A World Without Coffee?

One of our readers recently challenged me regarding human-caused climate change:  If it’s happening, how do you know it’s significant?

Hmm.  How do we measure significance? 

The significance of climate change probably depends on where you stand.  For example, this morning Barbara Elwood suffered one of the effects of climate change.  But you might argue that it wasn’t really all that significant.  When she brewed her beloved morning coffee, she cut the amount by one-quarter.   One quarter less of the precious elixir we all crave.

Have you noticed what’s happening to the price of coffee?  Barbara has.  The price of high-quality Arabica coffee beans from Latin America is up 85% since last June, with no end to increases in sight.  In March, world wholesale coffee prices of all types were up 79% over the prior year.  What’s going on?

Well, worldwide demand for coffee continues to grow at a 2.5% annual pace.  But production has been hit with many difficulties, limiting average annual supply growth to only 1.7% since 2000.  What’s the problem?  The International Coffee Association puts it simply: “Climatic variability is the main factor responsible for changes in coffee yields all over the world.”

I never knew how specialized a plant the Arabica coffee strain is.  It turns out to be a delicate fruit, grown in just-right climate zones. It grows in narrow bands of peak conditions on tropical mountainsides, requiring very specific ranges and timing for everything from temperature to rainfall amounts.  As a result, it’s particularly susceptible to weather shifts, changes and extremes. 

Coffee rust fungus flourishes in newly-warm temperatures

But extremes are exactly what the Arabica regions of Latin America and Africa have been suffering.  Average temperatures in many coffee lands have increased 1 to 2 degrees in the last thirty years.  And while global warming causes droughts in many places, the warmer Pacific Ocean today releases torrential rainstorms on South American coffee highlands.  In the new, warmer and stormier climate, the plants’ buds abort or their fruit ripens too quickly for optimum quality. Heat and flooding also incubate pests like coffee rust, a devastating fungus that could not have survived the previously cool mountain weather.

As a result, coffee production is being driven higher into the mountains.  According to a recent study by CABI – Britain’s science-based development and research agency – the lower altitude limit for coffee growing is rising by roughly 15 feet per year.  15 feet every year!  Our entire farm doesn’t have 15 feet of elevation variability.  And coffee isn’t like dandelions:  the bushes take years of work to become productive.  Even if you owned vast plantations, you can’t just move uphill.

So an arguably insignificant sacrifice for Barbara Elwood has a much darker side for coffee growing families in the world’s tropical zones.  Consider the news from Colombia, Kenya and Uganda:

Colombia:  The world’s No. 2 Arabica exporter has lost 28% of its coffee production in the last 4 years.  With a 2-degree warmer climate, and a 25% increase in mountain rainfall, Colombia’s 91,000 coffee growing families are facing an onslaught of challenges, including reduced coffee quality, squeezing them out of the crucial export market.   The warmer climate is incubating new pests, including coffee rust, which destroys entire fields which were once safely uphill from its range.  And while sales are down, costs are way up, with growers beset by the cost of new fungicides, insecticides and the cost of replacing fields with genetically-modified coffee strains. 

       

Kenya:  U.S. imports of Kenyan coffee have increased five-fold since 1992.  But since 2000, production is down 15%, and in three of the last four years, it was down by 33-50%.  The land around Mt. Kenya now being used for coffee and tea production is being pushed up the mountain, forcing clear-cutting of upland forests.

Uganda:  This country is dear to our hearts.  We have trekked among Ugandan coffee bushes, and we count as friends families who grow coffee, in addition to cocoa, cassava and plantains. The outlook for Ugandan coffee is alarming.  A report by Oxfam warns:  “If average global temperatures rise by two degrees or more, then most of Uganda is likely to cease to be suitable for coffee.  This may happen in 40 years, or perhaps as little as 30.”  

Uganda's prime coffee lands (brown/tan) are lost with 2 degree rise.

And it’s not just the heat:  the changing climate is bringing erratic rainfall patterns to Uganda, with resulting floods, landslides and soil erosion.  Let’s not imagine that these plagues will hit only the coffee, sparing the vital food crops that virtually all Ugandans rely on for their daily bread.

