March was the 349th straight month with global avg temps over 20th century average

...and then the deeeeeeeeeeeeep oceans turn to acid from the CO2. Of course, there's not enough CO2 on the planet to acidify the oceans as the AGWCult alleges, but it's just feels so good to save the planet
 
...and then the deeeeeeeeeeeeep oceans turn to acid from the CO2. Of course, there's not enough CO2 on the planet to acidify the oceans as the AGWCult alleges, but it's just feels so good to save the planet

And your degree is in what science?:badgrin:
 
Why are the AGW alarmists always so angry? Can somebody answer that question for me?

Meanwhile, me, Frank and the rest are always laughing and having so much fun in here!!

Whats up with that?


Could it be that we're not losing?:up:
 
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Why are the AGW alarmists always so angry? Can somebody answer that question for me? Meanwhile, me, Frank and the rest are always laughing and having so much fun in here! Whats up with that? Could it be that we're not losing?

Nope, that's not it. You're definitely both "losing" and a massive loser.

What it is, is this...you're all just too damn retarded and ignorant to be able to comprehend the seriousness of the climate change crisis our world is facing. You're like a bunch of morons trapped below decks on the Titanic, laughing at the rumors that the "unsinkable" ship could ever actually sink.
 
...and then the deeeeeeeeeeeeep oceans turn to acid from the CO2. Of course, there's not enough CO2 on the planet to acidify the oceans as the AGWCult alleges, but it's just feels so good to save the planet

And your degree is in what science?:badgrin:

And you never can show a lab experiment showing how 400PPM CO2 raises temperature because...?

And you never answered my "how much CO2 must you add to a liter of water to drop the pH from 8.25 to 8.15" because...?

In any event, if I were a scientist, I'd dedicate my life to getting you AGWCult fuckers booted from every campus and lab in America because you're a disgrace to real science
 
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Perhaps they will be able to grow grapes in northern England again someday...
 
Perhaps they will be able to grow grapes in northern England again someday...

LOLOL......oh please, not that moldy old denier cult myth again.....try growing a brain someday...

Medieval warmth and English wine
RealClimate
Dr. Gavin Schmidt
12 July 2006
Never let it be said that we at RealClimate don’t work for our readers. Since a commenter mentioned the medieval vineyards in England, I’ve been engaged on a quixotic quest to discover the truth about the oft-cited, but seldom thought through, claim that the existence of said vineyards a thousand years ago implies that a ‘Medieval Warm Period‘ was obviously warmer than the current climate (and by implication that human-caused global warming is not occuring). This claim comes up pretty frequently, and examples come from many of the usual suspects e.g. Singer (2005), and Baliunas (in 2003). The basic idea is that i) vineyards are a good proxy for temperature, ii) there were vineyards in England in medieval times, iii) everyone knows you don’t get English wine these days, iv) therefore England was warmer back then, and v) therefore increasing greenhouse gases have no radiative effect. I’ll examine each of these propositions in turn (but I’ll admit the logic of the last step escapes me). I’ll use two principle sources, the excellent (and cheap) “Winelands of Britain” by geologist Richard C. Selley and the website of the English Wine Producers.

Are vineyards a good temperature proxy? While climate clearly does impact viticulture through the the amount of sunshine, rainfall amounts, the number of frost free days in the spring and fall, etc., there a number of confounding factors that make it less than ideal as a long term proxy. These range from changing agricultural practices, changing grape varieties, changing social factors and the wider trade environment. For instance, much early winemaking in England was conducted in Benedictine monasteries for religious purposes – changing rites and the treatment of the monasteries by the crown (Henry VIII in particular) clearly impacted wine production there. Societal factors range from the devastating (the Black Death) to the trivial (working class preferences for beer over wine). The wider trade environment is also a big factor i.e. how easy was it to get better, cheaper wine from the continent? The marriage of Eleanor of Aquitaine and the English King in 1152 apparently allowed better access to the vineyards of Bordeaux, and however good medieval English wine was, it probably wasn’t a match for that!

However, for the sake of argument, let’s assume that climate is actually the dominant control – so what does the history of English vineyards show?

