Guest essay by Eric Worrall
According to NASA scientist Joshua Fisher, climate change in regions which produce hops for breweries in the Pacific North West may have reached a tipping point, impacting the future availability of craft beer.
Climate change is hurting craft breweries
IRINA IVANOVA MONEYWATCH November 1, 2017, 5:00 AM
First it came for the wine. Now, climate change is set to put a damper on the world’s supply of beer.
Small breweries in the Pacific Northwest are struggling with a shortage of hops, a key ingredient in beer. Washington, Oregon and Idaho grow almost all the hops in the country, according to the US Department of Agriculture, and those states have seen increasingly harsher droughts over the past few years.
Two years ago, an unusually warm winter led to widespread drought in Washington’s Yakima Valley, a situation that could repeat itself this year. Scientists say these warm winters will likely become standard in another 50 years.
“We are reaching this kind of tipping point,” said NASA climate scientist Joshua Fisher. “What we’ve been used to in terms of how much rain we’re going to get and how plants grow is no longer the norm.”
…
Read more: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/climate-change-is-hurting-craft-breweries/
In parched Australia we’re used to climate doomsday prophets proclaiming the end of rain after every dry spell, only to see their silly predictions washed away by the next deluge.
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Looks like they missed out on the Greening of the planet…
This video was posted here years ago..
No more IPA’s?? Hallelujah!!!
You beat me to it.
Now I’m hopping mad.
Seconded. Seriously, if every hipster dbag had to go without one over-hopped nutty vanilla bubblegum “stunt beer” a week, we’d have enough hops to do what was intended to be done with them: brew real beer for adults.
I literally just thought to myself last night while buying beer that there would be a much better selection of good ales if it weren’t for this mouth breathing hipster groupthink that has caused the the shelves to be flooded with IPAs.
Even a lot of blond beers now are over hopped. I’m not sure why they (micro-brewers) think that we all want to choke down obnoxious beer. I like to try craft beer because I enjoy drinking something unique, but over hopping beer is not unique. It is just lazy brewing.
If you can see through it, it isn’t worth drinking.
IPA = Intense Pinetree Aftertaste
Give me Ambers, Ales, Porters and stouts.
As long as the Guinness keeps flowing, and not that blond abomination, life is good.
OMG! YES!
At what point did we decide that good beer meant bashing us in the mouth with hops! I love a good pale ale. Full bodied. Bright, floral hop profile. Malty. But it’s so hard to find since the “hop it to death” crowd came in. I blame climate change for that!
rip
Hoppy trails to you, until we drink again
WITBIER!
Just remember – any beer that looks the same coming out as it did going in isn’t worth renting!
Preach it! Hooray for the original definition of “ale”.
I must have strange taste, or I am an outlier. I like IPA.
Tom,
Definitely not an outlier (based on market/sales). And the fact that you have tastes similar to the “mouth breathing hipster group” as described above doesn’t make it strange, just diverse 😉
We have more than enough hops for the best quality lagers. There is no reason to waste good hops by adding it to the “craft” herbal enema liquids produced by some of these outfits.
You may notice that hops is not even mentioned in the list of herbs commonly used in colon cleansing fluids.
A lot of Australia hops come from Tassie, and of course Australia has seen no warming for 20 + years.
Hops don’t grow up there.
Eh, you been looking at one of them upside down globes? Tasmania was down there last I looked, and grows hops, but don’t let me interrupt you in continuing your comment on Andy’s graph …..
The roots are in Terra Firma, the hops are in the atmosphere.;)
poor little nickie-boy.
Hops are mainly grown in Tassie, and Victoria.(the two main regions). Some also grown in WA.
So where exactly is “up there”.???
Notice the 20 year trend for Australia Nick…
Any comment ???
“So where exactly is “up there”.???”
Where UAH measures its temperatures. If you look at the UAH temperature without anomaly, it is about -25°C.
Nick think the lapse rate has changed..
Oh dearie me !!!
Hops aren’t grown in cities or at airports, either
You are getting desperate, aren’t you, little nick.
Next you will be using BOM’s 1 second readings.. that will be funny. :-p
Anyway, this is about droughts, and the Launceston area, had the highest annual rainfall (in data from 1980-2017) in 2016.
nickie-boy sucks socks, yet again.
