The global economy's biggest problem is that humanity is adding carbon dioxide, the most important heat-trapping gas, to the atmosphere faster than at any time since the dinosaurs were wiped out. A study in Nature Geoscience, published simultaneously with the wine study, concludes that carbon is being injected into the atmosphere at rates unseen since a major heating event about 56 million years ago.
There is no analogue to human-made warming, the scientists say. The rate of climate change "is too fast for many species to adapt, which is likely to result in widespread future extinctions in marine and terrestrial environments that will substantially exceed" any episode in the Cenozoic Era, going back 66 million years.
Bad years ahead for Merlot.