# Scorched, Parched and Now Uninsurable: Climate Change Hits Wine Country



## ibglowin (Jul 18, 2021)

Scorched, Parched and Now Uninsurable: Climate Change Hits Wine Country


Sunscreen on grapes. Toilet water that is treated and used for irrigation. Napa Valley winemakers are taking extreme steps in the face of climate change.




www.nytimes.com


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## jswordy (Jul 21, 2021)

I got notified of this story several different ways! 

Over the long haul, I think California and some Washington wine country is going to move to Idaho, Wyoming, Montana and the Dakotas. There is suitable terroir there, but the weather has been too cold in the past for large-scale vineyards (though there are smaller ones (and WMT has members who own and operate some of them). That will mean a dramatic shift in the cultures and social norms of those states, as well.

In my view, there will also be a resurgence of the central Midwest and the Northeast in grape production, as they reclaim major winemaking roles they once held pre-Prohibition.

I also expect renewed interest in the muscadine and scuppernong as grapes that thrive in heat, and a new turn to research on methods of wine production that can eliminate their less desirable characteristics (which is totally possible; I can do it on a small scale and inexpensively now). Genetic engineering may be able to transplant some heat tolerance characteristics of American grapes into European varieties.

Not only California, but much of the West has been growing over the past 60 years on borrowed time, climate change or not. Populations have reached a completely unsustainable level when matched with the history of resource availability year-to-year over the past 10,000.

Much of Western agriculture (which is essentially the practice of raising plants that are completely unsuited to the environment by using finite resources, European grapes and alfalfa being two of the more radical examples) and Western cities are dependent on unstable rains filling reserviors and drawing down aquifers that take long periods to recharge – in some cases, tens of thousands of years.

From a macro viewpoint, all this was inevitable in some form, eventually. Climate change may have hastened it, but it was coming anyway. Unfortunately, individual human activities are not conducted from a macro viewpoint. All those littler acts are promoting great change to come.


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## bstnh1 (Jul 22, 2021)

The chief cause of the California wildfires is the total lack of forest management there. When you prohibit logging, forest thinning, controlled burns and similar practices, the forest floor becomes lined with dead branches, trees and other easily ignited litter. Once a fire gets started, it not only has an abundance of fuel on the forest floor, but the density of the trees gives it all the oomph it needs to become the lead story on the evening news.


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## jswordy (Jul 22, 2021)

bstnh1 said:


> The chief cause of the California wildfires is the total lack of forest management there. When you prohibit logging, forest thinning, controlled burns and similar practices, the forest floor becomes lined with dead branches, trees and other easily ignited litter. Once a fire gets started, it not only has an abundance of fuel on the forest floor, but the density of the trees gives it all the oomph it needs to become the lead story on the evening news.



I would say that is a significant part of the problem, but the "chief cause"? No.


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## jswordy (Jul 22, 2021)

This has been perhaps the most disturbing development in the west to me in the last few years. Foreign desert nations buying up arid US southwestern dry land to raise alfalfa that they ship back home. Disregarding the carbon footprint of that, they are using up finite aquifer resources.









Saudi land purchases in California and Arizona fuel debate over water rights


Saudi Arabia's largest dairy company will soon be unable to farm alfalfa in its own parched country to feed its 170,000 cows.




www.latimes.com













Saudi Arabia buying up farmland in US Southwest


Saudi Arabia and other Persian Gulf countries are gobbling up farmland in drought-afflicted regions of the U.S. Southwest.




www.cnbc.com













Who keeps buying California's scarce water? Saudi Arabia


Saudi-based Almarai owns 15,000 acres of an irrigated valley – but what business does a foreign food production company have drawing resources from a US desert?




www.theguardian.com


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## ibglowin (Jul 22, 2021)

Ha ha but nope. Climate change is the chief cause.









Why Does California Have So Many Wildfires?


There are four key ingredients to the disastrous wildfire seasons in the West, and climate change is a key culprit.




www.nytimes.com







bstnh1 said:


> The chief cause of the California wildfires is the total lack of forest management there. When you prohibit logging, forest thinning, controlled burns and similar practices, the forest floor becomes lined with dead branches, trees and other easily ignited litter. Once a fire gets started, it not only has an abundance of fuel on the forest floor, but the density of the trees gives it all the oomph it needs to become the lead story on the evening news.


