Mildew attacks French vineyards

YEAHHHHHHHH! Go fungus! Wipe out the F_____ harvest!!!!!

You know that much of the harvest are small farmers. Why would you want them to struggle? Not a nice thing to wish on any business.

Would you like it if someone suggested all Italian Vineyard should be wiped out? Hurting all the farmers and winemakers and villages?

I have always supported your free speech and diverse views but this is not nice.

Nothing would make me happier than to see all F_____ wine-making go extinct.

Must be a bear drinker. ;-)

UC once again proves that he secretly KNOWS the French make the world's best wines. What an ass. The only bright side to this - maybe we will see a return to normalcy in Bordeaux pricing with the '07 campaign.

Yes and people should not reply, it is one thing to be polemic but another to rejoice about people's misfortunes based on some arbitrary national difference.

== I might mention that this summer is definitely the coldest I can remember in France (I have beeen here 18 years). Here on the Var coast the sea is at 17°C, about 6-8° below normal, with daytime air temperatures rarely above 25°C and evenings dipping below 18°C...

While this is accompanied by sunshine and wind over here, everywhere else in France temperatures are much lower and there are many storms, including lots of hail.

Champagne weather is comparable to autumnmn with dark skies and cold temperatures.

Bordeaux has experienced hailstorms that have destroyed most of the grapes in many areas.

It has snowed heavily in the Alps, and some mountain passes in Austria required having chains.

AxisOfBeagles wrote:

While being sympathetic, being polemic myself, I cannot help but reply with "Global Warming"?

Yes, I know; it was not worthy of me. ;-)) Dee Dee

Dee, assuming that this was a serious comment, let me note that the idea of global warming doesn't mean a uniform rise in temperatures worldwide. Rather, it means that the overall temperature of the Earth, measured as a quantity averaged over the entire surface (including oceans) is going up at an alarming rate. So, even with this cold French summer, I'll go on record right now as predicting that 2007 will, when all the data is tallied, go down as one of the 10 hottest years in recorded history, joining 2005, 2003, 2001, 2000 and 1998. See a trend here? ;-)

Mark Lipton

Indeed. If we had the individual put in permanent Coventry, we would long since have ceased to have to listen to his bigoted diatribe.

In Normandy we look with longing at your weather, Mike! :) After a broiling April without a drop of water, we had horrendous hail storms. I'm a maple collector, many of my trees were practically defoliated. Since, it's rained constantly, with daytime temperatures in the low teens, and often dropping to single digits at night. We've been keeping the wood stove going. The trees think it's autumn, many maples colouring up, others just shedding leaves. Yesterday we had heavy hail again.

I think it likely that many Loire makers will have no crop at all this year. It is an economic nightmare for thousands of small businesses already just barely making ends meet...

As for pricing, the Bordelais will no doubt declare that the hail has performed necessary triage after a warm spring and non-existent winter. This combined with a small harvest will be a perfect excuse to put the prices up.

-E

Weather in UK is similar to France................dire

we will eat out tonight for the second time in 6/52 and the forecast is dire with perhaps the Azores high building from the 20th.

we now have outbreaks of potato blight reported from London and it has spread to tomatoes.

so a glass of NZ SB in the garden tonight.

JT

Mark, for some reason I had heard the calculations for Global warming was poplations of cities. Of course we all know the polar ice caps at south of earth are growing.

Population density plays a large role I imagine in warming trends which explains why ice caps at south of planet are getting larger?

Also, anyone catch that Glaciers on Mars are also starting to get smaller?

If that the case is it human or maybe something else like the Sun is hotter?

Not a scientist..just asking. Its definitly hotter in NC over past few years. Miserably hotter.

No, Dick. There was a widely reported observation of the thickening of one Antarctic ice sheet, but overall the glaciers of Antarctica, which hold something like 1/3 of the total fresh water on Earth are melting at an alarming rate. The BBC has some good popular science articles on it:

Concern about this reached a new level of panic when the Larsen B ice shelf, a *huge* amount of ice, broke off from Antarctica and fell into the ocean. No one had seen that coming and it revised thinking about the rate at which glaciers will melt: the melting water from the top of the ice flows down into the glacier and weakens the structure, so once the melting starts it keeps accelerating, like a snowball rolling downhill.

Population growth plays a large factor, as each human being puts out a fair amount of CO2, but population density is irrelevant to a global phenomenon.

There is a lot of evidence that the sun is getting warmer. But the warming trend seen on Mars is only a small fraction of what we're experiencing. So, the most likely scenario is that both effects are happening: the sun's getting warmer and we're making matters worse by pumping large quantities of CO2 into the atmosphere. To me, as a scientist, the only real difference between the two is one we can do something about while the other we can't. This summer for us has been pretty typical in temperature, but fairly dry. We got about 1/4 of the usual rainfall in June and July isn't make matters any better. The corn harvest will probably be down as a result, but that's not necessarily a bad thing.

Mark Lipton

Thanks for clarifying. I refused to watch the Gore movie cause I was not really in need of sleep. I know its good but I hate documentaries.

Only to be a contrarian since we are closer to the sun that Mars Mars melt is slower. I also assume and based upon meteorologist I have met with because of our business that the sun likely plays a larger role than humans do.

That said I have NO scientific background but know we need to get a handle on stopping this even if we are or are not the cause. Its damned important and denial does not solve the issue. I saw a tv article on Foxnews(discount a little) a guy from Cato a think tank said it is possible that all the anti polution could have increased the role of global warming.

So in my lifetime I have heard:

-Coffee is bad for turn into it can be good for you

-Margerine is better than butter, not butter is better than Margerine

-Wine is bad for you to drinking in moderation can be great for you

-whats next, if we polute we can save the planet? :-(

That said, my son was accepted at UNC-Chapel Hill and decided on Chemistry as a major for Medicine. He starts in August. He got an 5 on his AP for Chemistry, Calculus and Earth Environmental...he really wants medicine. I have no idea if he can go the distance but he plans on it.

Dick

And some topical evidence that this is not a factor:

Go figure...

-E

I heard lots of storms on sun are putting out MORE heat. If its getting cooler....but the space is hotter....its hotter.

But I am NOT scientific.

Ric, allow me to elaborate on what I was saying. You're right about the surface temperature of the Sun, although it's far from a continuous decline (it shows periodic variability, too), but what I was referring to is the amount of heat that Earth receives from the Sun. If you look at our recent (10,000 years) weather, what you'll see is that we're emerging from the last Ice Age, so temperatures are expected to get warmer. Add to that the fact that in the mid-20th C. we were in a "mini Ice Age" and virtually all climatologists agree that temperatures would be rising regardless of human influence. However, most also agree that human influence has exacerbated that trend considerably. What is most worrisome is that there's evidence from the climatological record that in the not-so-distant geological past global temperatures were high enough that tropical plants were growing on Antarctica and there were no polar ice caps or glaciers. Should we be returning to such a state, sea levels would rise several *meters*, a scary prospect.

Mark Lipton