So, is the impact of climate change significant?  Barbara Elwood thinks so.  Not because she’s drinking less coffee, but because she knows and cares for families who depend on the earth’s stable climate for today’s food.

Thanks for reading, and may God bless you.

J.Elwood Follow @John_Elwood

Pinch Yourself – Are You Alive?

This week, Barbara, my wife, was cleaning out the attic, and came across our wedding album, one I hadn’t looked at in decades.  Who were those people?  We weren’t just young and thin; we were DIFFERENT.   Every photo reminded me how much we’ve changed.

But despite the inevitability of change, most of us are reluctant to do so.  I certainly am.  After all, we don’t hold our opinions, habits and beliefs because we think they’re stupid, right?  But if you’re within hailing distance of our age, look at your wedding album, and see how hard it is to recognize those strange people.

Fortunately, we’re not alone, and last week we saw a stunning example of it.  The new Congress was holding hearings on climate change, and climate-denial politicians brought out a raft of expert witnesses.  They had a marketing professor, a lawyer and an economist.  But their star witness was a physicist named Richard Muller, a scientist at the prestigious Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory at UC Berkeley. 

 

Muller didn't like NASA's global temperature data

For years Muller had been expressing skeptical views about the consensus climate data.  The existing data, developed separately by NASA and the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and the U.K.’s Hadley-CRU, all pointed to a 2.2°F increase in global temperature over the last century, accelerating in the last 30 years as atmospheric CO₂ concentrations have accelerated.  It’s some of the most important data about global warming.  But Muller didn’t like the way the scientists at NASA, NOAA and CRU had selected the data.  And he thought they hadn’t accounted well enough for the temperature effects of urban sprawl on some of the measurement sites.

So last year, backed by grants from coal & oil billionaires Charles and David Koch, Muller’s Berkeley team began developing their own global temperature data for the last century.  Climate skeptics were gleeful.  Finally, there was going to be a real record, free from the biases with which the world’s climate scientists had been tarred on skeptic blogs.  And last week, Muller was there at the U.S. Congress to unveil his new bias-free record of global temperature changes. 

 

As I said, it’s hard to change your mind, but there, in front of the entire nation, that’s exactly what Professor Muller did, to the shock of his climate-denial sponsors. 

Muller's results, virtually identical to NASA, NOAA & CRU

Here’s what the professor had to say:  “The world temperature data has sufficient integrity to be used to determine global temperature trends.”  In other words, the data he had been criticizing was actually valid.  But he went on: The work of the consensus researchers was “excellent.”  The human causes of climate change are very much what the U.N. IPCC declared in its 2007 assessment.

In fact, Prof. Muller made a disarming admission: He was surprised at his own results. “Data integrity is adequate. Based on our initial work at Berkeley Earth, I believe that some of the most worrisome biases are less of a problem than I had previously thought.”  The facts had changed his mind. 

In a subsequent video interview, Muller said:  “There are some real deniers out there….  They should be ignored.” 

Well, maybe I was glad at Muller’s willingness to change his thinking, but the denial machine was not amused at all. Their star player had grabbed the ball and raced into the wrong end zone.   Anthony Watts, a leading skeptic blogger who had previously endorsed Muller’s work now labeled his testimony “post-normal science political theater” in a letter delivered to the House committee.

Mainstream researchers, predictably, were more measured.  Scientific research is always subject to a process called “peer review.”  You submit your data, processes and conclusions to the scrutiny of other researchers in the field, so that they can rebut, refine or confirm your results.  Muller hasn’t done this yet.  So most researchers withheld judgment.  But they can't miss the fact that Muller’s conclusions to Congress are almost identical to theirs, conclusions that he’s spent years criticizing.

