Several stories on the recent finding that plants suck up lots of co2 and when the crops are grown and then cut a lot of co2 is exhaled. However, CAGW is never as simple as it really should be as climate scientists have been searching for a fair number of years now for the missing heat. Is it in the clouds, in the oceans, or have plants been feeding on it – like a tonic. See for example http://phys.org/print335624889.html … and http://phys.org/print335625192.html
Of course, farmers have known this all along as they pump co2 into their plastic greenhouses in order to grow those lovely long crisp cucumbers and the juicy strawberries, the plump sweet peppers and the lush tomatoes that hang in thick tresses, and even the humble lettuce (and various salad leaves). We might wish we had a big plastic greenhouse in our backyards and were able to pump in co2 in order to grow tomatoes just as bountiful but no, we have to put up with normal air quality.
Farm crops in fields such as corn, wheat, rice and soybeans make up 64 per cent of all the calories consumed around the world. Production has doubled since 1961 – the famous Green Revolution (science applied to agriculture) which means that something like a billion metric tons of co2 is captured by these crops – and later released, each year. Are 'ecosystems on steroids' influencing the climate? Are climate scientists stretching the evidence a point too far?
If this all sounds a bit like cows farting and causing methane levels to jump on a global level, at http://phys.org/print335625192.html … we have a slightly different take We are transported north to Barrow in Alaska. We are told the practise of modern farming is powerful enough to alter the Earth's atmosphere at an ever increasing rate. It's always an increasing rate with the models – they always go up and never run parallel or fall as happens in the real world with temperatures – a surreal world of computer screens and overworked mouses. It seems that not only do they want to freeze to death the economically challenged in society, the ones that can't afford to pay the escalating fuel bills, but now they want to starve the people that do manage to pay their bills. How do these people go to sleep at night?
There is another odd story at http://phys.org/print335609680.html … which uses data coming from satellites. The National Snow and Ice Data Centre which runs the show must be overworked this autumn as even the BBC has allowed us to see the heaps of the white global warming stuff on our TV screens that is currently topping the landscape of N America like sugar icing. Mind you, Auntie thinks it is freak weather caused by climate change. I mean, we aren't approaching winter are we – snow shouldn't fall in November. Its still summer in la la land. Looking at the abstract we have data from 2003 and one suspects most of it belongs to the early 2000s when indeed the glaciers were shrinking. It can't be up to date as they would have mentioned Antarctic sea ice is at a record level and the ice is back in the Arctic Ocean, and let's not forget, mountain glaciers are beginning to grow once again – even on Kilimanjaro.