Critique of Pure Raisin

An article in New Scientist (including info that's appeared in other places) claims that global warming could "scorch up to 80 per cent of the US's grape-growing areas" by 2100.

The prediction comes from a model developed by Dr. Noah Diffenbaugh of Purdue University's Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, and says that while climate change might open up new areas for grape cultivation in the Pacific northwest and the northeastern states, the Napa valley and other current production areas will be "wiped out."

According to Ron Bailey, we're all global warmers now. And among we global warmers there are three types of people: dicks, pussies and assholes deniers, accepters, and exaggerators.

We can probably file this report under the last category.

Comments

[AC]

Wow, I get the reference in the title. That's unusual.

[D.A. Ridgely]

"among we"? I can't state so categorically, but I think that's wrong and it's imperative I find out or it will bother me all day.

[Evan!]

D.A.: Seek help. I believe there is medication you can obtain with a doctor's prescription that may alleviate your condition.

[The Wine Commonsewer]

We spent July 3rd with the inlaws at Huntington State Beach, which is exponentially more crowded than any beach in Hawaii. After a day in the sun, Jacob's ten-year-old cousin, Clayton, came home with us and stayed most of the week.

Over grilled burgers one night, we regaled Clay with stories of our recent trip to Maui, describing how warm the Pacific Ocean is in Hawaii compared with Southern California.

His response? Well, that's because of global warming.

[Brian24]

As a resident of New York, I say: screw Napa, and I look forward to living amongst the nation's new "wine country."

[Brian24]

As a resident of New York, I say: screw Napa, and I look forward to living amongst the nation's best vineyards.

[The Wine Commonsewer]

claims that global warming could "scorch up to 80 per cent of the US's grape-growing areas" by 2100.

Lots of anecdotal evidence to support that claim too. Remember the billions of people who perished twenty years ago when the world ran out of food and the air became unbreathable? It was awful.

[kohlrabi]

TWC,

Nowhere near as bad as when the world ran out of copper.

[Chris]

When he says file it under the last category, is that a-holes or exaggerators?

[gaijin]

His response? Well, that's because of global warming

So he attends public schools then?

[D.A. Ridgely]

So he attends public schools then?

More likely teaches in one.

[Greg]

I can't believe you libs jumped on the band wagon. Suckers

[Greg]

I can't believe you libs jumped on the band wagon. Suckers

[The Wine Commonsewer]

Public schools it is.

[Brian24]

As a resident of New York, I say: screw Napa, and I look forward to living amongst the nation's best vineyards.

[TWB]

TWC and Kohlrabi: Don't forget Y2K and "Global Cooling" ...

[NoStar]

Washington state already produces better wines than California, but then we share the same latitudes as France.

[R C Dean]

According to Ron Bailey, we're all global warmers now.

Well, there's the question of whether we are in a warming trend, and it looks like the data has finally settled that we are.

Then there's the question of what causes these cycles in the planet's weather in general, as the joint has seen thousands of warming and cooling trends through the ages. No one really has any kind of explanation of that, which makes it hard to impossible to answer the last question:

Whether human activity has any noticeable effect on the current warming trend.

[The Wine Commonsewer]

Nostar, Washington State produces some good wines to be sure, but I think you're being a little optimistic when you say that Washington state already produces better wines than California.

I'd put Washington State more on a par with Temecula or perhaps Paso Robles Central Coast.

That's not to say that no clinkers come out of the famous wine growing regions of Ca because they do. I recently had a $60.00 bottle of Elyse Cab that wasn't worth a dime more than $18.00. It was good but not great. But people seem willing to pay that much for it because of where it came from.

[Aresen]

I'm all for anything which reduces the number of Whines coming out of California.

California, along with Massachusetts, New York and Washington, D.C., produces the biggest Whines in the USA.

Oops! Excuse me. I forgot we were talking about beverages.

[happyjuggler0]

global warming could "scorch up to 80 per cent of the US's grape-growing areas" by 2100.

