It's us against phlegm – global warming makes you sneeze

From Jo Nova:
The team at CO2science grew seedlings for 42 days in chambers of 450ppm (high) and 1270 ppm (very high) CO2 concentrations. They documented the growth of cowpea plants (Vigna unguiculata) via time-lapse photography, and showed what most market gardeners knew: More CO2 in the air makes for taller, stronger, faster-growing plants. Indeed, CO2 is one of the essential nutrients for plants, and is often the thing that limits their growth. Pretty much all the plants on Earth grow faster when CO2 levels are higher.
Increased CO2 is well documented to increase plant growth.
REPLY: True, but so does adequate water, adequate sunlight, and adequate nutrients. Liebigs Law states that plant growth is limited by the lowest available factor. There’s no proof that a 1-2 ppm increase of CO2 from last year is the trigger for a weed explosion. Elevated Co2 levels must be far higher to have significant effects. The factors of water, sun, and nutrients are much more variable than CO2 in our atmosphere. Sorry, fail. – Anthony

I am really not sure why no-one has taken the weatherization program to task. Sealing homes reduces ventilation. Reduced ventilation significantly increases allergens, and any number of organics, mold and particulates in the home. EPAs dirty little secret is indoor air quality has always been worse than outdoor air quality. Weatherization will make this worse. Seems these things only count when it fits an agenda.

The left is trying to reinvent world, as if allergies had never existed until global warming. As we older people die off, the leftist will no doubt continue their campaign to re-educate the younger people that the world is in chaos without government intervention. It is truly Orwellien. We have stood by and have allowed ourselves to be shamed by accusations of intolerance. We need to stop equating acceptance of idiocy and second rate science as being inclusive and open minded. They are not the same thing.

4 billion (20:24:49) : ………so, is plant growth preferable or not? ‘Cause I’m gonna ask them people to dig up those trees I donated money to so they could plant them trees if it’s a bad thing now………………………. Seriously, [snip]??? is it that a group of people got together and decided not to be happy with anything? What a magnificent discovery……increase in plant life equals higher pollen counts. Really? Who’d’ve thunk it.

I’ve had allergies (sometimes severe, life-threatening) all my life. I’ve never demanded that 95% of the population accommodate ME just because I have these health issues.
And it pisses me off that some people are using people with allergies as a tool to achieve a political goal.

Now hand on a cotton picken moment here. Increased CO2 made those plants grow faster and healthier. Let’s put aside the pollen thing for moment, I gots an evolution question to ask.
When plants evolve, they must by a process of natural selection achieve optimal growth profiles in the climate in which they evolved. Too cold, plant dies. Too warm, plant dies. A cactus in Nevada would thrive in a temperature and precipitation range that would kill a palm tree in florida, and vice versa. So, is there any reason to believe that evolution worked any different in regard to CO2 concentrations? Woujld they not have evolved to a CO2 range that was optimal for them? They must have a “sweet spot” in wich they make maximum use of the available CO2 across a natural number of other factors like prescipitation, nutrients and temperature. By building a database to cross reference all the factors, it should be possible to show the set of conditions the plant was evolving to. Once you know that, combined with the place the plant first appeared and how long ago it appeared, one should be able to say “hey, the spot here is where draconius publianist fajaroso yamal liartentium evvoled 3000 years ago and its ideal growing conditions were 5 degrees higher than now, less rain and 475 ppm CO2 or something like that.
Seriously, the fact that the plants do so well in an environment with CO2 concentrations so much higher than “normal” suggests that they exolved to handle those higher concentrations, and nothing evolves to handle things that don’t exist. I have long suspected the accuracy of ic core data, would love to see someone take a look at it ffrom this kind of perspective.

(See why allergies are on the rise in children.) <————– I didn't click on that link. I don't want to know what they want to blame their inferior genetic breeding on. But I surmise, it is more prevalent in………..sigh, I'm off to bed before I get out of hand.
Cheers.

While I was mowing the lawn Monday my lawn tractor brushed up against an evergreen tree. The tree retaliated by releasing a cloud of pollen that covered the tractor and me. Fortunately it seems I’m not allegic to that particular brand of pollen as I had no reaction to it.

