Thursday, January 15, 2009
Never mind higher temperatures, melting ice caps and disappearing habitats. Climate change may have a negative effect on something truly close to many college students’ hearts — the price and availability of beer.
Rome Hines, bartender and waitress at the Free State Brewing Company, prepares a glass of Ad Astra Ale on Wednesday night. Scientists have predicted that global climate change may impact barley crop yield.
John Gawin, Abilene senior (right), sits at the Jackpot Music Hall on Monday night, discussing Greenpeace's role in the Lawrence community during the "Save the Ales" event.
According to an Associated Press article published in April, scientists predicted climate change would make growing malting barley more difficult in the coming decades, driving up the cost of beer.
With that in mind, Lawrence Greenpeace volunteers organized a recruitment event Monday called “Save the Ales” at Jackpot Music Hall, 943 Massachusetts St.
Attendees wrote letters to President-elect Barack Obama and other political leaders, encouraging them to enact climate-friendly policies.
Katie Lothamer, Olathe sophomore, organized the event and said the group’s intent was to use the threat to beer to grab students’ attention, arouse interest in climate change and involvement with Greenpeace.
“It’s not really about the beer,” John Gawin, Greenpeace intern, said. “It just shows you how climate change can effect even small things.”
Lily Siebert, Greenpeace intern and Lawrence sophomore, said climate change was the “most unifying cause out there — there’s nothing it doesn’t effect.”
Greenpeace started its Lawrence chapter last summer. The organization’s student volunteers are looking for a University faculty adviser so the group can become an official on-campus group, Siebert said.
Siebert said the group currently had nine interns and about 20 students and Lawrence residents who volunteered on a regular basis.
Val Smith, professor of environmental studies, said opportunities to work with Greenpeace came “with pluses and minuses.”
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Greenpeace also provides the following tips:
— Fix any leaky faucets, toilets or water pipes. Even a small drip can add up to a lot of water over time.
— Turn your heat down on warmer days.
— Avoid using cars — walk, cycle or use public transportation whenever possible.
— Buy locally — not only is it good for the local economy, it will save energy because products haven’t traveled across the globe to get to you.
— Take your own bags to the grocery store. If you take plastic bags, use them until they are worn out.
— Always use reusable mugs, lunch containers, batteries, pens, razors, etc.
— Replace paper products with reusable ones (use recycled, non-chlorine bleached paper when you do have to use paper).
Source: Greenpeace.org
“They’re activists, and they want to do good,” Smith said. “But sometimes what they do is too emotion-based and not always science-based.”
Siebert said the group’s goals for the spring semester were to reach out to more Lawrence residents and to continue to put pressure on Congressman Dennis Moore to follow through with proposed climate-change policies. Siebert said Kansas Greenpeace members considered Moore’s stance on climate change to be one of their biggest successes.
“It got to the point that Moore’s secretary told us, ‘Stop calling us — we’re going to do what you say,’” Siebert said. “Which was good to hear.”
— — Edited by Andrew Wiebe
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Comments
Global warming threatens future beer production
It would be nice to see an actual debate over the merits of the theory of catastrophic anthropogenic global warming before placing something like this on the front page.
With links to arguments from both sides (some of them even scientific, at that) www.climatedebatedaily.com is a good start.
Global warming threatens future beer production
While we're at it, let's make sure we get quotes from Holocaust deniers in every story about concentration camps or WWII memorials. And please someone call up the Phelps family next time there is a gay rights piece.
Not every point of view deserves a platform for to spread misinformation.
The debate is nonexistent. The scientific consensus is in. Global climate change is real and human involvement in climate change is real.
Global warming threatens future beer production
The anthropogenic theory of climate change depends on the validity of the hypothesis that increased concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere are the driving force behind global temperature change. There is also the idea that we will reach a certain critical threshold concentration at which point catastrophic climate change will be irreversible.
The current concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is about 385 parts per million. During the Ordovician era (450 mya) there was a mean concentration of about 4000 ppm, yet the average surface temperature on Earth was about 5-10 degrees C lower than it is today. How can CO2 be the driving force behind climate change if its concentration was 10 times higher than what it is now yet the global surface temperature was considerably lower? How can there be a "tipping point" in contemporary times if 4000 ppm is not enough to cause one?
Observations of the Vostok ice cores (those used by Al Gore in "An Inconvenient Truth" to demonstrate the correlation between temperature and CO2 concentration over the past several hundred thousand years,) show that CO2 concentrations did INDEED vary with temperature, but they did so 800 years after temperature changes occured. How can CO2 be the driver in climate change if changes in its concentration fall behind changes in temperature by nearly a millenium?
Climate modelers and other scientists theorize that if CO2 is the driving force behind climate change, there will be a band of altitude in the troposphere at which we should see increased temperatures via radiosonde and satellite data. There has been no demonstrated increase in temperature in the troposphere without the use of questionable statistical methods that are indeed being argued over today.
Basic physics and chemistry textbooks will tell you that radiation absorption occurs by the law of diminishing returns for all gases in our atmosphere. This means that for every, say, 50 ppm of CO2 that goes into our atmosphere, there is a smaller and smaller effect on the overall change in temperature at a constant level of solar activity. The first 50 ppm, of course, are the most important. Without this minimum CO2 concentration the temperature of Earth would be about 18 degrees C lower than it is now on average and we would be unable to survive. Add another 50 and you get a smaller change, ad infinitum. We are at a point in the slope where doubling CO2 concentration is expected to have a small effect on global temperature.
The idea that a scientific debate can ever be nonexistent is fallacious at worst and manipulative at best. A theory is not scientific if it cannot be disproven by contrary evidence. To say that the debate is over and then try to shut me out by comparing me to a Holocaust denier and the Phelps family is despicable and offensive.
Global warming threatens future beer production
Pump, I would appreciate it if you could spare us some time and explain which of connerm's points fit into your definition of "misinformation." Thanks in advance.
Global warming threatens future beer production
I say connerm wins, but that may be because pump strikes me as a self-righteous hippie.
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