Enviro-Nutters Global Warming and Fat Trees
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09 February 2010
One of the reasons that Greens look ridiculous when they blame a trace gas for global warming is that CO2 is essential to life on Earth. That’s why the EPA’s ruling that CO2 is a pollutant is junk science in the first degree.
The Baltimore Sun reports that trees in the Chesapeake area are ‘bulking up’:
By measuring the circumference of a tree’s trunk, scientists are able to estimate its “biomass,” the combined weight of its wood and leaves. On average, they say, the woodlands they’re tracking are bulking up by an extra 2 tons per acre annually. That’s as if a new tree 2 feet in diameter sprang up every year.
Parker said he and his colleagues, Sean McMahon and Dawn Miller, aren’t sure exactly what’s driving the growth surge or when it began. But they note that carbon dioxide levels in the air at the Smithsonian’s research center have increased 12 percent in the time since Parker began monitoring the trees. That’s roughly the same increase tracked in the air above Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii – the site of the longest continuous measurement of carbon dioxide in the Earth’s lower atmosphere.
The good news is that nature takes care of itself, more CO2 = bigger trees, better crops and prettier spring flowers. For man, a warm period is a very good thing, not the warmaggedon that hippies are afraid of. It’s cold we should fear, not warmth. Unlike the mythical human cost of warming, cold kills, for real.
Of course, if hippies get to spin this story we’ll be told that global warming made the trees fat and it’s all your SUV’s fault.
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QUOTE:
But the beneficial effect of higher carbon dioxide might be limited. Parker said Duke University researchers, for instance, found that a stand of loblolly pines exposed to air enriched with carbon dioxide grew much faster for a while, but then stagnated from a lack of nutrients.
A 2008 University of Maryland study also suggested that the makeup of the state's forests might change as climate warms, with hardwoods in western and northern Maryland giving way to more heat-tolerant southern pines and oaks. Warmer summers and lack of precipitation might increase the risk of forest fires as well, it notes.
Matthias Ruth, director of the University of Maryland's Center for Integrative Environmental Research, said the Smithsonian scientists' findings are "perfectly consistent" with what computer climate models project. But he cautioned that the beneficial effects of forests soaking up carbon dioxide likely won't last long.
"As trees grow faster and we change climate, diseases will become an issue," he predicted. The findings now suggest there's a brief "window" before harmful changes wrought by rising greenhouse gases overwhelm the beneficial effects.
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Yet another case of denier-gate.
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