Yes, yes… we’ve heard all the doom and gloom arguments.
Glaciers will retreat, sea levels will rise, sub-tropical deserts will expand, politicians will argue, people will wave banners, everyone will go bonkers and then all life will come to an end. Or something like that.
But does it all have to be bad news? Will the Debbie Downers in the scientific community actually find a nugget of optimism among all the data?
Well, thanks to a spot of reading at Boing Boing, it looks like I’ve found one…
According to an Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change there may be a ray of light after all. Tucked away in the first chapter is this…
The consequences of warming are already detectable in wine quality, as shown by Duchêne and Schneider (2005), with a gradual increase in the potential alcohol levels at harvest for Riesling in Alsace of nearly 2% volume in the last 30 years. On a worldwide scale, for 25 of the 30 analysed regions, increasing trends of vintage ratings (average rise of 13.3 points on a 100-point scale for every 1°C warmer during the growing season), with lower vintage-to-vintage variation, has been established (Jones, 2005)
Which, more simply put, means better quality wine with more alcohol in it.
Which is a bit of a result seeing as we will have run out of ice for the Gins and Tonic…