But the “weather” up there is reflected to the surface, don’t you know? At least according to the “physics,” Nick.
One needs to keep the players straight. “Truth” in one area comes back to bite one’s ass.
Oh yes they do , Myhree in Victoria have a large hop farm and the area was once a major hop growing area , until the brewers discovered importing cheap hops helped the bonus incentive of the CEO .
“…Hops aren’t grown in cities or at airports, either…”
LOL, good one!
Learn some geography before making silly comment. And hops grow very well indeed in Tasmania.
Nor has US temperature.
See https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/temp-and-precip/national-temperature-index/
“First it came for the wine.”
The French and other European wine crops are down this year BECAUSE OF HEAVY FROSTS. !
That’s Global warming! /sarc
Was Al Gore planning a visit to speak to AGW/CCC?
Yeah, just like the neverending droughts in Australia and California.
I must have missed the Australian never ending drought, which is strange given my family are farmers.
I know Queensland and parts of New South Wales are currently in drought but I am not sure when a couple of East Coast states became the whole of Australia.
I notice you use California, you didn’t use USA because you recognized that California is a small part of a much larger country. Perhaps you may take the time to study the MAP of Australia and come to a realization. USA has a land area of 10 million square kilometres and Australia is not far behind at 7.7 million square kilometres. It would be appreciated if you took a little more care when using the term Australia if you mean a specific area in it.
There were predictions within the past ten years that the drought in SE Australia (sorry,my knowledge of Australian geography sucks) was permanent, and one city built a rather expensive desalination plant that has never been used. In the same time frame, droughts in California and Texas were also claimed to be permanent. Both the droughts in the US ended with quite heavy rain, and I seem to remember the situation in SE Australia ended the same way.
Although the winter of 2015-2016 in Washington State was mild, the winter of 2016-2017 was very cold with much snow. The same has been predicted for this winter of 2017-2018. The hops will flourish in Washington State.
Melbourne in Victoria built a $4bn seawater desalination plant which sat idle for 4 years was started in March to produce 50 gigaliters of water. It won’t be permanently left on as it’s too expensive to run. There was some politics behind why they turned it on the State had no shortage of water at the time.
Isn’t it just to wash all the dust and cobwebs out ? 😉
Huh?! And here I thought West Coast rainfall/drought was caused by El Niño ocean current changes. You know … the ones that SUDDENLY (and without Jerry Brown’s forethought, knowledge, or prior approval) ended CA’s “neverending” drought …
“……Two years ago, an unusually warm winter led to widespread drought in Washington’s Yakima Valley, a situation that could repeat itself this year. Scientists say these warm winters will likely become standard in another 50 years….”
This is ridiculous. “could”, “likely ….in 50 years..”.
That’s not science just typical bulltish.
Guess what? It is called FARMING and crops vary from year to year.
Not really. You can’t grow hops this year, apples next year, and cherries the year after that.
“These warm winters will likely become standard..” Yes we know. Our children will not know what a “snow” was. Been there.
In 50 years. Even better.
Interesting bit of science:
I picked Portland, Oregon as an epicenter of IPA craft beer ecothusiasm and because Yakima in Washington had no entry on the Location list so….
If you go to Berkely Earth, pull up the Land and Ocean dataset
and select Results by Location, you can find Portland (USA)…..
berkeleyearth.lbl.gov/locations/45.81N-123.46W
The data for Portland, as well as for Oregon as a whole and Washington as a whole is also displayed in Mean Temperature Rate of Change ( Degrees C/Century)
It turns out that since 1990 anyhow, these places have been cooling off.
Somehow though, I don’t think that’s what was meant by ‘tipping point’ wrt. hops.
Temperature Rate of Change ( Degrees C per Century) Since 1990:
Portland, Oregon -1.62 (+/- .60)
Oregon State -0.33 (+/- .29)
Washington State -0.54 (+/- .41)
error measurement? We don’t use error measurement in temperature discussions. Eva. /sarc
I wish we did but it’s not how ‘mainstream’ science works in the climate world.
Here in Western Canada (where we drink a few beers) and grow some grain (barley, etc.), we have just had a quite dry year. Luckily, this was the first dry year in about the last 20, and crops have generally been excellent. There must be a reason why world grain stores are at record levels despite much higher population.