The earliest documentation that is better than anecdotal is from the Domesday Book (1087) – an early census that the new Norman king commissioned to assess his new English dominions, including the size of farms, population etc. Being relatively ‘frenchified’, the Normans (who had originally come from Viking stock) were quite keen on wine drinking (rather than mead or ale) and so made special note of existing vineyards and where the many new vines were being planted. Sources differ a little on how many vineyards are included in the book: Selley quotes Unwin (J. Wine Research, 1990 (subscription)) who records 46 vineyards across Southern England (42 unambiguous sites, 4 less direct), but other claims (unsourced) range up to 52. Lamb’s 1977 book has a few more from other various sources and anecdotally there are more still, and so clearly this is a minimum number.

Of the Domesday vineyards, all appear to lie below a line from Ely (Cambridgeshire) to Gloucestershire. Since the Book covers all of England up to the river Tees (north of Yorkshire), there is therefore reason to think that there weren’t many vineyards north of that line. Lamb reports two vineyards to the north (Lincoln and Leeds, Yorkshire) at some point between 1000 and 1300 AD, and Selley even reports a Scottish vineyard operating in the 12th Century. However, it’s probably not sensible to rely too much on these single reports since they don’t necessarily come with evidence for successful or sustained wine production. Indeed, there is one lone vineyard reported in Derbyshire (further north than any Domesday vineyard) in the 16th Century when all other reports were restricted to the South-east of England.

Wine making never completely died out in England, there were always a few die-hard viticulturists willing to give it a go, but production clearly declined after the 13th Century, had a brief resurgence in the 17th and 18th Centuries, only to decline to historic lows in the 19th Century when only 8 vineyards are recorded. Contemporary popular sentiment towards English (and Welsh) wine can be well judged by a comment in ‘Punch’ (a satirical magazine) that the wine would require 4 people to drink it – one victim, two to hold him down, and one other to pour the wine down his throat.

Unremarked by most oenophiles though, English and Welsh wine production started to have a renaissance in the 1950s. By 1977, there were 124 reasonable-sized vineyards in production – more than at any other time over the previous millennium. This resurgence was also unremarked upon by Lamb, who wrote in that same year that the English climate (the average of 1921-1950 to be precise) remained about a degree too cold for wine production. Thus the myth of the non-existant English wine industry was born and thrust headlong into the climate change debate…

Since 1977, a further 200 or so vineyards have opened (currently 400 and counting) and they cover a much more extensive area than the recorded medieval vineyards, extending out to Cornwall, and up to Lancashire and Yorkshire where the (currently) most northerly commercial vineyard sits. So with the sole exception of one ‘rather improbably’ located 12th Century Scottish vineyard (and strictly speaking that doesn’t count, it not being in England ‘n’ all…), English vineyards have almost certainly exceeded the extent of medieval cultivation. And I hear (from normally reliable sources) they are actually producing a pretty decent selection of white wines.

So what should one conclude from this? Well, one shouldn’t be too dogmatic that English temperatures are now obviously above a medieval peak – the impact of confounding factors in wine production precludes such a clear conclusion (and I am pretty agnostic with regards to the rest of the evidence of whether northern Europe was warmer 1000 years than today). 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). If they are a good proxy, then England is warmer now, and if they are not…. well, why talk about them in this context at all?

There is a bigger issue of course. For the sake of argument, let’s accept that medieval times were as warm in England as they are today, and even that global temperatures were similar (that’s a much bigger leap, but no mind). What would that imply for our attribution of current climate changes to human causes? ……. Nothing. Nowt. Zero. Zip.

Why? Well, warm periods have occured in the past, and if not the medieval period, then probably the last interglacial (120,000 years ago), certainly the Pliocene (3 million years ago), without question the (Eocene 50 million years), and in particular the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (55 million years ago), and so on. Current theories of climate change do not rely on whether today’s temperatures are ‘unprecedented’. Instead they examine the physical causes of climate change and match up what we know about their physical effects and time history and see which of the multiple drivers or combination can best explain the observations. For the last few decades, that is quite clearly the rise in greenhouse gases, punctuated by the occasional volcano and mitigated slightly by the concomittant rise in particulate pollution.

Understanding past climate changes are of course also very interesting – they provide test cases for climate models and can have profound implications for the history of human society. However, uncertainties (as recently outlined in the NAS report) increase as you go back in time, and that applies to our knowledge of the climate drivers as well as to temperatures. So much so that even a medieval period a couple of tenths of a degree warmer than today would still be consistent with what we know about solar forcing and climate sensitivity within the commonly accepted uncertainties.
 
