Global warming threatens Californian wine industry
When we talked about species distributions I mentioned that one of the reasons for studying distributions was that many would be changing due to the effects of global warming. Well, a paper in the latest Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences looks at how climate change might affect the areas suitable for wine production in the US. Grapevines are very susceptible to high temperatures and typical global warming scenarios lead to a reduction of the areas suitable for premium wine by up to 81%. This could obviously have significant consequences for the Californian economy.The story has been picked up by the The San Francisco Chronicle and New Scientist Magazine, amongst others.
Labels: Global Warming, Research Reports
posted by John Latto @ 6:03 PM
2 comments
2 Comments:
Even if the global community does decide to finally get smart and actively try to stop or reduce the causes of global warming, won't the consequences be in a timeframe such that the damage will be irreversible? There is no short-term solution to the problem. Aren't we on a slippery slope?
Yes indeed, and the longer we slide down the slope without trying to stop, the harder it will be to stop when we do decide to do something. If we did manage to control greenhouse gases RIGHT NOW, what would be the consequences of the gases that we have already emitted?
The general consensus is that current temperature rise has been a little under 1C (compared to recent but pre-industrial times) and we are probably already committed to another 0.5C rise.
Although this might not sound very much we are probably already committed to enough warming to melt the Greenland ice sheet - which in itself will have numerous knock on effects on global climate......
This is hardly a realistic scenario though, CO2 emissions continue to INCREASE not decrease.
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