"As the climate changes and puts stress on plant life." WHAT?!

Increasing atmospheric CO2 will increase plant growth and make plants more water-use efficient. Warmer climate is beneficial to plant growth, not detrimental, and an extra degree is hardly going to be a negative for plant life.

I'm so sick of this type of sweeping statement that is such nonsense and is based on nothing more than speculation about what the climate will do. Maybe the author needs a trip to the tropics to see how plant life does there.

A policy of allowing small wildfires to occur to prevent catastrophic wildfires later is a good thing. However, worrying about carbon storage is ridiculous given that the effect of carbon dioxide on the environment (other than promoting plant growth) is pretty much unknown and unproven.

I was also under the impression that the Forest Service was allowing naturally occurring wildfires to go until they presented a danger to the public.

"Increasing atmospheric CO2 will increase plant growth and make plants more water-use efficient. Warmer climate is beneficial to plant growth, not detrimental, and an extra degree is hardly going to be a negative for plant life."

Except climate change is not the same thing as "increasing atmospheric CO2;" the latter is the cause, the prior the effect. Climate change is the sum total of all the regionalized effects which will occur as the average temperature of the globe warms.

Once again, we must remember that different regions will have sometimes paradoxical outcomes due to climate change. Some areas could develop drought-like climates, and if those areas feature fauna which are not specialized to deal with droughts, they will die off. Other areas could experience a shift to warmer or cooler average temperatures; this could dramatically affect the process of competition and shift ecosystems completely out of balance.

Claiming that rising CO2's will be better for plant growth and prosperity doesn't even glance at the surface of the effect of climate change on the ecosystem. It's a dishonest argument which obfuscates the reality of what climate change actually entails.

Interesting artical. What is the storage for carbon? Woody fibre? Cellulose? I am inclined to argue against More Forest equals Less carbon storage because atmospheric carbon samplings and statistics are impacted by many variables, like proximity to automoblies and factories, CO2 sources. I will stand on the known science that vegitation of the green leafy kind take up CO2 and off gass O2 storing the carbon in its cellular structures. Carbon sink. My research has led me to understand that 2000 years ago the atmosphere had a quantity of oxygen approaching 30%, A fellow researcher told me ten years ago our atmosphere had about 18% oxygen, the drop was attributed to desertification of vast tracts of tropical forests in africa, the vast clear cutting of the amazon rain forests, and the die off of oceanic phyto plantons that provide a whopping 40% of atmospheric oxygen. The UV radiation reaching the ocean surface due to ozone layer depletion being major killer of plankton's, pollution doing the rest of the deed. My question is are there any reliable current O2 consentration stats? Just how think is our atmosphere today with good old fashioned oxygen?

Prior to the devastating Los Alamos fire in May, 2000, 70 years of fire suppression had lead to a severely overgrown forest comprised of small and sickly Ponderosa Pine surrounding the town.

The place was a disaster waiting to happen. Healthy Ponderosa forest consists of large, widely spaced trees which have ground fires every few years to keep the forest thin.

Another unintended consequence of man's best intentions to protect the environment.

Steve Bloom's "expanding tropics" move into Australia

Ice age hits Illawarra..."It is coming from a long way south, basically Antarctica, and sweeping up from south-west to south-east Australia, and it is very cold air, even for the middle of winter - it is extremely cold,"

http://illawarra.yourguide.com.au/news/local/news/general/ice-age-hits-illawarra/1240282.aspx

Good:A forest grows wild & old.Old growth forests have less dry underbrush and dense canopies keeping the forest floor cool,moist and shaded.
Bad:Man tries to manage a forest because he thinks he knows better than nature.
Good:Lighting cause a forest to go up in flames.
Bad:Man causes a forest to go up in flames because he is negligent with his cigarette/camp fire etc.
Good:Man selectively logs when he needs to.
Bad:Man clearcuts everything for profit & because its cheaper.
My point is we manage/influence to much of the worlds natural systems because we think we know better than nature.Leave it alone and worlds natural climatic systems will recover.

