Slashdot Mirror
Climate Change Could Drive Coffee To Extinction By 2080
Hugh Pickens writes "Coffee is the world's favorite beverage and the second-most traded commodity after oil. Now Nick Collins reports that rising global temperatures and subtle changes in seasonal conditions could make 99.7 per cent of Arabica-growing areas unsuitable for the plant before the end of the century and in some areas as soon as 2020. Even if the beans do not disappear completely from the wild, climate change is highly likely to impact yields. The taste of coffee, a beverage of choice among Slashdot readers, will change in future decades. 'The worst case scenario, as drawn from our analyses, is that wild Arabica could be extinct by 2080,' says Justin Moat. 'This should alert decision makers to the fragility of the species.'" Read more, below.
Hugh Pickens continues: "Arabica is one of only two species of bean used to make coffee and is by far the most popular, accounting for 70 per cent of the global market, including almost all fresh coffee sold in high street chains and supermarkets in the US and most of Europe. A different bean known as Robusta is used in freeze-dried coffee and is commonly drunk in Greece and Turkey, but Robusta's high caffeine content makes it much less pleasant to most palates. In some areas, such as the Boma Plateau in South Sudan, the demise could come as early as 2020, based on the low flowering rate and poor health of current crops. The researchers used field study and 'museum' data (including herbarium specimens) to run bioclimatic models for wild Arabica coffee, in order to deduce the actual (recorded) and predicted geographical distribution for the species. 'Arabica can only exist in a very specific pace with a very specific number of other variables,' says Aaron Davis, head of coffee research at the Royal Botanic Gardens. 'It is mainly temperature but also the relationship between temperature and seasonality – the average temperature during the wet season for example.'"
I don't get why people drink coffee. It's not even particularly good. Cocoa would be much better tasting. The best drink is beer. Why don't you drink more beer? Pizza and beer are the best food and drinks in the world.
"Wake up and smell the coffee, before it is too late"?
Oh, wait...
... without coffee, we will die
Wild arabica is already quite rare.
hopefully god will design a better coffee plant next time!
Thank God I'll be dead before then. Without coffee, life wouldn't be worth living.
At last there's a plausible cause for a zombie apocalypse.
Even when the climate changes, there will still be some areas suited to the growing of coffee, and since it is popular, people will try to grow it in those locations.
Also there will be incentive to genetically modify it so it can grow in more places.
Of course there may not be enough to go around, but it won't be gone altogether.
OTOH species that live in really cold climates (like polar bears) will go extinct because there won't be any really cold places left.
(And polar bears are not as useful to man as coffee)
We only drink coffea robusta, from Brasil!
Sent as ripples into the electromagnetic field. No single photon has been harmed in the process.
An efficient delivery for self medication, but socially and culturally acceptable. Synthesis plus orange juice would give a nicer tasting alternative and dialing in the dosage would be easier.
Jesus H. Fucking Christ, and we wonder why way too many people pooh-pooh climate change claims.
NOAA and other reports have already stated that global temperature has no changed in 15+ years of monitoring. There are some warming trends in the northern hemisphere, but there are cooling trends in the southern hemisphere. Ice levels at the north pole are shrinking, but Antarctic ice levels are setting new records highs. There has been zero net change globally.
Most of the people live in coastal areas. Apparently global warming is going to melt all the glaciers and flood them all out and drown them any day now.
"Give us your money or no more Starbucks!"
then I'll start bicycling to work.
By then the magic carbon pixie believers will be back round to global cooling again, and climate change will be making it so cold we'll have to grow potatoes in greenhouses.
And nothing of value will be lost.
Look at a map of the world.
It doesn't take a rocket scientist to understand that as agricultural regions shift poleward even slightly, the amount of arable land favorable to crop-growing will greatly increase.
Moreover, I recall from the 1970s concerns that the breadbasket areas of the US were going to be 'exhausted' by the intensive farming (which hasn't happened, but let's go with it)...warming of the climate, shifting optimal growing regions northward in the US will essentially 'open' virgin lands barely farmed for more intensive processes like multiple crops per year. One would suspect that as some particular, marginal soil fades from viability to grow a specific species of coffee, others will be discovered.
