Things are hotting up!

摘要

It was recently invited to speak at the 'Viticulture '04, Growing our Future' conference held in Mildura in late October. The conference, coming close on the heels of the Australian Wine Industry Technical Conference in Melbourne, was designed for 'discerning grapegrowers'. My topic was 'Alternative Varieties for Warm Inland Regions'. In my work as an international consultant I do come across 'new' varieties, some of which do well in hot regions, and so I was pleased to share my experiences. Moreover, I was interested to further develop some thoughts on global warming, about which we are hearing more and more. At the Melbourne conference I had the very good fortune to meet Leanne Webb who is doing a PhD on this topic. She presented a poster as well as contributed to the wine quality seminar. She said that global warming was no longer a matter of scientific speculation, but a fact which was already happening. Depending on which climate model is used, predictions of increase in temperature of 0.3 to 1.7℃ by 2030, and 0.8 to 5.2℃ by 2070 are being considered.