...and then the deeeeeeeeeeeeep oceans turn to acid from the CO2. Of course, there's not enough CO2 on the planet to acidify the oceans as the AGWCult alleges, but it's just feels so good to save the planet

And your degree is in what science?:badgrin:

And you never can show a lab experiment showing how 400PPM CO2 raises temperature because...?

And you never answered my "how much CO2 must you add to a liter of water to drop the pH from 8.25 to 8.15" because...?

In any event, if I were a scientist, I'd dedicate my life to getting you AGWCult fuckers booted from every campus and lab in America because you're a disgrace to real science

Exhibit A: How to rid the thread of the AGWCult, just ask them a real science question
 
And your degree is in what science?:badgrin:

And you never can show a lab experiment showing how 400PPM CO2 raises temperature because...?

And you never answered my "how much CO2 must you add to a liter of water to drop the pH from 8.25 to 8.15" because...?

In any event, if I were a scientist, I'd dedicate my life to getting you AGWCult fuckers booted from every campus and lab in America because you're a disgrace to real science

Exhibit A: How to rid the thread of the AGWCult, just ask them a real science question


Frank,

Get 2 square fish(glass) tanks ~14 length x 6 width x 14" height
Buy two sensitive Thermometers. Even better, both that records the temperature in real time on your computer software.
Get a heat lamp(as the sun). You know the one that warms the eggs for baby birds!
Estimate how much co2 you'd need to make up 1/100 of the air volume
Lastly, put the co2 into ONE of the tanks and quickly put the lid on.
Turn on the heat lamp

Come back in 1 hour and check your data....
 
Last edited:
And you never can show a lab experiment showing how 400PPM CO2 raises temperature because...?

And you never answered my "how much CO2 must you add to a liter of water to drop the pH from 8.25 to 8.15" because...?

In any event, if I were a scientist, I'd dedicate my life to getting you AGWCult fuckers booted from every campus and lab in America because you're a disgrace to real science

Exhibit A: How to rid the thread of the AGWCult, just ask them a real science question


Frank,

Get 2 square fish(glass) tanks ~14X6X14"
Buy two sensitive Thermometers. Even better, both that records the temperature in real time on your computer software.
Get a heat lap(as the sun). You know the one that's warms the eggs for baby birds!
Estimate how much co2 you'd need to make up 1/100 of the air volume
Lastly, put the co2 into ONE of the tanks and quickly put the lid on.
Turn on the heat lap

Come back in 1 hour and check your data....

LOL. Trying to teach brainwashed denier cult retards to do lab experiments is like trying to teach a fish to ride a bicycle.

But hey...lot of luck with that....
 
And you never can show a lab experiment showing how 400PPM CO2 raises temperature because...?

And you never answered my "how much CO2 must you add to a liter of water to drop the pH from 8.25 to 8.15" because...?

In any event, if I were a scientist, I'd dedicate my life to getting you AGWCult fuckers booted from every campus and lab in America because you're a disgrace to real science

Exhibit A: How to rid the thread of the AGWCult, just ask them a real science question


Frank,

Get 2 square fish(glass) tanks ~14X6X14"
Buy two sensitive Thermometers. Even better, both that records the temperature in real time on your computer software.
Get a heat lap(as the sun). You know the one that warms the eggs for baby birds!
Estimate how much co2 you'd need to make up 1/100 of the air volume
Lastly, put the co2 into ONE of the tanks and quickly put the lid on.
Turn on the heat lap

Come back in 1 hour and check your data....

All those billion spent on "Climate Change" and nobody ever thought to do that experiment

Wow.

The CO2 tank will be the one with 8 degree higher temperature, hurricanes and earthquakes, right?

Did the American Physics Society do the experiment or they just went ahead and said "Consensus!" without any experiments?
 
Exhibit A: How to rid the thread of the AGWCult, just ask them a real science question


Frank,

Get 2 square fish(glass) tanks ~14X6X14"
Buy two sensitive Thermometers. Even better, both that records the temperature in real time on your computer software.
Get a heat lap(as the sun). You know the one that's warms the eggs for baby birds!
Estimate how much co2 you'd need to make up 1/100 of the air volume
Lastly, put the co2 into ONE of the tanks and quickly put the lid on.
Turn on the heat lap

Come back in 1 hour and check your data....

LOL. Trying to teach brainwashed denier cult retards to do lab experiments is like trying to teach a fish to ride a bicycle.

But hey...lot of luck with that....

Can you show us where that experiment was done?
 