To suggest it's going to be "extinct" is just FUD like claiming redheads will be extinct....something so obviously tragic that everyone will be "inspired to action" without really thinking about it.
-Styopa
http://www.dilbert.com/strips/comic/2003-06-19/
Most cheap is more likely.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
About disappearing stuff, like oil, coffee, etc. Necessity is the mother of invention, and the necessity to have something in place of what is poised to disappear, will drive new technological breakthroughs to meet market need.
By 2080, we'll probably have the technology to mass-produce artificial coffee, as no serious entrepreneur will ignore the potential for profit with the millions of caffeine-starved coffee drinkers looking for a substitute beverage.
Of course, before that, the increasing rarity of coffee will drive prices high, natural coffee will become a luxury, and some will make big bucks.
As for other things still found in the wild right now, natural coffee will be a thing of the past. The following generations will have no notion of it. Eating & drinking entirely artificially-produced products will be the definition of normality, Sad but true. As for coffee lovers like myself, there's a bright side: most of us will be dead by 2080.
Seriously, how many of these lame predictions do people come up with? Now they're at least getting smarter and putting the timeline out 60 years so we'll all be dead before we can call their BS.
...that in the mean time, the climate changes again.
But we know what plants crave. Brawndo. It's got electrolytes.'
'...Okay - what are electrolytes? Do you know?'
'Yeah. It's what they use to make Brawndo.'
'But why do they use them in Bawndo? What do they do?'
'They're part of what plants crave.'
'But why do plants crave them?'
'Because plants crave Brawndo, and Brawndo has electrolytes.'
It's just that I thin rather than let the world's largest drug addiction go extinct, people will probably plant it elsewhere. How knows, maybe I'm wrong and alarmist news articles are always right.
Coffee beans have been around long before men walked the earth, a product of millions of years of evolution. I highly doubt the species will go extinct. They have survived ice ages and climate cycles many times over..
Yes the climate is changing. It always did and always will. What an apocalypse.
Will it make the coffee disappear in the next hundred years?
Of course it won't. Farmers will move their stock around the hill or mountain to adapt to the changes, what ever it takes.
Who tf cares about the wild coffee anyways? If it can't survive it's just not wild enough.
Maybe someone should pick up a few samples in case the climate goes back to "normal" again.
If weed can be grown indoors, supposedly even in Antartica, then cofee could be grown in a covered area of the yard / roof ... whatever. Let alone a reformed warehouse - or something. Detroit is available, and relatively unoccupied, it would seem?
By 2080 we will 3D print coffee, or grow it in private orbital farms serviced by (3D printed) space elevators. Duh? Like, technology and computers and stuff? Hello? We will always find a solution.
Really ? Extinct ? What a BS. Coffee production will just move to higher latitudes. It is no different from Roman Empire times when wine was produced in Britain when previous global warming was going on.
JAM
Did it really never occur to this guy that as temperate regions become to warm, colder regions will be temperate? I’m just as concerned about global warming as the next guy but such obvious attempts to panic the people into buying Prius’s only hurts the cause. Just like the deceitful, discredited tools at the CRU – they shoot themselves in the foot and we take the ricochet. Keep it real or keep it shut.
Just more expensive FUD produced by modelers. Wholesale prices have fallen by 30% in the last year and Brazilian coffee growers expect a record coffee crop this year. http://www.marketwatch.com/story/coffee-prices-fall-but-not-at-starbucks-2012-11-08
You can have my Hummer when you wrest it from my cold dead hands.
Anyway, this is why God made FourLoko.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Where's that stupid bike now? Doesn't anyone ever clean this stinkin garage??
It was warmer during the Medieval Warm Period. Coffee didn't die out. I call bullshit.
Business/App ideas are like arseholes: everyone's got one, they're mostly shit, but very rarely they contain a diamond
...with vertical agriculture you won't need much arable land: http://news.slashdot.org/story/12/11/05/2115238/singapore-builds-first-vertical-vegetable-farm. This form of farming is " 5 to 10 times more productive than traditional farms."
I will be dead long before.
... raising the price of coffee.
"Wild arabica is already quite rare."
