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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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far more real threat : bromated flour
http://breastcancerchoices.org/perfectstorm.html
Thanks, Donald Rumsfeld!
You’re making me hungry.
Time fixes everything at GISS. Be patient
http://s5.postimg.org/oemuicy1z/hogenised.jpg
+25%
I have good news and bad news….
On the economics front, the good news is that CO2 is an antidote for inflation!!
The bad news is that governments and corporations world-wide will ban it because they need some inflation to reduce the real size of the debt-load they carry.
the quality and variety of breads made today from wheat grown in 400 ppm Co2 is probably at least as good as the breads made in the 1920’s from wheat grown at 300 ppm
What a bombshell! Now I understand why we are spending those trillions of dollars. This problem must be fixed at any cost.I suggest solar-powered baking ovens for a start.
All posited on the foolish assumption that the use of fossil fuels have ANY effect on atmospheric CO2!
The real Achilles heal of global warming/climate change.
It honestly took me a year or two to get pretty good at making my own bread. The author is right about so many factors that affect the rise of bread. Too dry and it cracks open on rise and lets out the air. Too wet and it rises really good but flattens when you bake it. If you don’t kneed it well after the first rise, it pukes and looks bad along with it really flattens when you bake it. Not enough salt and it rises too fast and you get big air pockets. My technique is to warm the oven a hair, put a drippy towel inside, keep the light on and the rising also produces heat. It keeps the oven moist and I don’t have to cover the dough.
What phenomenal stupidity. Many cooks (including me) augment their bread flour with wheat gluten, which raises the protein level and makes a wonderfully stiff dough. Like this won’t be available in the future? Maybe I’d have to use 1 1/4 tablespoon/cup instead of 1.
Great for Jewish religious holidays!
Let them eat cake!
The comments are hilarious, but harsh. These researchers have found (by observation, not modelling) that
the proteins in wheat change under high CO2 levels. And they admit that they do not know what is going on. Better science than from most climate scientists
The problem with your comment is that their ‘science’ is being used politically, apparently with their help. The scary headline in SMH impales their nobility.
See ROM June 21, 2015 at 9:00 pm.
Considering the local and seasonal variability of co2 I find this claim very unlikely. even if true though I expect it could be adjusted for just as I was able to learn to grow bread at high elevations which proved difficult at first.
I’ve really enjoyed this comment thread, after a distressing day – thanks everyone!
As for the ‘research’ – we certainly are all doomed, if this represents the level of intelligence in universities these days. I made two loaves every three days all the years of my marriage, and no two ever emerged from the oven quite the same.
File under; everything and I mean EVERYTHING, is negatively impacted by this idiocy.
This should be the yeast of our worries
The sad part is that the taxpayers had to shell out hard earned money for this study. Or, is that “study”?
As a guy who also likes to bake bread fm time to time, i have to say i’m more than skeptical of the conclusions, given the huge number of variables involved, and total lack of information regarding protocols. I mean, for example, did they only bake the two loaves? If not, how many did they bake in their trial, and what were is the statistical analysis of the results? What were the criteria for a “better” loaf?
They might’ve done better to study the impacts of increased CO2 on the Krebs Cycle regarding beer… Fewer variables & in my experience (yep, brew my own, too), a lot easier to control for consistency than baking bread, tho’ p’raps that just illustrates my inadequacies as a baker…
Still: i think it’s remarkable, & a demonstration of a horrible waste of both imagination & entreuprenurial spirit, the lengths to which “researchers” will stretch the dread of Global Climate Farce in order to justify a grant, and an even more remarkable idiocy among those institutions, private AND public but especially public, that greenlight such grants.
They have proven nothing to me, unless to prove once again the depths to which they will stoop to further generate fear, at the expense of the Scientific Method, & the public trust in public & scientific institutions, government, etc.
Besides: given the acreage required for growing corn for biofuel, who will be even have flour to be able to bake bread if the alarmists get their way?
(Marie Antoinette? Whodat?)
Too bad the science editor at the Sydney Morning Herald failed to understand the research being done at AgFace. So let me give it a go:
(1) There is no way to avoid significant increase in CO2 concentrations over the next decades. 550 ppm by about 2050 is a sure thing.
(2) These higher CO2 concentrations will result in much higher yields (the researchers say 25%).
(3) However today’s crops have been bred and selected to make high quality foods under current CO2 conditions (up to 400 ppm).
(4) For some foods the higher yields are a total plus. Asian noodles made from wheat grown in high CO2 conditions will be as good as ever.
(5) However, bread made from today’s cultivars of wheat grown under high CO2 conditions rises more poorly than the small decrease in total protein in the wheat (3-9%) would suggest.
In order to take full advantage of yield benefits from increased concentrations of CO2, while still delivering the kind of bread that consumers want at low prices, the agriculture industry will have to develop new cultivars over the next 35 years. The researchers at AgFace believe this is eminently possible.
I’d like more research like this.
Seems unlikely that total protein amount is changing the bread quality when we have improved protein levels so highly in some cultivars the lat few decades. We improved total protein in our cereal crops by much more then 3-9% in recent decades. Those claiming such things haven’t explained what the difference is supposed to be so I doubt the entire claim.
As someone who bakes bread every week, there are many variables that have a profound effect on how well bread rises and what the final loaf will look like.
Was the wheat for both loaves harvested from the same field? Where both grains ground by the same milling machine? Were the same stand mixers used for both loaves? Were both doughs machine-kneaded for the exact same period of time? Were both loaves allowed to rise for the exact same time? Was the humidity and temperature the same during the rising process? Were both loaves baked in the same place in the same oven? Were the consistencies of the doughs exactly the same for both loaves? If the dough consistencies were different, was the water/flour content adjusted accordingly? Etc., etc., etc.
There are so many variables that have a profound effect on the final loaf. To blame artificially adjusted CO2 levels on the differences between the two loaves is absurd.
What effect did the artificial CO2 gas piping have on plants? Pressurized CO2 is very cold when it leaves the pipes. What effect did this cold air have on the wheat?… Was this accounted for?
When they laid the CO2 piping, did digging process affect the composition of the soil where the wheat was grown?
This is junk science….
Eric Worrall said: “To ignore all of this, and conclude that CO2 shrunk the slightly stunted loaf, in my opinion seems utterly absurd, even for climate science.”
How do you know that all those other variables were ignored?
There are articles like this every day here in Australia, and some times we are treated to more than one per day. Gutter “science” at it’s best.
That’s Glenn James Fitzgerald, of the Victorian DEDJTR (it used to be Environment and Primary Industries). Some of the background to this imaginative claim is online at https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Glenn_Fitzgerald
Cut their funding! Please, someone, ANYONE, cut their funding!