Threat to coffee makes climate change real

My introduction to the idea of global warming (2017 version: climate change) came during childhood, when the big threat to the environment – other than thermonuclear war and the fact that people could smoke anywhere – was aerosol gas.

By using aerosol cans for deodorant, hairspray and cleaning products, we put a hole in the ozone. It was heating up the planet.

My dad's reaction? Since we lived in a town that rarely warmed beyond 70 degrees, he was all for it. "I go outside every day and spray several cans," he would tell his buddies. "If it gets about five or 10 degrees warmer here, it will be perfect."

Hah, hah, hah.

My amusement – and distrust – of his views manifested themselves in my adulthood. Like most people, I believe the world is warming. Like most scientists (I'm not a scientist, despite my predilection for white coats), I believe humans are responsible for much of it.

But like most people, I tend to ignore it.

It will get fixed. Smart people will figure out a solution. We're getting better. This won't affect us for generations . . . blah, blah, blah.

At my worst, I bring echoes of my dad: If the oceans rise, it will just make my Suisun City house that much closer to the ocean. It will drive up my home's value.

Hah, hah, hah.

Recently, I saw something in the newspaper that made me panic. It made me the Al Gore of Solano County.

Did you know that global warming threatens the ability to grow coffee beans?

Oh. Em. Gee.

A study found that Ethiopia, the world's fifth-largest coffee producer, could lose up to 60 percent of its suitable farming land by the end of this century because of climate change.

Another report from World Coffee Research (which has offices in the break room of the Gallup Organization), says the demand for coffee will double by 2050, but the suitable land to grow it will be cut in half.

This makes sense, because most of the world's coffee is produced near the equator, which is where climate change will have the quickest effect. A recent study by the University of Vermont found global warming could reduce coffee-growing areas in Latin America by as much as 88 percent by 2050.

That is a long time from now (although I remember when 2000 was impossibly in the future), but this is reason to panic. Do you think President Donald Trump would have pulled us out of the Paris Accord (which I thought was a Toyota model until I learned otherwise) had he known that it could ruin coffee? Well, probably, but go with me here.

The news about coffee may be a game-changer. This may finally engage people in the quest to slow climate change. Those who ignore the threat of catastrophic weather events and the danger of coastal cities being overtaken by the seas will react to the threat of bad, expensive coffee.

I know this: In post-apocalyptic books, coffee is always one of the most valuable items on Earth. Now we learn that global warming, not global war, could cause the coffee crisis.

Save our coffee, even if it means we need to rip that aerosol can of Right Guard out of my dad's hands as he tries to warm up my hometown by five degrees.

Hah, hah, hah.

Future generations of coffee drinkers will thank us.

Reach Brad Stanhope at bradstanhope@hotmail.com.

Wildfire reactions, play-by-play announcers, more

It's just over a week until Halloween, which means it's time for me to empty my theoretical notebook of column tidbits.

It's a theoretical notebook. I live in a digital world, next door to Max Headroom. So it's not a real notebook, but on to the topics du jour . . .

• The recent nightmarish wildfires reminded us of at least two important things:

• We're more vulnerable to nature's whims than we think.
• Our community still responds well when others are in danger.
• In an era when we often dismiss others for their political views and spend more time creating conflict than resolving it, it was refreshing to see the empathy and help given by all kinds of Northern Californians.

Now we can get back to bickering.

You know, back to normal.

• High five: The greatest play-by-play sportscasters in national TV history.

This requires people who do play-by-play on the national level. For my purposes, the broadcaster must do at least two sports – proving versatility.

5. Joe Buck. Giants fans hate the voice of Fox coverage of Major League Baseball and the NFL, but it's undeserved. Buck isn't perfect, but he tells stories, anticipates drama and captures the moment. Giants fans want a cheerleader and he isn't one. Because he shouldn't be.

4. Keith Jackson. Before he became a little bit of a caricature – "rumblin', bumblin', stumblin!"– Jackson established himself as the voice of college football. He also was the initial play-by-play man on "Monday Night Football," a longtime ABC baseball announcer and was staple on "Wide World of Sports," where he covered cliff diving, demolition derbies and anything else.

3. Curt Gowdy. He was NBC's voice for every major sport in the 1960s and 1970s. A Wyoming native who was a radio play-by-play man for the Boston Red Sox (Wyoming to Boston!), his nasal delivery personified the AFL, Major League Baseball and Saturday afternoon bowling.

2. Bob Costas. A network announcer before he turned 30, Costas was NBC's Olympics host from 1992 until he stepped down from that role this year. Put him behind the microphone for any major sport and he's a fantastic storyteller with a great pace.

1. Al Michaels. The voice of "Monday Night Football" is also America's greatest baseball announcer and has been the play-by-play man for the national NBA games. After 40 years on the air (he was a Giants radio announcer in the mid-1970s before joining ABC), he's still the best. Ever.

• I hate it when actors on TV shows or movies pretend to drive, but look at their passengers when they talk without checking the road. In fact, I yell at my TV: "You're going to crash!" They don't listen, but I'll keep doing it, just in case.