Exhibit A: How to rid the thread of the AGWCult, just ask them a real science question


Frank,

Get 2 square fish(glass) tanks ~14X6X14"
Buy two sensitive Thermometers. Even better, both that records the temperature in real time on your computer software.
Get a heat lap(as the sun). You know the one that's warms the eggs for baby birds!
Estimate how much co2 you'd need to make up 1/100 of the air volume
Lastly, put the co2 into ONE of the tanks and quickly put the lid on.
Turn on the heat lap

Come back in 1 hour and check your data....

LOL. Trying to teach brainwashed denier cult retards to do lab experiments is like trying to teach a fish to ride a bicycle.

But hey...lot of luck with that....




But then why are the "brainwashed denier cult retards" winning? And the "consensus" people losing?


http://www.usmessageboard.com/environment/313851-more-proof-the-skeptics-are-winning.html
 
And your degree is in what science?:badgrin:

And you never can show a lab experiment showing how 400PPM CO2 raises temperature because...?

And you never answered my "how much CO2 must you add to a liter of water to drop the pH from 8.25 to 8.15" because...?

In any event, if I were a scientist, I'd dedicate my life to getting you AGWCult fuckers booted from every campus and lab in America because you're a disgrace to real science

Exhibit A: How to rid the thread of the AGWCult, just ask them a real science question
The proof question on the 400PPM raises temperature. I asked the same thing on another message board, and the dude said you can't prove science. It just is. How about that, never have to prove a theory or validate a model. neat business model I suppose.

And like evidenced here, they can tell you how to do the experiment, yet, they never have? Too funny.
 
Last edited:
And you never can show a lab experiment showing how 400PPM CO2 raises temperature because...?

And you never answered my "how much CO2 must you add to a liter of water to drop the pH from 8.25 to 8.15" because...?

In any event, if I were a scientist, I'd dedicate my life to getting you AGWCult fuckers booted from every campus and lab in America because you're a disgrace to real science

Exhibit A: How to rid the thread of the AGWCult, just ask them a real science question
The proof question on the 400PPM raises temperature. I asked the same thing on another message board, and the dude said you can't prove science. It just is. How about that, never have to prove a theory or validate a model. neat business model I suppose.

And like evidenced here, they can tell you how to do the experiment, yet, they never have? Too funny.

I watched a couple experiments...One being from Professor Richard Muller at Berkley(in one of his physics for future president webcast). Let's just say it worked out the way science says it should. You'd have to throw out a ton of science to prove otherwise(Stafan boltsman, etc).

Honestly, our atmosphere is far more complex then a fish tank...Complex as in it has negative and positive forcings.
 
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Exhibit A: How to rid the thread of the AGWCult, just ask them a real science question
The proof question on the 400PPM raises temperature. I asked the same thing on another message board, and the dude said you can't prove science. It just is. How about that, never have to prove a theory or validate a model. neat business model I suppose.

And like evidenced here, they can tell you how to do the experiment, yet, they never have? Too funny.

I watched a couple experiments...One being from Professor Richard Muller at Berkley(in one of his physics for future president webcast). Let's just say it worked out the way science says it should. You'd have to throw out a ton of science to prove otherwise(Stafan boltsman, etc).

Honestly, our atmosphere is far more complex then a fish tank...Complex as in it has negative and positive forcings.

Can you post the link

Funny the Vostok ice cores show absolutely no forcing over the entire time span

Sent from smartphone using my wits and Taptalk
 
The proof question on the 400PPM raises temperature. I asked the same thing on another message board, and the dude said you can't prove science. It just is. How about that, never have to prove a theory or validate a model. neat business model I suppose. And like evidenced here, they can tell you how to do the experiment, yet, they never have? Too funny.

The problem for you here, jackoff, is that you seem to be just too frigging stupid and ignorant to even be capable of understanding what is happening around you, let alone what people say to you.

