Australian Report Predicts Global Coffee Shortage Will Get Worse

It's hard to know where to start in dismissing this nonsense.  All that global warming would do for ANY crop is to shift polewards the areas where it was grown.  There is no conceivable reason for an OVERALL shortage.  There are always new areas opening up for coffee growing anyway. 

Secondly, the current problem is described as drought.  Yet a warming world would mean a wetter world so warming could in fact SOLVE problems of coffee growing!

Thirdly, if they understood any economics they would know that any lasting reduction in supply would cause price increases and sustained price increases would then draw out more supply.  Australia's empty North, for instance, could undoubtedly be opened up to coffee growing in some parts.  There is already a small operation on the Atherton Tableland.  They even grow Arabica there


A new report from Australia's Climate Institute predicts that by 2050, global warming will make at least half of the land currently used for coffee production unable to produce quality beans.

By 2080, it cautions, hot temperatures could make wild coffee plants completely extinct. Although this report is projecting what will happen to supplies in decades to come, the coffee shortage isn't really off in the distant future.

It's already started to fall.  Brazil -- the source for over a third of the world's coffee -- has seen its coffee stores dip dramatically in the last two years as the result of a long drought.  So far, unusually large harvests in other world coffee markets helped to make up most of the difference.

But we can hardly expect these big harvests to continue. In fact, their trend may actually reverse.

Much of Brazil's latest shortfall was made up for by a record-breaking coffee harvest in Honduras -- which is a coffee-growing area that this new report says will probably be hit particularly hard in the coming decades.

Even the relatively smaller shift from Brazil's shortage in the last couple years resulted in a price surge and a jump in counterfeit coffee beans (which pretend to be fancier coffee varieties than they are).

With the spread of the shortage, we can only expect to see rising coffee prices and counterfeiting show up as even more of a problem in our daily cups.

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African crime out of control in Melbourne

This is the thanks Australia gets for taking them in as refugees

Terrified Melbourne residents are fortifying their homes amid a spree of African Apex gang home invasions

Terrified Melbourne residents are fitting their homes with secure metal doors and sophisticated alarm systems in a desperate bid to remain safe from the Apex gang.

A spree of gang-related break ins and violent carjackings in the city's south-east has seen a huge surge in business for security companies cashing in on the state of fear.

Multifit Security Doors managing director Rick Hyland told the Herald Sun that his company had seen a 30 per cent increase in demand this year alone.

He said most of his clients were from Dandenong and Cranbourne, suburbs where the predominantly Sudanese street gang has run riot the past 12 months.

'The Apex gang has created a lot of issues,' Mr Hyland said.  'Ten years ago home invasions were unheard of but now it's a weekly thing.'  'One of the jobs we have just done was for a pet food supplies store and we had to urgently do a door for them; we have had three cars stolen from our street as well.'

A Melbourne security alarm system business told the Herald Sun that they too had experienced a huge surge in business across the past six months.

The company said that families were requesting to have sophisticated camera and alarm systems installed to keep them safe while they were sleeping.

Earlier this month it was revealed that Melbourne families were resorting to fortifying their homes with barbed wires to protect themselves from the Apex gang.  ‘I will be doing this soon. It's either barbed wire or broken glass siliconed around the top of the fence,’ one resident said in a thread about barbed wire being used on properties in the area.

‘Go the glass. They might see barbed wire and look for another way in but the glass would be easier to keep hidden until it's too late,’ replied one.

Residents in the street where a 12-year-old girl was threatened with death during a violent carjacking linked to the Apex gang last month told Daily Mail Australia they are terrified to leave their homes.

The shocking incident has left neighbours so frightened that one couple, who have lived in the street for 40 years, will not leave the house at night. 'I am a man and I am too scared to go for walks in my own street,' the man said. 'It is scary to even sleep - I am keeping a metal bar beside my bed in case they come inside.'

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Leftist hate speech reprimanded

Labor leader Bill Shorten has been confronted by a preacher imploring him not to describe opponents of same-sex marriages as homophobic.

Mr Shorten was addressing reporters after leaving a parliamentary church service in Canberra on Tuesday when the man asked for a word.

He picked up on a comment the opposition leader made after the Orlando nightclub shooting that the plebiscite campaign would "give haters the chance to come out from under the rock".

"Please don't speak like that about other Australians so we can have a civil and tolerant discussion rather than the hate that's been coming," the man said. "That was disappointing, and I like you and I like the Labor party."

Mr Shorten replied he understood people of faith could be opposed to same-sex marriage. "But some people who object to marriage equality do have homophobic attitudes," he said.

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Pauline mentions the unmentionable

Note that nobody could refute her.  All they could do was splutter.  What she described is common in Britain and Germany but I don't know how common it is here

Pauline Hanson left her Senate colleagues dumbfounded when she accused polygamist Muslims of rorting the taxpayer during a Sky News debate last night.

While the One Nation senator's assertion that was she was "going to be controversial" initially seemed redundant, her fellow crossbenchers almost fell off their chairs listening to Ms Hanson's remarks.

"You’ve got people out there, of Muslim background, they’re actually having four wives, numerous children, they’re getting into housing commission houses, we’re actually paying for that, and that is not right," Ms Hanson said.

Derryn Hinch, who had jokingly asked earlier if the debate would be protected by parliamentary privilege, could only stare at Ms Hanson with the kind of inscrutable expression usually associated with the onset of an aneurysm.

Nick Xenophon, meanwhile, was quick to remonstrate with Ms Hanson, pointing out that polygamy is illegal in Australia.

"But it's happening!" Ms Hanson retorted.

"You can't single out one religion and pick on them," Mr Xenophon argued.

"I'm sorry, it's happening, that is the religion, so don't bury your head in the sand," Ms Hanson said.

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South Australian cop loses it

A SENIOR police officer has been charged with a range of serious offences over a domestic dispute and siege at Blackwood earlier this month that locked down part of the suburb.

Chief Inspector Ashley Francis Gordon, 54, was charged on Tuesday with aggravated stalking, aggravated serious criminal trespass, making unlawful threats, threatening to cause harm, disturbing the public peace and possessing unsecured ammunition in relation to the incident.

Gordon appeared in the Adelaide Magistrates Court on Tuesday afternoon where he was refused bail.

The court heard the incident occurred after the breakdown of Gordon’s long-term marriage.

Chief Magistrate Mary-Louise Hribal remanded Gordon in custody, citing the seriousness of the charges.

Police allege Gordon sparked the siege at a unit on Main Rd at Blackwood just after 9pm on Sunday, August 14.

Dozens of STAR Group officers surrounded the home at the height of the siege and paramedics and firefighters were called to the scene on standby.

Main Rd between East Terrace and the Blackwood roundabout was blocked off to all traffic and the public was kept well away from the area until the siege ended about 12.15am.

Gordon was detained and taken to the Flinders Medical Centre for a mental health assessment.

Police also issued Gordon with a Police Interim Intervention Order.

“Police warn that they will not tolerate domestic violence and will take every action available to protect victims,” a spokeswoman said in a statement.

Gordon has served in several high-ranking positions over a lengthy career spanning almost 30 years in the force, including as officer-in-charge of the Transit Services Branch and in senior roles with South Coast and Sturt police.

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Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.).    For a daily critique of Leftist activities,  see DISSECTING LEFTISM.  To keep up with attacks on free speech see Tongue Tied. Also, don't forget your daily roundup  of pro-environment but anti-Greenie  news and commentary at GREENIE WATCH .  Email me  here