Global Warming Credited for Boosting Plant Growth

[longknife]

Sunday, 02 Jun 2013 08:41 AM, By Audrey Hudson

Climate change has blamed for a myriad of planetary ills from floods to droughts, wildfires and tornadoes, but a new Australian study says the increase of atmospheric carbon dioxide is boosting plant growth in arid deserts.

The study by scientist Randall Donohue at the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization looked at the rise in foliage in the Southwest United States, the Middle East, some parts of Africa, as well as the Australian Outback, and discovered an 11 percent increase in plant growth, USA Today reports.

“If elevated CO2 causes the water use of individual leaves to drop, plants will respond by increasing their total numbers of leaves,” Donohue said. The Geophysical Research Letters journal published the results May 15.

Read Latest Breaking News from Newsmax.com Global Warming Credited for Boosting Plant Growth

Gee whiz. Another attack on the evils of Globull Warming?

 

[Oddball]

More CO2 means that plants will grow bigger and more quickly, hence absorbing more CO2?!?!?

I'll be dipped....Who woulda figured on that happening?

 

[t_polkow]

Sunday, 02 Jun 2013 08:41 AM, By Audrey Hudson

Climate change has blamed for a myriad of planetary ills from floods to droughts, wildfires and tornadoes, but a new Australian study says the increase of atmospheric carbon dioxide is boosting plant growth in arid deserts.

The study by scientist Randall Donohue at the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization looked at the rise in foliage in the Southwest United States, the Middle East, some parts of Africa, as well as the Australian Outback, and discovered an 11 percent increase in plant growth, USA Today reports.

“If elevated CO2 causes the water use of individual leaves to drop, plants will respond by increasing their total numbers of leaves,” Donohue said. The Geophysical Research Letters journal published the results May 15.

Read Latest Breaking News from Newsmax.com Global Warming Credited for Boosting Plant Growth

Gee whiz. Another attack on the evils of Globull Warming?

LOL So I thought you baggers denied global warming

 

[mamooth]

CO2 increases the growth rate of vines a whole lot, trees just a little. Meaning the vines smother the trees, and the carbon sink of the trees is lost.

http://boingboing.net/2009/10/07/howd-they-do-that-po.html
---
Both trees and poison ivy grew faster, when exposed to higher concentrations of CO2, than their oxygen-only counterparts. But poison ivy grew faster than the trees--150% faster, in fact, compared to a 20% increase in tree growth. The difference, according to Jackie Mohan, is that poison ivy, like all vines, is a bit lazy.

"Vines don't need to devote so much of their CO2 resources to growing these big, woody trunks," she says. "Instead, they can devote that to growing more green leaves, which increase photosynthesis some more. And it becomes a cycle."
---

Study: Vines crowding out trees in tropics, harming CO2 balance
---
The report, published online last week in the journal Ecology Letters, surveyed eight studies on the state of woody vines in tropical forests from the Savannah River system and the Congaree National Park in South Carolina to an area in the central Amazon about 50 miles north of Manaus, Brazil. They found that in all forests, vines were increasing in abundance, biomass or both.
---

CO2 is also not so good for crops.
Carbon dioxide could reduce crop yields
---
The plants, which ensure our basic food supply today, have not been bred for vertical growth but for short stalks and high grain yields. Scientists from the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Plant Physiology and the University of Potsdam have now discovered that an increase in carbon dioxide levels could cancel out the beneficial effects of dwarf varieties.
---

Weeds, of course, love the CO2. And boy howdy, does it make them pump out the pollen.

 

[Oddball]

Always with them negative waves....