What has Bishop Hill been drinking?
Having swallowed Mark Steyn 's Heartland Institute rant on wine & palaeoclimate cork and all, the prelate has regurgitated views even sillier than Steyn's vintage :
"I will take global warming seriously when they tear down the Climate Research Unit, and sow a vineyard making an amusing little Chateauneuf du Phil Jones"
...Gavin Schmidt said that there are "More...English vineyards now than in medieval times."... Gavin implies that this comparison trumps the argument about English vineyards being proof that Medieval Warm Period was hotter...
Hang on a sec! Surely you would not compare the two without mentioning the population size - the number of people buying and drinking the stuff -
I mean that would be unscientific, wouldn't it?
Hang on a sec: isn't it more unscientific to forget climate change dictates where grapes can ripen, not who plants how many?
British viticulture has spread north far beyond its Roman and Medieval limits, through grim Northumberland and on into Scotland, attesting to hundreds of degree - days of warming above and beyond the Medieval Not-So-Warm Period.
Word of this pleasant change of climate has reached Buckingham Palace, where the Telegraph reports British champagne now reigns:
"Ridgeview Grosvenor 2009 was served at the state banquet to welcome Chinese president Xi Jinping Gordon Ramsay has listed not just one but several English wines at his new restaurant in Bordeaux, of all places.
And at a recent blind tasting.... English wine scored a triumph over champagne, with two English wines (Hambledon Classic Cuvée & Nyetimber Classic Cuvée 2010) beating... Pol Roger & Taittinger to finish in first and second place."
If you want a nice place to sample northern wines at a picnic, try the twin summits of Matt Ridley's coal-based Northumbrian tourist attraction
