I used to get it for $1.30
and the hops has drastically jumped from $1.30 to $2.50/ OZ.
A minor note on hop growing, it takes 2-3 years for your hops to reach production levels. It's best to leave them alone while they attain that stage of growth. The hop farmers have noticed the high demand and planted more acres, that does not help now, but will in a few years.
Just my 2 cents or so...
Re:home brewers (Score:4, Informative)
I get my barley for about $2 a pound, regardless of the variety/malt.
I get my hops for about $2.5/ounce, in pellet form. It's available as cones, but they are more expensive.
Pure beer (accourding to the germans) cannot contain anything but barley, hops, water and yeast.
A 5-gallon batch of imperial stout uses about 10 pounds of grain and 3 ounces of hops.
The cost of barley has gone up for me in the last 2 years, I used to get it for $1.30
and the hops has drastically jumped from $1.30 to $2.50/ OZ.
A minor note on hop growing, it takes 2-3 years for your hops to reach production levels. It's best to leave them alone while they attain that stage of growth. The hop farmers have noticed the high demand and planted more acres, that does not help now, but will in a few years.
Just my 2 cents or so...
Re:home brewers (Score:4, Insightful)
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You seem to be ignoring what happens down on the farm. Corn is ideal because we already had the infrastructure in place to integrate corn-based ethanol plants into the supply chain with virtually no cost (money or energy).
Turning another crop, such as switchgrass, into a commodity is not an easy process and would waste a lot of energy in the process. Perha
Re:home brewers (Score:5, Informative)
That depends on where you live. It may be true in the US's Midwest or other farming areas with well-established grain crops. In other parts of the world, there are already commercial crops of Jatropha curcas, a dryland shrub whose seeds contain oil that can be burned directly by diesel engines without refining. There's also a tropical tree, Copaifera langsdorffii, which is tapped much like sugar maples, and whose sap also qualifies as diesel fuel. Google finds lots of info on both of them.
These two plants have only recently been domesticated, so there's a lot of research and breeding going on in the areas where they grow. J. curcas has potential to be a major crop the American southwest and southern Europe, as it's cold tolerant and needs only around 250 mm of rain per year to keep it happy. But the cultivation is rather different from corn, so you wouldn't expect corn farmers to immediately succeed with it, and it may not be a competitive crop for areas with more rainfall. C. langsdorffii isn't feasible outside the tropics, and is a medium-sized tree, so it has only been used for small-scale local fuel production so far, and will probably take some time to become a practical crop plant.
Switchgrass (Panicum virgatum) has gotten some attention in the US, where it's a native plant with a lot of potential. Even President Bush has heard of it. But its cultivation, harvesting, and processing into fuel would be something new for corn farmers. Sugar cane growers would probably be better prospects, as the process would be familiar to them -- except for the final fermentation stage, which you'd want to hand over to the rum producers
There are a number of other plants undergoing serious research for fuel production. Of course, each species will require educating farmers and development of infrastructure for its use. That's part of why so many people have been suggesting that we should be doing the R&D now, rather than wait until our fuel-supply problems grow even more serious.
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Trying to regulate every little thing is stupid (Score:3, Interesting)
We're going after barley today, and tomorrow it will be celery or lack of solar panels on buildings or computer that go to sleep too slowly etc etc etc.
A much more rational and simple approach would be: Tax all fossil fuels at the current cost of sinking the resulting carbon out of the air. (Actually, you just want to sink the fraction of existing output that needs to be removed in order to stabilize concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere but if I put that in the definition it would be too hard to untangle.)
Apply the funds to sinking CO2.
Then, all product use is carbon neutral. For all people, adjusting to climate change is simply a matter of buying whatever you want, so long as its cost is justified by its current price (which has been changed to account for the tax.) Given the new prices, all entrepreneurial activity redirects to account for higher fossil fuel costs and raises resources spent on minimizing this input.
This method is necessarily the least painful approach because and change in activities necessarily comes from those activities that have least benefit, as people currently judge them, and work up from there.
Furthermore, as the price of sinking goes down, the tax can go down.
Furthermore, this is robust against non-compliant countries, as their goods can be tarriffed to pay for whatever sinking they won't pay for. Or, if necessary, other countries can sink CO2 using general tax revenues.
Oops, I forgot, people would still be able to drive SUVs under this, so scratch it.
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.
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This is important when you look at the situation as a whole because it shows just how much of a loss carbon caps and credits are. I could go on about how I think they are little more then a scam but that isn't as important as the practical limitat
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- 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 othe
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.
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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. ... It takes a real fundamentalist (or a complete idiot) to attempt to solve market failure by the application of more market instruments.
When I go to the supermarket and look for plastic baggies to put lunches in, am I going to buy the ones that cost $150 because the company making them decided that retooling its factories wasn't necessary when they could just make us pay for their pollution, or the $2.50 baggies made by a factory that did?