CO2 is not bad for plants, but it is not the only element needed to grow better or more robust plants. The statement that 1000 ppm of CO2 in a greenhouse made the plants grow better is a bit misleading. A greenhouse is a controlled environment, the earth's atmosphere is not.

It takes a lot more than CO2 to grow plants. It is the combination of temperature, water, sunlight, O2, CO2, nitrogen and many other elements that determine how healthy a plant is. The point of the study was that a changing climate could affect how those plants grow.

Increased CO2 might be good for plants, but combine it with less water or higher temps or both and increased CO2 would not necessarily mean healthier plants.

If I am wrong, please let me know. A link would be great too.

Regards

AGW is not science wrote: "Maybe the author needs a trip to the tropics to see how plant life does there."

Reply: Don't you mean, to see how plant life adapted for life in the tropics does there?

As long as we're going with our guts, not science, here's my "analysis." I have a bayleaf plant that has been spending the summer on my deck. The summer where I live has been unusually warm and moist, and the plant is not doing well because it has evolved to live in a Mediterranean climate, which is nothing like the one in which it currently finds itself. Yet, it's warmer and more moist this year. Shouldn't that cause it to thrive, particularly given the record-high CO2 levels currently present in earth's climate?

Aren't you making the same argument when you claim that global warming can only help plant life? Shouldn't you really be arguing that global warming will only help plants who can flourish in the new changes brought about by global warming? I wouldn't necessarily expect trees and plants that had evolved in one climate to do particularly well when they climate in which they are rooted suddenly shifts and presents them with changes in temperature and precipitation.

Maybe AGWinS needs to take some temperate-adapted plants to a tropical climate, plant them and see how they do. Not so well for the most part. Interestingly doing the reverse often won't work out too well either. BTW, AGWinS, there is a rather substantial scientific literature behind the claim that a warming climate broadly stresses plants. You could try looking at some of it.

If I remember back to an earlier blog it talked of new younger forest absorbing more co2. As you remove old trees you are bound to get an over abundance of young trees which in the other blog was said to be better for co2 absorbtion, now this ones says otherwise. It really goes to show everything comes down to your own opinion and regardless of what that is nature will take its course anyways regarding fire and man needs lumber also and takes care of the other half.

Ever wonder why most people posting on non-censored threads are skeptics?

Only 30 percent of ABC News respondents said they trust what scientists have to say about the environment "completely" or "a lot," ... nearly 60 percent of respondents said there is "a lot of disagreement" within the scientific community as to how dangerous climate change is.

http://www.nationaljournal.com/njonline/pn_20080811_9261.php

Gary B,

"A greenhouse is a controlled environment, the earth's atmosphere is not."

So are you agreeing that we have no control over the atmosphere?

Interesting. Many more trees since the 30s and much less carbon sequester. Does anyone have an estimate of what share of the overall observed increase in CO2 is due to more trees? Also, in any given year, compared to human activity, what is the total amount of CO2 captured by trees and what is the total amount released by trees?

In a book entitled "Ancient Forests", the author points out repeated instances of proper forest management by the indigenous peoples of North America: small scale burning.

In California, for example, the result was to promote the growth of nut bearing trees. Similar good results elsewhere.

Gary B,

This site is great for learning about the effects of C02 on plant life and the records showing that the medieval warm period did occur and it was planet wide.

http://www.co2science.org/

BTW, Biomass has increased 6% planetwide since 1980. I don't think the earth's plants are 'under stress'. In fact an argument can be made that the planet has been CO2 starved for the last 1,000 years as the CO2 concentration fell to levels that are close to dangerous for plant life. If anything, they have been under stress from lack of CO2.

I have written before about my limited experience with forest management. We own about 30 acres of fairly mature woods. About 5 acres is very dense and very mature and has not been thinned in many years. We have attempted to have it thinned a few times but either the ground didn't freeze enough during the fall, or the frost came out too soon in the spring and thus the logging was abandoned. It really needs to be done - so thick. Back in 2001 we had the other 20 acres or more thinned and another 5 acres cleared cut for barns, pasture, etc. The thinning has produced thick, thick, grass on the floor of the forest. Some small pines are coming up as well as some birch. This is what was expected. We had virtually no pines or birch in that forest. BTW, we are surrounded by thousands of acres of forest privately owned and also state owned. I see no signs of stress in this forest with climate change. Meanwhile when we moved here in 2000 the previous owner had planted an alternating row of pines to act as a hedge/border/wind barrier. Those trees were around knee high when we moved here. Other than the few I destroyed trying to mow around them, they all survived and today are probably 15 ft or more high. They appear to be quite healthy which is amazing to me since we have endured about 7 years of drought up until this year.