I have allergies and live in North Carolina. This year was actually easy for me so far. How ever I did notice a huge amount of pine tree pollen, my water tanks are yellow and my critters have yellow muzzles this week.
I think the higher than normal rain fall this winter, with below freezing cold followed by a sudden week of very warm temperatures was the trigger not CAGW. The plants in my neck of the woods went from dormant to full out growth in a week.
However the temperatures are still cool with highs of 50F to 80F compared to several days of 98F in April of 2004.

This bizarre story, along with an absolutely fallacious claim that Spring pollen is somehow a more powerful allergen because of AGW was all over radio today. One has to wonder at the sheer stupidity of the newsreader.

And out West my Spring ran screaming into a cave after seeing Phil.
Black clouds, rained all night & day, cold, damp, trees refuse to bud.
Been cold since early Dec.
Well, if it ain’t worth complaining about, it’s not weather.

I’m going to pick a fight! With you Anthony!
When I am not busy with my birdfeeder I garden. I have four raised beds for vegies and my beloved Libby grows flowers. I have done some study about gardening. Rodale’s notions about intensive raised bed gardens have strongly influenced my practices since I have limited space. I have built a greenhouse like cap to fit over one of my beds. I am familiar with Liebig’s Law. As an experiment I put some dry ice in my little greenhouse. The spurt in plant growth was nearly unbelievable. Dry ice [frozen CO2] is now regularly used especially with my seedlings with consistant results.
It would be easy to say that I have created by soil amendments and watering a situation where CO2 is in short supply. But the object of Rodale’s ideas is to replicate rich natural soil with little or no chemical fertilizers. I submit that my little experiment implies that there may be a shortage of CO2 for optimum plant growth in our atmosphere. Commercial greenhouses certainly agree with me when they pump up CO2 levels to 1000pm.
The point of all this is that when excellent conditions are achieved [a situation which frequently occurs in nature] CO2 shortage stunts plant growth. I believe you are a renaissance man Anthony [a high accolade], but I’ll believe you’re a master gardener when you tell me so.
The birds love my vine ripe tomatos.
REPLY: No fighting needed. No doubt about the value of CO2 for plant growth, but we are talking about doubling, tripling, to have any real effect. For example ponder this video from CO2 Science:

Clearly, the growth effect is prominent at 1270 ppm, much like what you experienced with dry ice enrichment of the air with CO2. So yes, at 388 ppm right now, we are a bit low compared to what plants might like.
But to claim hay fever causing weeds and plants are growing bezerk over a change of 2 ppm in the last year is just plain junk science. – Anthony

50 years ago, hardly anyone went to the doctor with allergy symptoms. Why, because there was almost nothing that could be done. It would have been a waste of time.
The increase in the number of people seeking treatment for allergies now compared to 50 years ago is more related to medical science than to climate science.

“It’s us against phlegm”
Brilliant! LOL.
Ah yes, the NWF. I guess their usual business of ‘Conservation Biology’ junk science just didn’t use up enough of their huge junk science budget.

Bonny Prince Charles is reputed to talk to his plants claiming that they respond with increased growth. Maybe he’s right! Could be that gassing closely to the dear things envelops them in co2 which they just love…

I read an article recently — not online — pointing out that it had become fashionable in landscaping to plant lots of male trees fruit trees that flowered in the spring. The corresponding female trees were never planted because no one wanted to deal with the fruit they produced, which ends up lying rotten on the ground. I’ve looked around, and by golly there are a lot of flowering trees around now which weren’t there several decades ago The article blamed this trend for the growing prevalence of spring pollen allergies, and I think they have a point.

I can’t resist pointing out to you that I’m in my 70’s, and I still have copies of the National Geographic magazine discussing the problems of pollen counts 50 years ago. People moved in the USA from the coast to inland areas, and they were quite O.K. with their asthma problems. That was until they missed the gardens and shrubs that they used to grow “back home” on the coast.
I have a special interest in the issue for family reasons, and available water for gardens seems to be a major part of the answer, more than CO2 levels…
No available water equals no flowering shrubs. Tough on the birds though.!
The green movement is good in principle, BUT not for the people allergic to high pollens counts world wide,it seems. Jo Nova’s comment seemed O.K. !