• Similarly, Mrs. Brad has the unusual ability of spotting when people "drink coffee" on TV while using empty paper cups. How hard is it to add water or something, so they don't lift air-filled cups, making it obvious they are empty?

• Yes, we criticize TV shows while we watch them. Just like you.

• In a world where we criticize road planning all the time ("who decided to do that construction now?"), we should acknowledge the job transportation experts did to make the Interstate 680 drive from Concord to Fairfield work better. From the expanded Benicia Bridge to the 680-80 interchange, it's dramatically improved from a decade ago.

• Three foods still remain among my favorites, as they have been in every decade: Pizza, peanut butter and milk.

Reach Brad Stanhope at bradstanhope@hotmail.com.

Should we worry about Elon Musk's AI warnings?

Elon Musk is a smart man. He's the brains behind Tesla, SpaceX, Neuralink and Musk fragrance (maybe not the last one). He's just 46 and already an iconic figure in American business.

(I wonder if Musk changed his name to seem cooler, like when Laurence Turead became Mr. T. Apparently not, according to Wikipedia. However, Wikipedia once briefly listed me as a famous graduate of the college I attended and a frequent contributor to the Gary Radnich show on KNBR, back in the days when it was easy to change things.)

Anyway, I reached two conclusions: Elon Musk is the Thomas Edison of the 21st century, and Elon Musk makes me afraid.

Not because of what he does, but because of what he thinks.

Recently, he warned us about the dangers of artificial intelligence.

He commented on Twitter that AI (what we call artificial intelligence, although I habitually think of former NBA star Allen Iverson when I hear "AI") is more dangerous than North Korea. That might come as good news to South Korea, but is bad news for the rest of us.

Musk's tweet came after a product from his OpenAI company appeared at a $24 million video game tournament, beating some of the world's best players. (Frankly, the fact that I just typed a sentence that includes the phrase "a $24 million video game tournament" frightens me more than artificial intelligence.)

Musk warned that AI should be regulated. This echoed his statements a year earlier, when he said if IA is not regulated, humans could devolve into the equivalent of "house cats," compared to computers. (One plus: House cats wouldn't hold a $24 million video game tournament.)

Musk's campaign isn't just about video games and house cats, although that would frighten most right-thinking Americans, who don't like either. Musk joined other CEOs in signing an open letter to the United Nations, calling for a ban of the use of AI in weapons. The letter said, "lethal autonomous weapons threaten to become the third revolution in warfare," following the gunpowder revolution and Prince and the Revolution, if my grasp of history is correct.

This wasn't the first time. Musk joined a bunch of other smart people who wrote a similar letter in 2015.

So what should we do? From my perspective, here's what's important: The source. This warning about artificial intelligence posing a threat to humanity isn't coming from someone who watched too many science-fiction movies or one of the nabobs on an internet message board. It's not from someone who wears aluminum foil hats. It's not from your crazy brother-in-law who thinks 9/11 was an inside job.

This is from Elon Musk, a successful, forward-thinking entrepreneur.

This is from the guy who is possibly changing the energy game with solar-powered batteries. This is from the guy who suggested a "hyperloop" from Northern California to Southern California and no one laughed, because he had a plan.

That's the guy who warns about artificial intelligence taking over the world and turning us into house cats.

So what to do?

Don't go to all the websites recommended by your computer. Don't let the navigation app on your smartphone dictate where you drive. Don't . . . ahh, what am I saying? I will continue to do all those things.

Anyway, who is Elon Musk, anyway? Did you see the hyperloop thing he proposed? What a nabob.

I read on an internet message board that this isn't real and I shouldn't worry. Of course, the phrasing seemed slightly less than human, so . . .

I'm sure it's nothing.

And you can count on me. I used to be a famous graduate of my college.

Reach Brad Stanhope at bradstanhope@hotmail.com.

America has fallen for pumpkin spice ruse

Let's get this much clear: Pumpkin spice is fake news. It's like calling a vanilla milkshake (milk, ice cream, vanilla extract and sugar) "chocolate spice." Because, of course, there is rarely any pumpkin in pumpkin spice.

Pumpkin spice is usually some combination of cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, allspice and the eye of newt. Calling it pumpkin spice is like calling the NBA team in Utah the "Jazz."

Nonsensical.

Yet we've fallen for it, in the biggest triumph of American marketing since we thought "Happy Days" was funny. Watch "Happy Days" sometime. It's not funny. Never was, but we were told it was funny. We obliged.

We're now told pumpkin spice flavoring is great and is what autumn tastes like. We oblige.

The pumpkin spice ruse started with Starbucks in 2003. It's the same company that told us that "venti" is a size, frappuccino is a word, that it's a "mistake" when they foul up writing our names on the cups (and we share on social media, giving Starbucks free advertising) and that there was a controversy over their holiday coffee cups, requiring us to buy their coffee to prove we're open-minded.

Starbucks told us in 2003 that pumpkin spice latte was how to celebrate autumn.

