This UC Irvine study with heat lamps on grass plots seems to be almost at a science fair level. Here’s the relevant quotes from the abstract and conclusion:
Our results suggest that an increase in temperature caused by climate change as well as the urban heat island effect may result in increases in N2O emissions from fertilized urban lawns. In addition, warming may exacerbate weed invasions, which may require more intensive management…
The increases in N2O fluxes with warming suggest that soil N2O fluxes could serve as a positive feedback to global warming in turfgrass.
In high school I cut lawns to make money during the summer, and as any lawnboy can tell you, crabgrass is far more hardy than fescue in the heat. We’d spend all summer keeping the crabgrass and other weeds at bay. So this is hardly news. What is news to me is that taxpayer funds would be wasted on such things. With “tipping points”, sea ice loss, ocean conveyor shutdowns, and a whole host of bigger things we’ve been told to worry about, I’m really surprised that anybody is wasting time worrying about our lawn quality in the apocalyptic future that has been portrayed by some. On the plus side, at least they recognize UHI, which I’m sure will upset Peterson and Parker, who tell us it doesn’t exist. – Anthony
From the Orange County Register:
Our lawns could go to the weeds as the planet warms
July 14th, 2008, 3:00 am ·Gary Robbins, Orange County Register
UC Irvine researchers who simulated global warming at the campus arboretum say they’ve made an unexpected discovery: The additional heat caused crabgrass to flourish.
The finding came when plant ecologist Diane Pataki and graduate student Neeta Bijoor heated portions of a research lawn with infrared lamps. Other portions of the lawn weren’t heated during the study, which focused on greenhouse gas emissions.
“There were significantly more crabgrass weeds in the high temperature plots,” says Pataki. “Some of the weeds, including crabgrass, are better adapted for higher temperatures than fescue, the most common lawn grass, because they use a different type of photosynthesis.
“Our results suggest that these weeds may become more of a problem as the temperature gets warmer.”
The study, to be published in the journal Global Change Biology, says the “warming may exacerbate weed invasions, which may require more intensive management (e.g. herbicide application) to manage species composition.”
bijoor2008preprint1.pdf Click file at left to read the Pataka study.
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The AGW alarmists are really grasping at straws now, in a desperate, last-ditch effort to alarm people, and to keep the AGW gravy train rolling along for at least a while longer while they milk every cent out of it they can.
We don’t have lawn, just mowed green stuff, which only gets mowed about once a month in the summer, using a DR field and brush mower. We use no chemicals, nor do we water.
Worrying about weeds in lawns is just further proof that AGWers are not actual environmentalists. The environmental movement has been hijacked.
Save the Crabgrass!
This UC Irvine study with heat lamps on grass plots seems to be almost at a science fair level.
Sounds an awful lot like what they do to surface stations.
Pam is murdering Our Friend, the Blackberry!
Check it out, the “crabgrass menace” already on the Master List of Things Caused by Global Warming, right after “cougar attacks”
http://www.numberwatch.co.uk/warmlist.htm
These arguments are getting sillier and sillier.
Think of an area 100 miles south of you where it is 2.0C warmer on average. Does grass grow there? Does crab grass take over normal grass at the equator? Obviously, there is no disaster there.
There is city about 60 miles away from where I live and thanks to geography and typical weather patterns, this city is about 2.0C warmer than mine on average.
When someone says global warming is such a problem, I always say “So what, we’ll end up with the climate of City X? Big deal.” They always get a confused look on their face for awhile and then eventually laugh, realizing grass still grows in City X and everything will probably be fine if we have the climate of City X.
The really urgent question we need answered is :
What’s the effect of global warming on Triffids?
(One for the oldies there.)
Global warming must be awful for Triffids, as I haven’t seen any around here for well over two decades.
Ok, you two really got a laugh out of me on that one. Born 1958.
I have been reading this article with a smile on my face. I raise cattle and my pastures have various clovers, fescue, rye, bermuda johnsongrass and crabgrass so my cows have a choice and without a doubt they *love* crabgrass above all the rest!
Let it come!
Yours truly,
William Langston
Global warming…. Is there anything it can’t do?
I think Homer J got it right!
“”It’s just got a bad name is all. Everyone would love it if it had a cute name like, Elf Grass.”
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