This is a bonus Climate Craziness of the Week. It seemed that while Climategate was raging, we saw an end to bizarre claims such as this. Now they seem to have resumed again as we saw in yesterday’s story claiming global warming causes more violence. What’s hilarious about this story is that is cites one environmental fear (AGW) and uses another even more feared solution (genetic modification) to save the flowers from AGW. This assumes they need saving. Reading the story, I wonder; maybe public transportation for the pollinators will help?
Excerpt From Asiaone News
Flowers Losing Scent Due to Climate Change
KUALA LUMPUR: A rose may stop smelling like a rose.
This is the concern of environmentalists as flowers are losing their scent due to climate change and air pollution. And their fragrance may be lost forever.
Science and Technology Professor Emeritus at Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, Dr Abdul Latif Mohamad, said genetically modified flowers might be the way out.
Climate change is also the reason Kuala Lumpur City Hall is increasingly turning to shady trees, because flowers which previously formed the centrepiece of its beautification programme have been wilting fast.
Datuk Bandar Datuk Ahmad Fuad Ismail said City Hall used to spend RM1.5 million ($635,100) a month to plant and maintain flowers in the city, but the contractor’s services were terminated in March last year.
City Hall has taken over the planting, opting for bou-gainvillea and the tropical shrubs, Ixora, for their durability and cheaper cost.
Under the previous arrangement, some of the small flowers cost RM3.50 per seedling.
“It was getting too costly to beautify the city. Flowers were dying fast,” he said, adding that City Hall would continue to plant shady trees more suited for soaking up the increasing pollution and coping with global warming.
Latif said UKM might have offered plausible reasons as to why some pollinators were not spreading flower seeds, a pattern caused by the missing “scent trail” with scent tissues burning easily due to global warming.
“The aroma producing chemical compounds in flowers dry up faster now compared with before.”
The only way out, he said, was to genetically modify the flowers so that the effects would not be permanent and the future generation would not be robbed of nature’s beauty.
“The act is almost like producing essential oils. Scientists add on certain chemicals for stronger scent.”
He said scents in flowers last longer in colder climate as plants can hold on to their essential oils longer.
“The flowers may still have strong scents in colder climate. But locally, we fear this might be lost forever.”
With flowers emitting lesser scent, the insects and butterflies are travelling further and longer to get a share of nectar.
Latif said birds and insects were heading towards hilly areas and deeper into the jungles where the weather is cooler.
He related an incident in Sungai Siput, Perak, where the farmers failed to get fruits from their orchards.
Upon investigation, Latif’s team discovered that the flowers were no longer pollinating after dust from a hill blast blocked the growth of stigmas.
He said Malaysians could no longer rely on nature to heal itself without the help of science.
…
Read the whole mess at Asiaone News
===============================
Commenter John in GA who made the tip writes:
Note that there’s no mention of any application of that “scientific method” thing — some professor at a Malaysian university simply declared it to be true, and so verily it is. Look for this new AGW “fact” to appear in your kids’ textbooks next year.
The article also states that Kuala Lumpur has had to take somewhat drastic measures, eliminating the planting of flowers in public areas because they were “dying too fast”. In fact, he says, “The aroma producing chemical compounds in flowers dry up faster now compared with before.” Really? When was “before”? A hundred years ago? Two months ago? And how did he establish that chemical compounds are drying up faster due to warming? With a controlled experiment? No mention of that. If his scientific method follows the Gore/IPCC model, it probably went something like this: “Hmm, flowers aren’t doing so well. Couldn’t be soil quality, amount of water, quality of seed stock, or anything like that. No, the only plausible explanation is that the planet is getting hotter, because if there’s one thing we know for certain, it’s that tropical flowers don’t like warmth. And we know that global warming is caused by CO2 emissions. Therefore, man-made global warming is killing off flowers, and with them, birds, bees, and farmers. Call the press.”
Then there’s this:
“Forest Research Institute Malaysia (FRIM) director-general Datuk Dr Abdul Latif Mahmod said recently the extreme weather change might affect the life span of trees as a result of lighter or heavier rain.
‘We should look at how trees can be mutated so that they will not be destroyed.'”
