Global Warming is good news for Costa Rica coffee growers
Global Warming has struck again, this time blessing the Costa Rican highlands with the ability to grow coffee in higher altitudes.
In Costa Rica, the temperature increases may help transform mountainous land that was once too chilly for delicate coffee trees into prime coffee-planting territory.
The strictly hard-bean Arabica coffee sought by specialty roasters is only found at high altitudes, so the shift could mean more opportunities for a country already known for its quality coffee.
“We can now plant at 2,000 meters (6,562 feet). We didn’t plant there before,” said Daniel Urena, an agronomist for the Coopedota coffee cooperative, which sells its high-altitude coffee to buyers such as Starbucks Corp.
Urena said the cooperative’s coffee plants traditionally have not survived above 1,800 meters (5,906 feet).
Of course the article had to add some gloom and doom aspects like “unusual cold snaps” which has me scratching my head (If we are actually experiencing global warming, shouldn’t there be less “unusual cold snaps”?). The article goes on to say that many farms in Africa and Brazil will be hurt by a warming world, but does hint on the fact that a lot of the “problems” can be mitigated by simply educating farmers on better agricultural methods.
Anyways, it was nice to see that the media is beginning to acknowledge that rising global temperatures do have some benefits (which I think outweigh the negative impacts)
June 26th, 2008 at 11:00 am
Not to sound like a know-it-all, but I believe the unusual cold snaps have to do with shifting weather patterns. As the temperatures increase overall, it causes changes in wind patterns, ect. which could cause strange weather in addition to overall higher global temperatures. Unfortunately, the complex web of feedback loops that dictates climate change is not understood enough by scientists to accurately predict the outcome of global warming. In fact, even with the additional greenhouse gases from humans, the climate may balance itself out. But again, I don’t believe that the system is understood enough to say that the benefits outweigh the negatives. That’s like saying jumping off a cliff isn’t a bad idea because you may land in something soft and find gold. (Yeah, I know, bad analogy.)
June 26th, 2008 at 12:53 pm
Invent This:
I was trying to make the point (which I obviously failed at) that this change that may be occurring is obviously a lot more complicated than just calling it “global warming.” As you may have noticed, they are now mainly calling it global “climate change” hinting that it might not be a complete warming (I mainly attribute this to the fact that many of the alarmist want to give themselves an explanation for why many region, including large parts of the southern hemisphere, have actually been cooling). This particular article refers to “climate change” so they do seem to acknowledge this. I just wanted to point out the idea of what most people think about global warming (the whole world is experiencing the same warming affect) is not correct.
As for the benefits part, I still think that a strong case can be made that we will, as a whole, benefit from a warmer world. For instance, deaths do to the cold will drastically decrease while heat deaths slightly increase (and overall decrease in death).
The warming we are experiencing is showing up mainly in the winter and at night. Therefore, daytime temperatures haven’t increase that much. This can lead to longer growing seasons with less chances of damaging frosts.
Given, regions such as Africa will be hit harder by a warmer world but it would be much easier (and would actually help them more) to just give them financial aid directly to improve crop techniques.
Even though higher temperatures mean more evaporation, it also means more rain which has the net benefit of more water as long as people have the technology to store it (again, cheaper to give them aid for storage.
Again, these are just some of the few “benefits” that can be seen in a warmer world. Given, any changes that occur will take some time to adapt but when you look at the whole, in our history, we have always been more prosperous in warmer worlds than colder worlds.
I’m planning on writing an article in the future about the many benefits that can be attributed to a warmer world so look for that to come. Sorry about not being as clear or in dept in my explanations. Hopefully this clears up what I wrote.
June 26th, 2008 at 3:54 pm
It should also be noted that I fall into the category of Global Warming skeptics that believe the sun plays a large part in determining our climate. Therefore, with the recent drop off in sun spot activity, I am more worried about global cooling than any long term global warming. Any warming we are experiencing now is benefiting us and will benefit us up until a certain point (a point that has been much debated)
June 27th, 2008 at 4:25 pm
That helps a lot, although to be honest I’m still rather skeptical about the whole benefits thing. I’m looking forward to that post about the benefits.