People like it, which is fine – no different from Starbucks selling eggnog lattes in December and McDonald's selling Shamrock Shakes around St. Patrick's Day. It was a seemingly harmless diversion.

Then it spread. Pretty soon, you couldn't walk down the street without seeing advertisement for a pumpkin spice product.

Pumpkin spice tea. Pumpkin spice pancakes (well . . . sure!). Pumpkin spice gelato. Pumpkin spice peanut butter.

It continued.

Pumpkin spice cough drops (cough drops!). Pumpkin spice pretzels. Pumpkin spice butter. Pumpkin spice Pringles chips. Pumpkin spice Cheerios. Pumpkin spice Oreos. (OK. The last three have plenty of flavor varieties, so it's OK. Even though pumpkin spice, again, isn't really a spice and rarely contains pumpkin.)

It's over the top. It's marketing. Starbucks launched a campaign that has us craving something that didn't exist in 2002. It created the illusion that their product is linked to the arrival of autumn and Halloween and the holiday season and cool, crisp nights.

Fine for coffee, maybe. But butter? Cough drops? Gelato?

There's no end in sight and it's getting worse.

The idea went fully off the rails earlier this year when San Francisco-based, all-natural deodorant maker Native, which previously offered such scents as coconut and vanilla, apricot and white peach, and cypress and cedar, launched a new line.

Pumpkin spice latte deodorant.

Seriously.

Not only does it smell like pumpkin spice (again, not really a spice. And pumpkin is rarely included), it allegedly smells like a pumpkin spice latte.

Your armpit can smell like the most popular drink of autumn.

This is no knock on companies that are using pumpkin spice flavors and scents – they're just chasing the market.

This is a cry for the America consumer to see clearly. We're being exploited. We're being played. We're being molded into what Big Coffee and Big Cookie and Big Butter and Big Deodorant want us to be, so we'll buy their products.

Stop the madness. Buy a pumpkin spice latte if you need it, but stop there.

Take back fall. Take back pumpkins. We can do better than this.

And when we win, remember that the revolution was started by me, the official pumpkin spice columnist of autumn.

Reach Brad "Pumpkin Spice" Stanhope at bradstanhope@hotmail.com.

Ranking Solano's seasons, worst to first

Mrs. Brad and I were in the Sierra Nevada on the first day of fall. It snowed.

Meanwhile, in our hometown of Suisun City, it was in the mid-70s and sunny, which goes to show you at least one thing: Your perception of a season largely depends on where you spend it. Winter in Wisconsin is not winter in Hawaii. Summer in Alabama is not summer in Alaska. Falling in a sand pit is not the same as falling into a wood chipper, although that's a different issue.

Since I live in Solano County and I like to rank things (I've previously ranked generations, decades, punctuation marks and holidays, for instance), it's natural to rank the four seasons in our region (summer, fall, winter, spring. Not Frankie Valli's singing group nor the 1981 Carol Burnett-Alan Alda film), based on a scientific compilation of selective facts, feelings and personal history.

Starting from the bottom:

4. Winter: The best thing about winter here: It's better than elsewhere. It's not as cold, our rain isn't as plentiful, our fog isn't as bad.

Still, that's like saying that Hot Pockets aren't as bad as hot dogs . . . a dubious honor. When you support something by saying it's not as bad as it could be, you make a losing argument. Winter is dark, wet, cold and dreary. It includes all of January and February, our worst months. The best day of the season is Christmas, which comes four days into winter and is followed by three months of dreariness.

3. Fall: Few things are more predictable than the insistence of women in their 30s and 40s that they love fall. The only problem? They're wrong (just like they're wrong about pumpkin spice flavors, Ryan Gosling's acting talent and "The Bachelor").

However . . . fall in Solano County is a time of glorious weather (usually in the 70s and 80s until early November), overshadowed by two negatives: Days get shorter and fall actually lasts until Dec. 21, which is dreary, cold and dark. The good things? High school football returns (we can hear the Armijo High public address announcer and the cheering crowds from our house), heat waves are largely gone and the best holiday (Thanksgiving) takes place.

Fall in Solano County is better than spring and summer in many other places. But not here.

2. Summer: I grew up in a town where summer meant fog and 60-degree days, so when Mrs. Brad and I moved here, it was glorious. One-hundred degree days? Bring 'em on!

Decades of living here changed my view. Somewhat.

I still love warm weather, but don't enjoy heat waves. And when we get heat waves (arguably the worst weather events in Solano County, which is saying something), they're in the summer. But here's what else is in the summer: Outdoor community activities, camping, plenty of 85-degree days, late nights of sunshine.

For my money, summer is a winner. Just not the winner.

1. Spring: Just the name seems great: Spring! The weather gets warmer and the days get longer. It means the start of baseball, the NBA playoffs, the end of the school year and the start of outdoor activities. We're never more optimistic than springtime.

Warm weather, vacations, more sunlight? Spring is the best season here.

And in just more than five months, it will return!

Reach Brad Stanhope at bradstanhope@hotmail.com.