I love it — straight from whimsical hypothesis to policy recommendation! No need to bother with troublesome experiments or any of that stuff. In the brave new world of AGW, it goes like this: “Hey, it might be possible that changes in temperature will cause changes in rainfall, and if that happens, then perhaps that would adversely affect trees. Let’s start genetically mutating trees to compensate.”
“OK, but you said that AGW might cause *more* or *less* rainfall. Which condition should we try to genetically adjust for?”
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
A tree that can deal with either more or less rain would be a kind of Mangrove -Cactus.
Can you imagine the hysteria that will be flung when the earth hits a REAL global catastrophe–say the next ice age? On the other hand, they’ll probably be so wrapped up in fictitious hype nobody will recognize it, which will make the actual catastrophe that much worse!
And someone said humans were intelligent.
I have to agree with this one I’m afraid.
Chocolate bars are smaller now than when I was a child obviously due to global warming and not my hands getting bigger.
Adults used to be much taller when I was six but now that I’ve grown up they seem to have stopped growing, again due to global warming.
Unless we give more money to these experts then I think the world is doomed.
I have to go and get in my car now that doesn’t run on petrol because 30 years ago when I was at school they told me oil would run out and experts are never wrong.
I’ve noticed that in the summer there are more flowers than in the winter. That means there is a correlation between the two. Now using the same logic as Al Gore uses in assessing the correlation between CO2 and temperature, we can conclude that flowers cause summer. I.e. flowers cause warm weather. Therefore the solution to global warming is to get rid of flowers.
I should be in politics.
I live in the high dry country of NE Oregon. As I have said, we are a little bit of Idaho or Montana in Oregon. Our climate zone in s.LaGrande is 5a. My wife and I grow about 40 roses of all types,Gallicas, English, Hybrid teas,Floribundas, and one very tough China Tea. My wife loves scent-they all do very well with our
cold winters and hot summers. Natural fertilizer seems to make the best scent.
as the way the nutrients are absorbed the results, are best in the next season.
Now with chemical fertilizers, we use them too-sparingly but they are necessary
to give growth a boost. I’d say Kulala Lumpur is probably a pretty interesting
place to garden, but nasty for Roses in general. This is AGW proof is the biggest bunch of Horse manure I have ever read. Horse manure is good for roses, btw..
mmm something smells fishy about this.
Along with my birdfeeder I put out suger water for the hummingbirds. Because they are facinating creatures I have done alot of reading [research?] into Hummingbirds. Hummers, a very important pollinator especially in the tropics, rely solely on eyesight to find necter. That’s why they are attracted to the scentless red plastic flowers on my feeder bottle.
Incidentally, if you’ve ever been around Hummers fighting over a feeder you would realize the truth of the old saw: If Hummingbirds were the size of crows we’d all be wearing helmets.
because flowers which previously formed the centrepiece of its beautification programme have been wilting fast
scent tissues burning easily due to global warming
Flowers were dying fast
daaaaamn! how hot is it getting down there?
Flowers here in East Texas have lost their scent because none of them are blooming yet. Local growers are estimating that our spring is a full 3 weeks late this year.
Must be that global warming thing.
No…flowers aren’t losing their scent….”scientists” are losing their minds.
Dr Abdul Latif Mohamad, said genetically modified flowers might be the way out.
Follow the money. This person, or someone close to him, stands to gain if the state throws money at genetically modified flowers and trees.
So using the same argument it was climate change, and not plant breeders, that must have been responsible for Musk plants (Mimulus) losing their scent in Victorian times?
Roses were among the first plants to have an inferior ovary. They are old enough to have survived more than 4 glaciations.
They are not going to lose its scent just because the temps rise 1 or 2 degrees, due to man activities or not.
There are other things that smell funny here, apart from the roses.
In 1989, I read a front page article in the Wall Street Journal that observed that flowers were losing their scent. In the international world of flower production, it seems, scent is not considered important and is sacrificed when decisions of breeding are made in favor of size, color, number, and durability. Their customers simply did not care, and in the modern office world, scent is sometimes undesirable.
