How climate change could change the taste of your tea
By Paul Homewood
h/y alexei
It’s like Whack-a Mole!
Trouble is brewing for Britain’s beloved cup of tea, as a report warns climate change means it might start tasting worse.
Extreme weather and rising temperatures could lead to inferior quality leaves that could hit the taste, according to a report by Christian Aid.
Kenya, the world’s biggest exporter of black tea, faces more erratic rainfall, making floods and droughts more common, and increasing temperatures. Other major tea-producing countries – including India, Sri Lanka and China – are likely to be affected too.
Research suggests climate change is going to slash optimal conditions for tea production in Kenya by 26 per cent by 2050, and areas with only average growing conditions will see production fall by 39 per cent by the middle of the century.
The warning comes as the UK prepares to host the G7 meeting of major economies next month – where Boris Johnson has said climate, and finance for poor countries to cope with global warming, will be centre stage. Britain will also host the key UN Cop26 climate talks in Glasgow in November.
Dr Kat Kramer, Christian Aid’s climate policy lead, said: "As host of both the G7 in June and the Cop26 climate summit in November, the UK can ensure that countries on the front line of this crisis can adapt and respond to the impacts of climate change.
"With countries starting to announce improved climate plans, there is a unique opportunity to accelerate cuts in emissions and boost the finance needed to help countries adapt to the changing climate."
Richard Koskei, 72, a tea farmer from Kericho in Kenya’s Western Highlands, said: "Climate change poses a real threat to us. We cannot predict seasons any more, temperatures are rising, rainfall is more erratic, more often accompanied by unusual hailstones and longer droughts which was not the case in the past.
"If this continues then it will make growing tea much harder and life for us extremely difficult."
Fiachra Moloney, of the PG Tips maker Unilever, said: "In East Africa, where so much of our tea comes from, climate change is putting the livelihoods of the people who grow tea for us at risk.
"We call on governments to bring forward ambitious climate targets, policies and plans ahead of Cop26 that will help us all work together to limit global average temperature rise to 1.5C."
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/05/10/climate-change-could-change-taste-tea/
Meanwhile, back in the real world:
http://www.fao.org/faostat/en/#compare
No doubt it is pure coincidence (!), but this week just happens to be Christian Aid’s Appeal Week – please cough up, or you cup of tea will get it!
Access to clean water is certainly a worthwhile objective, but thanks to economic growth tremendous strides have been made with this in Africa. The idea that Africa never suffered from droughts and heavy rain in the past is just silly, and quite frankly fraudulent:
https://ourworldindata.org/water-access
I wonder which mole the Telegraph will put up tomorrow?
Comments are closed.
NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
I started keeping a list of things that anthropogenic climate change via the magic molecule could lead to. Trouble is, I’ve run out of computer memory.
I stopped keeping track before I ran out of the will to live.
The guy who created this partial list gave up 9 years ago:
http://www.numberwatch.co.uk/warmlist.htm
Ian
That surely proves it. If it wasn’t for Catastrophic AGW your computer would have had lots of memory. It decreases by 9.7% for each degree rise in temperature. Fancy you not knowing that!
Ahh climatereason – that explains it. Thank you for that gem – who knew?
I see that the report’#s authors are not named. Is this for fear of shaming?
Part of the justification for all of the climate madness is always anonymous: “experts say”, “scientists say”, but “reporters say” is surely stretching things, even for the torygraph.
I like the use of whack-a-mole to show how these activists are getting away with rank dishonesty; however, one choses whether to play whack-a-mole – these clowns give us no choice but to play.
Incidentally, I visited several of the Kericho tea factories a couple of years ago and tea-yields were clearly increasing: the factories were expanding, however, the mole must appear…..
I noticed that too!
I noted the Christian aid envelope come though the door the other day. Climate change was mention – binned it straight away. It does occur to me that ever since I was at school (60+ years ago) our local church was collecting for needy people in Africa then. Makes me wonder how much money has been given to good causes in that continent over the years, yet it doesn’t seem to have made much difference.
A very good point. It would be instructive to calculate how much aid has been given to Africa since, say 1960, when most countries started to get their independence. And let them ‘off set’ that (and the investment we made during the colonial years) against any claims for ‘reparations’ that may be coming our way soon. I remember a few years ago reading that in the early 1960s many African countries (Kenya, Tanzania, Nigeria, Zimbabwe/Rhodesia, Zambia) were as rich as countries in Asia such as Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, South Korea…. yet look at the situation now and how far Asian nations have pulled themselves up to economic development. Whereas in Africa…..
A good friend of my 92 year old mother busts a blood vessel any time she sees “aid” begging especially water aid for African countries. She says “My husband spent 40 years of his life supplying clean water all over British dependencies in Africa. What happened to his work?” They lived in Kenya and when he finally retired and returned to the UK he left behind a viable and “sustainable” water supply infrastructure certainly in that country. All gone…..
Britain can’t pay ‘reparations’ until it receives reparations from the Romans for invading and enslaving the British.
After all ‘what did the Romans ever do for us?’ 😉
And as for what the Normans owe!
Time for France to give us back Normandy!
At independence and during UDI Zimbabwe was the breadbasket of Africa . After Mugabe came to power it became the basket case of Africa
There is a very apposite definition of aid “The transfer of money from poor people in rich countries to rich people in poor countries”.