Sour grapes anyone?

I personally could give a shit what happens to the annointed ones' (i.e. CA "whiners") property in one hundred years.

Even assuming this isn't 100% pure hysteria, I assure people that there will be perfectly fine places to grow wine grapes somewhere closer to the poles if the planet keeps warming.

Of course I am not trying to scare nitwits (Californians) into donating money to environmental organizations either.

[Tym]

As a resident of New York, I say: screw Napa, and I look forward to living amongst the nation's best vineyards.

You do in NY, on eastern Long Island.

[zach]

I think that's what he was pointing out.

[Dan T.]

California, along with Massachusetts, New York and Washington, D.C., produces the biggest Whines in the USA.

Except for libertarian blogs.

[James Anderson Merritt]

As a California native and frequent pacific coast wine tourist, I can vouch for the presence of excellent wines as well as clinkers all the way from Santa Ynez CA in the south to Seattle WA in the north. We didn't used to like Oregon wines, for instance, but a recent road trip to Seattle took us past (and into!) many great Oregon wineries, and we brought a lot of their product home with us. We didn't get to visit Washington wineries, but had several nice wines from that state while we were in Seattle, and we're looking forward to a Washington wine tour at some point in the near future. Yeah, we encountered bad wines, too, but the overall verdict: it's all good. (I wouldn't go so far as to say that WA wines beat California's, though. That seems a bit premature.)

What I'm REALLY wondering, is whether it makes sense to invest in Southern Alaska real-estate now? With global warming (or the climate changes it is causing, anyway) seemingly accelerating during my lifetime, it hardly seems out of the question that Alaska could become a great wine-growing region -- that certainly seems possible if New England regains its Viking-era position as a wine capital.

[jimmy]

i saw that story on cnn the other day, scarily trumpeted in the tease as "global warming will wipe out 80% of california vineyards." of course no time frame was given.

only later in the story was it mentioned that ONE study suggested grape-growing capacity in a very localized central coast area could drop 50 to 80% in the next 100 years. the grapes in question are apparently extremely sensitive to very small fluctuations in temperature, so any extrapolation to other crops would be wholly unsupported. and no possibility of improved agricultural techniques was allowed for. heck, yields of many crops worldwide have increased 300 to 400% in the last 50 years as part of the "green revolution", and they're gonna tell me california grape-growers can't creatively fertilize or irrigate and raise more grapes a hundred years from now?

yeah some global warming does exist. but the global warming activists know THIS particular kind of story (just like the "global warming caused katrina" nonsense) is intellectual garbage. yet they remain silent or encourage such stories since they have a vested interest in promoting the ridiculous idea that global warming is destroying everything.

[Schempf]

TWC,
I can go for a little warming. The little ice age we had in the 80's sure made me appreciate the warmth of today.

[downstater]

not to get all provincial or anything, but such a scenario would certainly help the midwestern wine growing regions.

pre-prohibition missouri used to be one of the biggest producers of wine in the country. and the wine growing regions here are quite beautiful as well. and coming back.

i like the wines too, but i'm no critic either. i'm more of an "if i like it, it's good wine" kind of critic.

some people here seem to know a bit about wine and i'd love to hear the impressions of midwestern wines.

[Bee]

I love it that Mr. TheWineCommonsewer manages to get a reference to the amount of time he spends lolling on a beach into virtually every thread on H&R. Someone is enjoying the global warming, anyway.

[The Wine Commonsewer]

Bee, I resemble that remark. 🙂 I haven't been to the beach in over a week.

[joe]

Taylor, have you ever seen a report about an expected harm from global warming that you didn't file under exaggerators?

