Guest Opinion: Dr. Tim Ball is writing on behalf of the plants.
The National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) reports that global monthly CO2 levels reached 400 ppm. They present this as threatening news, but it is good news for plants and animals. I was involved in a brief to the US Supreme Court opposing the EPA actions on CO2. I proposed we seek Power of Attorney (POA) for the plants. We would vote on behalf of the plants against any attempts to reduce atmospheric CO2 from the current claimed 400 ppm and for any increase, at least to a level of 1200 ppm.
Seeking POA sounds like an environmental stunt for the Sierra Club, or all those who claim to care about plants and animals. Why aren’t they doing it? Why aren’t they proclaiming the good news for the plants and animals they say they care about? The answer is because the facts they have selected for their political agenda on the environment and climate puts them in a completely contradictory position. They know CO2 is critical for plant growth, but only promote planting more trees to reduce atmospheric levels because they have chosen to label CO2 a pollutant. It doesn’t occur to them that increasing the CO2 level enhances plant growth. It creates a moral and philosophical conflict, as they want plants to succeed, but want to reduce the input that makes them successful. They can’t see the forest for the trees.
All life on Earth exists because of CO2. It is essential to flora, which then produce oxygen essential to fauna. Gore and others claim current levels are the highest ever. Others modify that claim arguing it is the highest in 650,000 years. That figure is convenient because it sounds like a long time. The levels are based Antarctic ice core data, which are clearly created artificially low to achieve the slope necessary for the political agenda against post-industrial CO2.
The longer geologic record produced by Scotese and Bernier (Figure 1) shows that for most of Earth’s history the level was well above the current level. The only time when levels were commensurate with today was from 315 million years ago (mya) to 270 mya, yet for over half of that period temperature was similar to today.
Most plants, especially the complex vascular plants evolved in the last 300 million years. The average level of atmospheric CO2 over that period was approximately 1200 ppm.
Figure 12
This suggests that most plants evolved with an optimum level of 1200 ppm.
The work of Sherwood and Craig Idso supports this value as reported extensively in their research at their web site. Commercial greenhouse operators also use this information as they pump in CO2 to enhance yields. Figure 2 shows a commercial CO2 generator advertised as follows:
Normally there are approximately 300 parts per million (PPM) of CO2 in the atmosphere; when this level is increased to over 1000 PPM, it results in higher production and better plant quality. The Johnson Generator provides up to 1500 PPM per unit in a 4800 square foot (446 square meter) greenhouse. By adding CO2, especially during the winter months when greenhouse ventilators are closed and when low CO2 concentration becomes a limiting factor in growth, growers are obtaining yield and bloom quality similar to that which is normally associated with spring and summer conditions.
Commercial CO2 Generator
It’s possible the company is promoting a product merely to enhance sales but consider the benefits set out by the Ontario government
During particular times of the year in new greenhouses, and especially in double-glazed structures that have reduced air exchange rates, the carbon dioxide levels can easily drop below 340 ppm which has a significant negative effect on the crop. Ventilation during the day can raise the CO2 levels closer to ambient but never back to ambient levels of 340 ppm. Supplementation of CO2 is seen as the only method to overcome this deficiency and increasing the level above 340 ppm is beneficial for most crops. The level to which the CO2 concentration should be raised depends on the crop, light intensity, temperature, ventilation, stage of the crop growth and the economics of the crop. For most crops the saturation point will be reached at about 1,000–1,300 ppm under ideal circumstances. A lower level (800–1,000 ppm) is recommended for raising seedlings (tomatoes, cucumbers and peppers) as well as for lettuce production. Even lower levels (500–800 ppm) are recommended for African violets and some Gerbera varieties. Increased CO2 levels will shorten the growing period (5%–10%), improve crop quality and yield, as well as, increase leaf size and leaf thickness. The increase in yield of tomato, cucumber and pepper crops is a result of increased numbers and faster flowering per plant.
The irony is this comes from a government planning a carbon tax to reduce atmospheric CO2 levels. In their “climate change solution,” they introduced a cap and trade designed to
“set a limit on the amount of greenhouse gas pollution that can be emitted.”
The phrase “greenhouse gas pollution” is false. CO2 is not a pollutant. However, once that assumption is made emotion rather than facts produce policy that contradicts reality.
If someone had POA for the plants, they could speak against the insane claim of the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) that CO2 is a “harmful substance”. EPA even convinced the US Supreme Court, supposedly the wisest people in the land, of this falsity.