Common misconceptions about science I: “Scientific proof”
Why there is no such thing as a scientific proof

PsychologyToday
by Satoshi Kanazawa in The Scientific Fundamentalist
November 16, 2008
(excerpts)
There are many misconceptions about science. One of the most common misconceptions concerns the so-called “scientific proofs.” Contrary to popular belief, there is no such thing as a scientific proof. Proofs exist only in mathematics and logic, not in science. Mathematics and logic are both closed, self-contained systems of propositions, whereas science is empirical and deals with nature as it exists. The primary criterion and standard of evaluation of scientific theory is evidence, not proof. All else equal (such as internal logical consistency and parsimony), scientists prefer theories for which there is more and better evidence to theories for which there is less and worse evidence. Proofs are not the currency of science. Proofs have two features that do not exist in science: They are final, and they are binary. Once a theorem is proven, it will forever be true and there will be nothing in the future that will threaten its status as a proven theorem (unless a flaw is discovered in the proof). Apart from a discovery of an error, a proven theorem will forever and always be a proven theorem. In contrast, all scientific knowledge is tentative and provisional, and nothing is final. There is no such thing as final proven knowledge in science. The currently accepted theory of a phenomenon is simply the best explanation for it among all available alternatives. Its status as the accepted theory is contingent on what other theories are available and might suddenly change tomorrow if there appears a better theory or new evidence that might challenge the accepted theory. No knowledge or theory (which embodies scientific knowledge) is final. That, by the way, is why science is so much fun.

Further, proofs, like pregnancy, are binary; a mathematical proposition is either proven (in which case it becomes a theorem) or not (in which case it remains a conjecture until it is proven). There is nothing in between. A theorem cannot be kind of proven or almost proven. These are the same as unproven. In contrast, there is no such binary evaluation of scientific theories. Scientific theories are neither absolutely false nor absolutely true. They are always somewhere in between. Some theories are better, more credible, and more accepted than others. There is always more credible and better evidence for some theories than others. It is a matter of more or less, not either/or. For example, experimental evidence is better and more credible than correlational evidence, but even the former cannot prove a theory; it only provides very strong evidence for the theory and against its alternatives. The knowledge that there is no such thing as a scientific proof should give you a very easy way to tell real scientists from hacks and wannabes. Real scientists never use the words “scientific proofs,” because they know no such thing exists. Anyone who uses the words “proof,” “prove” and “proven” in their discussion of science is not a real scientist.
 
The proof question on the 400PPM raises temperature. I asked the same thing on another message board, and the dude said you can't prove science. It just is. How about that, never have to prove a theory or validate a model. neat business model I suppose.

And like evidenced here, they can tell you how to do the experiment, yet, they never have? Too funny.

I watched a couple experiments...One being from Professor Richard Muller at Berkley(in one of his physics for future president webcast). Let's just say it worked out the way science says it should. You'd have to throw out a ton of science to prove otherwise(Stafan boltsman, etc).

Honestly, our atmosphere is far more complex then a fish tank...Complex as in it has negative and positive forcings.

Can you post the link

Funny the Vostok ice cores show absolutely no forcing over the entire time span

Sent from smartphone using my wits and Taptalk

Let me correct that, they show changes in temperature forcing CO2 up and down.

Sent from smartphone using my wits and Taptalk
 
Can you post the link. Funny the Vostok ice cores show absolutely no forcing over the entire time span
Let me correct that, they show changes in temperature forcing CO2 up and down.

CO2 is a greenhouse gas that absorbs heat energy that is trying to leave Earth and keeps it inside the atmosphere. That's established physics, CrazyFruitcake, and none of your dimwitted denial will change that.

Polar ice cores reflect local temperature variations. A study using a wide range of proxy temperature indicators all around the planet found that CO2 did, in fact, lead the temperature increases at the end of the last glaciation. So even this little bit of denier cult propaganda that you're once again trying to push has been shown to be false.

Global warming preceded by increasing carbon dioxide concentrations during the last deglaciation
Nature

Jeremy D. Shakun, Peter U. Clark, Feng He, Shaun A. Marcott, Alan C. Mix, Zhengyu Liu, Bette Otto-Bliesner, Andreas Schmittner & Edouard Bard
Nature 484, 49–54 (05 April 2012) doi:10.1038/nature10915

Abstract

The covariation of carbon dioxide (CO2) concentration and temperature in Antarctic ice-core records suggests a close link between CO2 and climate during the Pleistocene ice ages. The role and relative importance of CO2 in producing these climate changes remains unclear, however, in part because the ice-core deuterium record reflects local rather than global temperature. Here we construct a record of global surface temperature from 80 proxy records and show that temperature is correlated with and generally lags CO2 during the last (that is, the most recent) deglaciation. Differences between the respective temperature changes of the Northern Hemisphere and Southern Hemisphere parallel variations in the strength of the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation recorded in marine sediments. These observations, together with transient global climate model simulations, support the conclusion that an antiphased hemispheric temperature response to ocean circulation changes superimposed on globally in-phase warming driven by increasing CO2 concentrations is an explanation for much of the temperature change at the end of the most recent ice age.
 