Wild arabica was always rare. :)
This is why it took until the last centuries until we had a global production of coffee even if it has been known for millennia.
Will the climate change make it dissappear? Probably not, but at least make it rare enough to preclude further harvesting.
Here's the paper. What's the fucking point in open access if nobody bothers linking or reading the research?
Five links in the summary, NOT ONE OF THEM TO THE FUCKING PAPER THAT REPORTED THE RESEARCH. Naturally the Telegraph article doesn't link to it either. Apologies for shouting, but this really fucks me off. Yeah, I know, if I hit the fourth link in the summary, there's another link three screens down that page which would take me to the article. Whoopee.
Would it have killed The Telegraph, Hugh Pickens, or Timothy to do us this small courtesy? As it is, the Telegraph sensationalizes the abstract, Slashdot sensationalizes the inaccurate Telegraph article, and 1000 idiots then argue about completely irrelevant points suggested by free-association from the title, because they couldn't be arsed to read the summary.
Henceforth I shall be tagging these stories "wheresthefuckingpaper".
Sorry I'm so grumpy folks, haven't had my coffee yet :-). I'm off to read the paper now -- why not join me?
The way it works is drinks are chemically decaffeinated, they are not "made that way."
Anybody who says global warming (oops, it's climate change now, right?) is "science, not religion" needs a good hard kick in their worldview. And all the while they'll be yelling, "I'm not biased! This is SCIENCE and LOGIC!"
Thousand years of no progress. Those of us who were paying attention to human nature a are a little worried. For the most part the rich and powerful kinda like technology at the moment. But then I'm here in the USA and we've managed to make 'progressive' a bad word. At the risk of getting into politics, conservatives worry me. A lot. Most of them are either poor and terrified to lose what little they have or really really rich and can't imagine it getting any better.
Plus, A lot of the really rich ones aren't trying to create new wealth, they're trying to monopolize the old wealth. When Bain Capital shuts down a profitable factory in the States you'd think somebody would come along, say hey, I can make money doing that! and reopen it. They don't. That's because the guys at the top all just sorta agree not to step on each other's toes (aka compete)...
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Coffee and cotton are both very destructive to soil, requiring large amount of fertilizer and other treatment to put back all the nutrients that those two crops remove every season.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
2081: Grad student enrollment drops to dangerously low levels.
Is there anything it cannot cause ?
I'm not a coward by any name.
The IT industry, teachers, researchers and may more depend on their morning dose of coffee. When that is gone, this will be the end of the Western civilization. However, we could adapt to tea. Tea has a wider range of flavors than coffee so it is not necessary to invent all these untasteful coffee mixtures, which only exist to give people who have not to make many decisions every day, a chance to do so, by answering 5 questions to get a coffee. However, we still have subway and can make seven decisions until we get to the food.
However, we most likely do not need any coffee by 2080, because our industry will be crashed for good, as they do not want to adapt to the necessities of reality. Then we will all sit at home without jobs. I do not need coffee to cry in my pillow. It is contra-productive to drink coffee and stay in bed. So, no big deal when there is no coffee anymore.
Leaving in Brazil, near millions of square miles of coffee trees, with relatives directly in the business, all I can say is: total BS. My cousin's farm, for example, has its production rising year after year and since a long time.
Although the adjusted for inflation number (since 1979) shows that it's still only $1.00: http://www.randomuseless.info/gasprice/gasprice.html
I heard NOAA is building a ship and there isn't enough place on it so they keep it low.
I was JUST having my coffee this fine Saturday a.m. & spotted this - & it's got me "worried" some, as I do LOVE MY COFFEE in the a.m.!
* This is NOT a good "wake up" because of it... I don't function as well as I can w/out a cup or two in the a.m. is why!
APK
P.S.=> I find it tough to believe that modern agricultural methods & engineering (perhaps even at a genetic level) can't solve this one though... we're good @ those kinds of problem solving (Lol, AND making guns + killing plus growing food to feed ourselves!).
So, I suspect that since coffee's SO widely used & traded?? You can BET & BANK ON IT, it will be worked on + maybe even solved via those means... "GM" food's risky though, unfortunately. Perhaps old-fashioned "breeding" might be a BETTER method here? I don't know...