That's the theory, anyway. Supposedly this would work for anything from companies whining about the government banning them from poisoning more than X/1000000 people to companies burning tires in their f
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First the tax issue. All this policy would require would be that the REAL cost of fossil fuels be pai
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"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
Re:Trying to regulate every little thing is stupid (Score:4, Informative)
I believe the word you're looking for is "externalities". Pollution and environmental issues are external to the market, so the market doesn't account for them. You need to internalize externalities with taxes based on them -- you need to assign them a realistic cost compared to what damage they do to society, and the market will readjust with that taken into account.
I'm a Keynesian; I don't believe in the authoritarian-socialist view of telling businesses, "You will do this," or, on the economic-libertarian view, doing absolutely nothing. I believe in the government simply adjusting the prices of elements of the market with taxes when needed to make externalities that have serious costs but are normally ignored now have costs that are factored into the market, and letting the market make its own choices now that it's facing true costs. And with the taxes collected as such, you can reduce general taxation on corporations and inviduals and/or ameliorate the damage caused.
In such a situation, I think that, for example, coal power would largely become uneconomical, while techs like wind, solar, and deep geothermal (EGS or whatnot) would become much more popular. But if coal power plant operators can still be profitable when compensating for the greenhouse gasses, heavy metals, and particulate matter they emit (prices based on the consequences of those actions, such as increased healthcare costs), and while paying more for coal that's compensating for the water pollution and so forth (also with prices based on the consequences of those actions), then by all means, continue.
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And how do they do that? REGULATION.
Re:Trying to regulate every little thing is stupid (Score:5, Informative)
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On the warming of planets:
http://www.skepticalscience.com/global-warming-other-planets-solar-system.htm [skepticalscience.com]
http://environment.newscientist.com/channel/earth/climate-change/dn11642 [newscientist.com]
So, your contention fails. Not all the planets are warming. Further, I'm going to go out on a limb and assume
Somebody please! (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Somebody please!....AHEM (Score:3, Funny)
Think of the underage drinking teenagers!
Or will this force us to re-consider legalizing "weed"? Since with no beer, they'll just move up the chain, anyway.
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I never did weed, probably half my friends did.
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Going on two years (Score:4, Interesting)
However, there are many other crops from which alcohol can be derived. A sudden price increase in beer will send drinkers to the arms of other libations. This should, in principle, keep the price of beer from fluctuating too wildly. In another couple years when barley yields are back at their maximums, this will all have been a bad memory.
Re:Going on two years (Score:5, Informative)
However, there are many other crops from which alcohol can be derived.
Which have also jumped markedly in price. Corn, wheat, and rice are all running at record or near-record highs in their prices. So your other libations will also jump in price.
Re:Going on two years (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Going on two years (Score:4, Interesting)
Source? Almost all gasoline is actaully 10% ethanol these days. Since gasoline accounts for 60% of oil consumption [doe.gov], wouldn't it stand to reason that ethanol replaces about 6% of our oil consumption at this point?
Finally, after processing corn for Ethanol, a great deal of high-protien livestock feed remains. The sugars from the corn get converted to ethanol, and the "everything else" is still used as livestock feed.
It's really a lot more complicated than you make it sound. Corn-based Ethanol will not solve our transportation energy needs, but it isn't all bad.
Re:Going on two years (Score:5, Interesting)
- Animal Feed
- Malting
A minority of the barley grown goes for malting, with the remaining majority going for animal feed.Malting barley has stricter requirements that that used for feed, there are max protein levels and germination percentage used along with the normal grain quality indexes (hectolitre weight, screening % etc.)
The interesting thing as regards to beer (larger, ale and stout) is that the price of the malting barley has very little impact on the price paid for a pint.
I don't have a quick reference but in Ireland the cost of malting barley works out at around 1-2 cent per pint, out of an average price of around €4.00 or so (pub price).
The problem is that barley as animal feed is easily subsisted for by other feeds such as wheat, soya, maize etc. This means that the price of barley moves in relation to the prices of these other grains. It is also important to note these these grains along with rice are the base constituents of most alcohol produced.
As regard to New Zealand, one of its biggest exports are milk products. As NZ sells on the world market the recent increase in milk and milk product prices is pushing up demand for animal feeds such as barley. This is because one of the ways of getting higher output from dairy cows in increasing the levels of concentrates (such as barley wheat etc.) feed.
So even with higher yields the price of barley may or may not decrease the price of barley depending on the market prices of the other grains.
Unlike fuel (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
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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.
Now THATS a problem (Score:5, Funny)
Here we face a HOT future with NO BEER!
I vote for the government to start giving away suicide packs (but not legalize mariguana).
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
Re:Climate change, guess old buzzword wasn't worki (Score:2, Insightful)
How much barley production is lost to other more cash ready crops?
DING-DING-DING! We have a winner!
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!
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Just like the game where you make almost any food sound nutritional, you can make anything caused by global climate change!
It's that sort of circular logic that makes the world go round!
Re:Climate change, guess old buzzword wasn't worki (Score:4, Insightful)
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Two years ago, it cost about $12 to make a 5-gallon batch of beer, now it costs between $20 and $30.
(I know, I'm bitching about paying 4-6 dollars for the equivelant of a 12-pack of beer.)