Plants are delighted that CO2 levels are now 400 ppm and rising. They would also vote, with numbers well in excess of the human vote of approximately 6.5 billion, to oppose any legislation or attempts to reduce those levels. They also hope you enjoy the oxygen they provide for a life, not just a better life.
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Increased atmospheric CO2 in addition to reducing growing time and increasing yield reduces water loss in plants.
C3 plants (trees, cereal crops, and shrubs) lose roughly 50% of the water they absorb due to transrespiration (loss of water from the plant’s stomata.) When CO2 rises C3 plants produce less stomata which reduces water loss in the plant.. This results in more water at the root of the plant which enables synergistic bacteria on the roots to produce more nitrogen byproducts which increases plant growth.
A higher level of atmospheric CO2 enables plants to make more effective use of water and enables the plant to survive in regions of low water such as deserts. Higher levels of atmospheric CO2 are beneficial to biosphere.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2003/05/030509084556.htm
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/07/090731-green-sahara.html
It’s worth noting that the earlier (2003) article (Weizmann) attributes the effect to CO2, but the later (2009) Nat Geo one only cites increased rainfall with no mention of CO2, although over those intervening 6 years temps were relatively flat and CO2 went up. Looks like Nat Geo got the “CO2 bad, must be something else” message…
Nat Geo got the “CO2 bad, must be something else” message… Indeed, they have been plagued by the same disease of biased journalism as SA, Discover and other magazines.
They’ve all been corrupted by agenda-driven progressive politics.
Prince Chuckles “talks” to plants, but I doubt they listen. They know he’s a bone-head, wanting to deprive them of food.
Ears like the FA cup. Mind like a sieve.
Without a climate theory that has predicted individual climate catastrophes or trends of climate catastrophes, the term “threatening” is meaningless and becomes a non-scientific value judgment.
In that sense it appears NOAAs and other activists strive to create a perception that increased CO2, specifically human CO2 is due to human failure of biblical proportions.
http://www.dreamwitness.com/GWimage/CO2.jpg
Practically everything written by the alarmists is fundamentally flawed by neglecting the positive component of marginal CO2 concentration. The only thing that matters is the NET externality. Failure to do the subtraction is an error that the utilization of all the advanced math in existence cannot rectify. Subtraction is taught in kindergarten. Perhaps Universities should offer a refresher course.
Math is of no use when one is pursuing an agenda of supreme importance. When the means is justified by the end, math must conform or be discarded. It is a brave new world, after all. GK
The best example is the last glacial maximum.
With lower CO2 and reduced precipitation, the planet only had a few places where trees and bushes were growing. Our ice age ancestors lived in the deserts and the C4 grasslands. The planet looked nothing like today. There were NO vegetarians at the time because they was no vegetables, fruit, nuts or berries. The human diet was the animals which ate grass, of which there was a lot.
Look for light blue, or green in this map to see where the trees and vegetables grew. With CO2 at 185 ppm, the planet sustains 500,000 people.
http://stommel.tamu.edu/~baum/paleoveg/veg-adams-big.gif
Very true. The decline in CO2 from the Mesozoic onwards eventually led to the demise of forest in large areas of Africa where they were replaced by savannah. I wonder if this would reverse if CO2 did reach 1200 ppm. I suspect not because in the pre savannah era, grass had not yet evolved but now it would probably out compete the trees.
Land-based biosphere is soaking up 4 PgC of carbon a year.
Thanks, Dr. Ball, for your advocacy in favor of us carbon-based beings.
CO2 is not a pollutant, it is the gas of life. Nitrogen is indifferent.
An Angel cries every time a Co2 generator is sold. It must piss off the alarmists that such a product exists. And while they extol GMO food manufacturers, who likely account for the lions share of these devices…hang on, I’m using logic.
If not for nitrogen we couldn’t breathe. Plants as well. It’s also plant food…
Dr Tim, You deserve thanks from everything that photosynthesizes..
The entire atmosphere (except Argon) is a product of biology.
The global biogeochemical carbon cycle controls the flow and amounts of CO2 and hydrocarbons in the various biological and abiotic pools.