In any event? I hope they fix this before it happens IF it happens, that is - as I like my a.m. coffee!
... apk
Well if there is one thing to end all the editor / language / operating system wars, it's this.
Computer Programmers around the world will be united and working together around the clock to develop a solution rather than face the nightmare situation of no coffee!!
We'll have Victory Coffee then.
Any prediction of more than five years from now should be treated with a grain of salt. This one is not even worthy of consideration.
One of the things that the article does not seem to mention is any study of areas which will become suitable for growing Arabica beans. All they seem to study are the existing locations. As the climate shifts new areas will open up. For example vineyards are becoming more feasible in the south of England due to climate change. So before I'll believe that coffee is endangered I'd want to see a study confirming that there will be no new areas that are becoming more suitable for coffee growing.
you'll have plenty of cold places for the polar bears.
...the Boston Tea Party is complete!
After years of careful manipulation the British have almost completed their most insidious method of regaining control over the US: depriving patriotic americans of their most essential beverage! However their belief that only black tea and their carefully controlled industry of it will be the only replacement for it are flawed.
For we, the most patriotic citizens of america have a secret weapon in the fight against tiredness: Methamphetamines! :-)
Would make an awesome plot for a movie!
- vranash
"How can we make people interested in climate change???"
We'll never make it.......oh! we made it! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SWf3iJjqYCM&list=FL7kKrE4eTs17mQl7eyvJIOg
We live in the time of Peak Coffee production. It is all downhill from here. The world has a finite supply, and we are pumping it at unprecedented levels. Levels which cannot be sustained indefinitely. In fact, we may have to introduce artificial controls to limit how may pounds per day are sold on the global market. We are not trying to artificially inflate the price to make ourselves richer, we are just looking out for your future... /parody
"You want to know how to help your kids? Leave them the fuck alone." -George Carlin
Change the area they're grown in.
If it's getting hoter everywhere, just transplant the trees to places that were too cold before.
Then grow other things that will survive where coffee was grown.
Glaciologists appear to disagree: http://climatecrocks.com/2012/11/08/new-video-antarctic-versus-arctic-ice-apples-and-oranges/.
WUHU!
That foul-tasting things going extinct will be one of the best things to happen.
Now we just need to teach people to be a bit more civilized and enjoy a nice cup of thee.
... I prefer coffee melanges! Cheers! :D
With the climate greatly warming over the past 20000 years, all those nice wine growing regions around the Mediterranean became so hot and dry that grapes just wouldn't grow there anymore! And now? Hardly anybody produces wine anymore! It's a disaster! (Rolls eyes.)
Wild weather and climate changes have occurred on regular long term glaciation cycles for over 2.5 million years and somehow species adapted and survived. Coffee plants didn't arise spontaneously after the last ice age, so they must have survived somehow through wild climate changes.
This article is just more alarmist propaganda by what I know from paleogeologist's work.
Synthetic caffeine solves that problem.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
I'll be dead by then, so I refuse to give a fuck. Yep. Just enjoyin' ma' coffay...
This article and the fact that it is at best a half truth, like so many others feeds both ends. Those that are convinced of AGW will latch on to it as proof that the end of the world is coming and anyone denying it is a 'Denialist'. While on the other side, those that are convinced that there is no AGW will latch on to it as proof that those 'experts' issuing studies are dishonest and you can't trust them and those claiming AGW are 'Alarmists'.
Even if everything in this is true, by 2080, we'll be capable of synthesizing most anything we want. Bonus: no vast tracts of land devoted to the production of a nonessential agricultural product.
There's a difference between surviving through a glacial cycle and producing the volume of beans that human consumption demands.
Perhaps you could link your sources.
The first chart here says otherwise:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temperature_record
Not to worry! We can all switch from coffee to methamphetamine.
Besides, the real danger from climate change is the coming Ice Age. Or a least a Maunder Minimum from the next craptastic solar cycle. Winter is coming.
Stupid stupid story.
We'll figure it out, don't worry. Not a complete waste- probably got the "researcher" some additional funding though....
