Are these points on global warming as pointless as media makes it seem?

Question

#1-Has anyone thought to study plants to see if they are growing at a faster rate due to higher levels of C02? I know that if you up the nutrients of a plant, it will grow faster and stronger.

#2- Why isn't there any talk about the fact that we still experience lower average global temps than we did before the ice age? Seems to me that we are just still coming out of it.

Answer 1

Plants and trees need CO2 and sunlight to photosynthesise, if there's a shortage of either then the growth of the plant is affected.  Plants, like humans, have a maximum 'food' requirement and there's already much more CO2 in the atmosphere than plants can absorb.  Even in the past when CO2 levels were significantly lower and the earth was covered with more forests there was still a surplus of CO2.  

Plants only need nutritional supplements if there's a shortage.  That's why farmers, botanists and the like carefully test the soil and only add the nutrients that are in short supply.  Adding nutrients that are already present would be a pointless exercise.  If there's a shortage of CO2 then plants will benefit but nature more than adequately provides all their needs.

To put some numbers to it - each year 120 billion tons of CO2 is absorbed by plants and soil, at the same time 118 billion tons are released.  The annual CO2 requirement is therefore 2 billion tons and with 230 billion tons of CO2 floating around in the atmosphere there's plenty more than the plants and soil need.

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We are indeed experiencing lower global temps than before the ice age and we are still coming out of it - you're absolutely right.

A lot of people when referring to the ice age are talking about a period between 10 and 18 thousand years ago but really the ice age has been with us for about 33 million years and will stay with us until all the snow and ice melts.

The last time the world was as warm as it is now was about 140,000 years ago, the last time it was consistently warmer was 3 million years ago.

Throughout the history of our planet there have been long, medium and short term cycles of warming and cooling.  We're currently in a short term (18,000 years) warming cycle which is part of a much longer (50 million years) cooling cycle.

The current concern is that temperatures are changing far quicker than has ever before been known.  Natural changes have occured over thousands and millions of years.  Even the exceptionally fast increase in temps that brought an end to the last glacial retreat pales into insignificance when you look at the rate of temp rises over the last 200 years or so.

Numbers time again - prior to the last glacial retreat temps were 9 degrees colder than they are now, during 7,500 years temps rose by 8 degrees C, during the next 10,000 years they rose by 1 degree C.  Since the Eocene Optimum temps have changed by 1 degree every 2.5 million years.  In the last 100 years they've risen by the best part of 1 degree C.

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These are things which are taken into account by climatologists and others studying the science of global warming and climate change, you don't get to hear that much about them because they're not the exciting headline grabbing news that the media focuses on

Answer 2

#1 - They absolutely study this.  And scientists agree there will be some short term benefits for agriculture in some places.  Wheat farms in Canada are an example.  But, overall, agriculture will be severely damaged, mostly by drought.

Upping one plant nutrient while keeping the others the same may not be beneficial.  It's an "unbalanced diet".

And CO2 is not always good.  In rain forests, "Spurred on by increasing CO2 levels, fast growing species are crowding out slower growing ones, reducing biodiversity."

http://www.amazon.com/Weather-Makers-Cha...

#2 - Climate was changing very slowly, but we have greatly accelerated it unnaturally.  The problem is that, with our coastal cities, and intensive agriculture, rapidly rising temperatures will be extremely destructive.   This particular warming is mostly due to us:

http://www.globalwarmingart.com/wiki/Ima...

We need to do what we can about our contribution.

Answer 3

I have watched the trees. I have 9 trees in my yard and they are still in the same growing season as they have always been. For example they start dropping a small amount of leaves at about the 2nd week of August. This indicates to me that the growing season is winding down and the trees are starting to shut down for the winter. They are smarter than us about what to do because their lives depend on it I am still doing leaves until about the 1st week of November. This means they are totally shut down by then and ready for winter. Now some of the small bushes I noticed had leaf buds on them last week. The big trees are still dormant right now. But the bulbs are almost totally up now but no blooms yet and this seems about normal. So basically from my own observations I do not believe in global warming. And I do remember this weather pattern that we experienced this past winter from the 50's when I was outside on Xmas day with out a coat and snow on Easter. So I and the farmers almanac think it is just a normal weather cycle pattern that repeats itself.

Answer 4

I am not sure about lower average global temps but, I know that here in Ohio, we have had warmer and warmer weather than in previous years! Winters are warmer and summers are hotter. Check out the Al Gore movie on Global Warming and you will get some good answers! Here are some sites for it...

http://www.oprah.com/tows/pastshows/2006...

http://www.rasmussenreports.com/2007/Mar...

hope this helps!

Answer 5

No they are very relevant but disprove global warming so they are ignored.

Global warming has nothing to do with science and facts but rather with social conditioning.

Answer 6

It's true that additional CO2 should benefit plant life. CO2 is sometimes added to commercial greenhouses to speed growth. However, human generated CO2 is such a small percentage of the natural total that it'd be tough to isolate the effects on plants.

Answer 7

The effects on plants are important. TisIS being studied--and some plants do benefit--some do not.

But the fact that there have been periods in the distant past when the climate was warmer than it is now is totally irrelevant.  The concern now is with TODAY'S environmental and ecological effects, not with what may or may not have happened hundreds of thousands of years ago.