Well, this is certainly a recycled news day:
http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/story?id=4660586&page=1
http://www.greendaily.com/2008/04/12/flowers-losing-their-scent/
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/nature/why-flowers-have-lost-their-scent-812168.html
It’s previously been blamed on “pollutants” and colony collapse disorder. Meh!
These jokers should take note:
Flower growers have been deliberately selecting against heavy perfuming plants because they can’t be given to people in hospitals due to their heavy scent. Thus, if these are commercial flowers they are probably reduced scent due to selective breeding. This is one of the driving forces behind the heirloom flower movement to preserve flowers in their more natural state.
http://www.underwoodgardens.com/-Heirloom-Flower-Seeds/departments/2/
Another possible problem… not everyone can smell every flower:
From http://www.heirloomroses.com/roseinfo/rosefaq.htm
The catalog said my rose was supposed to be fragrant but it isn’t. Why?
“Sense of smell varies from person to person just as the sense of taste varies. Some varieties provide a fragrance that everyone may smell and others may be more subjective. For instance: John and I and three others of our staff were in the garden checking fragrance. The beautiful, deep pink, climber ‘Viking Queen’ produced a fragrance that John and two others found outstanding. One of the staff and I could smell nothing. I know a rose breeder who says he can never smell any fragrance on a yellow rose.”
So many flowers have been selectively bred for years for color, size, long stems, even ship-ability, fragrance was irrelevant. Now to blame AGW is a total joke. Most of the heirloom and wild roses are incredibly fragrant but their blossom shape was deemed less desirable than the classic tea rose. And besides strong fragrance could ‘clash’ with someone’s perfume! They will be telling us the same thing about the hybrid tomatoes, strawberries and other fruits that lack flavor but can be shipped across several continents to market and not turn to mush, next—got to be global warming that took the flavor out of produce!
This is among the most ridiculous articles I’ve ever read. In my entire life.
I used to go to KL a lot in the 1970’s. It was a much smaller place then-the UHI effect must be considerable these days and couple this with the fact they like really chilly aircon the plants are hardly being used in optimum conditions.
I recall going to a rose nursery in the Genting Highlands near KL and being told that in the warmth of the lowlands the flowerd had an average life of a day but that was great for florists.
These days many flowers are deliberately bred for attributes other than scent. In the case of roses long stems or glossy leaves or perfect petals. The European type flowers didn’t last long 30 years ago and it doesn’t seem as though anything has changed.
Tonyb
Roses are thought to have evolved during the Eocene, when temperatures were up to 7dC higher than today. Temperate forests extended all the way to the poles, and the tropics extended to 45d latitude. So, I guess roses just didn’t smell as sweet in the “old days.”
I am sorry, but has anyone proven that it is temperature causing these oils to dry up, or is there another possibility?
http://www.recordonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20090904/NEWS/909040351
And if there is another possibility, how does this prove global warming? I will hold my breath, as I am sure it won’t take long.
And on a second thought, aren’t these essential oils what cause bees to find the flower attractive? Would this be necessary if bees were in abundance, and the flowers did not need to genetically compete for the attention?
If memory serves, the Burpee catalog includes a climate zone map and each item includes a list of climate zones it is compatible with.
I’m sure that plants being grown outside their appropriate climate zone won’t do as well as when planted in their optimal climate zone. Same goes for too wet or too dry. A non-thriving plant may very well produce less pollen, but I can only speculate.
My question is what flowers are being planted? Ones native to the local area? Are they appropriate for the local climate?
And what about smog, sulfur dioxide and other pollutants? Might that have something to do with this?
The article lists dust as a problem, but doesn’t mention how the climate has changed.
I’m sure that people will be able to generate statistics to back this theory up.
Journalism students must be watching Japanese monster movies from the 50s to get their training in how to write science articles. I can’t see much difference between this insipid reporting and the dubbed dialog.
This is bit like the island Tuvalu which is suffering from a sea level ‘rise’ in eccess of anywhere else. In this case the Kuala Lumpur City Hall has been suffering from AGW which oddly is not being reported in surrounding parks such as the Perdana Lake Gardens. Accordingly the park has “more than 2000 different species of orchid – including more than 800 that are native to Malaysia”. Maybe they should employ a gardener instead of a supplier of flowers.