Cold (frost) is the enemy of crops. Not warmth.
I live just to the South East of Yakima Valley, in the southern Columbia basin region.
It is bullcrap! since Yakima Valley is a well irrigated region,getting their water from the Tieton reservoir.
The 2015 Drought was exceptional ,yet water flowed almost the whole season anyway,just a two week shutdown was all that transpired.
Drought Forces Large Group Of Yakima Valley Farmers To Turn Off The Spigot
By Anna King • May 12, 2015
The Roza Irrigation District in Eastern Washington’s Yakima Valley is shutting off the water for two weeks because of drought. About a billion dollars in crops are on the line.
The spigot is turning off at a mini-dam on an artificial river. This is the main Roza Irrigation District canal that draws water from high reservoirs. It has a gate that controls the flow of water.
Federal water managers are slowly squeezing the water down.
“What’s happening today is Roza Irrigation District is basically budgeting their water supply,” engineer Chris Lynch explained. “They’ve decided to turn their water off for a portion of May to help save water for the hotter part of the season.”
In more than 70 years, this is only the fourth time the district has had to do this.”
http://nwnewsnetwork.org/post/drought-forces-large-group-yakima-valley-farmers-turn-spigot
Here is the ROZA Irrigation districts website showing there is no water supply problem in the forecast for 2017:
http://www.roza.org/usbr-forecast/
The end result of the drought impact was to transfer some water from the Columbia to the Yakima Valley area. The Columbia River is the 8th longest river ,with the 4th largest average stream flow in America which for a short time every year,drains more water into the ocean,than anywhere else.
I live just 1 1/2 miles from the Columbia River.
Can we fire all NASA climate scientists and start buliding some cool rockets?
Now that NASA has reached out to the Muslim community at NASA … I am sure they are ready to fire rockets for Allah
Sadly, this Fool is a climate scientist at JPL. JPL does some seriously hardcore planetary space science and engineering.
So where did this fool sneak in from?
Why is he allowed to do climate pseudoscience with real planetary scientists around him?
Both JPL and especially GISS have strayed from their original foundation goals.
It was Robert Jastrow,a long tome ASTRONOMER who founded GISS in support of Space exploration. He never intended to do climate change research gor Earth itself,it was to research ATMOSPHERES for other places.
NASA’s twitter put out a tweet a while ago saying we’d hit an all time high in CO2 levels. Yeah, we’re definitely above what was likely an all time low in the last 550 million years. This sure isn’t rocket science.
RobH,
CO2, a trace gas of little consequence. But your obeisance to a quaint fable about CO2’s control on climate is humorous and sad at the same time.
Hell, we’re barely above the minimum of the last 20 million years…
By Phanerozoic standards, Earth is barely alive…
Cool Rockets ? ? ? . . .OH,. . .you mean powered by Cold Fusion. . ?. .. .Yes of course. . .I see what you mean now. . . .
It’s possible to make traditional beers without hops. link
A lot of hoppy beers taste like grapefruit. A local brewer short circuited the process and made beer with grapefruit, probably saving a bundle on hops in the process.
No hops, no problem.
Not according to German beer purity laws.
Dang Martin Luther…If it wasn’t for him… 🙂
Germans are puritan regarding beer, not so much regarding wine. they add sugar, which is a profanity.
Can one market beer without hops as “Fake Beer”?
Nope. It’s real. Usually it’s brewed as an ale. link
We were brewing beer long before we started using hops.link
It used to be that one of the major reasons for any hops shortage is that US law once prohibited anyone from entering the commercial market. If you didn’t already grow hops, you couldn’t.
Just a thought from an American taxpayer:
Maybe NASA should focus less on fake science & beer-making so they can focus more on manned vehicles that safely transport astronauts to/from space and beyond (as opposed to paying Russia for rides),
Proposed new NASA slogan: MORE SLIDE-RULES; LESS BOTTLE-OPENERS!
ps: am I the only one to get one hell of a shock when I googled “QLav”?
What did you think it was??? A bong???
Had zero idea what it was – that’s why I googled it.
Apparently you & Max are more current on this stuff than I am…
Were you bummed?
