21/04/2018

South Australia's Famed Wine Regions Preparing For The Squeeze Of Climate Change

ABC News - Simon Royal

Winemaker Wayne Farquhar inspects grapes in his Barossa Valley vineyard. (ABC News: Tony Hill)
Wayne Farquhar bought his first Barossa Valley vineyard in the 1970s. He had a very practical reason for doing so.
"I don't like drinking beer at all," Mr Farquhar said. "I grew up drinking wine and I wanted to make my own."
In his time he's seen growing conditions become more unpredictable.
It's reinforced his concern climate change may threaten some Barossa wine drinkers' favourite drops.
"We still have pockets of Chardonnay, we've got pockets of Riesling, we have Roussanne and Marsanne," Mr Farquhar said.
"I think that they are going to fade away, and there's even potential for Shiraz. It's one of our earliest ripening varieties.
"We just don't know what climate change is going to do to Shiraz.
"It would be a shame to lose our icon wine, but who knows what's around the corner."
However wine buffs and barbeque quaffers alike need not panic or worse, in Mr Farquhar's view, contemplate beer.
He believes there's a future — not with traditional cool climate grape varieties, but hotter ones.

Region's recalibration inspired by Portugal and Spain
Amputated vines in a vineyard in South Australia's Barossa Valley. (ABC News: Tony Hill)
On the western edge of the valley, Mr Farquhar has built a vine propagation business and a wine label based on that belief.
"Despite what many Australians might think, the Barossa is by no means the hottest place where grapes are grown," Mr Farquhar said.
"The Iberian peninsula, Portugal and Spain, across Tunisia, the southern parts of Italy.
"They are much hotter, and with less annual rainfall than us, and they've been growing grapes there for thousands of years. That's where we need to be looking."
The Barossa would lose its German accent and gain a Latin one.
At his cellar door in Greenock, Mr Farquhar cracks open a bottle of Arinto, a Portuguese white variety he pioneered in Australia.
"Smell this, isn't it just gorgeous?" he enthused.
"Now that's much more interesting than any old Sauvignon Blanc, don't you think?"
He expects to have six new Portuguese reds gracing Australian tables within three years.

Man with 'fruit salad block'
Winemaker Wayne Farquhar bought his first Barossa Valley vineyard in the 1970s. (ABC News: Tony Hill)
But it's not so much Mr Farquhar's advocacy of new varieties that raises eyebrows — it's the way he raises vines.
They look nothing like a traditional vineyard, with its widely spaced trunks, two lateral branches, masses of fruit, and lots of leaves.
Mr Farquhar's vines have just one lateral branch, and even that's chopped in half.
The individual vines are barely a quarter the usual size and produce much less fruit.
But they are so densely planted Mr Farquhar said he ends up with more fruit, and quality, per hectare.
It also dramatically slashes water use.
All up, the winemaker grows 65 different grape varieties on 15 hectares. Traditionalists can't resist a bit of fun at his expense.
"They call me the crazy man with the fruit salad block," Mr Farquhar chuckled.
'We have to plan for climate change'
But the Barossa zone winemaker is not the only one planning for an unpredictable future.
Jeff Grosset has been making wine in South Australia's Clare Valley for 37 years, in a region famed for its Riesling.
"The harvest is now on average a month earlier than it used to be, when I first came here," Mr Grosset said.
"That trend of almost one day per year is pretty much universal across premium regions in the world.
"I have no doubt we have to plan for climate change."
Jeff Grosset believes climate change will have profound effects on production. (ABC News: Simon Royal)
It's a lot more complex though than hopping on a plane, going somewhere hot, grabbing some new varieties, bringing them home, shoving them in the ground and thinking that fixes the future.
Because of the dangers of introduced disease, vines are deemed a high-risk import.
It can take two years for them just to clear quarantine, and they don't come with a guarantee to grow.
"We planted two varieties, Fiano — a white variety — and Aglianico, both from the south of Italy. One has worked really well and the other one didn't," Mr Grosset said, gesturing to a bare patch of land where the doomed vines once stood.
"Let's just call it 'research and development', though it's better when it ends in success rather than failure."
Along with a good palate, what a winemaker needs most is patience.
"It's a really, really long process," Mr Farquhar said.
"Realistically, it takes anywhere from six to seven years before you finally get the product into the bottle."
The future is unpredictable, but one thing is clear — when it comes to wine, it's already starting to taste different.

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Schwarzenegger To Sue Big Oil For ‘First Degree Murder’

POLITICO - 

At SXSW (South by Southwest Festival), the former California governor lets loose on climate change, Donald Trump and gives his first in-depth remarks on #MeToo.
Paul Kane/Getty Images
AUSTIN, Texas — Arnold Schwarzenegger’s next mission: taking oil companies to court “for knowingly killing people all over the world.”
The former California governor and global environmental activist announced the move Sunday at a live recording of POLITICO’s Off Message podcast here at the SXSW festival, revealing that he’s in talks with several private law firms and preparing a public push around the effort.