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## sour_grapes (Jul 22, 2021)

bstnh1 said:


> The chief cause of the California wildfires is the total lack of forest management there. When you prohibit logging, forest thinning, controlled burns and similar practices, the forest floor becomes lined with dead branches, trees and other easily ignited litter. Once a fire gets started, it not only has an abundance of fuel on the forest floor, but the density of the trees gives it all the oomph it needs to become the lead story on the evening news.



So you want to rake the forest floor? Here is some perspective: The amount of just _forest_ land in California is 5.5 times the size of New Hampshire, or 1.4 times the size of NH, VT, MA, CT, and RI combined. You better get busy!


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## jswordy (Jul 22, 2021)

sour_grapes said:


> So you want to rake the forest floor? Here is some perspective: The amount of just _forest_ land in California is 5.5 times the size of New Hampshire, or 1.4 times the size of NH, VT, MA, CT, and RI combined. You better get busy!



Let me preface this by saying that keeping up with research is my job. Not preaching to anyone here, just summing up some research...

There is an argument in academic research that the former 50-year practice of snuffing out all fires as soon as they started has led to as unnatural a landscape in forests as it would be if they were burned out completely. The resulting underbrush, mast, needle and leaf debris pileup makes for a much hotter fire and a slower-advancing flame front when it does eventually burn, and retards reforestation because seeds that would have survived a quicker, less hot fire die and also because the slower advance of the flame front kills more trees than a quick fire would.

As a result of that research, the US Forest Service has modified its approach to fire suppression. The Forest Service is now more about containment in situations where that is appropriate, and is also setting many more underbrush clearing fires than it used to.

It's also been postulated that the fires themselves may be a form of natural "reaction" in the ecosystem to a warming climate, since the smoke shades out sunlight.

Less well studied is a theory that human expansionist activity itself in the Western region is helping to drive even hotter weather there due to the increase in hard surfaces that retain heat, a "heat island" effect that has been well documented in cities but is not well understood in regions, and increased rapid runoff of what water is available - which deprives it of a longer-standing cooling effect.

All that said, it is abundantly clear that the longstanding presence of drought that is uncharacteristic in the weather pattern history of the West in the past 5,000 years is the main cause of the ease with which major fires erupt and expand. And rather than being a transient weather pattern like shorter-lived droughts, this longer duration drought is being driven by climate change. Since climate operates on a much longer "wavelength" than weather, the long-term pattern is not likely to subside even if it ebbs and flows in coming years.


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## bstnh1 (Jul 23, 2021)

Droughts are nothing new or unexpected in California. The most significant statewide multi-year droughts occurred during 1918-1920, 1928-35, 1947-1950, 1987-1992, 2000-2002, and 2007-09. And while we see some unusual weather events now and then, the NOAA scientists that analyze weather patterns don't look at any cycles less than 50 year periods. So just because it's dry, wet. hot, etc. for 10 years, doesn't really count for anything more than a short-term phenomenon. As far as climate change .... sure the climate changes. It always has. We've had ice ages in the past and the planet warmed and the ice melted - all with no humans or cows spewing stuff into the atmosphere. Can we humans affect the worldwide climate? I doubt it. I remember the good scientists telling us back in 1973 that an impending ice age was ready to freeze us all out of existence because we were blocking the sun's rays from warming the Earth.


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## sour_grapes (Jul 23, 2021)

bstnh1 said:


> Can we humans affect the worldwide climate? I doubt it.



"Hey! I have an idea! Let's take ALL of the carbon that has been slowly sequestered in the Earth's crust over the past 500,000,000 years, and then burn it ALL over a 500 year period! What could possibly go wrong?!?!"


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## ibglowin (Jul 23, 2021)

Maybe when "the woods of NH" start burning to the ground it will become "real" to you.....



bstnh1 said:


> Can we humans affect the worldwide climate? I doubt it.


