Climate change cranks up pressure on wine industry

[Matt@5453]

This is a good read.

http://indaily.com.au/eat-drink-explore/wine/2017/05/09/climate-change-cranks-up-pressure-on-wine-industry/

[via collins]

Thanks Matt, always great to be reminded that Whitey actually writes outside his blog as well - always a delight.

Great to discover the meaning of Merlot, it's a cracker!

And alarming to read of the laxity in phylloxera laws - why would you even think of courting that demon?

Cheers.

[n4sir]

And alarming to read of the laxity in phylloxera laws - why would you even think of courting that demon?

Just over a month ago I had a quick day visit to the Yarra Valley, and asked a Winemaker friend about the Phylloxera situation there - he said there were 15 reported new outbreaks in the last year throughout the Yarra including one of Yarra Yering's outer vineyards. Anyone with old vines on original rootstock there is on borrowed time, what's being done now is way too little, way too late.

Unfortunately we are making the same sort of mistakes here already in South Australia despite the State Government charging all grapegrowers a phylloxera tax for decades. The only thing that has really prevented the little buggers from marching into SA vineyards is luck, one day that is sure to run out.

[swirler]

I'm not usually a Halliday basher, but I was gobsmacked when I read him dismiss climate change out of hand, quoting an obscure Russian scientist as evidence. Hmmm Russia, that bastion of all things right and true. The country that makes most of its money from oil and gas. They definitely have no reason to be climate sceptics!

https://australianwinecompanion.blogspo ... e.html?m=1

I'll step off my soapbox now

[Michael McNally]

Funny. I thought I read some articles from JH not that long ago extolling the virtues of Brown Brothers for moving into Tassie because that meant they were preparing for climate change which was evidenced by earlier and earlier vintages.

Cheers

Michael

[RogerPike]

I'm not usually a Halliday basher, but I was gobsmacked when I read him dismiss climate change out of hand, quoting an obscure Russian scientist as evidence. Hmmm Russia, that bastion of all things right and true. The country that makes most of its money from oil and gas. They definitely have no reason to be climate sceptics!

https://australianwinecompanion.blogspo ... e.html?m=1

In step off my soapbox now

He did not "dismiss climate change out of hand", he offered a dissenting voice on anthropogenic climate change.

He quotes undisputed historical facts regarding alternating climatic cycles dating back 1000 years to support his opinion.

He does not quote "an obscure Russian scientist", Dr Abdussamatov is well known and well credentialled. Perhaps there is no climate change gravy train for scientists in Russia!

He also refers to some very interesting work done by a mathematics professor at Northumbria University in the UK researching solar cycles. Despite the arrogance of the human race we are not able to exert any influence upon the Sun.

Everything is finite, the life cycle of the sun is such that it will get hotter and hotter until, in about a billion years, human life on earth will not be viable and will be extinguished. Nothing that we can do will prevent that from happening.

Mr. Halliday has every right to be a climate change sceptic. Everybody has the right to be a climate change sceptic, or an atheist, or a vegetarian or even to watch three hours of reality television every day.

Roger

[swirler]

Roger, nobody is denying his right to believe whatever he wants.

In the replies below the article there is a link to a document that says 97% of scientists believe in climate change.

Mr Halliday obviously goes with the 3%.

[Ian S]

Yes but Halliday only deals in 97-100 these days

[winetastic]

Yes but Halliday only deals in 97-100 these days

Slowclap

[RogerPike]

Roger, nobody is denying his right to believe whatever he wants.

In the replies below the article there is a link to a document that says 97% of scientists believe in climate change.

Mr Halliday obviously goes with the 3%.

So if 97% believe something it must be fact?

>97% of Christians believe in Christ, >97% of Muslims believe in Mohammed, >97% of certain religions believe that the Bible is the word of God. Once upon a time >97% of people believed that the world was flat. It is not that long ago that 97% believed that peptic ulcers were caused by stress.

Roger

[marsalla]

Halliday has every right to express his opinion, and good luck to him. He is , however, wrong, given the scientists who are specialists in the field overwhelmingly are in disagreement with him.

On the 97% numbers, if I visit 97% of doctors and they tell me I have cancer, it would be foolish of me not to give some thought to rectifying it, and if it was lifestyle associated I would think about changing my lifestyle.

Given Hallidays age he wont be around to stand corrected, and most of the most strident anti anthropogenic climate change are in the same boat.

[swirler]

Roger,

What poppycock! You're basically saying you don't believe in science....unless they agree with your uninformed opinion.