(They should have named the product End Time.)
Mods!!! Bad puns!!!! Please, DO SOMETHING!!!!! :))
Apocalypse Pale Ale.
4 Horseman Porter.
Stout of the Beast.
The mod is doing something. He’s contributing to the puns as fast as he can.
Don’t worry. The other guys are just fannying around with you.
Lol! So it’s not an electric tooth brush then?
a large self powered water-pik
The availability of hops has nothing to do with “Climate” and everything to do with insane water storage policies and government water regulations and restrictions in California…… It’s Government, not climate that is causing a shortage in hops.
It’s also supply and demand with all the micro breweries that have popped up, the demand for hops is growing.
“We are reaching this kind of tipping point,” said NASA climate scientist Joshua Fisher. Nice to know that they care for beer. Maybe for other things as well.
They must be a little tippy from too much beer.
Social hour before or after the meeting
Before, during and after.
Notice he doesn’t specify what tipping point and exactly when. He needs to tell us when they can’t grow hops so we can invest in wine futures.
Our cat has been limping a little bit and I’m blaming climate change!
It must be the paws.
Climate Paws.
There is no lunacy to which ignorant CACA spewers will not stoop.
As a PNW craft beer brewer, I can categorically state that if for some unimaginable region Yakima becomes untenable for hops, then there are the Umpqua and Rogue River valleys.
For decades and generations, hop production has alternated between the Willamette and Yakima Valleys, as soil depletion and climatic conditions have dictated. Should, in the unimaginable case, Yakima no longer be able to support hop cultivation, then we have all those more southerly valleys, as I mentioned.
But global warming should mean that Yakima will become the center of future hops production, rather than be excluded, since it’s so far farther north.
More raving lunatic insanity from know-nothing, badly educated idiots.
“First it came for the wine.”
As a wine aficionado , I have seen no decrease in quantity or quality of wine over the last decade. None. Just got some amazing reds delivered from the Paso Robles region in CA delivered for the cellar from a July tasting trip. Wines from this region just keep getting better in this emerging region as wine makers understand their grapes & land better.
I live a bit north of Paso Robles in a rural area where all my neighbors are plowing up their barley fields and planting vineyards. I think wine is in no danger of disappearing or beer either for that matter. Cheers!
warming -> opposite of droughts
More heat, more evaporation, more rain. It must be cooling.
NASA’s primary focus should be on rockets and spaceships. However, I understand the preoccupation with beer… and spirits. How else are you going to get some, ostensibly, sane person to take a ride in a cramped, confined space sitting on top of tons of high explosives? Also, it calms the nerves of the engineers that designed said high explosive conveyance. 🙂
SMC
“How else are you going to get some, ostensibly, sane person to take a ride in a cramped, confined space sitting on top of tons of high explosives?”
Built by the lowest bidders.
Hot Scot
Indeed.
Worth remembering – sometimes in the private sector, too, as well as Governmental.
Auto
They’re trying to get higher, but on a budget!
It has long been noted that when the Pacific NW US is dry, the SW US is wet, and vice versa. It was quite wet this past monsoon summer in the SW, while it was epically dry in the NW.
It has been dry for a few months now in SW. The rains will return to Pacific NW in due course.
Climatists Katherine Hayhoe and Andy Dessler both foolishly made similar Texas Perma-drought predictions for Texas about 5 years ago during the height of the Texas drought. They now are shown as being the stupid fools they are for those predictions.
Fisher is just teeing himself up to join that Fool’s Club.
So why aren’t these jokers hauled out in front of the cameras and called on it? Why are they not interviewed where the interviewer highlights their predictions and shows the actual result and the massive and often antiphase disparity between prediction and result? And then asked if they are going to stfu from here on in since they clearly have not the vaguest clue about which they speak.
Even if the claim is true, I do not view a “shortage” of hops as a bad thing.
I’m not a fan of alcohol. I discourage it but won’t go fascist banning it.
However, speaking of “public health crisis” in U.S. media regarding guns…
In 2013 29,001 died from alcohol by itself (does not include DUIs, cirrhosis or accidents, just drinking). Then imagine how many of those 35 thousand vehicular deaths were caused by alcohol?
