A small international team of scientists considered what the effect of climate change would be for this crop in the next 80 years, and they are raising an alarm they hope will pierce the din of political posturing.
They are predicting a beer shortage.
In a report in Nature Plants, researchers in China, Britain and the United States say that by the end of the century, drought and heat could hurt barley crops enough to cause intense pain to beer drinkers. Imagine a worst case of a 20 percent drop in supply in the United States, or a doubling of prices per bottle in Ireland. That’s no abstract end of civilization talk; that’s an empty display case at the Stop ’N Go.
Of course it may seem odd, almost irreverent, to concentrate on a cold, foamy recreational beverage, given the damage, real and potential, of climate-influenced natural disasters. Christopher Field, faculty director of the Stanford Woods Institute, who was not involved in the study, said that the report was based on a “solid analysis.” But he wrote in an email, given what is going on in terms of climate change, “It feels a tad trivial to talk about beer.”
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