Uh oh - Climate change will dramatically impact coffee-growing areas

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grog
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#1: Post by grog »

https://www.theguardian.com/environment ... 20m-people
theguardian.com wrote:Climate change is going to halve the area suitable for coffee production and impact the livelihoods of more than 120 million of the world's poorest people who rely on the coffee economy, according to a new report by the Climate Institute, commissioned by Fairtrade Australia & New Zealand.
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another_jim
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#2: Post by another_jim »

A problem with this measure is that it does not include the areas that will become suitable for growing coffee. In the most schematic case of uniform warming, the coffee areas will gradually move away from the equator. This means the coffee growers are still screwed (their property stays in the same place, while the growing region for their crops moves); but coffee production will not be go down as much as predicted.
Jim Schulman

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Unrooted
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#3: Post by Unrooted replying to another_jim »

That was my thought, but I wonder if more tropical storms and/or hurricanes will occur due to an increase in ocean temps?!?

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Andy
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#4: Post by Andy »

The area that is suitable for coffee growing may shift geographically, but that doesn't mean it will necessarily be planted to coffee. For example, it may be already committed to some other purpose that is less sensitive to climate change; or it may be needed for another, more critical, purpose, such as food production or watershed.

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another_jim
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#5: Post by another_jim »

That was my thought, but I wonder if more tropical storms and/or hurricanes will occur due to an increase in ocean temps?!?
Andy wrote:The area that is suitable for coffee growing may shift geographically, but that doesn't mean it will necessarily be planted to coffee. For example, it may be already committed to some other purpose that is less sensitive to climate change; or it may be needed for another, more critical, purpose, such as food production or watershed.
Good points. In evolutionary history, warming eras have usually been good for life as a whole; but I'm guessing that takes a lot longer to show up. The disruptions from global warming are certain to happen first; no matter how fine the silver lining.
Jim Schulman

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peacecup
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#6: Post by peacecup »

The rate of climate warming is what worries most scientists. There is concern that plants and animals will not be able to adapt fast enough, and since so much habitat has been lost through anthropogenic impacts, animals can't simply more either. Anyway, climate change biology is a discipline unto itself.

I usually stay away from politics, but the real problem is that people, and hence governments, don't care. After all the fanfare of the Paris talks, for example, not much is going to happen:

https://ideas.repec.org/p/wiw/wiwsre/sr ... 16_01.html

We all need to work hard every day to consume and waste less, and care more about the Earth,
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sweaner
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#7: Post by sweaner »

My biggest issue with the climate alarmists is that they will never state what is the BEST climate for Earth.

It is hard for me to believe that the climate now is really the ideal one. I know that the dinosaurs would not agree!
Scott
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peacecup
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#8: Post by peacecup »

Of course there is no ideal climate for Earth itself, and life as we now know has gone through vast changes in climate over the past 4.5 billion years. The dinosaurs certainly liked it warmer.

The human species, however, has had remarkable success over the past 100,000 years, particularly the 15,000 since the climate cooled to its current state. The growth of civilization as we know it is closely linked to this climate, which has allowed our agricultural revolution and all the little niceties like music, art, literature, and espresso.

Human-induced climate change is a fact, and it is largely caused by the burning of fossil fuels. There is no need for most of us to be alarmed because we will all be gone before large-scale changes like rising sea level cause mass social and political upheaval. At that time it probably won't matter where and how much coffee is being grown because there will be too many other problems for people to deal with.

It's nice to think that we can lead future generations in taking active steps to reduce the rate of anthropogenic climate change, to give people and animals a chance to continue on their evolutionary paths without worsening the current mass species extinction (we are currently undergoing the 6th mass extinction, the first ever to be caused by a single species, us). But if we don't, life in some form will probably continue long after we've joined the 99% of species in Earth's history that are already extinct.
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baldheadracing
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#9: Post by baldheadracing »

peacecup wrote:... The human species, however, has had remarkable success over the past 100,000 years, particularly the 15,000 since the climate cooled to its current state. The growth of civilization as we know it is closely linked to this climate, which has allowed our agricultural revolution and all the little niceties like music, art, literature, and espresso. ...
Nicely illustrated from 1:20-2:05 of the admittedly-boring-to-me TED talk on the nine planetary boundaries theory :
-"Good quality brings happiness as you use it" - Nobuho Miya, Kamasada

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HB
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#10: Post by HB »

peacecup wrote:The rate of climate warming is what worries most scientists.
Indeed, if the climate change we're concerned about were spread out over years in geological scale, we'd be hard pressed to even notice given our short existence. This video really puts into perspective how short our time on this planet has been:
Dan Kehn

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