Can You Say...

[Thomas]

Miserable, miserable weather pattern prevails.

This whole 2009 is a write-off.

Now, I hear that snow is coming our way--already! I just knew it would be a long, protracted winter ahead.

[winoweenie]

I know your pain. Was in the low 60s here this am. WW [img]http://www.wines.com/ubb/wink.gif[/img]

[Kcwhippet]

Whatever happened to Al Gore's global warming?

[TheEngineer]

I've been pretty lucky. I mean I where I travel to are suppose to be the leading rain capitals in the world (Vancouver, London, Portland, San Francisco, etc) and I've not seen much of the wet stuff this year. Boston as Foodie noted was an absolutely nasty year for rain. It seemed to rain all the time....but then again, I've not been there a lot [img]http://www.wines.com/ubb/smile.gif[/img]

[wondersofwine]

Global warming is occurring KC. You can't take an anomaly such as a bad winter in one place and extrapolate that that shows the climate is not gradually heating up. The polar caps are losing ice thickness and retreating. The main questions remaining are how much of the climate change is caused by human carbon footprints and activity and how much is caused by natural climate cycles? What can humans do to slow global warming and how effective will their steps be?

[Thomas]

Actually, WOW and KC, this weather pattern of cool and damp in the Northeast is part of the global climate change pattern--so I'm told.

The "warming" part of the climate shift is hitting certain areas of the globe, and that causes weather patterns that can (and will) create areas of cold. Overall, the process of warming the earth and the oceans is supposed to lead to the next ice age--too long and scientific an explanation for that for me to even try.

Oddly, even though we have had a cool, damp summer and early winters for two consecutive years, we still see plants extending their growing seasons and animals that don't belong here now living here. Our first and last frost periods don't arrive when they used to, and the rains and snows that we do have are not only more prevalent, they are much more violent.

Being close to agriculture in the Finger Lakes for 26 years, I am certain that the climate has changed and continues to change. I just don't know why or where it is going.

To bring it to wine, when I moved here in 1984, a person would have had to have been an idiot to plant Merlot. Still is, but to a lesser degree...



[This message has been edited by foodie (edited 10-14-2009).]

[hotwine]

Seems to me that the world's climate is so dynamic (and always has been) that its only consistent characteristic is change. All algore's nonsense is only designed to fatten his already bulging wallet by steering funding to programs in which he's heavily invested. I ain't buyin' what he's peddlin'.

[winoweenie]

AMEN there Bro!!!! The earths' done this meeny times afore in the past and will go thru it meeny times agin in the future. WW

[Innkeeper]

According to the BBC, yes the BBC, global warming ended in 1999; and a 30 year period of global cooling started. That tracks with my experience.

[Thomas]

IK, ask some people in France and Germany how they feel about that.

I understand that German vintages have been consistently warmer over the past decade, and just this year Bordeaux was a hotbed--and we all remember the few hot summers in Europe over the past decade that gave us three of the one "vintage of the century!"

It seems to me that parts of northern Europe are warmer and parts of Northern America are cooler. In fact, I seem to remember Londoners complaining of massive heat about two summers ago, and I read recently in a wine periodical for the trade that because of a warming trend, England is developing a wine industry.

Got to remember that BBC is a news organization, and we all know what that means to the news [img]http://www.wines.com/ubb/wink.gif[/img]



[This message has been edited by foodie (edited 10-15-2009).]