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Guest essay by Eric Worrall
Bread dough prepared with flour grown in a future climate with elevated atmospheric CO2 may not rise properly, claims Dr Fitzgerald, a senior Australian research scientist with the Department of Economic Development, Jobs, Transport and Resources.
According to the Sydney Morning Herald;
On the right is a loaf made from grain grown in today’s climate conditions. On the left is a loaf made from grain that sprouted in concentrations of carbon dioxide that are expected by mid-century if greenhouse gas emissions aren’t reduced significantly.
So this is 2050 bread. It was baked at the Australian Grains Free Air CO₂ Enrichment facility (AgFace) in Victoria by a research group studying the effect elevated carbon dioxide will have on crops such as wheat, lentils, canola and field pea.
AgFace leader Glenn Fitzgerald said the effect of high carbon dioxide on grains is complex. On the one hand, it makes plants such as wheat and canola grow faster and produce greater yields but, on the other hand, they contain less protein. Elevated carbon dioxide also alters the ratio of different types of proteins in wheat, which, in the case of bread, effects the elasticity of dough and how well a loaf rises.
“We don’t understand completely why that’s the case,” said Dr Fitzgerald, a senior research scientist with the Department of Economic Development, Jobs, Transport and Resources.
I have hand prepared fresh bread at least twice a week, for the last 5 years. There are so many variables which can influence bread dough. The air temperature is the obvious variable, but bread is also very sensitive to the amount of water, the temperature of the water, the amount of salt and shortening or fat, how long you mix the dough, the type of bowl it is mixed in (metal bowls conduct heat, which tends to cool the dough below optimum temperature), the quality of the yeast, the age of the yeast, what soap you used to wash your hands (bread yeast hates dish washing detergent – even a trace can badly affect yeast growth), the humidity of the air (flour absorbs a lot of water, humidity affects how much water you have to add to achieve the optimum consistency), whether one loaf caught more of a breeze than the other loaf while the bread dough was rising, the list goes on.
To ignore all of this, and conclude that CO2 shrunk the slightly stunted loaf, in my opinion seems utterly absurd, even for climate science.
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This ploy is actually a GOOD sign – of how desperate they have become not only in trying to sell their agenda of doom about CO2 but in that it is cast within their capitulation that CO2 does indeed increase crop yields.
“Well okay, we admit there will be MORE bread to go around but, (oh the horror!), it won’t rise quite as well if we continue to prepare it the exact same way”; (which everyone knows is sacrosanct and cannot possibly be modified under penalty of ancient law X!)…
Given this “bread disaster” is there any question that the next thing they will be warning us about will be something like “global warming extends life expectancy but it causes bad breath, baldness and hair to grow out of your ears”?
Boy, that CO2 – what a gas!
You beltcha!
I think I can understand the derivation of Dr Fitzgerald’s concern. As with all research, the outcome can be influenced by the starting point and if the starting point is one of being a few sandwiches short of a picnic, then yes this may appear to be a potential issue.
Or more likely it is simply a pitch to secure, in the here and now, a research scientist’s “daily bread”?
I would like to see the two loafs sliced open.
You mean, You would like to inspect the bubbles created in the bread and look at its structure to see if the test was held to high standards of ethical science? They would never deceive or misrepresent things like this…/Sarc
ON a brighter note; they do admit to yield increases and faster growth.
Let them eat cake
Well, I am still waiting for a time when they can grow fields of barley in Greenland like the Vikings did 1,000 years ago. It is still not feasible because the growing season is still not long enough, even for barley, at the current time in Greenland.
I apologize ahead of time but I just could not pass this up.
This just has to be the results on another government funded climate study. At least this time it would seem the Australian taxpayers can marvel at what they have funded. By the year 2050 the bread won’t rise.
However, with some in-depth thinking they would have realized that by 2050 Viagra will no longer be a patent medicine and will be generic. Put the little blue pill in the bread dough and it will rise.
Problem solved. Leave it to an engineer.
“Put the little blue pill in the bread dough and it will rise.” Bbbbut it would surely shrink the minute you bring a knife close to it.
Looking at the pic of pipes in an open field raises the question of: how was the CO2 concentration controlled and measured? Right from the get-go, the field methodology looks shonky, so the study (sensu lato) is likewise shonky.
The more ridiculous the claim, the more likely people will see it for what it is.
While it’s no doubt sad and all that mankind is going to be “wiped out by climate change in a hundred years” enduring on in pain beyond that point with soggy bread for breakfast is a horrible thought.
Utter garbage science. Who funded it?
Ok Even if we assume this research to be kosher, which it clearly isn’t, we could always stick to making soda bread.
But I have to say that this climate scientist clearly doesn’t understand how bread making works. I make bread regularly and no I’m not a baker although my family name is, and less dense or more dense bread appears not to be derivative entirely of flour. Whole wheat is more dense than pure white but add a knob of butter and a little more time to rise and it becomes very acceptable and tasty.
I think what Eric is trying to diplomatically say is that the production of the bread and or the article involved a dickhead or possibly dickheads.
Cheney, Nixon and VanDyke?
