{"id":45380,"date":"2018-10-20T05:00:44","date_gmt":"2018-10-20T09:00:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=45380"},"modified":"2018-10-19T12:39:34","modified_gmt":"2018-10-19T16:39:34","slug":"barley-beer-and-climate-change","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2018\/10\/20\/barley-beer-and-climate-change\/","title":{"rendered":"Barley, beer, and climate change"},"content":{"rendered":"

There was a “study” recently released proclaiming the end of beer … or at least a huge hike in beer prices coupled with a drop in availability due to climate change. Tim Worstall<\/a> explains why the report is — at best — misleading:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Barley (Hordeum vulgare<\/em>) at the United States National Arboretum.
Photo by Flikr user “Cliff” via Wikimedia Commons.<\/p><\/div>\n

You\u2019ll have seen the various reports over the past few days that climate change is going to do terrible damage to the beer industry. The mechanism is that drought and heat will reduce the barley yield, this will then reduce the amount of beer that can be made. What follows is the explanation from the actual researchers of what they\u2019ve done. It is, to put it mildly, nonsense. For their assumptions are wrong. Let us say that climate change does reduce barley yields on those lands currently planted to it. But we do know that as this happens then other, more polar, regions open up to being suitable for the growing of barley. So the initial worry is just untrue.<\/p>\n

They then go on to insist that we\u2019ll feed the cows on the barley that\u2019s left rather than make beer from it. Thus the shortfall in beer is greater than that in barley. Nonsense upon stilts. Humans don\u2019t work that way. We started this agriculture thing because we wanted the beer after all. Feeding the animals came later \u2013 and often enough the cows are fed on the barley after we\u2019ve made the beer from it anyway. We\u2019d put our minimal supply into booze not beasts.<\/p>\n

Finally, they tells us that Irish beer prices would double. No, really, given the level of taxes there upon the stuff it\u2019s really not true that even their 30% reduction in barley supply is going to double the price.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There was a “study” recently released proclaiming the end of beer … or at least a huge hike in beer prices coupled with a drop in availability due to climate change. Tim Worstall explains why the report is — at best — misleading: You\u2019ll have seen the various reports over the past few days that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[25,65],"tags":[52,210,245,924],"class_list":["post-45380","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","category-environment","tag-absurd","tag-beer","tag-climatechange","tag-farming"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-bNW","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45380","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45380"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45380\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":45382,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45380\/revisions\/45382"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45380"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45380"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45380"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}