Thread: Goodbye to the Fun stuff--due to global warming

A climate article with a different spin talking about the fun stuff many of us enjoy, such as French wine, that will be affected by climate change.

"...Not me. Not my kids. Not in my lifetime. The problem is abstract. It’s perceived as far away in time and place.


But what if we told you to prepare to say goodbye over the next decades to some of the things that make life fun? (Or if not goodbye entirely, then hello to through-the-roof prices and severe shortages).
Wine, coffee, chocolate, baseball bats, salmon dinners...."


Climate Change Wrecks All the Fun | Sightline Daily

LF

I am sorry.
But that list of things suggested to suddenly become unavailable simply kicks in my bullshit detector.
Yeah, riiight!

Humanity is simply not that dependent on single sets of conditions. If coffee does not grow well in traditional areas, other places will be found where it grows well. If a baseball bat is not made from a traditional wood, another wood will be found just as good.

Come on guy. Let's get real here.

If the fundamental problems aren't addressed stopgap solutions - moving, substitution - will be no more than temporary. Climate and emissions can and will lead to some serious problems for agriculture even with a surge in efforts to address them. Unaddressed the problems can get much worse and go on to impact human societies, including trade in agricultural produce, in profound ways. Floods, droughts, famines and forced migrations have impacts on international security and that will harm trade and change agricultural investment and practices locally, regionally and internationally. I suspect by century's end shortages of fine wine, chocolate and coffee will be the least of our worries.

"If coffee does not grow well in traditional areas, other places will be found where it grows well. "

Coffee and chocolate are leading examples of crops (or species) that are naturally restricted to quite smallish environmental and climatic conditions. We've managed to create broadscale plantations of coffee in a few places where the climate is suitable even though the plantings are not the best for the bushes themselves. As seasons begin to swing more to extremes of temperature or higher, more intermittent, rainfall the crops will become less reliable. We'll probably have to move back to growing it in conditions closer to its optimum requirements. Chocolate is even more restricted. So the ordinary daily indulgence of a good coffee or hot chocolate made with real cocoa will become more expensive. Less likely to be daily and much more of an indulgence.

As for fine wine. Already vignerons are regrafting existing vines with more heat tolerant varieties. The harvest in South Australia is now a full fortnight to 3 weeks earlier. Some vineyards have to uproot whole vines - because the rootstocks rather than the fruiting vine are unsuited to the changed conditions. Fine wine? Like a lot of people I can identify the varieties of grape used in most wines to about say 80% accuracy - one of the benefits of living in a prime wine-producing area. However, real experts really can tell which part of a vineyard or hillside some wine grapes come from. As climates of various areas change, the combinations of soils and terrains which produce high quality grapes of certain species will become unsuitable either for those particular varieties or for any wine at all.

Once again, we will certainly be able to produce wine. Will ordinary people be able to afford good quality wine in the more unpredictable, more extreme environment we're moving to? I doubt it. We may not have to pay Grange Hermitage prices for ghastly rotgut, but good quality at reasonable prices will steadily disappear.

Adelady

Such a lack of faith in humanity's ability to adapt!
There may need to be new techniques to force a fine harvest of coffee beans, but the new growing areas and the new techniques will be there. Even without improved technology (which is virtually guaranteed), the laws of economics ensure that new coffee plantations will be planted. Where there is a demand, there are people out to make $$$$ from that demand. That is totally guaranteed.

There will, of course, be subtle differences in flavour between the old and the new. This is something that 99% of humanity will take in their stride. Only the tiny minority who are the true connoisseurs of flavour will remain upset, and even they will eventually adapt.

More bikinis. Less ice fishing. All depends on what your idea of "fun" happens to be. Will arguing over the Internet disappear? If not, TSF is in good shape...

If nothing else, might spur the development of space, an inevitable and beneficial step in human development- on the Moon, every year in the vineyard can be an optimal one- cheers.

For Lynx Fox. Baseball bats? wot's that? westwind.

More bikinis. ?? Really?

I suppose everyone will eventually forget about the vanished beautiful white beaches and just stick to swimming pools.