Perhaps they will be able to grow grapes in northern England again someday...

LOLOL......oh please, not that moldy old denier cult myth again.....try growing a brain someday...

Medieval warmth and English wine
RealClimate
Dr. Gavin Schmidt
12 July 2006
Never let it be said that we at RealClimate don’t work for our readers. Since a commenter mentioned the medieval vineyards in England, I’ve been engaged on a quixotic quest to discover the truth about the oft-cited, but seldom thought through, claim that the existence of said vineyards a thousand years ago implies that a ‘Medieval Warm Period‘ was obviously warmer than the current climate (and by implication that human-caused global warming is not occuring). This claim comes up pretty frequently, and examples come from many of the usual suspects e.g. Singer (2005), and Baliunas (in 2003). The basic idea is that i) vineyards are a good proxy for temperature, ii) there were vineyards in England in medieval times, iii) everyone knows you don’t get English wine these days, iv) therefore England was warmer back then, and v) therefore increasing greenhouse gases have no radiative effect. I’ll examine each of these propositions in turn (but I’ll admit the logic of the last step escapes me). I’ll use two principle sources, the excellent (and cheap) “Winelands of Britain” by geologist Richard C. Selley and the website of the English Wine Producers.

Are vineyards a good temperature proxy? While climate clearly does impact viticulture through the the amount of sunshine, rainfall amounts, the number of frost free days in the spring and fall, etc., there a number of confounding factors that make it less than ideal as a long term proxy. These range from changing agricultural practices, changing grape varieties, changing social factors and the wider trade environment. For instance, much early winemaking in England was conducted in Benedictine monasteries for religious purposes – changing rites and the treatment of the monasteries by the crown (Henry VIII in particular) clearly impacted wine production there. Societal factors range from the devastating (the Black Death) to the trivial (working class preferences for beer over wine). The wider trade environment is also a big factor i.e. how easy was it to get better, cheaper wine from the continent? The marriage of Eleanor of Aquitaine and the English King in 1152 apparently allowed better access to the vineyards of Bordeaux, and however good medieval English wine was, it probably wasn’t a match for that!

However, for the sake of argument, let’s assume that climate is actually the dominant control – so what does the history of English vineyards show?

The earliest documentation that is better than anecdotal is from the Domesday Book (1087) – an early census that the new Norman king commissioned to assess his new English dominions, including the size of farms, population etc. Being relatively ‘frenchified’, the Normans (who had originally come from Viking stock) were quite keen on wine drinking (rather than mead or ale) and so made special note of existing vineyards and where the many new vines were being planted. Sources differ a little on how many vineyards are included in the book: Selley quotes Unwin (J. Wine Research, 1990 (subscription)) who records 46 vineyards across Southern England (42 unambiguous sites, 4 less direct), but other claims (unsourced) range up to 52. Lamb’s 1977 book has a few more from other various sources and anecdotally there are more still, and so clearly this is a minimum number.

Of the Domesday vineyards, all appear to lie below a line from Ely (Cambridgeshire) to Gloucestershire. Since the Book covers all of England up to the river Tees (north of Yorkshire), there is therefore reason to think that there weren’t many vineyards north of that line. Lamb reports two vineyards to the north (Lincoln and Leeds, Yorkshire) at some point between 1000 and 1300 AD, and Selley even reports a Scottish vineyard operating in the 12th Century. However, it’s probably not sensible to rely too much on these single reports since they don’t necessarily come with evidence for successful or sustained wine production. Indeed, there is one lone vineyard reported in Derbyshire (further north than any Domesday vineyard) in the 16th Century when all other reports were restricted to the South-east of England.

Wine making never completely died out in England, there were always a few die-hard viticulturists willing to give it a go, but production clearly declined after the 13th Century, had a brief resurgence in the 17th and 18th Centuries, only to decline to historic lows in the 19th Century when only 8 vineyards are recorded. Contemporary popular sentiment towards English (and Welsh) wine can be well judged by a comment in ‘Punch’ (a satirical magazine) that the wine would require 4 people to drink it – one victim, two to hold him down, and one other to pour the wine down his throat.