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## sour_grapes (Jul 23, 2021)

"The climate has always been changing": Here is a little perspective on that:


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## bstnh1 (Jul 23, 2021)

From the John Locke Foundation:

*"Climate experts believe the next ice age is on its way…within a lifetime…" *Leonard Nimoy 1978

The really sad part of all this is that Leonard Nimoy was right. In 1978 this is what "climate experts" believed. Like today, they were blaming the weather on humans and their polluting lifestyles. And, like today, part of the problem, along with particulate matter, was the evil carbon dioxide. As one government scientist concludes according to this 1970 article in the St. Petersburg Times, "doubling CO2 in the atmosphere…would raise surface temperatures by 3.6 Fahrenheit and [here’s the kicker] _cool the lower stratosphere some 27 degrees."_ Holy iceberg, Batman!!!

Below you’ll find similar hysterics from the 1970s global cooling alarmist crowd in a long (but partial) list of 100 newspaper and magazine articles from the period. I wonder, after 15 years of no global warming, when will we start to view the hundreds if not thousands of scare stories from newspapers, magazines, and TV newscasts over the last 20 years with the same sense of humor with which we now view these stories from 40 years ago? Have fun!


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## sour_grapes (Jul 23, 2021)

*“When the facts change, I change my mind - what do you do, sir?”*

― attributed to John Maynard Keynes, but possibly Paul Samuelson


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## bstnh1 (Jul 23, 2021)

Find this full list and additional videos here.

1970 – Colder Winters Held Dawn of New Ice Age – Scientists See Ice Age In the Future (_The Washington Post, January 11, 1970_)

1970 – Is Mankind Manufacturing a New Ice Age for Itself? (_L.A. Times, January 15, 1970_)

1970 – Pollution Could Cause Ice Age, Agency Reports (_St. Petersburg Times, March 4, 1970_)

1970 – Scientist predicts a new ice age by 21st century (_Boston Globe, April 16, 1970_)

1971 – Ice Age Refugee Dies Underground (_The Montreal Gazette, Febuary 17, 1971_)

1971 – Pollution Might Lead To Another Ice Age (_Schenectady Gazette, March 22, 1971_)

1971 – U.S. Scientist Sees New Ice Age Coming (_The Washington Post, July 9, 1971_)

1971 – Ice Age Around the Corner (_Chicago Tribune, July 10, 1971_)

1971 – New Ice Age Coming – It’s Already Getting Colder (_L.A. Times, October 24, 1971_)

1972 – Weather To Get Colder (_Montreal Gazette, September 12, 1972_)

1972 – British climate expert predicts new Ice Age (_The Christian Science Monitor, September 23, 1972_)

1972 – Scientist Sees Chilling Signs of New Ice Age (_L.A. Times, September 24, 1972_)

1972 – Science: Another Ice Age? (_Time Magazine, November 13, 1972_)

1972 – Ice Age On Its Way, Scientist Says (_Toledo Blade, December 13, 1972_)

1973 – The Ice Age Cometh (_The Saturday Review, March 24, 1973_)

1973 – Possibility Of Ice Age Worries The Scientists (_The Argus-Press, November 12, 1973_)

1974 – New evidence indicates ice age here (_Eugene Register-Guard, May 29, 1974_)

1974 – *Another Ice Age?* (_Time Magazine, June 24, 1974_)

1974 – 2 Scientists Think ‘Little’ Ice Age Near (_The Hartford Courant, August 11, 1974_)

1974 – Ice Age, worse food crisis seen (_The Chicago Tribune, October 30, 1974_)

1974 – Believes Pollution Could Bring On Ice Age (_Ludington Daily News, December 4, 1974_)

1974 – Scientists Fear Smog Could Cause Ice Age (_Milwaukee Journal, December 5, 1974_)

* **** 1974 CIA Report on climate change (or here) *****

1975 – Climate Changes Called Ominous (_The New York Times, January 19, 1975_)

1975 – B-r-r-r-r: New Ice Age on way soon? (_The Chicago Tribune, March 2, 1975_)

