Yarra Valley
So the planet has got a little warmer in the last 200 years, and grapes are ripening a little earlier. Just as it got colder before the Little Ice Age and, no doubt, grapes ripened a little later. It’s called climate and it’s what the planet does.
Maybe it’s because for the first time in history we are examining our planet in such microscopic detail, something that has really only happened in the last hundred or so years (which just happens to coincide with a period of warming) that we are continually worrying about where we are headed.
Grapes were grown in the north of England during the Roman Warm Period, but there isn’t a chance of any decent Château Harrogate or Côtes du Humber in the near future.
Add this to the fact that the range of climates in which grapes are grown would exceed many times over the tiny change in global temperature in the last 200 years, and it should be obvious that adaptation should not be a big issue.
But despite all this, pinning it on global warming (as many scientists, and AAP, are all too eager to do on many occasions) makes it newsworthy, apparently:
RESEARCHERS in Australia say they have pinpointed key factors in the early ripening of grapes, providing potential answers for wine growers threatened by global warming.
In Australia and Western Europe, there is an abundance of anecdotal evidence linking higher temperatures with earlier grape maturation, a phenomenon that can affect the quality of table wine.
But wine growing and climate change are each highly complex questions.
Until now, no one has sorted out how the variables – warming, sunlight, soil moisture and vineyard management – each play a role in grape maturation.
A team led by Leanne Webb at the CSIRO looked at 10 sites in southern Australia where there were highly detailed records, stretching from 1985 to 2009, for all of these factors.
Only at one site – at Margaret River on Australia’s southwestern tip – did the grapes ripen later. For the others, maturation occurred between six to 34 days earlier.
The commonest driver of earlier ripening was higher temperature, deemed a significant factor at seven sites.
Lower soil moisture, particularly in the drought-stricken southeast, was a major factor for earlier harvests at five sites. Drier soils lead to higher levels of a stress hormone called abscisic acid in vine roots, which drives the plant’s fruit to earlier ripening.
But vineyard management was also important.
In four sites, pruning and fertilisation methods that lowered crop yields contributed strongly to earlier maturation.
And there may be other technological innovations in these and other sites, such as improved disease and pest control, that could have been a ripening factor, says the study. (source)
So out of just 10 sites, warming was “deemed” a significant factor at seven, soil moisture at five, pruning and fertilisation at four, plus there “may be” other unknown factors which they were unable to attribute. Make of that what you will.
But it’s not all doom and gloom, as the study shows that vineyards can (dirty word warning) adapt, like humanity has been doing for centuries.
Call me cynical, but making “global warming” so prominent in this report seems to be purely to sensationalise the story. Its connection to “global warming” is tangential and the focus is clearly more on factors that are important for adaptation.
But let’s not forget this is CSIRO after all – and they have already made up their minds on climate change.
Australian Climate Madness 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=anxzOZMU_3k&feature=player_embedded .
Interesting that they use the word “threatened” without actually indicating why warming is a threat. Might pay for them to remember the Chinese word for crisis.
Yep. The Romans certainly knew about grapes, and grew grapes at Vindolanda, near Hadrian’s Wall. I have been there and seen the evidence. Now you would only bother growing the local specialty – leeks.
Another thing I saw around that time was a Viking map, tattooed into leather, showing a sea route across the Arctic. (You would think that could now be found on the www, but so far no success.)
Red grapes were grown in Yorkshire in Norman times- temperatures were much higher then.
The Green/Left resemble the Soviets in that they think history begins with them, and have no interest in what might have happened before they arrived on the scene in Year Zero.
It’s not “new Soviet man” they’re trying to create, but “new Green PC person” and the results will ultimately be the same — abject failure.
I don’t know why the CSIRO is suddenly fretting with the early maturation of grapes.
The CSIRO had already discovered, in 2010, a new method growers could use to control when their grapes ripen, without affecting wine quality. “We discovered that the application of certain plant-growth regulators can delay berry ripening. Applying plant-growth regulators to the grapes can greatly increase the number of berries reaching optimal maturity at the same time,” CSIRO Plant Industry’s Dr Christopher Davies said.
The CSIRO has already developed the technology to delay or stimulate maturation and bypass the natural processes, but the CSIRO neglects to mention that fact in their 2012 story!
You are not displaying the correct amount of guilt.. you must report to the indoctrination camp immediately for further training..
I’m amazed that they are STILL trying to peddle this hoax!
Toto only had to pull the curtain away once.
Were people THAT much smarter in 1939?
Beat me to it. As soon as I saw CSIRO I knew it was deigned to be. They are so obvious to be worthy of derison and giving a once great organisation a very bad name for political servitude.
Tut, tut, those naughty little grapes.
Perhaps they are suffering from the Hawthorne Effect. This is a well-known effect in the study of human motivation.
When factory workers’ productivity was studied by people in white coats walking around a factory carrying clipboards and stop watches the workers became more motivated to perform well (because finally here were some people who cared about them).
Since the original Hawthorne Effect was identified factory workers now go slow when they are studied by people in white coats carrying stop watches and clip boards. They know that white coated people do NOT care about them.
Accordingly, my suggestion to grape growers is to tell the people from the CSIRO to get out of their vineyards – obviously THEY are the CAUSE of early maturation and other unusual vine behaviour.
If you believe the above then you are obviously paying enough attention to cause and effect.
This is a common problem that CSIRO warmists have yet to overcome.
If you believe the above then you are obviously NOT paying enough attention to cause and effect.
What about everyones tomatoes here in NZ that are really late in ripening?
a pole shift isn’t warming 😛