Josh writes: Here’s an odd thing.
Replying to Tweeter ‘Hot Topic’, who was highlighting this article in the Guardian, Gavin Schmidt said that there are “More than 10x number of English vineyards now than in medieval times.” with a link to a 2006 Real Climate article.
Gavin implies that this comparison trumps the argument about English vineyards being proof that Medieval Warm Period was hotter.
However, one can conclude that those who are using the medieval English vineyards as a ‘counter-proof’ to the idea of present day global warming are just blowing smoke (or possibly drinking too much Californian).
Hang on a sec! Surely you would not compare the two without mentioning the population size – the number of people buying and drinking the stuff – I mean that would be unscientific, wouldn’t it?
A quick bit of research and doing some sums, admittedly by a cartoonist, gave me approximate ratios of 15 Vineyards per million in medieval times compared to 7.5 Vineyards per million today. That means that if you want to use Vineyards as a proxy for temperature (I wouldn’t) the MWP was twice as hot as it it today!
I think we can conclude that this is simply Vintage Gavin (pronounced Ga-Vin) and we should all be enormously cheered up by the logic of climate science – what they can brew up with numbers is very entertaining.
Please embibe responsibly. No more that two units of Climate Science per day.
***
P.S. I didnt see it at the time but William Briggs also noted Gavin’s omission.
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Gavin is having one of his “turns”, possibly from smoking the vine leaves after throwing away all those nasty berries.
Pointman
Pointman, don’t forget that the by-product of wine making is CO2, I am surprised Gavin doesn’t want to compound our climate change misery by banning wine, that is why he his throwing away the nasty berries!
By and large people in the U.S. were not wine drinkers until they became much more affluent. Grapes were grown for jelly, juice and raisins. Beer was the drink prior to that time and still is.
Native Americans harvested wild grapes for raisins. Wild grape vines are extremely hardy in parts of the U.S. Wild grape vines will grow right up to the tops of trees and have “ropes” you can swing on. Wild grape jelly is very delicious.
California also produced a lot of raisins to supply the U.S. Americans use apple vinegar and not wine/grape vinegar.
Speaking of raisins, are you’all familiar with the Great American Raisin confiscation? Basically the government (during the Great Depression) wanted to prop up the price of goods by controlling supply. To create raisin scarcity, the government established a Raisin Administrative Committee that manages the supply of raisins. To this day, raisin growers MUST set aside a portion of their annual crop and give it to the government which may then give away, sell on the open market, or send overseas without compensation to the raisin growers.
That is interesting. My mother-in-law had a life long revulsion of raisins which apparently had something to do with her and her siblings having nothing to eat other than raisins during a period of her life when they wandered thru California as migrant workers during the depression.
That practice was recently deemed unlawful by the SCOTUS. Basically, a farmer said enough was enough, and he refused to turn over the product. It went all the way to the SCOTUS and they ruled that it violated the Takings Clause of the Constitution.
http://modernfarmer.com/2015/06/raisin-grower-wins-supreme-court-battle/
It sort of reminded me of the 100 year old Spanish-American war tax. Basically, a tax was added to phone bills (only the wealthy could afford phones back then) to pay for the Spanish-American war back in 1898. We were still paying the tax looooooong after the war ended. That finally got squashed, 100 years late. Once the government gets a hold of an income source, they won’t let go..
http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/money/industries/telecom/2006-05-25-phone-tax_x.htm
Thanks Mike, I knew the case was going there but didn’t know it was ruled one already.
When I did geography in school, around 1970, it was almost taken for granted that the medieval period was warmer, and as evidence was the number of roads in southern England named Vine Street, or Vine Lane, or similar, when at that time (around 1970) there was virtually no viticulture anywhere in England.
This, has to enter the discussion!
https://youtu.be/jdM9HDI33AY
He has one of the greatest voices in all history! Perhaps is was all the wine, gin, vodka, whiskey and rum. Or possibly the women.
Smoking will also impart a nice deep resonance to the male voice.
And give you the munchies.
Shouldn’t it be acreage per million, rather than vineyards per million? And what kind of grapes were grown? And how far North? We’ve barely scratched the surface here.
There appear to be documents detailing a complaint from Romans on the continent to those in England. The complaint was that the English ones had stopped to import wine from the continentals. The reason was that they were producing the stuff themselves. Al the way up to Hadrians Wall, that’s much farther North than grapes will grow currently.
The original claim by Gavin dealt with number, not acreage.
So?
But, But, But, don’t they homogenize the wine now days? 🙂
Classic stuff Josh!