I recall visiting Kenya in the early 70s. Although Jomo Kenyatta was a wealthy man; investment was obviously going into the country’s infrastructure. My second visit in the mid 90s coincided with another wealthy President, Daniel arap Moi. This time the infrastructure was getting much worse. I wonder why?
On this latter visit there was an editorial in ‘The Nation’, the national newspaper (run by Kenyans). It was asking for GB to come back as a colonial power again, because all the previous British colonies in Africa, including Kenya, were seen as having gone backwards due to massive corruption amongst the political elite.
QED?
I don’t know, JBW, many African leaders have done very nicely thanks to our aid. Big palaces, fleets of cars, well-equipped armies, etc.
It is not just the DT that is peddling this rot, a quick google shows that a lot of the major media outlets are running the same story. Funnily enough, not the BBC … yet!
Greta Thunberg’s racism doesn’t allow coal fired power stations to be built in sub Saharan Africa. Luckily the Chinese are doing it.
Oh more from the “climate experts” in Christian Aid.
Notice the use of the default “COULD” word, so popular among those promoting the climate fantasy for money. Meanwhile, back in the real world, empirical data based science uses “WAS”” IS” and “WILL”.
“We call on governments to bring forward ambitious climate targets, policies and plans ahead of Cop26 that will help us all work together to limit global average temperature rise to 1.5C.”
How can any intelligent person believe we can control the temperature of the world at all, let alone to some specific level and within a certain timeframe. Suppose they they can and it goes too far…..oops it been cold this April, release more co2.
Empirical data no longer has any relevance in the anthropogenic climate change world of lies and deceit except of course when it can be subsampled and manipulated to fit the narrative. Feelings and opinions of people with no qualifications or expertise are the new “data”.
“NULLIUS IN VERBA”, the motto of the Royal Society, applies: take nobody’s word for it!
Unfortunately, they seem to have cast that aside in matters climatological.
What CA forgot to tell you is that as the planet is getting hotter, we can grow our own tea in the UK – where there is lots of water.
Unfortunately the water supply is often over chlorinated in many parts of the country, rendering the brew undrinkable. This water is however emminently suitable for washing out tins and plastic containers for recycling.
So that’s OK then.
This is another article where virtually EVERY sentence is wrong.
‘Research suggests climate change is going to slash optimal conditions for tea production in Kenya by 26 per cent by 2050, and areas with only average growing conditions will see production fall by 39 per cent by the middle of the century.’
That’s gotta scare you to your core.
‘The warning comes as the UK prepares to host the G7 meeting of major economies next month – where Boris Johnson has said climate, and finance for poor countries to cope with global warming, will be centre stage.’
‘Finance for poor countries.’ Again. What did they do with the last money we gave them?
‘Britain will also host the key UN Cop26 climate talks in Glasgow in November.’
Key? Weren’t ALL the previous ones ‘key?’
‘Dr Kat Kramer, Christian Aid’s climate policy lead, said: “As host of both the G7 in June and the Cop26 climate summit in November, the UK can ensure that countries on the front line of this crisis can adapt and respond to the impacts of climate change.’
Dude, the Empire is gone. You can’t do squat in ‘countries on the front line,’ whatever that means.
‘”With countries starting to announce improved climate plans, there is a unique opportunity to accelerate cuts in emissions and boost the finance needed to help countries adapt to the changing climate.”‘
Improved climate plans? WTF ?!?! We’re a generation into this schtick.
This article is word salad from a 20-year old playbook.
‘The climate emergency is one of the greatest injustices we face.Together we stop this climate crisis.’
Dr Kat Kramer should be arrested today for raising money on this absurdity. It’s one thing to spout nonsense, but criminal to try to raise money on it.
Why disagree with AGW when you can enjoy massive funding for almost any wild theory about what is affected by a fractional increase in CO2. Boris is much to blame or rather Carrie’s persuasive powers.
A conjugal rights issue??
One wonders if these people know that the tea is blended & producers employ expert tea tasters to ensure each batch is up to standard. Whatever makes them believe that ‘bad tasting’ tea will get anywhere near the consumer? These people are morons & have been duped by the climate propaganda.
And if kenya gets too hot that means mozambique will have warmed to have perfect tea growing conditions. Even if their bunkum were true, the crops would just move to areas now newly perfect for them.
Arn’t they forecasting no ice on greenland = greenland green tea!
You summed it up Paul, this latest scare story has one main purpose; fund raising.
LOL, coping with the weather is the lot of all farmers; it’s not a climate change “catastrophe.” There’s the usual innuendo and opinion masquerading as fact in the “Telegraph” article.What a bore!
Only in 2012 we were told by the modelling boffins at Kew that we’d be out of coffee by 2080
So what’s left? Carrot juice?
I wonder how this will affect this tea plantation
https://tregothnan.co.uk/tea-plantations/
YOUR UK tax paid for the “research & PR)
done via DFID, Leeds Uni (Sustainability Research Institute)
and @MetOfficeww (Met Office worldwide)
One recent paper
https://journals.ametsoc.org/view/journals/bams/aop/BAMS-D-20-0020.1/BAMS-D-20-0020.1.xml
I’m guessing the report is based on his research since he tweeted the article.
And then there is this. Good Gravy.
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/nasty-ale-to-show-how-climate-change-affects-taste