California Wine Industry Threatened by Global Warming

From: THE
AGRIBUSINESS
EXAMINER
August 30, 2004, Issue #368
Monitoring Corporate Agribusiness
>From a Public Interest Perspective

EDITOR\PUBLISHER; A.V. Krebs
E-MAIL: avkrebs@earthlink.net
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CALIFORNIA WINE INDUSTRY BEING THREATENED BY GLOBAL WARMING

MAGGIE FOX, HEALTH AND SCIENCE CORRESPONDENT, REUTERS: California will become hotter and drier by the end of the century, menacing the valuable
wine and dairy industries, even if dramatic steps are taken to curb global
warming, researchers said on Monday.

The first study to specifically forecast the impact of global warming on a
U.S. state also shows the snowpack melting in the Sierra Nevada mountains,
more frequent heat waves hitting Los Angles and disruptions to crop
irrigation.

Researchers from the Carnegie Institution's Department of Global Ecology in
Stanford, the Union of Concerned Scientists, the National Center for
Atmospheric Research and elsewhere ran scenarios through new computer models
of global warming.

All predicted California's weather would be hotter and drier, but this would
be worse if only weak action is taken to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide
and other greenhouse gases contributing to warming the planet.

"We are already in a situation where we have seen some warming and we have
seen some impacts," said Carnegie's Christopher Field, who led the study.

"If we stay on higher emissions trajectory, there will be consequences over
the coming decades that are truly, truly serious and something I think
reasonable people would be doing whatever they could to avoid," he said in a
telephone interview.

Writing in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Field and
colleagues described the impact based on scenarios devised by the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

One forecast, the so-called high emissions trajectory, is what Field
described as business as usual. "High economic growth, high globalization
and a strong emphasis on fossil fuels," he said.

The low-emissions trajectory has slightly lower economic growth with
industries shifted from factories toward service industries and information
technology.

Under the highest-emissions forecast, carbon emissions by the end of the
century will be 28 billion tons of carbon per year --- about four times the
current rate of six billion to seven billion tons a year. The low-emission
scenario forecasts the emissions would stay at the current level.

"By the end of the century under the (best) scenario, heat waves and extreme
heat in Los Angeles quadruple in frequency while heat-related mortality
increases two to three times; alpine/subalpine forests are reduced by 50% to
75% and Sierra snowpack is reduced 30% to 70%" Field and his colleagues
wrote.

Under the worst scenario, heat waves in Los Angeles are six to eight times
more frequent, with up to seven times as many heat-related deaths as now.
The Sierra snowpack falls by 90%.

This could "fundamentally disrupt California's water rights system," the
researchers wrote.

They estimated that the $3.8 billion a year dairy industry and the $3.2
billion dollar grape industry would be especially vulnerable.

California, which has taken stronger action than other states to reduce
emissions, for example with strict requirements for vehicles, cannot save
itself, Field said.

"California has something like two percent of the world's total global
greenhouse emissions," he noted.

"Even if California were to aggressively adopt emissions controls, global
climate wouldn't respond to that directly. But if California is proactive,
that could inspire the rest of the U.S. to be proactive, which could inspire
the rest of the world, and you would see a domino effect." ( August 16, 2004
)