As I said above in response to BCBill, there is NO pasteurization (or homogenization, two different things) being done in the wine industry, specifically in CA. I lived, worked and made wine in the CA wine area for 28 years and NEVER even heard of pasteurizing wine. The LAST thing you ever want to do is HEAT must/wine! There are various methods of killing the “natural” enemy’s of good wine, including chilling, not heating. And NEVER homogenization! That would KILL any wine! Blending yes. but that is NOT homogenization. And here is the post I submitted here back in 2009 the last time this silliness came up;
Where art thou o’ grape,
Grape of English vine?
Thy glory is now,
And the French dost whine.
Pleasure me nose,
With pepper bouquet.
Whilst to the south,
They swig tart Tokay.
Oh yea, oh yea,
For global warming.
And ice free lands,
Of Scottish moor’ng.
From green of York,
To white of Dover.
We’ll plant thy vine,
Rolling hills over.
For the French too long,
Hath claimed false glory.
The time dost fit,
To end their story.
Where art thou o’ grape,
Grape of English vine?
To thou I sing,
And my tongue dost pine.
Apologies. I should have put up the sarcasm flag!
My inference was related to homogenizing temp data, so why not wine making climate data next?
One wonders how they calculated with such accuracy how many vineyards there were in Britain
Our modern grape varieties have probably been imported from Germany and developed to be frost resistant
Even wild North American grapes won’t grow in the shade and require sun for growth. And these wild grape varieties will stand sub-zero temperatures. As far as I know they were not used to make wine. Poor quality for wine.
Our local vineyards, eastern Great Lakes area, suffered a lot winter kill the past couple of winters but not the wild grape vines.
If the cartoon is meant to represent Ga-Vin.
Then he must have up set, the made men as he has a finger missing…
The cognitive dissonance that this man suffers should make him throw a fit any day now. Even a stupid person shouldn’t be able to intellectually withstand that much BS.
Real Climate is a real sham.
No logic or Science in climate science.
Cheers Ga-Vino.
PS The next time Gavin does an interview on TWee the interviewer will say, “An now direct for the bar at the ‘Jersey’ Casino it’s Ga-Vino Dino.” Then Ga-Vino launches into his favorite bar tune, “How lucky can one guy be … ”
Ha ha
La Fit Le Data is only one Ga-Vin product. The other vintage is from the Domaine Sordide!
You need to know the type of grape that is being grown and what type of wine is being produced.
You pick you terroir according to what grapes are to be grown and what types of wine are going to be produced.
The temperature differences are very large (~5C), particularly if you are comparing them to temperature differences measured in 1/100th of a degree.
I suppose they won’t be opening any champagne bottles during the Parisfest Jamboree. We must ban sparkling wines, beers, coke, pepsi, any sparkling drink in fact! I had a couple of beers last night after work in my living room after I put the heating on, noticed the temperature go up after a few minutes, wow this CO2 laden drink is pretty powerful stuff! Sarc-off.
Well done. Great fun. Gavin and friends have small minds (I just said as much on Heller’s site – real clear science – on ‘Gavin Announces How Much Sea Level Fraud NASA Plans For The Future’.
~~~~~
However, “twice as hot” ought to have quotes around it.
Artistic license (literary license) allows you to use this wording, although it is mathematically not proper. [The “Ordinaire” is a good choice.] The “La Fit Le DATA” – I like also. Vin de Table is the least quality designation within French law so this falls below that.
Now, about the hand with 3 fingers …
It’s a 3-toed sloth.
The point is not the number of vineyards, but rather how far north are the vineyards.
There is evidence that they extended as far north as Yorkshire, and in Roman times even as far north as boarders, ie., Northumberland, close to Hadrian’s wall.
That is not the position today, where vineyards are in the south, predominantly the south east.
Also, I seem to recall that Roman wines were sweet. Need high sugar content in the grapes, which requires hot weather. (The actual grape varieties that were grown in Roman times no longer exist, and the ones in commercial use now did not exist then.)
You are correct about the sweet wine but there are other traditional ways to get there than natural sugar levels. Grape varieties vary in the quality of the wine they make and sugar levels is only one factor. To boost final sugar the fresh grapes can be dried in the Sun to concentrate the available sugars. This is still done in Jerez Spain for Sherry. In France this traditional method is used for Vin de Paille, so called because the grapes are dried on matts made of straw. Cyprus produces a sweet wine called Commandaria (ΚΟΥΜΑΝΔΑΡΙΑ) that uses similar methods. There are other wines, but you get the idea.
The other thing the Romans did was to cook down wine in lead lined kettles to make a syrup which would be mixed with water. The lead made the syrup taste sweet, but was not healthy.
