Happy Mother’s Day.
As part of my personal celebration, I am planning to indulge in one of my pamper pastimes: Sipping some fine California wine.
Sadly, eco-activists have targeted the Golden State’s vineyards in their latest fear campaign:
The study, published recently in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), is billed as the first worldwide analysis of climate change on wine production. It concludes that a warming world will produce a decline in wine-grape vineyards— as much as 75 percent by 2050—in regions including California, Chile, Argentina, southern Europe, and Australia. The study’s only points of distinction, though, are its purported global scope (which means the margin for error is larger) and its lack of rudimentary knowledge of contemporary winemaking.
The great wine scare has been around for quite a while. Spain even hosted an annual “World Conference on Climate Change and Wine,” featuring that well-known climate scientist and oenophile Al Gore, along with former United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan, though the series seems to have lost its effervescence after its third meeting in 2011. The current PNAS study is not the organization’s first prediction of a dire future for California’s wine industry. “Climate Change May Bring Sour Grapes,” CBS News reported in 2009 of a similar PNAS study. Still another PNAS study from 2006 explored how “Extreme Heat Reduces and Shifts United States Premium Wine Production in the 21st Century.”
Nice to know our former Vice President is enjoying some wonderful vintages in his post-political career.
Fortunately, as I have noted in an earlier post, the real data does not support the contention that global warming is occurring — man-made or otherwise. And such skepticism is readily apparent in the City Journal piece by Steven F. Hayward:
Left out of the news accounts was the finding that the net area suitable for premium viticulture outside existing wine-grape regions would expand by more than twice as much as the area supposedly at risk in California and elsewhere. As the study says, “Large newly suitable areas are projected in regions of Northern Europe and western North America.” Good news for wine consumers, no? It wouldn’t be the first time viticulture has changed along with the climate: 1,000 years ago, after all, wine was made in England and Greenland. (Climate change already appears to be reviving the British sparkling wine industry—don’t you dare call it “champagne”!)
Additionally, the eco-activists trying to promote this doom scenario have also conveniently forgotten about a cold snap in 2008 that damaged many California vineyards.
I may have to pop in a DVD of one of my favorite films, “Sideways”. In it, one of the lead characters refuses to drink Merlot. I refuse to drink the eco-activists’ global warming “wine/whine” — and it is good to see more people joining me.
In a related piece, Harrison H. Schmitt (an Apollo 17 astronaut and a former U.S. senator) and Dr. William Happer (a professor of physics at Princeton University) demonstrate that carbon dioxide, vilified as the cause of global warming, is actually beneficial to plants — including grape vines.
So, eco-activists worried about our vineyards should actually be clamoring for more CO2, not less! I’ll drink to that!
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http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2013/03/matt-ridley-explains-it-all.php
I’ve posted that before, but it bears watching by everyone.
Our future is very bright…if we can fight off the Collective.
In 30-plus years of fishing the mythical Minnesota walleye opener, I can safely say I’ve never seen ice on my favorite lakes this late in the season. It’s been close a few years but never like this and, according to the record books, only a time or two like this in the last century. “I can remember there being ice up here in 1996 but that’s about it,” said Bryan “Beef” Sathre of Fathead Guide Service in Bemidji and Cass Lake. “The old-timers up here tell me that the last time it was like this was back in 1950, so this is probably a once in a lifetime sort of experience,” he added.
http://www.startribune.com/sports/outdoors/blogs/207059731.html
Left out of the Eco-scare carbon-is-responsible-for-all-the-worlds-troubles scares is the fact that carbon dioxide is to plants like oxygen is to us.
And while oxygen is not a green house gas, it only makes up about a little less than 21% of the atmosphere. The rest is composed mainly of Nitrogen (A whopping 78%), Carbon Dioxide (approximately .4%), and other trace gases.
So when we produce carbon dioxide (which according to the EPA is a pollutant like runoff water?!?!?!) in any quantity whatsoever, plants are very happy. In return for their happiness, they produce oxygen for us to breathe, thus maintaining the status quo of our atmosphere.
Here endeth the biology lesson.
… Dr. William Happer (a professor of physics at Princeton University) demonstrate that…
Wow, he teaches at Princeton so he must be correct…as long as he supports my preconceptions, of course. Otherwise he’s just another academic moonbat.
Do you have any kind of scientific point to make here, gs?
Or are you just tarring with your broad brush?
1. Are you asking leading questions to try to put your interlocutor on the defensive?
2. My self-assigned good deed for the day was to debunk some BS in the Hawking thread. When anticipating that, I was perhaps curter here than I might have been.
3. That said, Leslie has STEM credentials. The opinions of scientific societies on climate change are there to be found.
4. To form today’s Right into a winning, governing, conservative coalition would be a feat comparable to Reagan’s. Ted Cruz has his work cut out for him.
The BS in the Hawking thread was not necessarily BS to the degree I had assumed.
Global warming is the ad campaign that seeks to convince people to redistribute global wealth for Mother Gaia’s benefit. Look how much wealth has been redistributed to onephile Gore’s pocket. It’s a Grapes of Graft of story.
“Sideways” is one of my favorites, too. Miles loves Pinot.
I made the mistake of buying Sideways based on reviews. What an empty pair of protagonists. One steals from his mother in order to get drunk on fine wine while the other commits insurance fraud by totaling a car in order to explain how he got a black eye to his already cheated upon fiance.
I watched the deleted scenes. In one, our hero walks into the motel room, takes the Gideon Bible out of the night stand and tosses it into the trash. Sad.
WRT warming: Washington State wines are fine and, if worse comes to worse, Vancouver may become the next Vinland.
One of the inside jokes of “Sideways” is that the Château Cheval Blanc that Miles makes a fetish of is composed in large part of the Merlot grape, in some years over 50%.
Wine is one of the few things that are actually good about California.
We also buy Chilean and Argentinian wine, and whenever we drink Chilean, we toast to Milton Freedman.
Leslie, if you are ever in Northern California, we will take you wine tasting in Napa and Sonoma.