Re:Climate change, guess old buzzword wasn't worki (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Climate change, guess old buzzword wasn't worki (Score:3, Interesting)
so lets latch on to something generic... even though it occurs all the time we seem to think its only bad now.
So by that logic because we used to have hot spells, we shouldn't consider an increased number of hot spells as different in any way. What nonsense.
I guess with all the stories about the earth having not warmed recently...
The stories that do the circles of the right-wing blogs? Because they're credible evidence. Take a look at the current graph of global average temperatures [wikipedia.org] and look at the five year avererage and tell me that the planet is cooling. 1998 was a peak year due to El-Nino, and this year is predicted by those same gosh-
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 likel
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I suspect, because obviously I haven't bothered checking myself, that crop yields might be close to catastrophically low at the moment due to a never ending drought/severe flooding.
Hmmm... (Score:5, Funny)
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.
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But over the last five years, Australia has experienced three droughts. In 2006, in what was dubbed the 100-year drought, barley production fell 70 per cent. Last year, drought caused a 40 per cent fall.
So drought leads to decreased barley yields. We've had more drought in Australia in recent years than in any previously recorded time. And it just happens to correlate with the highest global temperatures ever recorded. But you're right, it's probably just BS. Why don't you come down under and enjoy our water restrictions?
Uh, not due to climate change though... (Score:5, Interesting)
Just once, why can't one of our poorly considered quick fixes work?
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Re:Uh, not due to climate change though... (Score:4, Interesting)
Flour prices have skyrocketed due to the corn (as you have mentioned) and the fact that farmers are then locked into subsidy land because farmers who grow other crops on corn acreage lose their subsidy for the current year and are fined the market value of the crop they chose to grow instead but are also threatened that they may be permanently ineligible to receive future subsidies (link [nytimes.com]).
So while we are getting more "inexpensive" gas and we are lessening our dependencies on foreign oil, we are creating an uncomfortable situation in our food stores and prices. I'd rather we deal with more mass transit and alternative fuel sources that don't fuck with our domestic food supplies.
Re:Uh, not due to climate change though... (Score:5, Informative)
Just thank god you don't live in, say, Haiti or Egypt, where there've been food riots due to skyrocketing prices (like, 40% increases since January type skyrocketing).
The use of food as a fuel source is, without a doubt, the most idiotic, selfish, short-sighted thing the developed world has ever dreamed up...
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How can people continue to deny that climate change is real?
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Climate change is real. What is fiction is the extent of man's impact on climate change.
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, ethano
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.
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First Human Sacrifices (Score:4, Insightful)
Maybe... (Score:2)
Meanwhile, (Score:5, Insightful)
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Canadian barley is well under $1.00 CDN bushel. And a bushel makes a lot of beer.
Are you sure it isn't taxes? In Canada at 75% of the cost of a beer is pure taxes. Sort of a situation where starve the farmer but line the pockets of government.
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
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Oh my, this pub's nearly dry! (Score:2)
O'Brien is cryin' and Murphy's upset.
Mulronan is groanin' and hasn't stopped yet.
And the tears from O'Leary make ev'rything wet
while MacMahon like a banshee is keenin'.
While their women chat lightly, the men sit and sob
with their eyelids shut tightly and fists in their gob.
Not a one's lost his health or his home or his job,
but their lives are now empty of meanin',
for the worst of all curses is here.
And it's...
Oh, no, the beer's runnin' low! The stout is tapped out
and there's
Al Gore Has it Right (Score:3, Funny)
Manbeerpig will kill us all!
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)
To quote Slim Dusty (Score:2)
By the campfire at night where the wild dingos call
But there's nothin' so lonesome, so dull or so drear
Than to stand in the bar of a pub with no beer
Now the publican's anxious for the quota to come
There's a faraway look on the face of the bum
The maid's gone all cranky and the cook's acting queer
What a terrible place is a pub with no beer
The stockman rides up with his dry, dusty throat
He breasts up to the bar, pulls a wad from his coat
But the smile on his face quic
Climate change (Score:2)
So lets say it takes 6 degrees to start making a difference. So we will have less beer in 2,000 years?
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 temperature
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.
wann gib'ts kein bier (Score:2)
Beer (Score:3, Funny)
Beer lovers get the shaft either way (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Beer lovers get the shaft either way (Score:4, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Cheers,
_GP_
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
http://wattsupwiththat.wordpress.com/2008/02/13/where-have-all-the-sunspots-gone/ [wordpress.com]
sun cycle length predicts coming cool period
http://www.universetoday.com/2008/04/03/there-is-no-sun-link-with-global-warming/ [universetoday.com]
sun cycle has no effect on temperature
http://reason.com/news/show/125300.html [reason.com] the David Archibald presentation mentioned here interested me.
AFAIK empirical data will be the final arbiter of the various climate beliefs (climate religion).
I don't discuss religion publicly so this is m
Ethanol (Score:2, Insightful)
Bad Title (Score:2, Insightful)
that's been going on a lot longer than that (Score:3, Interesting)
In related news....... (Score:2)
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.
This is a non-story because (Score:3, Insightful)