All good points, but with respect to your comment: “To boost final sugar the fresh grapes can be dried in the Sun to concentrate the available sugars”. one has to bear in mind that in October on the boarders of Scotland, there is today little in the way of warm sunshine, quite unlike the position say in Southern Spain, or France.
if in Roman times grapes harvested in the boarders were sun dried and sweetened in this manner, it must have been considerably more sunny and less cloudy back in Roman times. that of course may be one component of a warmer Climate but if so, it emphasises how much warmer the Climate was back in those times, and how much more pleasant life would have been.
Please, it’s degrees proof and % alcohol. never % proof. As is customary, the relation between proof and ABV is different on the two sides of the Atlantic, being a factor of 2 in the US and 7/4 in the UK. The test for ‘proof’ spirit was traditionally the naval gunpowder test. Gunpowder won’t ignite if doused in rum that’s been watered down below ‘proof’. Sailors wouldn’t accept a watered down rum ration. Very practical. Unlike climate modelling.
Lamb’s Navy Rum – 150 proof!
Gavin needs to just put a cork in it.
0% Proof is no joking matter!
Chateau Gavin – 0 Proof !
>>>sonfametman
>>Please, it’s degrees proof and % alcohol. never % proof
Did you not get the joke, sonfametman? – No Proof.
And I am presuming that the 70 cl label on the bottle is actually reading 7ºc — ie: the extra warming that the BBC and Met Office were promoting.
So the bottom of the label reads: 7ºc – 0% Proof.
Ralph
The point is, where were the vineyards in Roman times? In the North of England where it remains unfavourable for growing grapes; I’ve not checked the numbers but I would guess most, if not all, vineyards are confined to the South. And how does Schmidt account for farming in Greenland?
Middle Ages Drink
The people of the Middle Ages enjoyed to drink, and as water was often unclean, it was a necessity. The poor drank ale, mead or cider and the RICH were able to drink many different types of wines.
http://www.lordsandladies.org/middle-ages-drink.htm
I’ve heard this claim repeated all my life.
I have made beer and firstly you must boil a large quantity of clean water containing malt.
BUT – you could simply boil the water without the malt and it would thereby be sterilized and fit for drinking.
So, the assertion that people in the past made water into beer because the water was unfit for drinking seems to me to be an urban legend. Or just a feeble excuse for the alcoholism of the past.
Also after boiling the malt, the rough insoluble material must be filtered out.
If they had the facilities to make the water into beer – then they had the facilities to store, coarsely filter and boil water. Surely?
There was also another issue, especially with cider. There was a condition called “Devonshire Colic” (DC)and people used to go to Bath to “recover”. Floating in the mineral rich waters allowed the body to “clean out” toxins via the liver. DC was, in effect, lead poisoning as lead was used to “sweeten” up the cider. Rough cider, is REALLY rough. Lead was not the only “sweetener” Oh no. Dead animals were often used to extract the acid. Glad to say this does not happen anymore.
Saw this in local shop window today.
http://rs446.pbsrc.com/albums/qq187/bobclive/033_zps9d2z11th.jpg~c100
Saw this in local shop today.
http://i446.photobucket.com/albums/qq187/bobclive/033_zps9d2z11th.jpg
Yep, a brown bear and a polar bear sharing the same eco-system-display-area.
And then people are surprised when they discover that polar bears and brown bears may interbreed.
Well, bears will be bears. And a window display can be a lonely place…
I like the tree rings that the polar bear is holding up. Is this the infamous section from Yamal?
There were fewer than 5 million people in the UK by 1500, and about 90 million in the whole of Europe, Current UK population is close to 65 million and is one of the fastest growing in Europe, which has expanded in size to over 740 million. Call me crazy, but I think there may be a greater demand than there was 600 years ago, far greater than 10x.
Greater level of demand (for both local consumption and export), greater requirement for more vineyards. The cooler temps, the greater the likelihood fruit crop will fail, so there is a need for the creation of additional crop to meet increased demand so when crops are bad the business doesn’t go under.
Australia had no wine industry in the 1400s and they are now the fifth largest exporters of wine globally. Does this mean that temps down under were too cold to grow grapes 600 years ago?
…derp
Schmidt has no grasp of what is simple logic. Or a basic understanding of historical research. Or agriculture. Or business. Or even of the climate of the UK.
“In England, it is only in about 2 years in every 10 that grape production will be really good, 4 years will be average and 4 years poor or terrible – largely due to weather and/or disease exacerbated by weather”
http://www.english-wine.com/history.html