In Japan they have a pollen forecast by the TV weatherpeople. Why? Because after the end of world war two, the Japanese government started planting non-indigenous cedar trees to replace the indigenous deciduous forests which were cut down to supply material for the then war effort.
These non-indigenous cedar trees are fast, aggressive growing trees which release clouds of pollen every spring/summer season and have made life a misery for vast swathes of Japanese hayfever sufferers. What’s even more interesting is the lack of effort to try to reintroduce the indigenous varieties which were originally there – so now they’re stuck with what amounts to an allergy-causing ecological disaster.
Another reason as to why the above report is arrant nonsense – and the only involvement of CO2 in the making of this allergy disaster, is the amount of CO2 used by the cedar trees.

Sarcasm:
The CO2 fertilized plant growth holds more terrible threats than allergies!
In a recent report to be included in AR5 2012, a WWF funded study on daffodils growth in Central Park found that human induced CO2 may have even worse effects than we thougth.
The study was carried out on three plants over a three year period.
The results was a follows:
Year one – average stem length 7 cm.
Year two average stem length 7.5 cm
Year three average stem length was 8.5cm.
(The stems were measured on sligthly different times each year. However, the data has been homogenized to account or this).
The study found that the extreme and accelerating growth correlates perfectly with the increase in CO2 from 380ppm to 382ppm in the same period.
The super computer models find that by 2023, it is very likely that daffodil stems in teh Manhattan area will reach thirty meters, provided the CO2 continues to rise as expected.
If the CO2 levels are doubled, as the models project will be the case by 2045, the average stem lengths will very likely be more than 350 meters.
According to the predictions, it is very likely that the extreme and accelerating growth will make the Manhattan area uninhaitable for and lead to mass extinction of a numbe rof local, specialy adapted species (city pigeons and rats to name few).
On a positive note, the daffodils are expectd to suck up and bind large amounts of water, thus the predicted sea level rise is expected stop short of 5 meters by 2100 instead of the 8 meters previously predicted
The models have not yet been scaled to do global simulations, though it is likely that the effects will be the same globally. More research is needed to reach firm conclusions in this respect.
/sarcasm

@Paul Z. (22:48:13) :
“I’m sorry to say that England and The Brits are [snip]. Their government is so deeply involved in carbon emissions trading that there is no way back for them, short of a citizen revolution. I would not be surprised to see an uprising similar to the recent one in Kyrgyzstan (caused by high energy prices and cronyism) take place in the UK in the next 5 to 10 years.”
I would be very surprised indeed to see any such popular uprising in Britain. The populace is deeply anaesthetised, generally incurious about anything other than our equivalents of bread and circuses; we have a vast unemployed welfare underclass who are supported by government handouts to an enormous extent and a banking/business class rubbing their hands at the prospect of another profitable bubble in CO2 indulgences – both these groups are perfectly capable of seeing which side their bread’s buttered on. We also have an increasingly politicised state-controlled education system which promotes the paralysis of personal judgement and independence, nanny-statism and catastrophic global warming “theory” and the state is rapidly developing surveillance and compliance systems to extend control to an absolute level over the entire population.
We loathe and despise our politicians, more than ever before, but the majority of British are most unlikely to do anything at all about it except roll over and “think of England”. So yes, we are indeed thoroughly, totally fucked and will become the revised version of the old GDR very soon indeed. And, never forget, we have no right to bear arms. Now, excuse me while I go see whether the X-Factor’s on tonight (I certainly don’t intend to watch our equivalent of the 3 Stooges, our party leaders, “debating” their identical lies on the box tonight). If not, I’ll be down the pub getting blind drunk to forget about it all – the current British answer to just about anything you can think of.

Mods: suitably adjusted version of my earlier post.
@Paul Z. (22:48:13) :
“I’m sorry to say that England and The Brits are ******. Their government is so deeply involved in carbon emissions trading that there is no way back for them, short of a citizen revolution. I would not be surprised to see an uprising similar to the recent one in Kyrgyzstan (caused by high energy prices and cronyism) take place in the UK in the next 5 to 10 years.”
I would be very surprised indeed to see any such popular uprising in Britain. The populace is deeply anaesthetised, generally incurious about anything other than our equivalents of bread and circuses; we have a vast unemployed welfare underclass who are supported by government handouts to an enormous extent and a banking/business class rubbing their hands at the prospect of another profitable bubble in CO2 indulgences – both these groups are perfectly capable of seeing which side their bread’s buttered on. We also have an increasingly politicised state-controlled education system which promotes the paralysis of personal judgement and independence, nanny-statism and catastrophic global warming “theory” and the state is rapidly developing surveillance and compliance systems to extend control to an absolute level over the entire population.
We loathe and despise our politicians, more than ever before, but the majority of British are most unlikely to do anything at all about it except roll over and “think of England”. So yes, we are indeed thoroughly, totally ****** and will become the revised version of the old GDR very soon indeed. And, never forget, we have no right to bear arms. Now, excuse me while I go see whether the X-Factor’s on tonight (I certainly don’t intend to watch our equivalent of the 3 Stooges, our party leaders, “debating” their identical lies on the box tonight). If not, I’ll be down the pub getting blind drunk to forget about it all – the current British answer to just about anything you can think of.

