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
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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?”
A love poem for Dr Abdul Latif Mohamad
Roses are red,
Violets are blue,
But neither flower smells,
Like this story by you.
This newspiece reeks of cerebral putrefaction. For example:
Genetic selection has reduced ethylene content to increase longevity. Ethylene is a plant hormone that regulates the metabolic pathway to formation of scent (and ripening etc)
If you are among the millions who receive flowers on Valentine’s Day, you likely will put your nose to a rose, only to find you can’t catch a whiff of your favorite floral aroma.
And it isn’t because your sense of smell has diminished. Plant breeding has led to bigger, longer-lasting blooms, but in the process many flowers have lost their scents – a trend University of Florida researchers hope to reverse.
http://www.scienceblog.com/cms/florida_researchers_try_to_put_scent_back_into_flowers
He said scents in flowers last longer in colder climate as plants can hold on to their essential oils longer.
Most scents are not essential oils, and again the genetic pathway to phenolics and terpenoids is favored by the production of ethylene at high temps.:
These investigations have determined that floral scents are almost always a complex mixture of small (approximately 100-250 D) volatile molecules and are dominated by monoterpenoid and sesquiterpenoid, phenylpropanoid, and benzenoid compounds (Fig. 1). Fatty acid derivatives and a range of other chemicals, especially those containing nitrogen or sulfur, are also sometimes present (for review, see Knudsen et al., 1993 ).
http://www.plantphysiol.org/cgi/content/full/122/3/627
http://www.plantphysiol.org/cgi/reprint/135/4/1893
And temperature increases evolution and production of odiferous compounds:
Finally, the effect of temperature on fragrance emission has generally received even less attention, but it has been shown that temperature has a strong effect on the quantity of fragrance. For example, total emission of fragrance from Trifolium repens L. flowers was 58% higher at 20°C than at 10°C and all compounds of floral scent were affected by the change in temperature (Jakobsen and Olsen, 1994). http://www.mcdb.lsa.umich.edu/labs/pichersky/references/pub11.pdf
How come the trolls are not on this tread trying to justify this load of B.S.?
I guess we’ll have to close down all those greenhouses and man made rain forests so the flowers don’t lose their odiferousness.
If Genetic engineering is so good why not Blue Roses?:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_rose
We aren’t there yet, either. How now ?Purple Cow?
There’s always FlowerPone:
http://www.symrise.com/fileadmin/user_upload/pdf/Flowerpone_Flowerconcentrole.pdf
German product. Symrise. No i don’t own the stock.
It’s far more insidious. The flowers are not affected by global warming it’s our noses but they won’t tell you that. 3 more degrees and we won’t be able to smell anything. Deodorant sales will plummet, the perfume industry is doomed. I’ve sold my Eau de Cologne futures already and put the money into developing an electronic olefactory stimulation implant. This will be wifi enabled and you’ll be able to create any fragrance experience you like direct from your mobile phone keypad. Tulips will smell of chocolate, bacon will be the new lavender…where will it end?
noaaprogrammer (08:50:18) :
“OK, but you said that AGW might cause *more* or *less* rainfall. Which condition should we try to genetically adjust for?”
It might be even worse if by more or less rainfall he is referring to precipitation that is like rain but not quite. Anyway, I thought that the AGW models said there would be no warming in the tropics – just in the temperate and polar regions.
cherchez le Gore
Is it that Al Gore and XXX rated new-age writer Pachauri are now in the flowers’ business?
Bees and flowers predate the present Ice Age by how many million years?
Hmmm. Greater warmth ’causes’ flowers to lose their scent?
I visited a town in South Africa called Graaff Reinet, it’s in the Great Karoo (Place of Thirst). It is slap-bang in the middle of a semi-arid desert where the temperatures soar during the day but plummet after dark. The atmosphere is gin-clear all the time. An evening walk through the well preserved Victorian town, whose church is modelled on Salisbury Cathederal in England, exposes one to the scent of thousands of roses and other scented flowers. There are rose bushes growing there which are certified as being over one hundred years of age. The townspeople are very proud of their scented evenings and a pause to sniff a rose overhanging a fence can lead to an hour’s conversation.
Have a look at a short movie clip of the town here
http://www.graaffreinet.co.za/
And, no, I have no affiliation with this beautiful place.
Well that’s just because most flowers are now grown in hothouses. The Rose capital of the World, in California’s central valley, routinely gets 108 deg F temperatures starting about now; so that doesn’t seem to be bothering the customers of those flowers; that probably smell like an Orangutan’s underarms.
After reading the article my wife called an emergency meeting of her flower and garden club to see what could be done about this catastrophe. Tongue firmly in cheek.
An Obituary printed in the London Times –
Today we mourn the passing of a beloved old friend, Common Sense, who has been with us for many years. No one knows for sure how old he was, since his birth records were long ago lost in bureaucratic red tape. He will be remembered as having cultivated such valuable lessons as:
– Knowing when to come in out of the rain;
– Why the early bird gets the worm;
– Life isn’t always fair;
– and maybe it was my fault.