“This is no different from the smoking issue. The tobacco industry knew for years and years and years and decades, that smoking would kill people, would harm people and create cancer, and were hiding that fact from the people and denied it. Then eventually they were taken to court and had to pay hundreds of millions of dollars because of that,” Schwarzenegger said. “The oil companies knew from 1959 on, they did their own study that there would be global warming happening because of fossil fuels, and on top of it that it would be risky for people’s lives, that it would kill.”
Schwarzenegger said he’s still working on a timeline for filing, but the news comes as he prepares to help host a major environmental conference in May in Vienna.
“We’re going to go after them, and we’re going to be in there like an Alabama tick. Because to me it’s absolutely irresponsible to know that your product is killing people and not have a warning label on it, like tobacco,” he said. “Every gas station on it, every car should have a warning label on it, every product that has fossil fuels should have a warning label on it.”
He argues that at the very least, this would raise awareness about fossil fuels and encourage people to look to alternative fuels and clean cars.
He added, “I don’t think there’s any difference: If you walk into a room and you know you’re going to kill someone, it’s first degree murder; I think it’s the same thing with the oil companies.”
Schwarzenegger was at SXSW for an extensive discussion of lessons he learned in his seven years as governor, and how he’d apply them to the current political situation in Washington and beyond. On the list: Maximize the bully pulpit; use the carrot but have the stick ready; and no one gets a perfect “10,“ because there’s always room for improvement. Those, he said, were part of his art of the deal, and explained how he’d been able to institute major laws from worker’s compensation reform to environmental standards to a state election overhaul to implement independent redistricting and a “jungle primary” system, in which the top two advance.
Schwarzenegger also addressed, for the first time since the national reawakening around the #MeToo moment, the charges of groping and inappropriate behavior that surfaced from multiple women against him at the end of his first campaign for governor in 2003. He acknowledged that the change in the moment made a huge difference.
“It is about time. I think it’s fantastic. I think that women have been used and abused and treated horribly for too long, and now all of the elements came together to create this movement, and now finally puts the spotlight on this issue, and I hope people learn from that,” he said. “You’ve got to take those things seriously. You’ve got to look at it and say, ‘I made mistakes. And I have to apologize.’”
He stressed the importance of sexual harassment training, like the one he made his staff do once he was elected— including himself.
“We make mistakes, and we don’t take it seriously. And then when you really think about it, you say, ‘Maybe I went too far,’” Schwarzenegger said. “You’ve got to be very sensitive about it, and you’ve got to think about the way that women feel—and if they feel uncomfortable, then you did not do the right thing.”
The past few months, he said “made me think totally differently,” adding, “I said to myself, ‘Finally.’”
Schwarzenegger took a number of shots at Donald Trump, dismissing the president’s latest attack on him, delivered at a rally in Pennsylvania on Saturday night, for having “failed when he did the show,” a reference to the former governor’s rocky one-season stint as the host of “The Apprentice” on NBC last year.
“I never know really why the Russians make him say certain things,” Schwarzenegger said. “It’s beyond me. Why do you think he says those things? He’s supposed to be very busy.”
Later in the interview, he returned to the attack on Trump, teasing that the script of the new “Terminator” movie, which Schwarzenegger is set to start filming in June and is expected to be released next year, had to be rewritten to include Trump. “The T-800 model that I play, he’s traveling back in time to 2019 to get Trump out of prison,” Schwarzenegger joked.
He wouldn’t reveal any actual details about the script other than that he is still the T-800 model. This isn’t his only upcoming foray into old film franchises: He’s due to shoot “King Conan” and “Triplets,” an update on the 1988 film “Twins,” with Eddie Murphy as the third brother. (“There’s something funny there with the mixing of the sperm,” he said.)
Schwarzenegger said he’d like to see Ohio Gov. John Kasich run for president but urged him to run in the Republican primary rather than as an independent.
“He’s a great Republican,” Schwarzenegger said.
But he said don’t expect him to be a major campaign presence in 2020. He’ll be focusing on pushing gerrymandering reform, and has gotten involved again with California Republicans, with whom he’ll be meeting in the coming days back home.
“The Republicans that are the new thinking Republicans in California want to get things done,” Schwarzenegger said, adding that he wants elected officials to remember, “ultimately, you are a public servant, not a party servant.”
He urged the GOP to pay attention to what happened in California, where Democrats have become completely dominant. Republicans there, he said, “are stuck with an ideology that doesn’t really fit anymore with what people want.”
He cited the environmental work of Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush as examples.
“Today, those are all things that are absolutely a no-no in the Republican Party. I didn’t change; it’s the Republican Party that’s changed,” he said. “Now we have to work very hard to get the party back to where it was.”
Back at the end of his presidency, Bill Clinton wrote Schwarzenegger a long letter that ended with Clinton urging Schwarzenegger to become a Democrat. Schwarzenegger said he wasn’t interested then, and isn’t interested now, for all his problems with Trump and the current GOP.
“That’s a fun letter, and I like supporting him on some issues,” Schwarzenegger said. “But the bottom line is that I’m a Republican, and I’m a true Republican, and I will always be a Republican. It’s a fantastic party, but they’ve veered off into the right into some strange lanes.”

