AccuWeather Forecasting Senior Director Dan DePodwin and AccuWeather Climate Expert Brett Anderson discuss top headlines related to climate change in the Dec. 13 edition of Climate In The News.
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00:00Today, we're covering two climate stories, both on how climate change has direct impacts
00:05on things that you use every day.
00:07The first here from Inside Climate News about the price of coffee and how that coffee price
00:13has really significantly increased over the last several decades, Brett, and it seems
00:17like it's mainly due to drought and significant drought in some cases in some of the major
00:22coffee-producing countries across the world.
00:24Yeah, drought caused by climate change and El Nino recently, with El Nino coffee prices
00:30at a 47-year high now, and again, most of this drought is occurring in these prime growing
00:35areas, Brazil and Vietnam.
00:38Projections though with climate change are that nearly half of these growing areas may
00:43not be suitable for growing coffee by the middle of the century if we continue to warm
00:48at the current rate.
00:49Yeah, and as a coffee drinker, it's certainly concerning to me.
00:52I only use a drink one cup a day at least, but it seems also too that many of these coffee,
00:57either coffee producers or coffee companies that sell coffee are looking at other countries
01:02or places to start buying farms to be able to produce coffee in places that may not have
01:07these extreme conditions that are causing the reduced output of coffee.
01:10Exactly.
01:11Central America is being looked at.
01:13Also, Cuba by some European coffee makers is also looking at diversification is another
01:19option for some of these companies to use multiple sources in order to obtain the coffee
01:25at a reasonable price.
01:27One other option they've also looked at is replacing coffee beans with chickpeas or barley
01:32as a last minute correction to that problem.
01:37Well, I hope we do not get to that point.
01:40So moving from the coffee to the energy it takes to produce your coffee every day, the
01:46U.S. energy markets have been impacted by climate change in many different ways.
01:50Five covered in this article from Bloomberg.
01:53We'll focus on just a few of those here, one being the warmer winters and another being
01:59the reduction in hydroelectric power.
02:01Yeah, warmer winters means less usage of natural gas.
02:05So we're seeing an excess of natural gas in some of these storage facilities.
02:09And what do they do with it?
02:12These companies lose money because the price goes down.
02:15So the option is to export some of this.
02:17That's one option for that.
02:19In terms of hydropower on the Pacific Northwest, the summer is getting drier and therefore
02:23the rivers are not running as strong or they're very low and the result is less electricity
02:29generation from hydropower.
02:31Most importantly, or certainly significantly important, is the impact of hurricanes.
02:35It's the most costly natural disaster that impacts the U.S. and how that also hits the
02:40energy markets too.
02:42With climate change, as we've been saying for a long time now, not necessarily more
02:46hurricanes, but stronger, more intense hurricanes, and obviously with a stronger, more intense
02:51hurricane coming in the Gulf of Mexico, there's a greater risk for a shutdown of some of these
02:55oil and gas production facilities in the Gulf of Mexico, which leads to higher prices.
03:00Well, thanks, Brett.
03:01Really, from the hurricanes in the Gulf of Mexico to warmer winters and dry conditions
03:06in parts of the country in the U.S. and the Northwest, as well as parts of the world causing
03:10those increased coffee prices, wide-ranging issues from climate change.
03:14For those stories and more climate information, you can find that at accuweather.com slash
03:19climate.