1975 – Cooling Trends Arouse Fear That New Ice Age Coming (_Eugene Register-Guard, March 2, 1975_)

1975 – Is Another Ice Age Due? Arctic Ice Expands In Last Decade(_Youngstown Vindicator, March 2, 1975_)

1975 – Is Earth Headed For Another Ice Age? (_Reading Eagle, March 2, 1975_)

1975 – New Ice Age Dawning? Significant Shift In Climate Seen (_Times Daily, March 2, 1975_)

1975 – The Ice Age cometh: the system that controls our climate (_The Chicago Tribune, April 13, 1975_)

1975 – *The Cooling World* (_Newsweek, April 28, 1975_)

1975 – Cooling trend may signal coming of another Ice Age (_The Sun, May 16, 1975_)

1975 – Scientists Ask Why World Climate Is Changing; Major Cooling May Be Ahead (PDF) (_The New York Times, May 21, 1975_)

1975 – Summer of A New Ice Age (_The Age, June 5, 1975_)

1975 – In the Grip of a New Ice Age? (_International Wildlife, July-August, 1975_)

1975 – Oil Spill Could Cause New Ice Age (_Milwaukee Journal, December 11, 1975_)

1976 – Ice Age Predicted (_Reading Eagle, January 22, 1976_)

1976 – Ice Age Predicted In Century (_Bangor Daily News, January 22, 1976_)

1976 – It’s Going To Get Chilly About 125 Years From Now (_Sarasota Herald-Tribune, January 23, 1976_)

1976 – Worrisome CIA Report; Even U.S. Farms May be Hit by Cooling Trend (_U.S. News & World Report, May 31, 1976_)

1977 – The Ice Age Cometh… (_New York Magazine, January 31, 1977_)

1977 – The Big Freeze (_Time Magazine, January 31, 1977_)

1977 – Space Mirrors Proposed To Prevent Crop Freezes (_Bangor Daily News, February 7, 1977_)

1977 – We Will Freeze in the Dark (_Capital Cities Communications Documentary, Host: Nancy Dickerson, April 12, 1977_)


1978 – Winter May Be Colder Than In Last Ice Age (_The Deseret News, January 2, 1978_)

1978 – Winter Temperatures Colder Than Last Ice Age (_Eugene Register-Guard, Eugene Register-Guard, January 3, 1978_)

1978 – Winters Will Get Colder, ‘we’re Entering Little Ice Age’(_Ellensburg Daily Record, January 10, 1978_)

1978 – Geologist Says Winters Getting Colder (_Middlesboro Daily News, January 16, 1978_)

1978 – It’s Going To Get Colder (_Boca Raton News, January 17, 1978_)

1978 – *The Coming Ice Age* (_In Search Of TV Show, Season 2, Episode 23, Host: Leonard Nimoy, May 1978_)


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## bstnh1 (Jul 23, 2021)

Who/what warmed the planet to end the last ice age?

What Thawed the Last Ice Age?


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## jswordy (Jul 23, 2021)

bstnh1 said:


> Droughts are nothing new or unexpected in California. The most significant statewide multi-year droughts occurred during 1918-1920, 1928-35, 1947-1950, 1987-1992, 2000-2002, and 2007-09. And while we see some unusual weather events now and then, the NOAA scientists that analyze weather patterns don't look at any cycles less than 50 year periods. So just because it's dry, wet. hot, etc. for 10 years, doesn't really count for anything more than a short-term phenomenon. As far as climate change .... sure the climate changes. It always has. We've had ice ages in the past and the planet warmed and the ice melted - all with no humans or cows spewing stuff into the atmosphere. Can we humans affect the worldwide climate? I doubt it. I remember the good scientists telling us back in 1973 that an impending ice age was ready to freeze us all out of existence because we were blocking the sun's rays from warming the Earth.



For my part, I am referring to the CLIMATE, which is not the same as the WEATHER. I just want to clarify that.


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## jswordy (Jul 23, 2021)

bstnh1 said:


> From the John Locke Foundation:
> 
> *"Climate experts believe the next ice age is on its way…within a lifetime…" *Leonard Nimoy 1978
> 
> ...