The global biogeochemical nitrogen cycle controls the flow and amounts of nitrogen in the various biological and abiotic pools.
http://users.rcn.com/jkimball.ma.ultranet/BiologyPages/N/NitrogenCycle.html
http://www.ess.uci.edu/~reeburgh/fig3.html
There are several points I’ve started to emphasize in my own discussion of this topic, two in particular. One is that plants can and have been shown in greenhouse studies to grow between 10 and 15% more in a season at 400 ppm CO_2 than the do at the pre-industrial levels of <300 ppm. That means that roughly 1 billion people are fed every day on the surplus agricultural production resulting from the increase. Somehow WHO is omitting these people when they allege that some tiny fraction of this number are being killed by global warming in spite of the fact that one cannot possibly attribute a single death to carbon dioxide, whether or not it caused some fraction of the < 0.8 C of planetary warming observed over the last 165 or so years. All of their attributions are via enormously weak chains of evidence and extrapolation of statistics with no direct evidence whatsoever. There is really no question about the billion people who didn't starve because of it.
The second is that carbon dioxide fertilization is a confounding factor in "dendroclimatology" that seems not to have been considered at all in the various tree-ring proxy reconstructions of past climates. I first noted that when reading a study of tree rings in the Phillipines where temperatures and rainfall basically had been unaltered but tree rings showed a pattern of steady increase (as if the temperatures were "increasing" too). Somehow, nobody thought to correct for the 10 to 15% expected increase in growth rates due to the CO_2 alone, even in a climate that was known to have experienced no statistically significant variation over the period in question.
In fact, CO_2 alone has produced a “hockey stick” in plant growth nearly everywhere. Plant stoma are actively shrinking (as happens when CO_2 is abundant enough as partial pressure increases diffusion rates to where smaller stoma suffice). Smaller stoma means plants are more drought tolerant and generally healthier and more robust. If CO_2 continues to increase, it may or may not cause a dramatic uptick in planetary temperatures, but we can be nearly certain that there will be a dramatic uptick in the overall productivity of the biosphere.
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rgbatduke
I have been asking that for a while – specifically, about the re-calibration for tree growth against CO2 increase since the mid 1950s . And we have heard nothing from Mann about what he does to even recognize that factor.
Perhaps we should ask warrenlb – after all, if it is not peer-reviewed published, it doesn’t exist, right? 8<)
It would require extra effort to be negative about this subject. Warrenlb might not comment, due to lack of proper programming.
I wonder if it’s possible that, as CO2 levels rise, there will be cases where plants see a major step upward in total productivity as genes that are usually turned off due to low levels start activating (especially when combined with rain and other growth boosting conditions).
It’s being seen everywhere you look, trees growing faster than normal and with leaves bigger than usual, pollen counts for the record books, garden plants that have suddenly become jumbo-sized compared to previous years and decades (this just happened to the flowering plants at my grandmother’s house), lawn grass that needs mowing more often as the yard starts developing faster growing patches with more brilliant shades of green ect…
Why would plant lovers want to see CO2 levels drop now?
Good article. When will the demonization of CO2 cease? A rhetorical question, and I guess the answer is when it becomes politically expedient. Dissemination of this sort of information should help.
When? When “climate activism” is banished from science.
This is a really good idea.
I wonder what liberals would think of a “plant rights” campaign to mimic the “animal rights” activism some engage in. We could forgive the vegetarians among the populace for the diet, but suggest that perhaps some people are now going a bit too far in their anti-plant attitudes in their war against CO2. They should consider being more compassionate and tolerant of the desire of many to support healthy plant growth in a more sustainable fashion than the years of CO2 deprivation they’ve had to suffer in the past. Long live the plants! 🙂
What a fine post, top to bottom. Veritable scientists chime in with comments even a lawyer can understand. Can CO2 also promote the growth of hope?
Reblogged this on Public Secrets and commented:
Something else climate alarmists don’t like to consider, because the truth is an abomination in their cult: rising levels of CO2 are generally good for plant life, as CO2 is plant food, and more plants means more food for humans. Maybe that’s why they don’t like it, since climate alarmists also tend to be Malthusians at heart.
I get the impression that plants evolved to be too efficient at sequestering CO2.
Their success is evident in all that lovely coal,peat bog and permafrost.
Their success at removing CO2 from the atmosphere seems to have almost been fatal for the C3 series of plants, as the CO2 levels almost reached starvation levels.
Only a handful of species of plant seem to have adapted to modern CO2 levels.
Save the food chain, save life as we know it… Burn Baby Burn.