[RogerPike]

Roger,

What poppycock! You're basically saying you don't believe in science....unless they agree with your uninformed opinion.

Swirler,

Thank you, that's what I wanted. A strident condemnation and personal insult to one that you believe offers a dissenting voice. I wondered how long it would take.

Where have I said that I don't believe in science? Where have I said that I don't believe in climate change?

I was simply defending the dissenting voice of Mr Halliday and taking the opportunity to play devil's advocate on a subject which seems to generate a sanctimonious fervour in some people.

Crowd psychology is an interesting field.

So is anonymity.

Roger

[swirler]

Roger,

Sorry, it seems I badly misread your previous message. Multitasking has its downsides

I'm glad that you got what you wanted. Sorry to withdraw my point! Don't know why you were so eager for a certain kind of response in any case.

And why do people care about the future of the planet? Pretty insignificant issue, right?

Do you believe in climate change, Roger? I think you do, but confirmation would be interesting.

On anonymity, you're in the minority using your name on here. You can benefit (or not - your call) from the publicity. Most of us have nothing to gain, but the possibly something to lose. But that's another can of worms altogether...... .

[RogerPike]

Swirler,

Is this the point that you are sorry to withdraw?: "What poppycock! You're basically saying you don't believe in science....unless they agree with your uninformed opinion."

Damn that multitasking, eh! The things it makes us do!

Not sure it can make things unsaid though.

Roger

[sjw_11]

I am not expert on the topic of climate science. However, some brief reading suggests Dr Abdussamatov falls within a camp of climate change researchers who believe the warming has been caused by cycles in solar activity, which he argues is a much more substantive factor than human activity (although it does seem he acknowledges that the greenhouse gas effect does contribute to warming, just to a lesser degree, in contrast to some other climate change sceptics who argue

"Over the past decade, global temperature on the Earth has not increased; global warming has ceased, and already there are signs of the future deep temperature drop ... The so-called greenhouse effect will not avert the onset of the next deep temperature drop, the 19th in the last 7500 years, which without fail follows after natural warming... The global temperature of the Earth has begun its decrease without limitations on the volume of greenhouse gas emissions by industrially developed countries; therefore the implementation of the Kyoto protocol aimed to rescue the planet from the greenhouse effect should be put off at least 150 years."

That is from a recent paper quoted at http://principia-scientific.org/top-rus ... l-warming/, which is a website run by an organisation largely devoted to promoting research arguing against man-made climate change, however from other Google research it does not seem to misrepresent Dr Abdussamatov's views.

For those with a scientific bent, his more thorough 2013 paper which I believe first outlined this topic can be read in full here: http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/image ... inimum.pdf

In that, he charts his temperature predictions as follows:

ScreenShot007.jpg

What I struggle with here, is his argument that global warming has already ceased and temperatures are already falling, indeed he argues global warming peaked in 2005 (p4 of the referred to paper, and visible in his chart). This seems at odd with the reported empiric data, for example the on-going increase in temperatures as reported by the Goddard Institute for Space Studies within NASA:

[sjw_11]

I might add, the evidence that global warming is occurring, as against the causal question of what is driving this and whether it can be prevented by human action or not, seems much more settled:

"The 10 indicators are:
1.Land surface air temperature as measured by weather stations...
2.Sea surface temperature. As with land temperatures, the longest record goes back to 1850 and the last decade is warmest.
3.Air temperature over the oceans.
4.Lower troposphere temperature as measured by satellites for around 50 years. By any of these measures, the 2000s was the warmest decade and each of the last three decades has been much warmer than the previous one.
5.Ocean heat content, for which records go back over half a century. More than 90% of the extra heat from global warming is going into the oceans – contributing to a rise in…
6.Sea level. Tide gauge records go back to 1870, and sea level has risen at an accelerating rate.
7.Specific humidity, which has risen in tandem with temperatures.
8.Glaciers. 2009 was the 19th consecutive year in which there was a net loss of ice from glaciers worldwide.
9.Northern Hemisphere snow cover, which has also decreased in recent decades.
10.Perhaps the most dramatic change of all has been in Arctic sea ice. Satellite measurements are available back to 1979 and reliable shipping records back to 1953. September sea ice extent has shrunk by 35% since 1979."

I have used a summary as of 2010 from https://skepticalscience.com/evidence-f ... arming.htm.

This is based on an annual report undertaken by the NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information, a US Government department. Those comments were based on this edition https://www1.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/cmb ... lo-rez.pdf.

