In short: The warmer a winter is, the earlier the pinot noir grapes are ripe. The Catholic church being what it is, the monks in Bordeaux kept records of the harvest date every year since forever. The mathy-type science people in France analyzed the data from 1676 to 2004.
Math-hater's summary of the next paragraph: The winter temperatures in Bordeaux have gone up and down regularly since 1676 until 1988, when they should have started heading down but instead kept going up until the end of the data in 2004, ending up three times higher than usual in terms of difference from normal.
Slightly longer version: A glance at the graph shows that there have regularly been years with warm winters leading to very early harvest dates, alternating with cold winters leading to late harvest dates. The really early harvest dates have occurred as a spike, pretty regularly every 40 years or so. To smooth out the curve, the scientists graphed the 11-year running average harvest date: the harvest date average for the previous 11 years each year. This resulted in a surprisingly regular curve. It's nearly a sine curve with a period (valley to valley) that begins around 20 years and gradually increases to 40 years. The curve stays almost exclusively within +/- 5 days until 1988, when the curve doesn't head back down as expected, but continues upwards to a peak of around +15 in 2003.
Math-lover's version: Go see the graph.
The evidence mounts. The worst polluters see it as someone else's problem, a hopeless situation, or a problem that will be headed off by the end of the world, depending on your/their perspectives.
I get to be Tina Turner. Dibs! Called it. All we want is life beyond Thunderdome.
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