Nor 'man made global warming', for that matter. (Although they conveniently RENAMED it, because they know the climate is ALWAYS changing.)
www.climatedepot.com
If you bothered to dig a little deeper you'd find that the increase in Antarctic sea ice is partially a result of global warming and partly a result of the Antarctic ozone hole. Meanwhile Antarctic land ice volume is still dropping.
Not true; the NOAA says global average temperature is rising: http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/indicators/
So you are fine with having no steak as long as I have two to balance out the average?
"...The taste of coffee, a beverage of choice among Slashdot readers, will change in future decades.
Oh, so climate change will be to blame for the change in coffee taste? Gee, and here I thought it was the double-mocha-pumpkin-spiced-triple-vanilla-chai shit that everyone pays Starbucks $5 for that might have something to do with it.
The few who know and respect the actual flavor of coffee will likely go unaffected by this, other than perhaps higher prices paid, which is the standard cost for rarity (look what bean aficionados pay today for rare varieties). The rest of the "coffee" drinking world will somehow learn to adapt...when the next seasonal flavor comes out.
Don't let Starbucks find out about this, or your $5 espressos will become $10.
Be seeing you...
Here's the paper. What's the fucking point in open access if nobody bothers linking or reading the research?
Five links in the summary, NOT ONE OF THEM TO THE FUCKING PAPER THAT REPORTED THE RESEARCH. Naturally the Telegraph article doesn't link to it either. Apologies for shouting, but this really fucks me off. Yeah, I know, if I hit the fourth link in the summary, there's another link three screens down that page which would take me to the article. Whoopee.
Would it have killed The Telegraph, Hugh Pickens, or Timothy to do us this small courtesy? As it is, the Telegraph sensationalizes the abstract, Slashdot sensationalizes the inaccurate Telegraph article, and 1000 idiots then argue about completely irrelevant points suggested by free-association from the title, because they couldn't be arsed to read the summary.
Henceforth I shall be tagging these stories "wheresthefuckingpaper".
Sorry I'm so grumpy folks, haven't had my coffee yet :-). I'm off to read the paper now -- why not join me?
The original paper is the fifth link in TFS.
Click on the link on the sentence 'It is mainly temperature but also the relationship between temperature and seasonality – the average temperature during the wet season for example.'" and see for yourself.
Would it have killed pnot to do us the small courtesy of checking all the links in the summary before posting an incorrect statement?
Henceforth I shall be tagging pnot's comments "asshat".
I could cope with that, but if the quality of hops and malt is also spoilt, that would be a total disaster!
Try Ilex vomitoria instead, American coffee was never that great anyway.
Coffee would be grown in new areas, just like wine grapes are no longer grown in Sweden.
I went to Costco today, and they were cleaned out of coffee. Now I know why. The preppers must be prepping for The End of the Coffee as we know it.
...that the #1 world commodity may lead to the extinction of the #2.
Hugh Pickens wrote incorrect information in his lede sentence there. Tea is the second most widely consumed beverage in the world after plain water. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tea
Q: What is the gostak?
A: The gostak is that which distims the doshes.
Q: What's distimming?
A: Distimming is that which the gostak does to the doshes.
Q: Okay, but what are doshes?
A: The doshes are what the gostak distims.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gostak
You fucking global warmings fucktards keep trying to fistfuck us with this crap. Un friggen real.
References or sources?? Looking at the NOAA reports, there is certainly continuing increase past the year 2000. For example: http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/service/global/glob/201201-201209.gif and http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/service/global/lo-hem/201201-201209.gif from: http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/global/2012/9.
I'll be 105 in 2080, so I don't give a fuck. I'll keep drinking coffee until I drown.
Operation Guillotine is in effect.
Just bullshit from a psychopath.
In the year 2080, people won't be drinking coffee anymore. Refined stimulants will be automatically delivered via implanted pumps, and electrodes running from an advanced subcutaneous neural network into the center of everyone's brain will increase alertness, intelligence, and sexual performance. Men will no longer be men but extreme examples of uber-mensch whoopass. And as for the women...
Presumably if the current regions are become unsuitable, other regions will become more agreeable. Russian coffee anyone?
