Could Climate Change help the Global Economy?

Raise a Glass of Scottish Wine to Global Climate Changes

By Rudy Ruitenberg Mar 25, 2014 11:00 PM CT

Thanks to climate change, Christopher Trotter will make history later this year by pairing a Scottish white wine with the local spoots.

The razor clams harvested from the nearby shores of the North Sea will go down nicely with the first bottles from Trotter’s vineyard north of Edinburgh. The 2014 vintage will be special for Scotland, where Highlanders have distilled whisky and brewed ale for centuries.

“Scotland has probably been more of a beer-drinking nation than anything else,” said Trotter, a chef and food writer. Wine hasn’t been part of the culture, he said, “until now.”

Christopher Trotter, Scottish Chef, Vintner and food writer, stands in his vineyard in Fife, Scotland
– Source: Christopher Trotter via Bloomberg

Trotter might as well pour a splash on the ground in memory of a vanishing world. Climate change, which scientists say is caused by heat-trapping gas accumulating in the atmosphere, is transforming dinner tables and scrambling traditions in the $270 billion global wine industry. In Europe, warmer seasons are chasing Italian and Spanish vintners up hillsides, making a winner of Germany, encouraging growers in Poland and spreading the cultivation of wine grapes to latitudes friendlier to belly-warming whiskies and ales. And it’s raising the alcohol content, and altering the flavors, of famous wines in France.

Vitis vinifera, the common grape vine, is a finicky crop. Vineyards flourish where average annual temperatures range from 10 to 20 degrees Celsius (50 to 68 degrees Fahrenheit). Too much dry weather, hail or too much rain can downgrade or wreck a vintage.

“Scotland has probably been more of a beer-drinking nation than anything else,” said Trotter, a chef and food writer. Wine hasn’t been part of the culture, he said, “until now.”

Trotter might as well pour a splash on the ground in memory of a vanishing world. Climate change, which scientists say is caused by heat-trapping gas accumulating in the atmosphere, is transforming dinner tables and scrambling traditions in the $270 billion global wine industry. In Europe, warmer seasons are chasing Italian and Spanish vintners up hillsides, making a winner of Germany, encouraging growers in Poland and spreading the cultivation of wine grapes to latitudes friendlier to belly-warming whiskies and ales. And it’s raising the alcohol content, and altering the flavors, of famous wines in France.

Vitis vinifera, the common grape vine, is a finicky crop. Vineyards flourish where average annual temperatures range from 10 to 20 degrees Celsius (50 to 68 degrees Fahrenheit). Too much dry weather, hail or too much rain can downgrade or wreck a vintage.

Fine Wine

“Wine is very responsive to climatic factors,” said Karl Storchmann, a professor of economics at New York University and managing editor of the Journal of Wine Economics. “This is especially true for fine wine, when weather-induced vintage-to-vintage price variations can exceed 1,000 percent.”

Over centuries, growers in the top producing countries — France, Italy and Spain — selected grape varieties that now account for 75 percent of the world’s wine plantings, according to a database prepared by the University of Adelaide in Australia.

Where the Jobs Are: Is the Nursing Job Market a mixed bag?

Eminent nursing researcher & scholar Dr. Peter Buerhaus, PhD, RN, FAAN has made a career studying Nurses, and suggests that the jobs picture for new nurse grads is good, and that they may be facing one of the best job markets in decades.

A 2009 study he conducted found that, “Registered nurse (RN) employment has increased during the current recession, and we may soon see an end to the decade-long nurse shortage. This would give hospitals welcome relief and an opportunity to strengthen the nurse workforce by addressing issues associated with an increasingly older and foreign-born workforce. The recent increase in employment is also improving projections of the future supply of RNs, yet large shortages are still expected in the next decade. Until nursing education capacity is increased, future imbalances in the nurse labor market will be unavoidable.”

A 2004 study of his said that, “Wage increases, relatively high national unemployment, and widespread private-sector initiatives aimed at increasing the number of people who become nurses has resulted in a second straight year of strong employment growth among registered nurses (RNs). In 2003, older women and, to a lesser extent, foreign-born RNs accounted for a large share of employment growth. We also observe unusually large employment growth from two new demographic groups: younger people, particularly women in their early thirties, and men. Yet, despite the increase in employment of nearly 185,000 hospital RNs since 2001, the evidence suggests that the current nurse shortage has not been eliminated.”

Most recently, research he worked upon which was published in the December 2011 issue of Health Affairs found that “because of this surge in the number of young people entering nursing during the past decade, the nurse workforce is projected to grow faster during the next two decades than previously anticipated.”

In essence, “...the nurse workforce is now expected to grow at roughly the same rate as the population through 2030.”

They also cautioned however, “that the dynamics of the nursing workforce are more complex than sheer numbers.”

Lead researcher and RAND health economist David Auerbach said, “Instead of worrying about a decline, we are now growing the supply of nurses.”

Here’s something very interesting, however.

In that same issue of Health Affairs, a survey conducted by Christine Kovner of New York University examined the low “mobility” of new RNs. The most striking finding was that