Climate Change

That bottle of Bordeaux you put aside may become even rarer in the next few decades as climate change could reduce wine grape production in traditional parts of the world and move it elsewhere, researchers say. Danish Cabernet, anyone? Wine grape production's sensitivity to climate makes it a good test case for what could happen over the next several decades. And the land suitable for viticulture in current major wine producing regions could be reduced by 20% to 70% by 2050, depending on the amount of greenhouse gases produced, the researchers said this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

If changes in the public mood and the party alignment of the U.S. Senate have stalled healthcare legislation, they may have thrown the highly anticipated climate bill under a bus. Even before Republican Scott Brown's stunning election to the Senate in traditionally Democratic Massachusetts last month, it was proving hard to corral moderate Democrats to support a bill capping greenhouse gas emissions. Now they're afraid to back anything that could be perceived as harmful to the economy.

According to a survey of more than 4,000 young adults, a large proportion of Generation X isn't all that concerned about climate change.    Writing in the quarterly Generation X Report - which details findings of the Longitudinal Study of American Youth, a yearly survey of Americans who entered 7 th or 10 th grade in 50 U.S. public school systems in the fall of 1987 - University of Michigan research scientist Jon D. Miller said that the...

WASHINGTON -- Some major U.S. corporations that support climate science in their public relations materials actively work to derail regulations and laws addressing global warming through lobbying, campaign donations and support of various advocacy groups, according to a new report by the Union of Concerned Scientists, an environmental and scientific integrity group. The multinational oil giant, ConocoPhillips, for instance, said on its website in 2011 that it “recognizes” that human activity is leading to climate change, the view supported by the overwhelming majority of scientific research.

Last week, at a place called Bird's Point, just below the confluence of the Ohio and the Mississippi rivers, the Army Corps of Engineers was busy mining a huge levee with explosives. The work was made dangerous by outbreaks of lightning, but eventually the charges were in place and corps Maj. Gen. Michael Walsh gave the order: A 2-mile-wide hole was blasted in the earthen levee, and a wall of water greater than the flow over Niagara Falls inundated 130,000 acres of prime Missouri farmland.

Climate activists descended on Washington, D.C., on Sunday in what organizers boasted was the largest climate-change rally in American history, claiming more than 35,000 attendees. The Forward on Climate rally, as it was billed by environmental groups Sierra Club and 350.org, called for President Obama to take immediate action on climate change, with many calling for the government to block the construction of the oil pipeline known as Keystone XL. Protestors marched through the streets bearing placards and massed on the National Mall, where speakers addressed the crowd.

AMSTERDAM -- On an early morning flight coming out of the clouds above the North Sea, the first objects that come into view as the coast of the Netherlands approaches are the windmills. No, not the quaint, creaking, wooden windmills that, along with wooden shoes and the little boy with his finger in the dike, are the cliches of Dutch culture; these windmills are sleek and modern and so huge they dwarf the container ships passing by.  There are phalanxes of them just off the Dutch coast, and on land there are many, many more planted like daffodils along the wet rural stretches of this low-lying country that looks as if it could, at any moment, be inundated by the sea. In fact, the Dutch could be swamped as sea levels rise due to global climate change.

Insurance companies don't care if you believe in climate change or not: Your premiums are going up anyhow. NPR reported Monday that home insurance premiums are going up across the board in response to the record number of tornadoes, floods, fires, blizzards and other heavy weather that hit the country in 2011. The piece features insurance executives at major firms such as Allstate and State Farm saying they are raising rates as much as 10%.  The president of the Insurance Information Institute, a New York-based industry association, says the weather caused about $35 billion of insured damages last year in the U.S. in events that caused a total of $70 billion in economic losses.

In the future, white-knuckle fliers may be able to blame those brutally bumpy flights over the Atlantic Ocean on greenhouse gases. Turbulence will be stronger and occur more often if carbon dioxide emissions double by 2050, heating up the atmosphere, according to a study by British scientists published last week in the journal Nature Climate Change. Turbulence is created by atmospheric pressure, jet streams, air around mountains, cold or warm weather fronts or thunderstorms, among other conditions.