From my perspective this year especially, the wildflowers this year were exceptional. The Monarda has never looked better as well as the Heliopsis. Even though the spring was extremely cold and thus the crops got a very late start, I would have to say the crops look very good this year. They certainly made up for lost time.

I do not have a trained eye as perhaps a DNR expert, but to me making that statement that climate change stresses plant life is certainly not easily visible with the naked eye, at least not here on the Ponderosa.

If CO2 is so great for plant growth, then New York City should have turned into a jungle, and Tokyo would be filled with those plants from the Little Shop of Horrors.

Once again, our resident AGW Deniers have shown that science isn't their forte.

This is off topic but might be of interest. Last Friday a BBC radio show interviewed a man who wants to 'mine' old landfill sites for recyclable materials like metals and (particularly) plastics. He believes that the current high price of oil, and therefore of oil derivatives like plastics, makes it economically viable to do so.

Steve Bloom,

Care to provide any of those references to the "substantial scientific literature" you make mention of? Additionally, do any of those literature references include actual experimentation? Most likely all conjecture.

There is nothing wrong with what AGWnS wrote. All other variables held constant, more CO2 = more and healthier plants. The arguments about CO2-induced climate change stressing plants are speculative as stated since CO2-induced climate change is speculative, despite the assertions of some posters here. In any case, no doubt plants will do what they always have done: adapt.

As for the earlier study which appears to contradict this one, are we talking apples and oranges? Larger, older trees certainly store more carbon, while the earlier study asserted younger trees absorb more carbon?

Bill Marsh has an excellent link in his post, with thousands of peer-reviewed papers discussed. There have been a few studies at Stanford looking at growth response of a natural field to variations in CO2, Nitrogen, water and temperature. The reported results were that increasing all parameters resulted in dramatic improvements in growth, something greenhouse owners and farmers and gardeners have known for a long time. Increases are also seen for individual parameter increases. Increases are seen when all but CO2 is increased. The big news was that the difference between "all but CO2 increased" and "all increased" was small. An increase, but only a small increase. Draw your own conclusions from this.

From recent articles-
Grasslands sequester more CO2 than mature forests.
Deserts sequester as much CO2 as forests.
Logging mature forests for construction lumber sequesters the most CO2.
Now we have mature forests sequestering more CO2 than overgrown forests.

Mark, what are the average CO2 concentrations in NYC, for example in Central Park?

Patrick Henry:

Since when are polls dispositive of a scientific question?

*If CO2 is so great for plant growth, then New York City should have turned into a jungle, and Tokyo would be filled with those plants from the Little Shop of Horrors.*

From what I can remember from my Biology classes, most plants on the planet Earth require some type of soil or appropriately named organic material appropriately called earth. Most plants don't grow in asphalt or concrete, which I believe is by design, so plant vines don't get entangled in car tires or trip us while we are walking on sidewalks.

Mark, try this experiment. Find some asphalt or concrete. Look closely and see if you can find some cracks in the concrete or asphalt. In some cases, not all of course, you may see some type of plant material, sometimes called weeds, that managed to grow up through those cracks from the soil underneath. Pretty amazing really.

Now look at the concrete and asphalt where there are NO cracks. I would imagine that you will probably not see any plant material whatsoever growing directly in the concrete or asphalt. This material is not conducive to plants growing. This is one of the reasons we use asphalt for parking lots and roads.

Hope this helps in explaining why New York and Tokyo are not currently jungles.

Wow Mark. That statement is hardly worth a response. Could it be the huge number of people living in the cities cutting grass, trimming trees, etc. that keeps the plant growth in check?

Yet again pro-AGWers will twist statements to their advantange. /sarcasm/