Common Sense lived by simple, sound financial policies (don’t spend more than you can earn) and reliable strategies (adults, not children, are in charge).
His health began to deteriorate rapidly when well-intentioned but overbearing regulations were set in place. Reports of a 6-year-old boy charged with sexual harassment for kissing a classmate; teens suspended from school for using mouthwash after lunch; and a teacher fired for reprimanding an unruly student, only worsened his condition..
Common Sense lost ground when parents attacked teachers for doing the job that they themselves had failed to do in disciplining their unruly children.
It declined even further when schools were required to get parental consent to administer sun lotion or an aspirin to a student; but could not inform parents when a student became pregnant and wanted to have an abortion.
Common Sense lost the will to live as the churches became businesses; and criminals received better treatment than their victims.
Common Sense took a beating when you couldn’t defend yourself from a burglar in your own home and the burglar could sue you for assault..
Common Sense finally gave up the will to live, after a woman failed to realize that a steaming cup of coffee was hot. She spilled a little in her lap, and was promptly awarded a huge settlement.
Common Sense was preceded in death, by his parents, Truth and Trust, by his wife, Discretion, by his daughter, Responsibility, and by his son, Reason.
He is survived by his 4 stepbrothers;
I Know My Rights
I Want It Now
Someone Else Is To Blame
I’m A Victim
Not many attended his funeral because so few realized he was gone If you still remember him, pass this on. If not, join the majority.
“Upon investigation, Latif’s team discovered that the flowers were no longer pollinating after dust from a hill blast blocked the growth of stigmas”
Have they considered or experimented for dust from a hill, air pollution, contaminated ground water etc.? Might the missing “scent trail” be caused by insects being overwhelmed by other ‘scents’ produced by cars.
In any case the “global warmig” they refer to might be better described as “local UHI”.
Not surprised their having trouble in Kuala Lumpur. Place was a hell-hole 20 years ago and I expect the population has risen since then! I’m surprised anything grows well in that environment,
I noticed this weekend that global warming causes an increase in traffic. When the weather warms during the spring there is a lot more traffic on my street. You see more people going out for a drive, motorcycles come out, so do antique cars and custom cars. Lots of folks head to the ice cream shops and cafes or just for a drive.
I think this is one of those dangerous feedback mechanisms. CO2 causes warming which causes more traffic which causes more CO2.
I should seek some funding for a paper,
Flowering plants and their pollinators really got going during the lower to middle Cretaceous, like about 100 million years ago. You know what REALLY killed the dinosaurs? flowers!
Next thing you know, the flowers will become violent.
@Shoshin (09:06:27) :
“Utter crap of an article. I read an article many years ago about the genetic inverse interrelationship between bloom size and perfume strength in roses. The roses that were bred for fabulous blooms lost their perfume.”
True. I’ve been aware of the same for decades, as a rose fancier. The flashy blooms and disease resistance of modern tea roses caused them to lose their fragrance, which led to a new interest in old garden roses, like the old Bourbon roses that were popular during the Victorian age. Also, breeders have started cross-breeding new patented roses with old roses to regain fragrance. The David Austin roses which have the flashy blooms, colors, and disease resistance of the modern rose and the fragrance of the old-fashioned rose has been one of the best innovations ever. 🙂
IOW, the modern rose lost its fragrance because it was bred out of it in favor of color, flash, and disease resistance, as you said. David Austin and other new breeders (“new” as compared to, say, developers of the modern tea rose) are correcting that problem nicely, thank you! 🙂
@DesertYote (15:26:50) :
“Flowering plants and their pollinators really got going during the lower to middle Cretaceous, like about 100 million years ago. You know what REALLY killed the dinosaurs? flowers!”
What… they all got hayfever? 😀
Ray (14:57:44) :
There has been a rapid decline in common sense, it is true. It seems to correlate to the rise in CO2.
It’s worse than we thought: CO2 is killing common sense!
Just wait a flower-picking moment.
The average temperatures have increased by, what, less than 1degree in the past century?
Surely this article has been lifted from The Onion.
I have noticed that it seems to be warmer in the tropics. This is probably related to CO2 rises. I would like to apply for a federal research grant to examine the causes and effects of CO2 rises in tropical temperatures.
This may take some time, as we are expecting to be forced to visit as many tropical islands as we possibly can. In order to reduce travel expenses and the associated burden on our research grant, we suggest the purchase of our own boat to allow us accommodation and to house our research material. This should further reduce costs.
One of the main aspects we intend to study is the effect of the increased temperatures on the beading of condensation upon glass. We find this s clear indication of many factors of global warming. We have found that beer is a particularly good material for holding the temperature while studies are made, as we also suggest a large quantity of this material is made available to us to transport with us for studies as required.
I am now off to spend some time examining global warming beside my pool. I am currently seeking grants to help me continue this valuable work to help the progress of science. Offers gratefully accepted.