By 2080 I should be dead, so even if by some freak of nature, the areas that coffee can grow in are actually disappearing, and not simply moving, I can have a cup of java on the morning of the day that I die.
It requires huge amounts of water to grow in bulk so it likes large flood plains in wet areas. In short, once easier places to grow sugar were found the stuff was planted there in high density plantations instead of the low density ones requiring a lot more manual work that they would have had in Portugal. It's got nothing to do with climate and everything to do with exploration and global trade. Sugar cane will grow there, but you can farm it far more easily in Jamaica.
I'm late to the story, I know, but the point of this isn't about coffee production - despite the FA. The radio programme that I heard had proper information, and it's about the effect of climate change on wild arabica coffee plants (already endangered). The programme explains why This Is Bad.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01nq7dd
Honestly the only good thing I've heard about global warming to date. You coffee drinkers will become a docile servile class for the non-coffee drinking elite. South America will go from being run by drug lords to coffee lords, as each fifedom engages it's enemies in unceasing wars for the precious remaining coffee-growing territory, which, in all honesty, probably won't be any worse then it already is for those regions, so, all-in-all, there's no downside.
OTOH species that live in really cold climates (like polar bears) will go extinct because there won't be any really cold places left.
(And polar bears are not as useful to man as coffee)
And nothing of value was lost that day. I hate polar bears, those ugly, blood thirsty monsters. After what they've done, I don't expect anyone will miss them. Good riddance.
After the incident, I can't believe there are still some polar bear sympathizers around. Sickening.
Not this again...
Antarctic sea ice is expanding, but Antarctic land ice is shrinking fast.
What's happening is that the ice is slipping off the land and into the sea. So of course there's more ice in the sea, at least until it melts (which it will, since the southern ocean is getting steadily warmer despite the increase in ice).
Expanding Antarctic sea ice is not a good thing. In fact, it's far, far worse than declining Arctic sea ice.
It's not about producing the volume for human consumption anyway - it is about the wild coffee plants. I do like my wild Ethiopean coffees, though...
Ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.
By then we'll all have an iBrain42 installed under our skull and get our nutrition via a daily pill. You're worried about warm beverages.
>NOAA and other reports have already stated that global temperature has no changed in 15+ years of monitoring
What planet do you live on? NOAA has the complete opposite graph showing heat anomaly for the last 120 years right here:
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/service/global/glob/201201-201209.gif
See the bright red on the right hand side? That's the hot bit.
Yes, but even wild natural swings still take centuries. More than enough time plants and animals to migrate naturally. Human induced change is happening 10 to 20 times faster, leaving insufficient time for natural solutions to the problem.
I'm sorry, would you be so good as to point out the half truths. Changing climate has ALREADY impacted the growing conditions of Coffee Beans, this is not some distant someday effect. Just as it is not a someday effect that plants in the United Stated bloom weeks earlier for spring than they used to in 1960. Its a well known phenomenon, every gardener older than 10 is familiar with it. The problem is with the wild beans. They have the majority of the genetic diversity and are essential to breed new strains of coffee resistant to pests and will be needed for migration. We will lose the wild coffee before the end of the century, and with that the cultivated bean soon after. Whats left will be hothouse coffee and it will be a beverage for the wealthy.
As for the problem with the alarmists and the denialists, both people defending ideological turf instead of just getting ahead of the facts to get an idea of what is actually happening. The world is changing and we have a growing arsenal of responses to assure a happy and healthy future, we just need to act now.
More Alarmist BS, Note that as 2020 approaches and all the BAD things that were to happen then are NOT, the apocalypse has moved back to 2080.
More BS paid for by TaxPayer Dollars, shut the NSF.
MFG, omb
That's just not true. One of their core businesses is to buy a successful business, borrow tons of money on it's good name, and pay themselves bonuses from the debt. Then move it to a cheap labor country.
As for progressive, my point wasn't that one side or the other is stopping progress, it was that 'progressive' has taken on negative connotations. Progressive == liberal == socialist == communist == bad. Whether you believe in a small government or an active government progress, meaning things getting better in general, should be something we all can agree on. Put another way, even the Amish use modern health care.
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Which do Americans really love more?