Unremarked by most oenophiles though, English and Welsh wine production started to have a renaissance in the 1950s. By 1977, there were 124 reasonable-sized vineyards in production – more than at any other time over the previous millennium. This resurgence was also unremarked upon by Lamb, who wrote in that same year that the English climate (the average of 1921-1950 to be precise) remained about a degree too cold for wine production. Thus the myth of the non-existant English wine industry was born and thrust headlong into the climate change debate…

Since 1977, a further 200 or so vineyards have opened (currently 400 and counting) and they cover a much more extensive area than the recorded medieval vineyards, extending out to Cornwall, and up to Lancashire and Yorkshire where the (currently) most northerly commercial vineyard sits. So with the sole exception of one ‘rather improbably’ located 12th Century Scottish vineyard (and strictly speaking that doesn’t count, it not being in England ‘n’ all…), English vineyards have almost certainly exceeded the extent of medieval cultivation. And I hear (from normally reliable sources) they are actually producing a pretty decent selection of white wines.

So what should one conclude from this? Well, one shouldn’t be too dogmatic that English temperatures are now obviously above a medieval peak – the impact of confounding factors in wine production precludes such a clear conclusion (and I am pretty agnostic with regards to the rest of the evidence of whether northern Europe was warmer 1000 years than today). 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). If they are a good proxy, then England is warmer now, and if they are not…. well, why talk about them in this context at all?

There is a bigger issue of course. For the sake of argument, let’s accept that medieval times were as warm in England as they are today, and even that global temperatures were similar (that’s a much bigger leap, but no mind). What would that imply for our attribution of current climate changes to human causes? ……. Nothing. Nowt. Zero. Zip.

Why? Well, warm periods have occured in the past, and if not the medieval period, then probably the last interglacial (120,000 years ago), certainly the Pliocene (3 million years ago), without question the (Eocene 50 million years), and in particular the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (55 million years ago), and so on. Current theories of climate change do not rely on whether today’s temperatures are ‘unprecedented’. Instead they examine the physical causes of climate change and match up what we know about their physical effects and time history and see which of the multiple drivers or combination can best explain the observations. For the last few decades, that is quite clearly the rise in greenhouse gases, punctuated by the occasional volcano and mitigated slightly by the concomittant rise in particulate pollution.

Understanding past climate changes are of course also very interesting – they provide test cases for climate models and can have profound implications for the history of human society. However, uncertainties (as recently outlined in the NAS report) increase as you go back in time, and that applies to our knowledge of the climate drivers as well as to temperatures. So much so that even a medieval period a couple of tenths of a degree warmer than today would still be consistent with what we know about solar forcing and climate sensitivity within the commonly accepted uncertainties.







Oh looky, more "real climate" propaganda BS. How completely unsurprising. And how wrong it is....typical for a ignorant blowhard like trolling blunder....


It is more certain that by the time of the Norman Conquest, vines were grown, and wine made, in a substantial number of monastic institutions in England, especially, southern England. The legacy of street names (such as Vine street or the Vineyards) in London and provincial towns and cities - suggests that vines and vineyards were certainly no great rarities.


At the time of the compilation of the Domesday Survey in the late eleventh century, vineyards were recorded in 46 places in southern England, from East Anglia through to modern-day Somerset. By the time King Henry VIIIth ascended the throne there were 139 sizeable vineyards in England and Wales - 11 of them owned by the Crown, 67 by noble families and 52 by the church.

It is not exactly clear why the number of vineyards declined subsequently. Some have put it down to an adverse change in the weather which made an uncertain enterprise even more problematic. Others have linked it with the dissolution of the monasteries by Henry VIII. Both these factors may have had some part to play but in all probability the decline was gradual (over several centuries) and for more complex reasons.


The History of English Wine



Although it is debatable which terroir component is most important — landscape, soil, climate or cultural practices — climate clearly determines whether a region can adequately ripen the fruit to produce high-quality wines. History has shown that wine-grape-growing regions developed when and where the climate was most conducive. For example during the medieval Little Optimum period (roughly A.D. 900 to 1300), temperatures were up to 1 degree Celsius warmer, allowing the planting of vineyards as far north as the coastal zones of the Baltic Sea and southern England. Conversely, temperature declines during the 14th century were dramatic, leading to the Little Ice Age (extending into the late 19th century), and resulted in northern vineyards dying out and growing seasons so short that harvesting grapes in southern Europe was difficult.




Geotimes — August 2004 — Making Wine in a Changing Climate
 

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