Global warming boosts poison ivy
I’ve seen some pretty disingenuous “research” from the nut job side of the environmental movement where global warming is concerned but this one on poison ivy really takes the cake.
Stop global warming now or face worse poison ivy rashes!! Gads, what a sham…
Another reason to worry about global warming: more and itchier poison ivy. The noxious vine grows faster and bigger as carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere rise, researchers report Monday.
In elementary school we learned that while humans breath in oxygen and out carbon dioxide, green plants breath in carbon dioxide and out oxygen. Why should poison ivy be any different than, say, Virginia Creeper? Poison ivy is just scarier than Virgina Creeper so makes for more effective propoganda.
And a CO2-driven vine also produces more of its rash-causing chemical, urushiol, conclude experiments conducted in a forest at Duke University where scientists increased carbon-dioxide levels to those expected in 2050.
I’m sure there is a point of deminishing returns, a point at which more carbon dioxide does not boost plant growth. Otherwise, any green plant will do more of what ever it is the plant does when infused with more carbon dioxide. I also have to wonder, first, who’s model were the 2050 predictions taken from and , second, where exactly is that point of deminishing returns because it doesn’t look like we’ll hit it in 2050. ( And what about the increased crop yields? Don’t we want increased yields to help with bio-fuels and feeding the 3rd world? )
Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas — a chemical that traps heat similar to the way a greenhouse does — that’s considered a major contributor to global warming. Greenhouse gases have been steadily increasing in the atmosphere since the Industrial Revolution.
An attempt to reclassify, in the minds of the general population, the relationship between carbon dioxide and everything green. This statement implies that first and foremost carbon dioxide is an evil “green house gas” and they use the word “chemical” which to many implies it is something man made, manufactured and artificial rather than a naturally occurring part of the ecosystem and a key in most natural biological processes such as photosynthesis.
Compared to poison ivy grown in usual atmospheric conditions, those exposed to the extra-high carbon dioxide grew about three times larger — and produced more allergenic form of urushiol …. “The fertilization effect of rising CO2 on poison ivy … and the shift toward a more allergenic form of urushiol have important implications for the future health of both humans and forests,” the study concludes.
Hello? It’s plant food! They could have used Kentucky Blue Grass or a Venus Fly Trap and gotten similar results. I’d be not the least surprised to find out the original “research” was done with marijuana!
Against my own better judgment I’ve filed this under Science. Not because it is, but because that’s what they claim it to be. Even though there is more science in a 3rd graders science fair exhibit….