It is possible to lose things and be unable to replace them, regardless of demand. The American Chestnut tree produced wood and nuts for which no good substitute was ever found, the American Elm was a uniquely suitable shade tree for city streets.

The loss of a match between climate and soil cannot be easily accomodated - if wet rice farming deltas are swamped by salt water, suitable new deltas will take many hundreds of years to form; if the corn belt weather moves north of the mollosoil regions of the American midwest, the yields lost will not be replaceable in the less suitable soils of the north.

Easier than that, iceaura.
Research has shown, for example, that a blend of ground up granite and municipal waste compost makes an excellent and very fertile top soil. It can be manufactured by the millions of tonnes, if need be.

There is very little that cannot be replaced if need be. Except lack of vision.

Easier than that, iceaura.
Research has shown, for example, that a blend of ground up granite and municipal waste compost makes an excellent and very fertile top soil. It can be manufactured by the millions of tonnes, if need be.

No need. That's what the soil already is, north of the corn belt. It's OK for corn - not great, like Iowa mollosoil, but we won't starve. Just like hybridized Norway maples and lindens are OK as city shade trees - not great, like elms, but they do provide shade. And chicory root makes a marginally acceptable coffee - not great, but you get used to it.

If we are reduced to industrially manufactured dirt, we probably will be starving.

On the other hand, Vancouver Canada may say hello to pests our climate formerly shielded us from: mosquitoes, cockroaches, house centipedes, dry-wood termites, wasps and other stinging insects normally common south of the border. Leg-biting sharks in the Strait of Georgia? The nature I knew as a boy was harmless to people (we did see some wasps in July and August though).

Such a lack of faith in humanity's ability to adapt!

I have no fears that people can adapt. After all, it will only be very few generations from now when people won't even know what they've lost. A bit like people having blown up beautiful statues or burned down museums and libraries, they'll never be replaced. Films and photos or archeological relics are all that's left.

But my feeling is that the capacity to adapt is a very poor argument. Families can adapt very well to caring for a disabled child, but sensible people ensure that they have their rubella vaccinations, and they take the folate and iodine supplements, and they avoid alcohol when pregnant. Why? To reduce the chances of having certain statistically predictable disabilities occurring in their offspring. They'll do their best if some other statistical nasty comes their way, but they've ensured that obvious and avoidable bad things are in fact avoided.

If we can avoid the unmanageable, we're in a much better position to manage the unavoidable.

Adelady

I agree that we need to do what we can, and mitigation of global warming is an action that we are very sensible to carry out.
However, knowing what we should do, and realistically understanding what the world probably will do are two different things.

I predict that mitigating actions will be inadequate for some time yet. Most will follow on from new technologies that can be used without paying an economic cost. For example : coal will continue to be burned to generate electricity, stupid though that is, until equally cheap alternatives are available, and the old coal plants reach the end of their economic life.

My prediction is that the next 40 odd years will see inadequate action, and sufficient action to lower atmospheric greenhouse gases globally will not happen before 2100. I am consoled, though, by the fact that warming and sea level rise so far is minimal. While there are doomsday prophets who claim that both will accelerate out of control, that is deeply uncertain. We will not know until, and unless it actually happens. My own feeling is that both warming and sea level rise will be less than disastrous, and that ultimate mitigation will, eventually, be sufficient.

In the mean time, lobbying governments to get more into mitigating greenhouse gases is important.

We will not know until, and unless it actually happens.

By which time it's far too late. One thing that should give even the most rabid contrarians cause to pause is the shape of the paleoclimate graphs.

If you pause this video at about 2.40 ..... Time history of atmospheric CO2 - YouTube then at 10 to 15 second intervals, you'll notice something unpleasing.

It's usually straightforward for CO2 concentration to rise rapidly, almost vertically on the graphs when the time intervals are compressed. But on the way back down again when CO2 is being absorbed rather than released, the graphs show hesitations, delays and dithering about instead of matching the way the rise went. It looks to be a whole lot harder to get concentrations down than to raise them.

