Saturday, September 22, 2007

And now for today's episode of...

The unintended consequences of bad Global Warming science
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2 comments:

JLW said...

Maybe now I will be able to afford milk again.

September 22, 2007 at 6:22 PM
Anonymous said...

i'm surprised you missed this one, Alex. but then, it could be completely wrong.

http://www.azcentral.com/home/wine/articles/
0302wineclimate0302.html

The year 2005 was the warmest recorded in the United States in the 150 years that good records have been maintained. And each of the past nine years has been among the 25 warmest on record in the U.S. Globally, each of the past 15 years has been in the top 25 hottest years on record.

In France, the projected climate changes threaten the very definition of wine, says Bernard Seguin, a climatologist with the French National Agronomy Institute. Each one degree increase in temperature in France is equivalent to moving 200 kilometers (or 124 miles) north, he says. By the end of the century, with current warming predictions, the north coast of France will be experiencing weather that today is common for the south of France.

In a stunning bow to climate change, French wine regulators in December approved the use of vineyard irrigation, reversing centuries of tradition to rescue regions suddenly too hot for dry farming.

Scientists at the University of California, Davis are breeding new strains of vines and root stocks that can better survive extremes of heat and drought. Spanish vintners are studying whether they can plant vineyards in the cooler foothills of the Pyrenees. Belgium, Denmark and even Sweden are jumping into viticulture.

"The research is clearly pointing to major long-term risks to an industry that people in California care about," says Chris Field, director of the Carnegie Institution, Department of Global Ecology at Stanford University. The question facing the wine industry, Field says, is whether it will be a victim of global warming or "are they going to assume a leadership role to ensure that their way of life is sustainable?"

It's a sensitive issue on which Robert P. Koch, president and chief executive of the Wine Institute, the industry's chief Washington lobbyist, has kept a low profile. Careful not to get out in front of his brother-in-law, President Bush, or the conservative wine industry, Koch says the Wine Institute's board is starting to discuss its options.

In France, the projected climate changes threaten the very definition of wine, says Bernard Seguin, a climatologist with the French National Agronomy Institute. Each one degree increase in temperature in France is equivalent to moving 200 kilometers (or 124 miles) north, he says. By the end of the century, with current warming predictions, the north coast of France will be experiencing weather that today is common for the south of France.

September 22, 2007 at 6:42 PM

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