About the John Locke Foundation...




__





John Locke Foundation - Wikipedia







en.wikipedia.org





I'll take my science without the politics.


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## bstnh1 (Jul 23, 2021)

jswordy said:


> About the John Locke Foundation...
> 
> 
> 
> ...


Science w/o politics is rare, if it exists at all. All scientists depend on grants for their own survival. Most grants depend on who's in office and what policies and programs they favor. If it was proven tomorrow that there is no climate change taking place, just think how many scientists would be packing up their desks.


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## sour_grapes (Jul 23, 2021)

bstnh1 said:


> Find this full list and additional videos here.
> 
> 1970 – Colder Winters Held Dawn of New Ice Age – Scientists See Ice Age In the Future (_The Washington Post, January 11, 1970_)
> 
> ...




Do you have the foggiest inkling how much we have learned since the 1970s? 

See the Keynes quote above. Do you _also _continue to think that the sun goes around the Earth, as leading scientists believed a few hundred years ago? Do you believe that diseases are caused by noxious vapors, as everyone believed in the late 19th century? Evolution? Plate tectonics? Quantum mechanics?

More time has elapsed between 1970 and now, than elapsed between the formulation of quantum mechanics and 1970.


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## bstnh1 (Jul 23, 2021)

sour_grapes said:


> Do you have the foggiest inkling how much we have learned since the 1970s?
> 
> See the Keynes quote above. Do you _also _continue to think that the sun goes around the Earth, as leading scientists believed a few hundred years ago? Do you believe that diseases are caused by noxious vapors, as everyone believed in the late 19th century? Evolution? Plate tectonics? Quantum mechanics?
> 
> More time has elapsed between 1970 and now, than elapsed between the formulation of quantum mechanics and 1970.




And in 45 years or so will we be making excuses for the scientists who in 2020 told us the oceans would rise up and swallow us?

Wrong Again: 50 Years of Failed Eco-pocalyptic Predictions - Competitive Enterprise Institute


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## jswordy (Jul 23, 2021)

bstnh1 said:


> Science w/o politics is rare, if it exists at all. All scientists depend on grants for their own survival. Most grants depend on who's in office and what policies and programs they favor. If it was proven tomorrow that there is no climate change taking place, just think how many scientists would be packing up their desks.



As someone who is involved heavily with science and research on a daily basis, I can tell you flat-out that you have no idea what you are talking about, nor you you have even a basic understanding of the scientific process. I'm done here.


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## bstnh1 (Jul 23, 2021)

jswordy said:


> As someone who is involved heavily with science and research on a daily basis, I can tell you flat-out that you have no idea what you are talking about, nor you you have even a basic understanding of the scientific process. I'm done here.


I worked with water quality scientists who's jobs depended 100% on grants they received to study the Great Bay Estuary in New Hampshire. Do you really think they would conclude there's no problem with the water quality in the bay? Nope! They kept coming up with study after study and that's still going on. It will never end because no one is going to write themselves out of a job.


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## sour_grapes (Jul 23, 2021)




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## Obbnw (Jul 24, 2021)

sour_grapes said:


> "The climate has always been changing": Here is a little perspective on that:


Come on man! This is a winemaking forum, you have to add:
6000 bc people's of the southern Caucasus discover wine.

For a while I thought what's the big deal with CO2, then I saw a plot of historical CO2 ppm. Eye opening for me...

True science is not political. Funding can be political, but political funding doesn't equate to political science. Yes there are unethical scientists, just like there are unethical anything but from my experience unethical behavior is the exception.

Just a note on the water quality example above, if water quality did improve any self respecting and "capitalist" scientist would report the truth then secure more funding to discover why and how it got better....

Back to grapes, the do seem highly drought resistant. In my neck of the woods, Utah, if we stopped watering, my grapes would fair the best.


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## Old Corker (Jul 24, 2021)

bstnh1 said:


> Science w/o politics is rare, if it exists at all. All scientists depend on grants for their own survival. Most grants depend on who's in office and what policies and programs they favor. If it was proven tomorrow that there is no climate change taking place, just think how many scientists would be packing up their desks.


