Welcome to DU!
The truly grassroots left-of-center political community where regular people, not algorithms, drive the discussions and set the standards.
Join the community:
Create a free account
Support DU (and get rid of ads!):
Become a Star Member
Latest Breaking News
General Discussion
The DU Lounge
All Forums
Issue Forums
Culture Forums
Alliance Forums
Region Forums
Support Forums
Help & Search
16 of your favorite things that climate change is totally screwing up
http://grist.org/climate-energy/16-of-your-favorite-things-that-climate-change-is-totally-screwing-up/***SNIP
?w=470&h=111
Climate change endangers clean water, quality barley, and ample hops. A study from 2009 suggested that the quality of Saaz hops from the Czech Republic has been falling since 1954 due to warmer temperatures. This is true for hops-growing regions across Europe. Smaller brewers like Colorado’s New Belgium Brewing Company understand the seriousness of the problem, as the company’s sustainability director said in 2011, “If you drink beer now, the issue of climate change is impacting you right now. … Craft brewers — the emphasis there is on craft. We make something, and it’s a deeply agricultural product.”
?w=470&h=111
Football practice starts up in high schools every summer, and the hottest part of the year keeps getting hotter. Schools began to notice a trend: Their players were dying more and more frequently due to heat stress, three times as frequently from 1994 to 2009. While increasing heat is not the only factor for these heat deaths (increasing obesity being another), rising temperatures are having serious impacts on the safety of high school and college football. So Arkansas, Arizona, Connecticut, North Carolina, New Jersey, and Texas all started to implement rules that limit practice time when the field gets too hot. Climate also messes with football in between heat waves, as drought has been drying up football fields and killing grass. Switching to artificial turf might make things greener, but because synthetic materials can get up to 100 degrees F hotter than regular grass, tackling becomes even more dangerous than normal.
?w=470&h=111
Maple trees are not featuring as brilliant colors in the fall, and the sap they let out is not as sweet. Researchers think that this has to do with the fact that the amount of time the trees keep their leaves has grown longer, which makes the sap that comes out when syrup producers tap into the tree less sweet. Therefore more sap is required to make syrup, and it tastes different. According to a Cornell study, in 100 years, maple syrup production south of Pennsylvania will likely stop altogether because the trees will not freeze at all.
?w=470&h=111
Walking through the woods, alert hikers watch for small plants with trefoil, shiny leaves: poison ivy. Yet because the itchy plant thrives on higher temperatures and increased carbon dioxide levels, avoiding the plant is only getting more difficult. The potency and spread of poison ivy has doubled since 1960, and researchers say that will double again should the planet reach 560 ppm of carbon dioxide (current readings recently broke 400 ppm).
9 replies
= new reply since forum marked as read
= new reply since forum marked as read
I was so looking forward to that. Oh well, we'll just have to make do without it, I guess. 