The next scare tale:
Global warming causes erectile dysfunction.
/joking.

They say spring is coming earlier in the East USA. That is nonsense, of course. Look at Pa. spring temperatures for the past 30 years, plot Spring Mean Temp from 1980-2009 with same trend line. It is FLAT
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/research/cag3/pa.html
Then plug in NY where you see the Pa. in the web address, get the same thing.

@RichieP (02:58:48)
C’mon! I’m not having that!
I’m no fan of the 3 Stooges but they were absolute geniuses compared to our fearless “leaders”!
Better looking, too!

davidmhoffer (21:23:55)
Hi, I posted a reply (kind of) to this question on Jo Nova’s site yesterday. Antony has already pointed out that factors other than CO2 are generally limiting plant growth (nitrogen more often than not) so increasing CO2 into the battleground that plants usually have to survive in won’t make the huge improvement shown by plants grown in nutrient rich, moist, sunny, heated greenhouses with CO2 enrichment. I’ve copied & pasted the rest of my reply below (very lazy – sorry)
“For me, one of the key pieces of evidence that we’re living on a planet with CO2 levels currently at the very bottom of the normal range is that a whole new group of plants evolved several million years ago specifically to cope with it. They developed a new method of photosynthesis called C4 which permits greater water efficiency and the ability to photosynthesise in higher temperatures at greatly reduced CO2 levels. Just do a Wiki on ‘C4 photosynthesis’. An even more robust adaption called CAM was evolved by plants like cacti which we now see living in deserts. But even these can’t grow in the Sahara – no water, no nitrogen, no nothing.
Despite a probable increase in net biomass with increasing CO2 concentrations, there could be a loss in plant biodiversity as the big greedy plants with a high relative growth rate totally out-compete everything else. This happens anywhere you add loads of any nutrients of any sort to an ecosystem and upset the delicate battle for resources. The analogy is similar to acid soils (lots of nutrients) which are generally species poor and dominated by big greedy hooligan-like plants vs alkaline soils which are nutrient poor but very species rich.”
So there is indeed a suggestion that more ancient plants are now living in a world where CO2 levels are much lower than when they first evolved.

@Smokey (05:01:31) :
“If you’re going to use old timey language like ’stooges,’ then that makes the taxpayers the chumps.”
No change there then! (Though please note I speak only for the UK.)

I’m trying to find a list of things which are *not* harmed, destroyed or exacerbated by global warming (erm, climate change). I’m sure, by now, it’s a very short list on the verge of extinction.

So Time Magazine is admitting that more CO2 is good for plants! That’s a very good start IMO. The fact that Time even acknowledges the connection between allergies and parents sheltering their newborn babies inside an industrial clean room environment underscores a chink in their blind obdience to the alarmist crowd.
Yes it’s true, whoever suffers from pollen allergies will likely suffer more as plants become HEALTHIER thanks to CO2, (let them retreat back into the clean room their parents put them in when they were babies…), but there no room for alarmists to argue that the allergic reaction itself is the result of AGW. It clearly is not. It would be like blaming flooding for people not knowing how to swim.

As any landscaper knows, stressing a plant will make it stronger. This winter caused a lot of stress on all plants. Some couldn’t handle the stress and died, i.e. my coconut palms and even my bougainvilleas. But those that could handle it have grown back bigger and stronger. The leaves on the plumbagos and oak trees are the largest I have seen since living at this location. My citrus trees have enormous amounts of buds this spring, the most I have seen on these trees. We also have had a wet spring which is definitely a contributing factor.
Like a human muscle, when plants are stressed and fed properly they respond favorably.