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Victoria Demands New Detailed Analysis On NEG After COAG Meeting

The Guardian - 

Meeting on Friday between energy ministers almost derailed by disagreement over how Energy Security Board should proceed
The issues Victoria wants addressed include treatment of renewable energy schemes and targets. Photograph: Bloomberg/Bloomberg via Getty Images
The Victorian energy minister Lily D’Ambrosio has written to the Energy Security Board asking for new detailed analysis to be provided on the national energy guarantee, as the stand off between the Turnbull government and the states over energy policy shifts into its decisive phase.
The federal energy minister Josh Frydenberg secured agreement on Friday for further work to be done on the NEG, but the process was almost derailed by a backroom skirmish about the riding instructions for the Energy Security Board before a critical meeting in August.
The Energy Security Board was established last year by the Commonwealth and the states to provide advice about the proposed energy policy overhaul, and given it is a joint body, there has been sensitivity behind the scenes about who instructs it.
Victoria and Queensland wanted a detailed form of words recorded in a joint communique setting out specific lines of inquiry for the Energy Security Board to pursue before the COAG energy council reconvenes in August for a meeting that will either tick or torpedo the policy – but Frydenberg refused.
The argument played out at a private dinner the ministers attended in Melbourne before Friday’s meeting.
The wording of the joint communique distributed after Friday’s meeting is entirely non-specific, saying the Energy Security Board “will consult with jurisdictions on the specific details of the design” and the meeting “noted that the states have raised issues that will require further work ahead of the August meeting”.
Victoria has now written to the Energy Security Board setting out the issues Labor states want addressed, including the treatment of their renewable energy schemes and targets, and the consequences of future adjustment to the proposed emissions reduction target of 26% on 2005 levels by 2030.
The letter, seen by Guardian Australia, sets out five specific lines of inquiry, including the impact of the targets and their interaction, and the impact of scaleability of the national target; ensuring that regulators have sufficient powers to ensure compliance with the emissions reduction obligations; ensuring competition concerns are addressed; and seeking more detail about how the NEG will work with pre-existing concepts like the strategic reserve in the national energy market.
The whole subject of emissions reduction, and all the components required to achieve it, is a deeply sensitive issue within the federal Coalition, and Frydenberg has insisted Canberra will unilaterally determine those elements of the policy.
While welcoming Friday’s progress, Frydenberg made it entirely clear that the Commonwealth would not be budging on the 26% – a figure both the Labor states and many experts argue is entirely inadequate.
Data released this week on renewables compiled by Green Energy Markets and funded by the progressive activist group GetUp suggests the NEG will deliver no meaningful emissions reductions in its own right because the capacity of renewable projects now under construction already exceeds what is required to achieve the 2030 NEG target.
The federal energy minister also insisted that any emissions reduction undertaken at the state level would count in the national target. That issue, the relationship between the national target and the state schemes, is a major source of conflict with some state governments.
Frydenberg declined to say whether or not energy companies would be allowed to lower their emissions by the purchase of offsets, which some of the jurisdictions don’t support.
“We remain open on the issue,” Frydenberg said. “I’m not going into further detail on it other than to say we retain an open mind on the issue of permits.”
Energy ministers will participate in a telephone hook up in June to check progress before the Energy Security Board produces a detailed design of the scheme in July, and the COAG energy council reconvenes in August.
Despite the continuing flash points, and the fact several states are refusing to sign on in the absence of detail, Frydenberg is sounding upbeat about the chances of landing a deal on the policy in August.
“I am confident that all the issues that were discussed today and last night with the ministers can [be worked] through, and that we can land a position in August which is in the national interest,” Frydenberg told reporters after the meeting.
“From the Turnbull government’s perspective, from the Commonwealth’s perspective, the national energy guarantee is Australia’s best chance to integrate energy and climate policy and deliver cheaper, cleaner, more reliable power to all Australians.”
“If we don’t seize this opportunity, what we will see is higher prices, lower reliability, and more expensive government interventions, and that is not a positive way forward for our country.”

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