Rising beer prices due to Global Warming????

It's bad enough we get to hear about all the hype of Global Warming.

But now they're going to blame rising beer prices on it? hahahha...

H/T: Beer Therapy

Scientist warns global warming will push up beer prices

Jim Salinger, a climate scientist at New Zealand’s National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research, says climate changeLearning-to-Love-Global-Warming likely will cause a decline in the production of malting barley in parts of New Zealand and Australia.
“It will mean either there will be pubs without beer or the cost of beer will go up,” Salinger told the Institute of Brewing and Distilling convention.
His is a longterm prediction, looking 30 years out, although brewersCanning-Craft-Beer around the world experienced the domino effect of a poor crop in Australia last year. China, which now consumes more beer than any country in the world, relies heavily on barley malt from Australia. When that wasn’t available prices around the world went up.
“It will provide a lot of challenges for the brewing industry,” even forcing breweriesCraft-Beer-Investment to look at new varieties of malt barley as a direct result of climate change, Salinger said.
Similar effects are expected worldwide, and barley prices also will be affected as farmers are find it lucrative to grow crops other than intended for malt.

Personally I am more inclined to agree with Karlis'

There's no free lunch....

Good Morning, and here is my environmental rant for the day. Don't usually like to discuss things like this in this blog, but this is directly related to beer. Today I received an email from Northern Brewer discussing how the supply of hops will not meet worldwide demand for the next two years. This is on top of what we have all seen with rising beer prices this year.

Now what the Northern Brewer article didn't mention, is why there is a shortage of hops? And why have beer prices overall increased as well? Of course rising petroleum costs are raising prices of everything we buy. But that's not it by itself. One of the main reasons for hops shortage is the energy trend towards biofuels like ethanol. At first glance you might not see the correlation, but it's there.

What will they think of next?....