[Stevo Darkly]

The worst case with global warming is that the melted icecaps would inundate our coastal cities, turning them into swamps with the ruins of deserted skyscrapers festooned with tropical lianas and Spanish moss. Meanwhile, the lifelong growth of cold-blooded creatures' would no longer be retared each year by a cold season, so they would grow twice as fast, many times as large. At the same time, the rise in temperatures would retard the fertility of large mammals. Soon, the Earth would have reverted to a reeking, fetid Permian swamp where giant hissing reptiles and monstrous arthropods would clamber over the deserted ruins of the works of Man. High-tech civilization would be maintained only in a few deep artificial caverns near the poles which, from time to time, they would send out expeditions in futuristic aircraft to loot the abandoned cities of the past for lost treasures. And that would be so cool.

[Russ R]

I just kant believe how bad some of the jokes here are.

[Russ R]

Among global warmers there are 10 types of people. Those that use binary and those that don't.

[Russell Seitz]

A century hence AlGore IV will surely strike back with _An Inconvenient Vermouth_.

Audiences will toss their popcorn drunken polar bears rampage through the tokay cellars of Grapeland, formerly Greenland, and bergs of frozen reisling crash into the Baltic as wind powered electricity fails to prevent the meltdown of the European Wine Glacier , solidified from the former lake to provide a new home for Inuit refugees in 2076.

[Jason Ligon]

I find it somewhat annoying that for all of their whining, the hydrology of most of Califoria is ALREADY completely imported. What does 'scorched' mean in that context?

[NoStar]

TWC,

I'll put Washington's best 5-Buck-Chuck up against anything that Ernest and Julio (and the rest of California) has to offer at the same price.

[NoStar]

Heck, I'm feeling flush, so let's include the Te-Buck-Chuck as well.

[NoStar]

Make that "Ten-Buck-Chuck."

[The Wine Commonsewer]

No Star, You can only get ten buck chuck by using one of those devices that automatically ages and improves wine. I think the website sells bridges too.

Are you sure it's flush that your feeling? Maybe it's rush that your feeling. From the wine of course.

Once upon a time, way back in the 1980's Ernest & Julio decided to go into the premium wine business. All of their advisors told them to drop the E&J nameplate but they were proud. As a consequence, the cabs they made, which were actually pretty good, didn't sell because the market assumed that anything E&J was hog swill. After the fact, I found some of those bottles and bought an entire lot of them from a liquor store that had been bought out by immigrants from another land for a mere $2.00 bucks per. I've long since drank them all but I can assure you that people were surprised that E&J could actually make a decent wine. No it wasn't Opus 1 but they were a long way from two buck chuck.

[The Wine Commonsewer]

Actually Jason, Californicate has lots of water and it's almost all used by Agriculture.

I'm not aware of any water used in this state that doesn't come from California sources. It's just that a lot of that water is far away. Like the Bay Area, which gets it's water from the Sierra and LA which gets it's water from the Sierra and Metro So Cal which gets half it's water from the Colorado River.

All of which, brings me to point out that without that water from the Colorado River I wouldn't have a beautiful lake to at every day here at Casa de las Rocas Grande. That is correctomundo, Lake Mathews is the terminus of the Colorado River Aqueduct.

Disclaimer: I fully concur that absent government subsidized water California might not be able to feed half the world.

[joe]

Jason Ligon,

It means many more days over 95 degrees in the wine regions. At those temperatures, the plants have trouble photosynthesizing, and the sugar levels in the grapes drops, redering them unfit for wine production.

[The Wine Commonsewer]

Nostar,

A list of Wa State appellations and wineries.

[NoStar]

TWC,
No doubt you know more about Washington wine, even though I live surrounded by many of the AVA's listed in that link. I was just being my usual smart-assed self.

Are you aware of the wines of Charles Smith from Walla Walla. Check out his Ten Buck Chuck "House Wines."

http://www.seattleweekly.com/food/0540/051005_food_sips.php

[The Wine Commonsewer]

NoStar, thanks for the tip on Ten Buck Chuck. I?m going to track some down.

I thought you were just kidding around, I didn?t quite put it together (it seems obvious to me in retrospect) until the last post with the link.

And thanks for the inspiration for my most recent blog post on Washington wines.