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WASHINGTON (AP) – Adding chocolate, coffee and wine beer is one of the little pleasures of life that global warming will make more rare and more expensive, scientists said.
The multiplication of heat waves and drought will weigh on barley production, an essential ingredient of beer, in the future. Yield losses in barley can reach 17%, according to an international group of researchers.
This means that beer prices on average would double, even allowing for inflation, according to the study published Monday by Nature Plants magazine. In countries like Ireland, where the cost of an infusion is already high, prices could triple.
The findings of this study come one week after the release of a UN critical report that describes the consequences of dangerous levels of climate change, including worsening food and water shortages, heat waves, climate change and climate change. rise in sea level and diseases.
The co-author of the study, Steve Davis from the University of California at Irvine, said the beer research was partly done to make our neighbors understand the unbearable message that climate change is disturbing all aspects of our daily life.
Several scientists who were not part of this study stated that it was a healthy and perhaps more effective way of communicating the dangers of global warming.
"One of the biggest challenges as a scientist conducting research on climate change and food is to illustrate it in a way that is understandable to all," said in a letter. Lewis Ziska, scientist at the US Department of Agriculture. Few would complain if global warming ruined Brussels sprouts, he added.
Scientists have long known that barley "is one of the most heat-sensitive crops in the world," but this study links this to something that interests people – the price of beer – so it's valuable, said David Lobell, an environmentalist at Stanford University.
Davis, a supporter of the IPA, is one of those who care about everything.
"It's a paper born of love and fear," he said.
Barley from all over the world is used for all kinds of purposes, mainly for feeding livestock. Less than 20% of the world's barley is turned into beer. But in the United States, Brazil, and China, at least two-thirds of barley is packaged in six-packs, drafts, drums, cans, and bottles.
Davis and his colleagues have only looked at the combination of heat waves and drought, not the general warming that should also affect the barley growing place.
If heat-trapping emissions from coal, oil and gas combustion continue to increase, the likelihood that weather conditions will adversely affect barley production will increase by about a decade before 2050 in Canada. once every two years from now until the end of the year. century.
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Follow Seth Borenstein on Twitter: @borenbears.
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The Health and Science Department of the Associated Press receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute's Department of Scientific Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
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