Allergies Worse Than Ever? Blame Global Warming
Allergy sufferers like to claim — in between sniffles — that each spring’s allergy season is worse than the last. But this year, they might actually be right.
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, which is already home to some of the most allergenic cities in the country. A pollen count — the number of grains of pollen in a cubic meter of air — of 120 is considered high, but in Atlanta last week the number hit 5,733, the second highest level ever recorded in the city. (See a 1992 TIME cover on why allergies are nothing to sneeze at.)
The bad news is that in a warmer world, allergies are likely to get worse — and that’s going to cost sufferers and the rest of us. A new report released on Wednesday by the National Wildlife Federation (NWF) found that global warming will likely increase pollen counts in the heavily populated eastern section of the country and that the effect of climate change could push the economic cost of allergies and asthma well above the current $32 billion price tag. “The latest climate science makes it clear that allergies could get much worse,” says Amanda Staudt, a climate scientist at NWF and the author of the report. “I really think this should be a wake-up call.”
Here’s how it works: higher concentrations of CO2 in the atmosphere generally speed plant growth, while warmer temperatures mean that spring — and with it, allergy season — arrives earlier. Spring-like conditions in the East are already arriving on average 14 days earlier than just 20 years ago. (See why allergies are on the rise in children.)
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Gosh, it HAS to be CO2, it couldn’t possibly be related to changes in rainfall, sunlight, available nutrients (like fertilizer runoff) or winds. No, only CO2 can make weeds grow like crazy. Apparently the Times writer never heard of Liebigs Law
Read the rest of the story here, then wipe your nose on your sleeve.
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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.
Wow… I HAVE been sneezing a lot lately… I guess I must stop driving my SUV…..
“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.
“Paul Z. (22:48:13) :
I’m sorry to say that England and The Brits are [snipped]. 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 believe that if politicians do not get off the bandwagon then the agw agenda is driving relentlessly to this conclusion.
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 find this a bit of refreshingly comical news. They now threaten us with allergies – so as a mitigation strategy against global warming (which can’t be stopped anymore) i propose antihistamins every now and then.
I think i can handle that. It’s even cheaper than dikes.
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.
Paul Z. (22:48:13) :
Mods lost their scissors for that comment? There may be children present (and the swearing did not enhance the comment one iota).
Reply: Thanks. It wasn’t me, but fixed now. Paul Z if you see this, further use of profanity is a temptation to hit the delete button rather than take the time to clean it up. ~ ctm
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. !
I liked the statement:
“The latest climate science makes it clear that allergies COULD [my emphasis] get much worse,” says Amanda Staudt, …..”
‘Clear’ and ‘could’ seems to be a mite oxymoronic.
Add it to the list of nasty effects all allegedly caused by non-existent global warming.
When global cooling starts in earnest (later this year, apparently), it will be interesting to see what side effects will be ascribed to THAT particular phenomenon.
Let’s see, feeling cold, asthma from smoke inhalation from the fires we’ll need to build to keep ourselves warm, hunger, desertification, strife and warfare, crop failure, for starters. Oh, roll on the good times. I suspect CO2 will become our friend…
Anthony,
Like you, I live in California’s Central Valley, which as everyone knows, is the hay fever capital of the universe. Unfortunately, most allergy meds are worse than the original problem for me. The good news is that I’ve stumbled across several DIY approaches that are helpful for this particular sample size of one. Example. During the peak of my hay fever season in May, I can handle much more outdoor time if I stay in the shade and minimize direct sun exposure.
If you think that it would be of interest to the skeptical readership here, I’d be happy to start writing up a guest-post about my remedies for Global-Warming-induced hay fever, and then run it by you or ctm.
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.
I read the rest of the “Time” article. It included an assertion that pine trees don’t produce pollen!
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
Hmmm, let’s see what we can find in the Google News archives, shall we? How about this article from the New York Times dated April 13, 1989:
Early Pollens Make March, April and May The Cruelest Months
“Tree pollens are already at an early-spring peak in the Southeast, where allergists say this is one of the worst seasons ever. The pollens have begun to sprinkle the Northeast, and over the next few weeks many residents in the New York area will face the sneezing, tears, runny nose, itchy eyes, headaches and general misery more often associated with ragweed in August.”
http://www.nytimes.com/1989/04/13/us/health-allergies-early-pollens-make-march-april-and-may-the-cruelest-months.html
Also this one from April 5, 1995:
Personal Health; How to survive allergy season.
http://www.nytimes.com/1995/04/05/us/personal-health-how-to-survive-allergy-season.html
Fast forward 15 years later to April 5, 2010, and the New York Times has an excellent story on why allergy season has gotten so much worse in major American cities since the 1960s and 70s. It has nothing to do with global warming (I know, shocking coming from the New York Times — This is a must read!):
Allergy-Free New York
“Street trees weren’t always as allergenic as they are today. Back in the 1950s, the most popular species planted in the United States was the native American elm, which sheds little pollen. Millions of these tall, stately trees lined the streets of towns and cities from coast to coast. Sadly, in the 1960s and ’70s, Dutch elm disease killed most of the elms, and many of them were replaced with species that are highly allergenic.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/06/opinion/06ogren.html
@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.
Apologies, I missed the mods bits about profanity and quoted the earlier post. Please snip the offending word(s) though I’d be grateful if you’d retain the body of my post nvertheless.
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 BBC has a different take! http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/8617255.stm
The next scare tale:
Global warming causes erectile dysfunction.
/joking.
[EMAIL NOT VALID. BLOG RULES. USE A REAL EMAIL ADDRESS AND YOU CAN COMMENT ~ CTM]
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.
The bad news is that in a warmer world, allergies are likely to get worse…
The other bad news is that in a *cooler* world, allergies are likely to get worse, too.
Plants will throw seeds like crazy if the winter is going to be bad — it increases the chance that at least some will survive to sprout the following spring. I have white, pitch, and Virginia pines growing in my yard, and when the ground is ankle-deep in cones in September and October, it’s going to be a tough winter.
@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!