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If horrendous hurricanes and a new UN report, more frightening than ever, do not change attitudes about climate change, maybe a new report on barley.
A small international team of scientists has examined the impact of climate change on this crop in the next 80 years and has launched an alert which, he hopes, will break through the din of politics.
They predict a shortage of beer.
In an article in Nature Plants, Chinese, British and American researchers said that by the end of the century, drought and heat could harm barley crops enough to cause intense pain to drinkers. of beer. Imagine a worse case of 20% drop in supply in the United States or doubling of prices per bottle in Ireland. It is not an abstract end of the discourse of civilization; it's an empty showcase at Stop 'N Go.
Of course, it may seem odd, even irreverent, to focus on a foamy and cold recreational beverage, given the actual and potential damage caused by weather-related natural disasters. Christopher Field, faculty director of the Stanford Woods Institute, who did not participate in the study, said the report was based on "solid analysis." But he wrote in an email, given the changing climate, "It's a bit trivial to talk about beer."
One can only ask: to whom?
From Ireland to England, from China to the Czech Republic, love, or "like" beer, has made it the most popular alcoholic beverage on the planet. It's in volume consumed, and what other criteria would you use?
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One of the authors, Dabo Guan, of Tsinghua University in Beijing and the University of East Anglia, Norwich,
said the report was aimed at the world's richest countries, such as the United States, to suggest that climate change would affect everyone, not just the poor, who could suffer serious food shortages.
"We will suffer less," he said, but we will continue to suffer. Climate change "may not affect our bread," he said, "but that will affect our beer."
The idea of the study came – elsewhere? – A bar, says Dr. Guan. It was after a day at a scientific meeting in China, and some participants had gathered, including climatologists, a crop modeller and himself, an economist. His own work, he said, is about international trade. The group had a lot in common, he said, "We all love beer."
"We started talking about the impact of climate change on agriculture, food and then beer," he said.
They decided to develop mathematical models of the impact of climate change on barley crops with patterns of international trade. Seventeen percent of barley is used for beer, he said, while the rest is mainly for animal feed.
The group even proposed a term for beer and some of the other products they could study in the future, such as coffee and chocolate: luxury goods. You do not need them to survive, but if you are rich enough to live in the developed world, you need it.
Guan also said that one should not focus on the precise numbers of the study because the models are based on the current economy. Many things can change. But, he said, the effects are clear.
For example, in case of particularly severe drought, the price of a beer bottle in Ireland could double. In the Czech Republic, this could cost six or seven times more.
China and the United States drink the most beer because of their population. "In the worst case scenario," he said, China would lose 10 percent of its beer supply and the United States between 15 percent and 20 percent.
This will not happen if Anheuser-Busch has something to say about it, though. Jess Newman, director of agronomy for the company in the United States, said, "We take climate uncertainty very seriously."
To this end, she and her staff are monitoring climate predictions, raising new barley strains and collecting data on their own farms and from suppliers in Montana, Idaho and North Dakota, to determine the best conditions. practice. "The barley nerds are on the case," she said.
Regarding how the public should take the news, Dr. Guan was adamant: "Our goal is not to encourage people to drink more beer now." Good caution, as this may well be the political solution favored by beer drinkers facing a possible shortage in 80 years.
No, he said, looking a bit like a preacher in a pub: "Mitigation of climate change is the only solution. Everyone in the world has to fight.
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