Yes. Global warming’s Paul Reveres may finally have found the message to galvanize support for climate change legislation: Global warming is messing with your beer.

Here’s the disturbing news from the Discovery Channel’s Space Disco:

In a paper recently published in the Journal of Agricultural and Forest Meteorology,
a team led by climatologist Martin Mozny of the Czech Hydrometeorological Institute has found that the quality of Saaz hops — a delicate variety of hop used to make pilsner lager — has been decreasing in recent years. Why? It would appear the continuing rise of air temperature in the Czech Republic (where the crops are located) is the culprit.

The team used high-resolution weather pattern, crop yield and hop quality data to gauge the impact of climate change on the Saaz crops between 1954 to 2006. Mozny’s team found that the acidity of the hops had dropped 0.06% every year in this time period. Ideally, to get that characteristic delicate bitter pilsner taste, the hops must contain around 5% alpha acid. Unfortunately, this quantity is dropping and showing little sign of stabilizing. In fact, the team predict that it is only going to get worse.

But this isn’t an isolated case, the hop growing regions of eastern Germany and central Slovakia have noticed similar changes in their crops.

OK. Enough with the facts. Time to spring into action. So, get on the phone, fax, email, facebook and Twitter and tell Congress to stash this health care nonsense and get down to serious work on climate change.

As in, measures that will SAVE OUR BEER.