global warming
After watching the program No Impact Man, it made me think of global warming. Unfortunately, I don’t trust humanity to take the steps necessary to solve our issues with global warming, but instead I couldn’t help but think of all the farmers and local producers who were likely to be negatively affected by the changes which are coming to the environment.
Dairy farmers are going to see their fields drying up. Of course, for an organic dairy farmer they can’t simply buy more feed for their cattle because buying feed makes sure that they are no longer organic and their entire distribution and sales system is likely to be disrupted by such a change. How many similar industries are likely to see similar crazy changes where people who have done things the right way are going to be negatively affected?
Isn’t that reason enough to do something about it?
Tags: global warming
We’ve talked a bit in this space before about some of the unintended consequences of global warming. The wine industry is a favorite subject of mine, peculiarly because of how fragile agriculture can be.
Looking at it again, but this time in terms of the wine gift baskets market, which is worth about $2.2B per year we see that there is a ton of money to be lost. San Francisco is cold. Really cold in fact. It’s so cold that Mark Twain said the coldest winter he ever experienced was a summer in SF. Many locals don’t own shorts.
The question quickly becomes, how does Napa Valley grow such great wine only an hour north? While Napa Valley is warmer than the city of SF, it isn’t a ton warmer.
The follow up question is how only a 2 degree temperature swing might affect the wine in your gift basket this coming holiday season. Do you purposely buy a lot of wine from Lodi?
I don’t and the average temperature is only about 4 degrees warmer than Napa. In wine, small temperature swings mean the difference between a world class product and one which is going to barely be sold at your local drug store.
Tags: global warming, temperature increase, wine, wine gift baskets
Antarctica holds around 90% of the world’s ice; a incomprehensibly large amount of water. Global warming presents a huge risk to the geography of the earth as we know it; the melting of this ice could rise sea levels by as much as 200 feet.
Many think that it is the melting of the icebergs that climate change observers are warning us about, but this is not exactly true. The majority of the mass of an iceberg is underwater, so if it melts it adds relatively little volume to the ocean.The south pole landmass would create a huge issue if it melted, but that’s still a long way off at this stage, with temperatures averaging at -37 degrees.
However, the melting icebergs still mean a warmer sea, which precipitates the current problem that presents a very real and immediate danger- warmer water molecules expand, moving slightly further apart. This means the volume of the sea could very well increase in the near future, bringing dramatic increases in water levels with it.
With all the concern in the US media over immediate issues like employment, public health and the presidential election, it is easy to forget that we may be seeing the damaging and irreversible effects of climate change before many more presidential elections go by. However, the problem cannot be ignored for long; if nothing changes we will see vast amounts of land being reclaimed by the sea.
Tags: climate change, global warming, politics, science
Al Gore once was the Vice President of The United States. He ran for President and was narrowly defeated by George Bush. From that time on, he has become a very rich man.
How did he do it? If you want to learn how to make money (here are some interesting money making ideas), you should use Al Gore as an example: create controversy about something that might or might not be true and figure out every angle you can to profit from it. I guess it helps a bit if you are famous first though.
Al Gore is now very wealthy because of his books, movie, speaking fees ($175,000 a pop) and other things he has invested in that have all turned to gold. Take a look at the pictures of his house and tell me whether you think he has any ulterior motives in the global warming debate?
Now maybe man does have a thing or two to do with global warming, shrinking arctic ice, and all the other things embroiled in the controversy. I don’t really know. But we all know that there was an ice age and many, many periods in earth’s history where the climate was VERY different from what it is now. No one really disputes that.
So the real question is whether what man may or may not be doing to the environment today will every really matter in the long run. Even if we still were living like cavemen did 1000′s of years ago, the earth may have warmed up on its own. Or it might have cooled. Who knows? The point is, nobody really knows.
Just seeing all the effort Gore has put into his crusade has convinced me that it is all a charade. That’s probably because I never liked Gore in the first place but seeing how pompous he is has convinced me that this whole man made global warming thing is pretty much all a lie.
Tags: Al Gore, global warming