You know, my wife’s gluten-free bread stopped rising properly starting about three months ago. So that’s what’s causing it! My wife is so excited to have the reason at last — NOT.
Al Gore and the Pope agree. Let them eat cake.
Amen to that! ! ! 🙂
This has got to win a price for stupidest research ever. Anyone remember the CO2 measurements from 19th/early 20th century collected by that late German biology teacher? Ernst Beck I think. Chemical method.
Now some of these measurements went up as high as 500 ppm. They were taken in German valleys in heavily industrialized zones. Like near Giessen which is north of Frankfurt.
Beck took it as proof that CO2 was way higher in the past, others pointed out that the measurements were influenced by local industry.
Anyway; you don’t take BREAD from Germans away and survive it. And no we don’t eat Matzo or Knäckebrot that willingly. So, as no bread riots broke out under Bismarck’s program of industrialization I consider this “science” thoroughly refuted.
“…you don’t take BREAD from Germans away and survive it…”
Much of Hitler’s rise to power was the result of German resentment that the UK did exactly that after WWI, blockading Germany in violation of international law. As many as a million civilian casualties resulted, men, women, and children dying slowly of starvation. Others survived, but with considerable physical damage from inadequate nutrition.
Yeah. Where is there control group grown under zero CO2 conditions? I can’t wait to see the robust harvest from climate scientists garden of Eden when we eliminate CO2.
I guess once you have drunk the Kool-aid even Bigfoot is related to elevated CO2.
Did they control for the CO2 generated in the bread. I suspect in a large bakery CO2 will be quite a bit higher, probably more than projected for 2050. In the late 1950s, working on a geological survey field party, junior assistants were rotated so that one stayed in camp to bake bread, cook up breakfast and dinner for the two field geologists and their assistants. The first couple of weeks, the bread was like bricks. We used the worst loaves for axe throwing targets and other bushy games. By the 2nd to 3rd week the loaves began to be sliceable and less like hardtack. We found one fellow with a sciencey bent (physical sciencey to be sure) consitently made lousy bread. We discovered on a rainy day off that he was not heating the flour up in the oven (still could be frosty at night in June). He brilliantly took the cold flour, added the cup of yeast water/sugar to the scalded milk, butter and salt and then dumped them together into the flour to get roughly the right temperature.
Our best baker gave him an hour of instruction (which included adding the powdered milk to the flour): cooling the hot liquid and warming the dry ingredients, and we soon ran out of durable axe throwing targets. We cooked in a portable wood fired sheet metal stove with a couple of lengths of chimney pipe to get the smoke a couple of feet above our heads. Our lousy baker, now elevated to mere mediocre, still somehow blackened the tops of the pies which he unveiled with a flourish of tea towels and a ‘Ta dahhh’. We wondered if it trampled on his rights to not have him hired the next year. But it got even worse.
On a traverse with me, he got stung by a wasp and when a rash started to spread all over him, I hurried him back out of the bush to the canoe on the lake and got him back to camp as quickly as possible. Being the party chief, I was also the emergency surgeon. I got the trusty “Ship Captain’s Medical Guide”, which was first published in the 19th Century. I turned to the chapter on snake bites and insect stings and was advised to check for ‘haemera’ in the urine before administering sulpha drug. The miserable, welted, discolored fellow peed in a jar and I expected that haemera was something I would be able to see (blood?). It looked like a garden variety sample so I gave him the drug. It took him a couple of days to recover, but now we couldn’t risk taking him out in the bush again so he became our everyday cook and baker for the remaining three months of the field season.
http://www.dieselduck.info/machine/06%20safety/Ship%20Captain%27s%20Medical%20Guide%20-%2022nd%20Ed.pdf
I know for sure I can eat 2050 bread with no problem!!! Anyway, I think the CO2 bread looks more like the kind I like.
“So this is 2050 bread.”
I don’t want bread from 2050! I want a freakin’ sports almanac from 2050!
Or a flying car…a history of the stock market…a Mr. Fusion. If magical CO2 can bring us a loaf of bread from 2050, why not something useful?
As noted in earlier comments, Half baked uttering by an utter dough head.
At the dinner table one evening (in black and white) it was all to do with the “CO2 bread pause” dont’cha’know !
Phone rings … he picks up … and says … “Hello” (then a rather long PAUSE).
“It certainly is !”, he replies (then he hangs up the phone).
“Well … who was it ?”, asks the fat one.
“It was the operator: …………. she said … it’s a long distance from New York”.
Thank you Eric for a most entertaining post: I don’t know where you get ’em from but please keep ’em coming. Wonderful stuff.
Don’t worry. Dough will be raised with a carbon tax.
Is there a connection between CO2 and my hair. I have the impression it grows faster or more than years ago??
No, that’s an impression created by the rising cost of haircuts.
“I have the impression it grows faster or more than years ago??
I can provide conclusive proof that that is not always the case.
But then, if you still have hair, I’m probably older than you, !!
As usual climate “research” is always about how much dough they can make.
“Bread in danger! Send more bread.”
Let’s see here… the sea level is rising but the bread won’t. Take a xanax and rest.
“We don’t understand completely why or if that’s the case,” (bold mine)