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Climate Change Finally Impacts Important Industry
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."
so lets latch on to something generic... even though it occurs all the time we seem to think its only bad now.
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
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
The Warmlist has already been updated with this new information.
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.
Greenland's barley production jumps %500 and sees new global markets.
Climate change has impacted agriculture since it was invented. Nothing new here. The only "news" is that the article speculates this particular crop was affected by man made climate change. Quite a stretch.
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Considering that 20 percent of the U.S. corn crop was converted into 5 billion gallons of ethanol in 2006, (and that amount replaced only 1 percent of U.S. oil consumption). The prices of food products containing barley and wheat are also on the rise because farmers are switching to growing subsidized corn crops instead of other less profitable grain crops. Dwindling barley feedstock supplies also currently coincide with a pretty large reduction in other crops used as livestock feed, prices of which are also climbing. Thus another unintended consequence is the increase in the price of meat and dairy products consumers are currently experiencing as well. We haven't even started to talk about how diesel fuel prices are simultaneously causing food, feedstock, and crop prices to skyrocket.
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.
I hate printers.
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.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
The reason for these price increases are because the farmers have all switched to growing corn, one of the least efficient crops used to produce ethanol. For every gallon making it to the customer, you need to create and burn an additional five gallons to run all the manufacturing equipment. There are much more efficient crops that could be used, corn being one of the absolute worst, but the wackos have decided to put everything into that one.
Who would win this election: Andrew Weiner vs Andrew Weiner's weiner.
Well I have a modest proposal:
- 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.
The government is not your daddy. Its purpose is not to raid middle-class neighbors' wallets and give it to you.
Climate change is not the reason for ethanol in gasoline. The reason is political: to reduce dependence on energy from foreign sources, as well as to buy votes from corn farmers via subsidies.
www.timcoleman.com is a total waste of your time. Never go there.
And now there's rioting in Haiti over food shortages (i.e. prices). So, the first human sacrifices at the altar of the Global Warming religion are occurring right now.
My God, it's Full of Source!
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Your idea will totally work because humans don't actually have any desire to procreate!
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.
I like basketball!!1!
Faced with the difficulty of separating anthropogenic and non-anthropogenic influences, they reverted to the time-honored method of taking data.
The trouble is that some of the data 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.
My God, it's Full of Source!
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Your example, if true, would be directly attributable to climate change.
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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