ABOVE: A barley field
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In a collaboration that came about over drinks, an international team of climate researchers has modelled the effects of climate change on barley and beer production. Their predictions, published today (October 15) in Nature Plants, include a drop of 3 percent to 17 percent in barley yields by 2099, a decrease in the supply of beer, and sharp increases in prices.
“Climate change will affect all of us, not only people who are in India or African countries,” coauthor Dabo Guan of the University of East Anglia in the UK tells Reuters.
CNN reports that Guan and others hatched the idea for the study when they went out for beers in China after a series of lectures. They used climate change data to model the projected effects on barley yields and the economic response to those changes. Under the most severe scenario for a ...