Now all sarcasm aside, the insanity of condemning carbon-dioxide, and all carbon based life with it is beyond parody.
But as the body of knowledge has grown, it is down right astounding that we, by choosing to release the energy bound up in ancient biomass, have done exactly the right thing to allow the plants to prosper.
Seems plants were too efficient at storing both carbon and sunlight.
I guess we could help them out… or starve.
Or in Team UN IPCC ™ logic, we must kill all the plants cause its “carbon neutral” or something.
Regarding greenhouse gases:
Maybe we should listen to the guys who design greenhouses, and who will have to deal with the consequences, no matter what happens to the climate.
http://www.asabe.org/meetings-events/2015/05/asabe-1st-climate-change-symposium-adaptation-and-mitigation.aspx
ASABE 1st Climate Change Symposium – Adaptation and Mitigation
Date: May 3-5, 2015
Location: Chicago, Illinois
Disclosure: I am a member of asabe, and have a MS in Agricultural Engineering, Irrigation.
Really???? Let’s count how many of the BS talking points are false…
“Global Climate Change has been related to increases in temperature, prolonged wet and dry hydroperiods, and an increase in climatic extremes. In the US, the recent 2014 US National Climate Assessment report (http://nca2014.globalchange.gov) recognizes that effects of human-induced climate change are being felt in every corner of the United States, with water growing scarcer in dry regions, torrential rains increasing in wet regions, heat waves becoming more common and more severe, wildfires growing worse, and forests dying under assault from heat-loving insects. Such extreme events are already impacting our ecosystems (e.g., agricultural, urban/suburban, aquatic, wetlands, forests, coastal, etc.). Melting of glaciers, sea level rise, and salt water intrusion in coastal areas are stressing our water resources.”
I wrote the following on this subject, posted on Icecap.us:
On Climate Science, Global Cooling, Ice Ages and Geo-Engineering:
[excerpt]
Furthermore, increased atmospheric CO2 from whatever cause is clearly beneficial to humanity and the environment. Earth’s atmosphere is clearly CO2 deficient and continues to decline over geological time. In fact, atmospheric CO2 at this time is too low, dangerously low for the longer term survival of carbon-based life on Earth.
More Ice Ages, which are inevitable unless geo-engineering can prevent them, will cause atmospheric CO2 concentrations on Earth to decline to the point where photosynthesis slows and ultimately ceases. This would devastate the descendants of most current [terrestrial] life on Earth, which is carbon-based and to which, I suggest, we have a significant moral obligation.
Atmospheric and dissolved oceanic CO2 is the feedstock for all carbon-based life on Earth. More CO2 is better. Within reasonable limits, a lot more CO2 is a lot better.
As a devoted fan of carbon-based life on Earth, I feel it is my duty to advocate on our behalf. To be clear, I am not prejudiced against non-carbon-based life forms, but I really do not know any of them well enough to form an opinion. They could be very nice. 🙂
Best, Allan
We used to understand this – then science when backwards for several decades,
Proof:
Circa the 1960’s, comedian Shelley Berman said:
“No matter how mean, or cruel, or sinful you have been, every time you breathe out, you make a little flower happy.”
🙂
What’s next for the neo-Malthusians, neo-Luddites, and OGI’s (other green imbeciles)?
Next they’ll be insisting that their food is grown at CO2 concentrations of less than 400ppm.
“I mean, y’know, it’s like, ah, natural,”
In addition to “Trans Fat-free”, “non-GMO”, “Organic”, “Lactose-free”, and “Gluten-free” we will soon see food labelled “Carbon-free”?
You heard it here first folks – it’s like, ah, the Next Big Thing!
Because vegetables.
It’s a false spring. There is no way that a level above 400PPM can last more than a few thousand years. Assuming the CO2 level is mostly due to human activities, it will peak very early and drop like a rock. Assuming CO2 level is mostly due to being in an interglacial, at most, this level will persist a few tens of thousands of years. When it drops, Katie bar the door.
*gulp*
Agree (in general) James – see my comment above at
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/05/09/plants-encouraged-as-co2-levels-reach-400-ppm/#comment-1930874
and this :
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/02/11/national-academy-of-science-demands-equal-access-to-the-climate-trough-for-geoengineering/#comment-1859354
[excerpt]
I see two problems for humanity and the environment in the next very few thousand years:
1. Another Ice Age
and
2. CO2-deficiency (if not in this next Ice Age, then in the following ones).