Science is actually factual. Politicizing how the facts are depicted is not factual. Science doesn't really care if you believe it or not. It just happens.


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## Old Corker (Jul 24, 2021)

sour_grapes said:


> "Hey! I have an idea! Let's take ALL of the carbon that has been slowly sequestered in the Earth's crust over the past 500,000,000 years, and then burn it ALL over a 500 year period! What could possibly go wrong?!?!"


Not to mention what humans have done to the forests of the world. 4 billion years in the making and 10,000 years to destroy 98% of it.


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## wood1954 (Jul 25, 2021)

the Milankovitch cycles led to more sunshine falling on the Antarctic at the same time—a likely cause of the warming waters.
In fact, the Milankovitch cycles would predict gradual global cooling.
The melting in the north could have been triggered "because the ice sheets had reached such a size that they had become unstable and were ready to go.
I do believe in climate change, heck I’m old enough to see it happening, but the first two sentences were a paragraph apart in one article and the the third sentence was anothe SA article. the author seems to give up and just make up a reason for the ice sheets demise. It’s reporting like this that causes confusion and leads to denial of the problem because to fix the problem is going to require sacrifice and it’s easier to point at lousy reporting and say it’s unfounded science so why make the sacrifices if it’s all bs


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## bstnh1 (Jul 25, 2021)

Why Apocalyptic Claims About Climate Change Are Wrong


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## Obbnw (Jul 25, 2021)

bstnh1 said:


> Why Apocalyptic Claims About Climate Change Are Wrong


The key to that article is the last sentence. Also note that the title isn't "why claims about climate change are wrong."

Personally, I took the chance on vinifera grapes in SLC , Utah elevation 4605, because I think SLC is no longer zone 5-6. I think we are zone 6 to 7. 

We'll see...

Also many of the "climate change policies" can be divorced from the climate change argument and add value as air quality policies. Many western cities have serious air quality problems.

In winter it is inversions in summer it is ozone.

Sooo, I agree, apocalypse is not imminent, but why not try to improve air quality and potentially slow climate change?


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## balatonwine (Jul 28, 2021)

Obbnw said:


> Personally, I took the chance on vinifera grapes in SLC , Utah elevation 4605, because I think SLC is no longer zone 5-6. I think we are zone 6 to 7.



Interesting. I love such experiments. Do you have a blog or other place that documents this process (no, I will not call it a "journey".... such an over used term these days...  ).


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## Obbnw (Jul 28, 2021)

balatonwine said:


> Interesting. I love such experiments. Do you have a blog or other place that documents this process (no, I will not call it a "journey".... such an over used term these days...  ).


My journey into winemaking has been long and arduous....
: )

I have trouble typing 2 sentences into this forum, so no blog.


Basically, I've lived here 25 years and the only year it got down to 0f was 1996. So don't think I'm taking much of a risk. (Really no risk since it is just for fun). I picked Tempranillo because I like cheap Spanish wine and picked Malbec because our climate is similar to the Uco valley in Argentina. SLC summers are hotter, +5, and winters are colder, -5.

Overall I love my vines and the fact I can use them to make wine is just an added bonus.


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## heatherd (Jul 28, 2021)

jswordy said:


> Let me preface this by saying that keeping up with research is my job. Not preaching to anyone here, just summing up some research...
> 
> There is an argument in academic research that the former 50-year practice of snuffing out all fires as soon as they started has led to as unnatural a landscape in forests as it would be if they were burned out completely. The resulting underbrush, mast, needle and leaf debris pileup makes for a much hotter fire and a slower-advancing flame front when it does eventually burn, and retards reforestation because seeds that would have survived a quicker, less hot fire die and also because the slower advance of the flame front kills more trees than a quick fire would.
> 
> ...


I've been doing sustainability consulting for my firm for about ten years. We've found that the heat island effect + lack of permeability of hard surfaces + dark pavement and roofs + unsuitable and non-native plants + over-building + over-engineering + poor site planning + relying on non-natural cooling + not designing to net-zero or net-positive are a combination of factors that have created climate change and we have to do things differently at a large scale.


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