Cizik: I've changed my thinking

I recently saw a riveting documentary about nuclear arms called Countdown to Zero.  One of the film’s commentators was Rev. Richard Cizik, a leading Christian evangelical thinker.  The film ended with this quote from Cizik:  “I've changed my thinking and millions and millions of other people are changing their thinking. And frankly, if you've never changed your mind about something, I say, pinch yourself. You may be dead."

Well Rev. Cizik, there are at least some signs of life in the political wars over climate change.  Skeptic professor Richard Muller has seen the data, run the numbers and determined that the research he had been attacking was right after all.

It’s not that painful to change your thinking.  After all, you’re alive.

Thanks for reading, and may God bless you.

J. Elwood

Follow @John_Elwood

Numbers You Never Learned in Algebra

They say figures don’t lie, but liars figure.

So I’ve checked the numbers pretty carefully, and I think they are correct.  If you’re one of the billions of people who are suddenly curious about nuclear energy, here are some numbers for you to think about this week.

04410                  The number of nuclear electric power reactors worldwide.  105 of them are located in the United States.   Another 14 are in Ukraine, 6 on Taiwan, 2 in Pakistan, and a whopping 53 on the earthquake-prone islands of Japan.

01,3000              The number of tons of highly-radioactive nuclear waste generated every year by the world’s nuclear power plants.  In the U.S., the average reactor generates 27 tons of high-level radioactive waste every year.

06,000,0000      The number of years it takes for spent nuclear fuel waste to decay to the point where it is no more dangerous than natural uranium.   This is the time it takes to reverse the effects of concentrating and using these materials.  For much of this time (give or take a few million years), someone will have to manage this waste to prevent exposure, leakage, fire, etc.

000                      The global number of disposal facilities licensed for long term storage of nuclear waste.  None exist.  Anywhere.

The U.S. has more reactors than any other country, concentrated in the east.

010.50                The average number of years between major meltdown or partial-meltdown nuclear accidents, beginning with Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and now, Fukushima.  These all occurred during times of general global stability (no world wars, pandemics, etc.).  

0140                    The number of “near misses” reported by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission in the United States during 2010 alone. Near misses are malfunctions or failures that the NRC judges to have had the potential for major failure resulting in exposure to harmful radiation.

0110                    The number of U.S. reactors with 8-hour battery backup systems in case of a loss of power.  The remaining 94 U.S. reactors have only 4-hour backup.  Some in Congress are now pushing for 72-hour backup systems.

050%0                The approximate proportion of U.S. nuclear reactors located near major geological fault lines, including the San Andreas and New Madrid Faults.

Many reactors are in active geological zones. The gray areas are safer.

031.50                The average age (in years) of nuclear reactors in the United States.  Reactors are rated for lives of 30-40 years, and estimates of actual useful lives vary, from 30 to 50 years.   

017,452,5850    The number of people who live within 50 miles of America’s most dangerous nuclear power plant, at Indian Point, NY.   

 57,400,0000      The number of people who live within 50 miles of America’s ten most dangerous nuclear electric power plants.   

0400x0                How much more radiation was released by the Chernobyl, Ukraine accident than the bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima.  Caribou in Scandinavia, tea plantations in Turkey and farm fields in England were among the victims the Chernobyl’s contaminants.

0600,0000           The number of Soviet citizens assigned to work on the “liquidation” of Chernobyl.  2,000 known deaths occurred from the catastrophe.  250-350,000 people were forced to relocate from the area.  The union representing plant workers claims that 220,000 were either killed or permanently disabled.

03 to 50              The number of years that Japanese experts predict will be necessary to “feed and bleed” the Fukushima reactors: pouring on water that then leaks radioactive waste into the surrounding environment.

0300                    The number of new plants proposed for construction by the U.S. nuclear power industry.   Beyond this, some nuclear developers are proposing another 270 U.S. plants.

0$9 billion0         The projected cost of a single new nuclear reactor in the U.S.

0$0 billion0         The amount of private investment available for the development of new nuclear plants without U.S. government guarantees.

  

Now you remember why you didn't go into mathematics in college, right?

Thanks for counting, and may God bless you.

J. Elwood

Follow @John_Elwood