Climate Change in California: Impact on the Wine Industry

Mark, You are absolutely correct about the PG&E logo on the podium! This is good detective work on your part. It's also an excellent observation. Pacific Gas & Electric supported California's greenhouse gas emission's reduction (Bill 32) program in the mid-2000s, which Republican Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger signed into law in 2006. We all know that 1) PG&E was sued by Erin Brockovich for contaminating water with chromium6, which leaked from a containment pond. Brockovich's lawsuit was settled for $333 million dollars, a huge amount of money for environmental litigation. After all, the water is clean now. 2) Steven Soderbergh, who is friends with both Schwarzenegger and Brockovich, directed Brockovich's biography of the same name, "Erin Brockovich." It starred Julia Roberts. 3) Soderbergh was director the very controversial, liberal-left, anti-capitalistical, Hollywood/atheist-jewish conspiracy and environmental/socialist documentary, Naqoyqatsi. 4) Recall that Julia Louis-Dreyfus, daughter of a billionaire French-Jew, was in Naqoyqatsi. Louis-Dreyfus was also in "Deconstructing Harry." 5) Deconstructing Harry was directed by a famous ex-jew, from liberal-left New York City, Woody Allen. Allen cast Elisabeth Shue as his character Harry's ex-girlfriend. Clearly the conspiratorial connections are thick here, Mark, because: 6) Elisabeth Shue was in "Hollow Man" with none other than Kevin Bacon. Clearly this woman lecturing on observed data-sets is dancing just 6 degrees away from IMPENDING DOOM.

Anybody else notice the PG&E logo on the lecturn? Hmmmmm. . . don't know what I think of that. A few points: -She is a Horticulturist/Viticulturist, not a Climate Scientist. Her reliance on IPCC data is troubling. I would like to know where the IPCC findings she relies on came from. The WWF perhaps? East Anglia University? -I am surprised by the certainty with which she presented such controversial notions. Her presentation was not convincing to me at all. -Offering a high school student's poem in a scientific presentation damaged her credibility. If the science is as complelling as she claims, silly propaganda or political partisanship undermines her arguement. This is the biggest red flag that thinking people see when it comes to the climate change arguement. -Her slide showing the cartoon where someone in an audience asks a presenter, "What if this climate thing is a hoax?" The answer given was political, not scientific. All of the purported benefits of going along with the alarmist line of the global warming true believers were listed as positive. She left out the dramatic diminution of our liberty and damage to the global economy. We fat and happy Western nations will be fine. It is the poorest of the poor who will be harmed the most. It is not at all certain that world, the economy or anything else she claims will be better will actually be better. Better for whom? Are there cost free benefits from these actions? If so, this will be the only case in history of this being so. Intellectually honest people talk in terms of trade offs, unintended consequences and the down side of all actions. She left these out. -The claim we will be 10x richer by going along with carbon caps and moving to alternative energy sources has not materialized anywhere. Look at the country Obama and many in the climate change crowd hold up as a model - Spain. They have a 20+% unemployment rate, massive budget deficits at all levels of government and no economic growth. The only way any nation implements "green" technologies is massive government subsidy of them. Solar energy in the United States is 40 -50 years old or more. It has been subsidized the whole time, yet wind and solar are no more than 2 - 3% of our electricity generation. Why is this so? Why can this technology not compete on its own terms? The petroleum industry receives subsidies as well, but they can claim to power the global economy - there has been a tangible benefit to the citizen in the form of abundant, cheap energy and high paying jobs to explore for it, find it and bring it to market. There is little to show for our millions in solar and wind subsidies other than self congratulation among environmentalists. -Academics and politicians have attempted to deliberately control economies and diverse human needs and desires for centuries and have always failed and even worse, have ended in tyranny of unimaginable proportions. -Rather than shaking down politicians to force their agenda on people through the coercive power of the state, solar and wind power producers and proponents should find ways to make their technologies more effective, both in terms of cost (without subsidy) and energy production. Until these technologies are more cost efficient than petroleum/coal/natural gas and more potent, efficient sources of potential and kinetic energy, they will never be viable. Government coercion is a cynical, anti-democratic approach that is doomed to failure and diminishes our freedom.