We're hearing talk only about changing our release of gases which means we're talking about more emissions, just slower. We hear SFA about proposals for absorbing what's already been spewed into the communal atmospheric sewer. We should be pushing, nagging, letter-writing and generally making pests of ourselves to get things moving along faster.

Who cares if we lose our 'fun stuff' that would have to be the least of peoples concerns with Climate Change surely. Seems a little shallow and selfish to me, if to get the point across they have to threaten the loss of French Wine to get them to act. I hate to think back to the time when i was that narrow minded. Oh wait that is the whole issue with Global Warming/Climate Change. It really only affects our current lifestyles with the world, that has made us take real notice and think to change. Us the selfish beings that we are.

Loss of ""Fun "" things. You posted the Thread to test the water. Well, for true researchers the fun begins now. Nothing will give true investigators of what is possible, more satisfaction than to evolve a concept of helping, in a practical way, the invironment. It can be done. Indeed, the challenges are being taken up by all most Societies in the developed world. We hope above all else that the cutting down of natural rainforest stops. The weather systems that have more or less been part of the present order of things and on which we have built up our economies, are now subject to variation, both in reliability and predicted outcome. Skeptic believes in our ability to adapt to change. I accept that point of view. In the analysis of what we are seeing and experiencing regards our changing weather patterns it would probably be a good time now to re--define our concept of fun things, put on our outdoor clothes, take up the mattock, get a few trees in, and fall tired into bed. westwind.

For those of you who know a relative or a friend who sticks to the yes-the-science-is-right-but-we'll-be-able-to-fix-things-if-they-go-pear-shaped approach, there's a nice personal essay here. Changing Climates, Changing Minds: The Personal

Worth it, especially for people with a similar scientific training to the writer - he's a geologist - but there are plenty of others in the earth and physical science fields with similar notions. And for those with a particular hate on "An Inconvenient Truth", he has an unusual take on that as well.

Who cares if we lose our 'fun stuff' that would have to be the least of peoples concerns with Climate Change surely. Seems a little shallow and selfish to me, if to get the point across they have to threaten the loss of French Wine to get them to act.

Not so mauch a threat, that, as a warning: even a brief history of the British Empire will illustrate what people - and therefore governments, including armies - will do to get hold of fun stuff, like black pepper,

or coffee.

A good share of our current problem with oil is the fact that an internal combustion engine powered with excessive amounts of oil can snap your head back coming out of a stop sign, at a price within the reach of most Americans and many other people.

It is ten o'clock on a Saturday night, I am alone, online, and having no fun whatsoever, yep, gotta be due to GLOBAL WARMING...

Originally Posted by westwind

For Lynx Fox. Baseball bats? wot's that? westwind.

Baseball bats can be used against vampire bats. The former are the only bats which never carry rabies. Rabies, like everything else that is BAD, is caused by, YES, GLOBAL WARMING! Bet you didn't see THAT one coming.

Originally Posted by Arthur Angler

Rabies, like everything else that is BAD, is caused by, YES, GLOBAL WARMING! Bet you didn't see THAT one coming.

Stop trolling.

Arthur @6 - what advantage is there to hydroponic grapes on (in?) the moon over hydroponics grapes here on Earth? I can't see that there's anything you can do there that can't be done easier and much, much cheaper here on Earth, including, if it comes to that, creating self supporting nuclear powered bunkers. I think you underestimate how much of our prosperity derives from our environment and how much of of our extravagantly wasteful ways depend on unsustainable practices that eat away at that environmental capital.

I think that space colonies will be utterly dependent on a healthy global economy down here for a long, long time. The technologies they need are the ones we need and it's more likely we will be providing it to them than the other way around. Inhabitants of space will surely be more, not less, concerned with water and air quality and their recycling practices are likely to make the most fanatic greenie efforts look amateur; their one advantage will be that it will be harder to delude themselves that their future survival and prosperity is God given, due to their innate superiority or otherwise independent of their own actions. Although I think there's a lot of self delusion amongst the proponents of this particular course of action that could - if there were any chance that their dreams become reality - be carried into space with them.