That’s two and a half times more likely to die from just alcohol than a firearm (11,208).
Source https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/deaths.htm
Tad of a tangent I’m going on, but…
further depressing, more people commit suicide than are murdered.
I’ll drink to that!
So more people die from alcohol than from being shot? I’m pretty sure that at least 97% of tests would show that drinking is way more fun than being shot.
You need to put things in perspective istead of just spouting meaningless figures.
Some politicians can’t function without it. Churchill in the UK and Muldoon in NZ were infamous for it on the job.
Well all of those people were collectively generating lots of greenhouse gases, so it’s a positive in the world of climate change.
JerOme, meaningless numbers?
I see you’ve missed the point.
MJD,
U. Grant over on this side of the pond.
Jankowski,
Ha, that’s a positive outlook
“We are reaching this kind of tippling point…”
There, I fixed that quote for you.
Several years ago now, I drove up to Porthill, Idaho, looking for the USHCN weatherstation. Bumbling around town, I came upon a dandy little weather station that I (incorrectly) took to be what I was looking for. It was on the Anheiser-Busch hops farm right next to the Kootenai river. I don’t know whether they use irrigation or rely on natural rainfall, but there is plenty of water in that river. I walked around trying to find somebody who spoke English in what appeared to be dormitories for AB’s employees. From what I saw, I suspect the only impediment to future hops production might be difficulties in obtaining green cards for immigrant workers.
Here’s a link (hope it works) to a google aerial view.
https://www.google.com/maps/place/Idaho/@48.9957192,-116.505554,520m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m5!3m4!1s0x5358ffa885e499e9:0xd06b300515f78758!8m2!3d44.0682019!4d-114.7420408
For those who are interested, here is a writeup on the AH farm:
http://celebrator.com/features/abhopfarm/
MODS: That first link not only didn’t work, it messed up my computer to where I had to restart the Xwindows. If you could delete it?? Anyone who wants to see what the AB farm looks like can google the coordinates 48.9958 -116.5031
Xwindows? Isn’t that a bit of of date?
Juan,
Unfortunately programming incompatibility increases with older tech. I’m impressed still works for you 😉
JerOme, should believe me here, not everyone you encounter online lives first-world with all the fanciest, newest gadgets.
Getting a bit far from hops and booze here, but I will comment on the IT question. This machine’s platform is Fedora core 24. I have another that is core 26. So far as I know, Fedora has always used X. This link describes their usage as of core 12; I don’t think things have changed much.
https://docs-old.fedoraproject.org/en-US/Fedora/12/html/Deployment_Guide/ch-x.html
My concern above is that anyone clicking on my first link above may experience problems as I did.
Anheuser-Busch having a hop farm would seem a bit unnecessary, given the tastelessness of their primary product. We used to joke that they would just get the trucks of hops to drive into the brewery and straight out again without unloading, so as to give the correct appearance. True, AB-InBev as they are now have been on a buying spree and bought up a raft of smaller breweries whose products you could actually call beer, so there is a genuine need for hops in parts of their empire. I’m sure they can fix that though.
Eric…Shame…Shame…Shame.
This is what you come up with when, Down Under, we are experiencing the Worstist Evah Kangaroo Depressive Illness outbreak, in recorded history.
As a result of this Hop Shortage.
In the future Children will never know what Hopping Kangaroos are!!!!!
It is an Outrage Sir!
Delicious Kangaroo… 🙂
Bobbert,
Good form, good form lol
on the other hand maybe not burning down or blowing up the hops factories and storage might help.
http://www.theolympian.com/news/article25273030.html
https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/yakima-warehouse-fire-destroys-4-of-nations-yield-of-hops/
http://www.nbcrightnow.com/story/7115146/fire-destroys-hop-warehouse-in-moxee
hmm I guess burning down is a form of climate change.
michael
Wisconsin is hopping back on the growers wagon as well. Shortly after the Civil war ended, Wisconsin became a major source for hops used world wide, after the hop crops in New York had repetitive failures. When New York and other eastern states eventually got their crops going again, supply exceed demand and the effervescent prices went flat. Hop farming in WI fizzled out then but is finding new interest now, with the bubbling interest in craft brewing there.
If there is a viable profit to be had, Wisconsin farmers will happily provide…..