You can also read their 2016 annual report here https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/global/201613. They note:

"2016 became the warmest year in NOAA's 137-year series. Remarkably, this is the third consecutive year a new global annual temperature record has been set."

This report also has a lot of recent charts as well, although in full disclosure it is produced by The Global Warming Policy Foundation, which presumably has a clear existing view of the debate. http://www.thegwpf.org/content/uploads/ ... e-2016.pdf

[sjw_11]

And guys, please keep it civil...

[RogerPike]

Sam,

Thank you for your substantive and interesting contribution.

Roger

[Bobthebuilder]

this was never going to end well

[Ian S]

And guys, please keep it civil...

Agreed. Politics and wine are the worst match imaginable. It turns friends into enemies and I come here to be with friends.

[Michael McNally]

And guys, please keep it civil...

I will be careful of the use of the words "poppycock" and "uninformed" in the future!

(Climate-change-induced) storm in a teacup....

Cheers

Michael

[George Krashos]

The Earth inhales and exhales. Thankfully it continues to produce wine in the process.

[odyssey]

Roger, nobody is denying his right to believe whatever he wants.

In the replies below the article there is a link to a document that says 97% of scientists believe in climate change.

Mr Halliday obviously goes with the 3%.

So if 97% believe something it must be fact?

>97% of Christians believe in Christ, >97% of Muslims believe in Mohammed, >97% of certain religions believe that the Bible is the word of God. Once upon a time >97% of people believed that the world was flat. It is not that long ago that 97% believed that peptic ulcers were caused by stress.

Roger

To me it should be a calculation, modelling and scientifically-based risk assessment argument.

Imagine if you will, that 97% of the world's astronomers, physicists and geologists have calculations and models indicating that asteroid X12345 will hit earth in 100 years and may cause a global extinction level event.

Lets say it costs the inflationary equivalent of US$400 trillion (ie. roughly 25 times the United States GDP) over the span of the next 100 years to build a set of countermeasures and contingencies. You can stop building at any time in the process but you MUST begin working on it in the next 5 years or it will too late.

Meanwhile 3% of those experts have calculations and models indicating that it will not hit earth and that contingency measures are expensive and unnecessary.

Do you:
a) go with the 3% and do nothing, saving money, and risking the permanent extinction of most of the species on the planet
b) start building the contingency plans before it's too late, knowing you can stop working on them at any time (and stop spending) if proven wrong.

[Benchmark]

Roger, nobody is denying his right to believe whatever he wants.

In the replies below the article there is a link to a document that says 97% of scientists believe in climate change.

Mr Halliday obviously goes with the 3%.

So if 97% believe something it must be fact?

>97% of Christians believe in Christ, >97% of Muslims believe in Mohammed, >97% of certain religions believe that the Bible is the word of God. Once upon a time >97% of people believed that the world was flat. It is not that long ago that 97% believed that peptic ulcers were caused by stress.

Roger

To me it should be a calculation, modelling and scientifically-based risk assessment argument.

Imagine if you will, that 97% of the world's astronomers, physicists and geologists have calculations and models indicating that asteroid X12345 will hit earth in 100 years and may cause a global extinction level event.

Lets say it costs the inflationary equivalent of US$400 trillion (ie. roughly 25 times the United States GDP) over the span of the next 100 years to build a set of countermeasures and contingencies. You can stop building at any time in the process but you MUST begin working on it in the next 5 years or it will too late.

Meanwhile 3% of those experts have calculations and models indicating that it will not hit earth and that contingency measures are expensive and unnecessary.

Do you:
a) go with the 3% and do nothing, saving money, and risking the permanent extinction of most of the species on the planet
b) start building the contingency plans before it's too late, knowing you can stop working on them at any time (and stop spending) if proven wrong.

c) Allow Bruce Willis to intercept and destroy the asteroid with an Aerosmith soundtrack.

[phillisc]

d) or I will see you on the dark side of the moon.

Cheers
Craig

[odyssey]

There is no dark side in the moon, really. Matter of fact, it's all dark.

[Hunter]

Mm yes and i enjoy the cheap clare quaffa..
Not sure what you guys are on about

[odyssey]

Not sure what you guys are on about

Nevermind us, just the lunatics on the grass. Got to keep the loonies on the path.

[phillisc]

Mm yes and i enjoy the cheap clare quaffa..
Not sure what you guys are on about

Or you Hunter
Yes indeed never mind us, you are right the record tells me so...there is no dark side...but I would like to check that with Mr Armstrong first...I haven't actually had the pleasure of seeing it first hand.

Cheers
Craig