I think failure to fix our mess down here will put that dream of colonising space further beyond reach - not be the spur to a serious space colonisation effort. (I don't mean to derail this thread - Arthur, you are welcome to start a thread on the prospects and advantages of colonising space if you want to discuss this further).

You can take that further.
Imagine a world utterly destroyed by humans. Rampant global warming. Pollution. No forest left. No pure water. A toxic world.

That world would still be a better habitat for humans that the moon, Mars, or any other lump of rock in the solar system. We might have to live in what Ken calls nuclear powered bunkers, but it would still be a lot easier to survive there than on the moon.

However, I do not think it will come to that. The world will not be degraded to that extent. In addition, I still think that humanity has a future in space. Once the technology exists, we will have colonies off Earth. Earth will not contribute much to those colonies because it will be just too damn expensive to do so. Instead, they will make pretty much everything they need at home.

We already have 3D printers that can make all the components to make more 3D printers. It is not too big a stretch to imagine a Mars colony that makes all the things it needs right there on Mars.

Originally Posted by Lynx_Fox

Originally Posted by Arthur Angler

Rabies, like everything else that is BAD, is caused by, YES, GLOBAL WARMING! Bet you didn't see THAT one coming.

Stop trolling.

Define "trolling". Is it anything like "snarkiness", "constant polemics", "spamming nonsense", or "inane questions"? None of which are prohibited under the TERMS OF USE POLICY, in any case.

In the meantime, here's some fun for all, cheers, o brethren:

Global Warming - Doomsday Called Off (1/5) - YouTube

Originally Posted by Ken Fabos

Arthur @6 - what advantage is there to hydroponic grapes on (in?) the moon over hydroponics grapes here on Earth? I can't see that there's anything you can do there that can't be done easier and much, much cheaper here on Earth, including, if it comes to that, creating self supporting nuclear powered bunkers. I think you underestimate how much of our prosperity derives from our environment and how much of of our extravagantly wasteful ways depend on unsustainable practices that eat away at that environmental capital.

I think that space colonies will be utterly dependent on a healthy global economy down here for a long, long time. The technologies they need are the ones we need and it's more likely we will be providing it to them than the other way around. Inhabitants of space will surely be more, not less, concerned with water and air quality and their recycling practices are likely to make the most fanatic greenie efforts look amateur; their one advantage will be that it will be harder to delude themselves that their future survival and prosperity is God given, due to their innate superiority or otherwise independent of their own actions. Although I think there's a lot of self delusion amongst the proponents of this particular course of action that could - if there were any chance that their dreams become reality - be carried into space with them.

I think failure to fix our mess down here will put that dream of colonising space further beyond reach - not be the spur to a serious space colonisation effort. (I don't mean to derail this thread - Arthur, you are welcome to start a thread on the prospects and advantages of colonising space if you want to discuss this further).

True, this thread is perfectly equipped to derail itself with no further assistance. So, for that matter, is the climate of the planet, as the recent spate of tornadoes in the USA, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions and tsunamis generally, and mass extinction events in the geological record will attest.

None of these phenomena are known to have occurred on the Moon or Mars.

I think that it will happen sometimes in the future, but it is not only going to affect "fun stuff", but also food and other necessities.

Originally Posted by slavenenco

I think that it will happen sometimes in the future, but it is not only going to affect "fun stuff", but also food and other necessities.

Amen brother, surely we must repent. Try holding your breath as long as you can every day, walking everywhere, breaking out that cardigan sweater from the Carter Administration, and going to bed every day promptly at sundown. And NO INTERNET, so, goodbye...

Originally Posted by Arthur Angler

Originally Posted by Lynx_Fox

Originally Posted by Arthur Angler

Rabies, like everything else that is BAD, is caused by, YES, GLOBAL WARMING! Bet you didn't see THAT one coming.

Stop trolling.

Define "trolling". ....bla bla bla
Global Warming - Doomsday Called Off (1/5) - YouTube

Good bye AA. (for those wondering; AA has been banned three times previously for similar things--he isn't learning).

It will not be fun for sure if the climate change in the future leads to a food depletion