I too read the rest of the “Time” article. Not only does it assert that pines do not produce pollen, It bases its springtime allergy claims – in amazingly precise terms – on increased production of, and increased allergic response to, “spring ragweed”. In fact, all ragweeds (genus Ambrosia) bloom in late summer and in the fall. This story is made out of whole cloth.

Conclusions: Our study adds to the evidence that a farm childhood in combination with current livestock farming protects against allergic disorders. This effect was found for both organic and
conventional farmers
http://oem.bmj.com/content/64/2/101.abstractentional farmers.
The Liberal media writes anything they want and really doesn’t even do google research.

How is our Main Stream Media different from Pravda? Government cheerleading all the time. Leading to…….”we need to control you more”. This insidious malfeasance is the greatest threat to democracy.
And only a small percentage of people even recognize that it’s happening. It is why when you try to explain something to someone you feel as though you have to grab them by the shoulders and shake them. They are brain dead zombies of the MSM propaganda.
It’s very scary. Seriously, it is.

Typical propaganda from the sophists with an agenda. I have suffered from pollen and dust related sensitivities since a child. It is true that they have gotten more annoying as I have grown younger (at age 50 I started counting backwards so am now only 33). This increased annoyance is highly correlated to many things; the state of the global climate less so then living in the forest and sneezing in the presence of spruce pollen every spring, however. But then correlation is not causation, is it.

no early spring around here. in fact, opening day is likely to see 100% ice cover on local lakes, as opposed the normal 100% fishing boat cover.
at least in the southwest, increased pollen this year would more likely be caused by the very wet winter’s concomitant plant growth.
speaking only from actual observation of course, no models or projections on which to rely

Since all of us human beings have to eat food, this is a very good thing. So which way would anyone reasonable want it to be? Some suffering allergies, and all eat well, or fewer or less allergic reactions and all live in famine?

Thanks to an unusually cold and snowy winter, followed by an early and warm spring, pollen counts are through the roof in much of the U.S., especially in the Southeast,
I spent c8 weeks during Febrary and March in SW Florida. It has been a (much) colder than usual winter in FL. With pretty constant NW or NE winds that continued thoughout March. Not much sign of “an early and warm spring” there.

Gail Combs/b> (10:25:14) :
WHAT!! Pine trees produce a “huge” size pollen that is yellow in color and coats everything, the car, the windshields, the water in the water troughs…..
And it sticks. Pine pollen is nature’s way of letting you see what you’d be driving if you had ordered your car with a canary yellow paint job.

Hi,
You seem to have got the wrong end of the stick – I’m on your side! I never said anything about a silly Gaia-like ‘balance’ (in fact I didn’t say ‘balance’ at all, did I?)- all plants and animals live on the edge of existance and death by starvation is never far away. So it is a ‘battle’ and a ‘battleground’, words I used above.
The reason for biodiversity is generally due to patchiness in habitats, there’s slightly more light here, less water there, more nitrogen here. The ‘battle’ is about plants developing subtly different strategies to cope with these slightly different conditions. One species will always outcompete another in a particular microhabitat – ‘competitive exclusion’ – so patchiness is the key to biodiversity.
If you consider that it is nitrogen in nature is normally the most limiting factor and is also very patchy, then those ‘greedy’ plants that have evolved to live in places with high nutrients (such as stinging nettles for example) will simply spring up everywhere if you dump a lot of fertiliser in a habitat. Urtica dioica (nettles) if I remember correctly hold the ‘world record’ for the rate of uptake and use of nitrogen so there is nothing that can live with them in a nitrogen unlimited habitat. In no time they will have completely taken over (they’re a nuisance but now you’ve got to admire them!). This is why agricultural runoff into rivers etc causes such concerns.
I’m a plant ecologist so am reasonably familiar with Darwinian theories. I’m not one of those silly hippy conservationists either, I consider the process of nature far more important than the end result. I was trying to add a little more detail to the debate, that’s all. I think both sides of the AGW debate don’t do themselves any favours when they over-simplify ideas. Shouting people down and insulting those who are trying to add something constructive to the debate happens often on these blogs which is a shame. After all, one of our biggest criticisms of the ‘other side’ is that they lack objectivity, isn’t it?