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England’s Booming Wine Industry has Nothing to Do With Climate Change

The Daily Sceptic | November 7, 2022

In the U.K. one of the ways in which the message of global warming has been subliminally insinuated into the minds of the general public is in the reporting of the huge growth in the number of English vineyards in the last 20 years. Seldom a week goes by without this message appearing in the mainstream media. Worldwide, the meme ranks alongside swimming polar bears, dying barrier reefs and islands sinking beneath the rise in sea levels.

Yet does this have any basis in fact? The answer is no. To see this we need to look at the history of the renaissance in wine growing in England. From the 1960s onwards, vineyards were seemingly owned by an army of amiable retired Colonel Bufton Tuftons who made a range of very pleasant, drinkable wines using German grape varieties. These wines benefited from the cooler English climate to resemble German wines but were more flowery and fresh.

It took the somewhat more hard-headed and business savvy Americans to transform the English wine scene to the booming industry it is now. In 1986, a wealthy U.S. couple, Stuart and Sandy Moss, bought the Nyetimber wine estate in West Sussex, and established a vineyard there two years later. They realised that the Champagne varieties of Pinot Noir, Chardonnay and Pinot Meunier would be ideally suited to the production of sparkling wines in England and so they planted these varieties. This is for two reasons, one being that Champagne is the most northerly region for wine production in France. Secondly, grapes for sparkling wines are picked at a lower level of ripeness than those for still wines, and so require less sunshine and are picked earlier.

It is bizarre that global warming would be proved by a style of wine that can only be grown in a cool climate at the margins of what is warm enough for successful grape growing.

The Mosses were straight away successful in their experiment and won awards for their first harvests in 1992 and 1993.

This led to a huge expansion in the production of wines made from the same grape varieties and with the same methods of production as Champagne. English sparkling wines have subsequently proven in competitions and blind tastings to be at the same level of quality as those of Champagne, if not higher.

Although the total acreage of vines in the U.K. has quadrupled since the 1990s, 75% of the acreage of English vineyards is now Champagne varieties and the acreage of grape varieties for still wine has increased very little. As control of wine production has moved into the hands of more trendy Islington types, the old fresh and flowery still wines have been replaced by still wines which are “fruit driven” with notes of lychees, leather and oak.

It may surprise mainstream media consumers to know that England has always been very well suited to the production of Champagne style wines. In the 1750s they were being produced most successfully. Charles Hamilton planted a vineyard at his landscape garden at Painshill in Surrey and was succesfully producing and selling a sparkling wine from Champagne grapes during the 1750s. The wine was considered by himself and the French ambassador to be superior to any from Champagne. From the records kept, it appears that climate conditions were very similar to today and they faced similar problems, such as occasional cold wet years and too vigorous plant growth.

The vineyard continued for at least 40 years. It has recently been replanted and produces the same sparkling wines of very good quality, and is only 10 miles from Denbies, the largest vineyard in the U.K.

In short, the booming English wine industry has nothing to do with rising temperatures – if, indeed, temperatures are rising. Nearly all the grape varieties being cultivated in England are only suitable for growing in colder, Northern European climates and in some cases have been successfully cultivated in England since the 1750s.

The author of this piece wants to remain anonymous to protect his career as a budding vinter.

November 9, 2022 Posted by | Timeless or most popular | | Leave a comment

Belief Of Steady 5300 Year Climate Unravels: Ötzi Got Exposed “Again and Again”

Changing Holocene climate… was never steady

By P Gosselin | No Tricks Zone | November 8, 2022

Researchers say the 5300 year old Ötzi corpse didn’t remain covered by ice 5300 years long, but in fact was exposed again and again!

Lots of experts believe that Ötzi, the corpse found at the Tisenjoch in the Alps in 1991, got uncovered for the first time in 5300 years due to the ice melting – from 20th century manmade global warming.

However, glacial archaeologists from Norway, Austria and Switzerland now believe Ötzi had been exposed “several times in the past 5300 years” and have published their findings in the journal The Holocene. This is reported in an article appearing here in the Swiss online NZZ.

In general, Ötzi researchers are quite sure about what had led to the ancient traveler’s death, but little was ever asked about what happened after he died. It was simply assumed that he stayed covered by ice 5300 years long – until modern manmade global warming caused the ice to melt and expose the body for the first time, allowing it to be discovered in 1991 in a hollow at an altitude of 3210 meters. Freed for the first time by global warming!

But now a team of glacial archaeologists think the body must have slid into the hollow afterwards and did not spend the millennia constantly covered by the ice, “but lay exposed again and again”.

“Ötzi’s body and its equipment are not the pristine time capsule they are portrayed as,” reports the NZZ.

This means the climate cycled between warm and cold phases during these 5000 years and the melting like that of today happened again and again. The climate had not been “more or less constant” like many researchers like to suggest.

The authors of the new study conclude that Ötzi likely died on the snow at a higher elevation, and then afterwards his corpse and equipment slid into the hollow. The ice field formed was “relatively small and thin and therefore probably melted several times”.

“The state of preservation also speaks against Ötzi being a time capsule from the ice. Twenty years ago, examinations of hairline cracks in the skull already showed that the corpse had repeatedly thawed and refrozen, reports the NZZ.

Also: “The part of the fur coat lying under the body was much better preserved than the rest, and on the back of Ötzi’s head – he was lying face down – the skin had disappeared. This also indicates that the body was exposed several times.”

Moreover, if Ötzi had actually been under the ice for 5300 years, nothing younger than the corpse should have been found on the floor of the hollow. But that is not the case, as a large number of much younger articles like plants, animal droppings, feathers and a piece of wood were found there as well, meaning the ice had to have melted again and again.

“Thus, even thousands of years after Ötzi’s death, material landed in the hollow again and again; consequently, it was not permanently covered by ice.”

November 9, 2022 Posted by | Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | Leave a comment

CIA Officer Frank Snepp Discusses Planting Stories in Vietnam

Witness to War | September 30, 2017

Frank Snepp arrived in Vietnam in 1969 and stayed on until he was evacuated as Saigon fell in 1975.

He spent a good deal of time working with the press while there and developed the ability to plant stories in major media outlets like the New York Times, the New Yorker, the LA Times, Chicago Daily News and others that supported the Agency’s goals.

The younger reporters like the Associated Press’s Peter Arnett wouldn’t take the bait.

After he left the CIA he wrote a book, Decent Interval, that talked about his time in Vietnam. The CIA made his life hell and took a case all the way to the Supreme Court where they won a verdict that required Snepp to turn over all the money the book had made. That was $300,000.

To Snepp, that decision and the Pentagon Papers case, where the Supreme Court decided in some instances the government could impose prior restraint on the media meant the only victory the US could show for its war in Vietnam was undoing the first amendment.

Witness to War

Clete Roberts, correspondent
Ian Masters, Producer, Director
Michael Rose, Producer
Haskell Wexler, Camera (along with others)
Susan Cope, Sound
Eric Vollmer, Coordinator
Anne Vermillion, Coordinator

Vietnam Reconsidered Conference, USC Conference
USC, 1983

Snepp went on to be a journalist working for some of the same outlets he’d once duped into printing fake news. But as a reformed spy he earned a Peabody award and an Emmy for his investigative reports.

November 9, 2022 Posted by | Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Timeless or most popular, Video | , , | Leave a comment

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