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Sustainable Systems Analysis Group
News | media coverage of our INFEWS products
Climate Change's Effect on Beer Production Worldwide
The Daily Show with Trevor Noah | October 16, 2018
"Climate change. Sometimes it feels so hopeless that all you want to do is get drunk and forget about it. Well, sadly, that won't be an option--because of cliamte change. ... Oh man, they're trying so hard to get people to care about climate change. Right? No, because if you tell Americans that in 10 years the Marshall Islands will be underwater, no one cares, but tell them Corona will cost more, now they're marrching in the streets! C'mon!"
Heat and Drought Could Threaten World Beer Supply
New York Times | October 15, 2018
"In a report in Nature Plants, researchers in China, Britain and the United States say that by the end of the century, drought and heat could hurt barley crops enough to cause intense pain to beer drinkers. Imagine a worst case of a 20 percent drop in supply in the United States, or a doubling of prices per bottle in Ireland. That’s no abstract end of civilization talk; that’s an empty display case at the Stop ’N Go.
Global warming to leave us crying in our costlier beer
AP | October 15, 2018
"Increasing bouts of extreme heat waves and drought will hurt production of barley, a key beer ingredient, in the future. That means beer prices on average would double, even adjusting for inflation, according to the study in Monday’s journal Nature Plants. Study co-author Steve Davis of the University of California, Irvine, said the beer research was partly done to drive home the not-that-palatable message that climate change is messing with all sorts of aspects of our daily lives."
Trouble Brewing? Climate Change Closes In on Beer Drinkers
Scientific American | October 15, 2018
"Even if you didn’t notice beer price fluctuations following those years—2014 and 2017—consumers probably will in the near future. Climate change will make extreme events like prolonged droughts and heat waves more severe and frequent, says Steven Davis, an earth systems scientist at the University of California, Irvine. That, in turn, could make beer (the vast majority of which is brewed with barley) dizzyingly expensive, according to study results Davis and his research team published Monday in Nature Plants."
We have no idea how to eliminate 25% of energy emissions
MIT Tech Review | June 28, 2018
"A new paper in Science offers a stark reminder that there are still huge parts of the global energy system where we simply don’t have affordable ways of halting greenhouse-gas emissions. Air travel, long-distance transportation and shipping, steel and cement manufacturing, and remaining parts of the power sector account for 27 percent of global emissions from the energy and industrial sectors. And the authors say we need much more research, innovation, and strategic coordination to clean up these sources."
The US Could Supply 80% of Its Energy with Wind and Solar
VICE | February 27, 2018
"A new report in Energy and Environmental Science shows that a conversion to an 80% solar and wind-based energy system is possible..[with] advancement in energy storage technologies or hundreds of billions of dollars invested in renewable energy infrastructure. 'The sun sets and the wind doesn’t always blow,' Steven Davis, an associate professor of Earth system science at UC Irvine, said in a statement. 'If we want a reliable power system based on these resources, how do we deal with their daily and seasonal changes?''"