A HIGHER concentration of CARBON in the atmosphere is "biologically" beneficial for most all of life.
You have the key to the whole issue right in your question:
"Record CO2 Coincides With Record-Breaking Crop Yields"
Yes, it coincides with record-breaking crop yields - at least it did last year. However, the fact that they coincided last year, does not necessarily mean one caused the other. In 2012, we had terrible crop yields (at least in the United States), and CO2 levels were high then too. Where was CNSnews then?
Crop yields have been on an upward trend for the last 100 years, with blips here and there caused mainly by unfavorable weather. So have CO2 levels. Improved farming techniques and better plant genetics are mainly credited for these increases in crop yields, not elevated CO2 levels.
It's clear the planet is on a warming trend. Whether that's caused by human activity remains controversial. However, there have indeed been some benefits to the warmer temperatures we've seen in recent years. For example, Canada used to be considered too cold to grow soybeans commercially. Now a lot are grown there.
But a warming planet wouldn't be all good. Certainly there would be a significant downside. Given the tremendous influence our climate has on our economy, population, society, nature, everything - I'd say it's a subject that deserves a great deal of research.
One of the reasons we have such high crop yeilds is warmer weather and increased CO2 certainly hasn't hurt. S suggests that it didn't help in the droughts obviously making a snarky comment about our CO2 causing droughts but it also reveals his ignorance about the actual effects of increased CO2. It allows plants to close their stomata sooner and therefore loose less water so yes increased CO2 will help plants in droughts.
This is actually an interesting question. At around 150 ppm, plants have trouble even surviving. At 5000 ppm animals start having trouble.
We are currently at 400 ppm. Prior to man's addition of CO2 into the atmosphere, we were at 280 ppm, but the Earth's atmosphere has been as low as 180 ppm and as high as 7000 ppm.
Indeed, if the earth was following the pattern of Mars and Venus, our atmosphere would be 95% CO2 instead of the paultry 0.04% that it currently is. That would be 950,000 ppm. The reason the Earth is NOT that high is the conversion of CO2.
So one large question is if the Earth will stop converting CO2 to stuff like limestone. If it continues to do so, it may eventually push the CO2 concentrations below what is necessary for plants to survive.
It may very well be that our burning of fossil fuels is actually helping life on this planet. Remember that this CO2 we are placing into the atmosphere was CO2 that was previously in the atmosphere.
Now because I am normally a cautious person, I will say that since we do not KNOW all of the consequences of our adding CO2 into the atmosphere, we should limit our CO2 production until we do, BUT given what we know, it seems far more likely that burning of fossil fuels helps life on Earth more than it hinders.
Consider that when there is more CO2 in the atmosphere, the plants stomatas have to open up less in order to suck in CO2. This allows the plants to lose less water, thus they need less water to survive.
As far as the crop yields, though... That could simply be due to our advances in technology. In fact, we have advances that will not likely ever come out to market, because they SO increase crop yields that they would drive the crop prices too low.
While we cannot say that CO2 fertilization is the reason for the crop increases, we CERTAINLY cannot say that AGW is hindering crop production. The alarmunists LOVE to say that AGW will kill crop yields and they have ZERO evidence backing their scare-mongering claims. In other words, they are just making it up.
To really call out some of the stupidity of the alarmunists I present:
http://ehs.sph.berkeley.edu/krsmith/publ...
Notice what this alarmunist claims. 50,000 will die of malnutrition in 2050 due to "climate change" (he means global warming, because climate change is a meaningless phrase, as the climate ALWAYS changes). Now you may ask why I LAUGH at such idiocy. You see, because of the ethanol mandate (legislation to cut down CO2 emission, that actually cuts NO CO2 emssions at all) 4.9 billion bushels of corn are being use to make ethanol. 4.9 BILLION BUSHELS!!!!! That is nearly 100,000 bushels of corn for each one of those people who will "die of malnutrition". About 300 bushels of corn a day for each one of those starving people.
So here is the REAL TRUTH. These alarmunists cannot even MAKE UP enough deaths to cover the HUGE cost of their IDIOTIC NONSOLUTIONS.
Quite literally, their solutions are worse than the problem even after their unreasonable unjustifiable exaggeration of the problem.
Higher CO2 levels do benefit crops. But crops do not live by CO2 alone. Crops are also temperature and moisture bound as well in their yields. As temperatures continue to rise then the crops will become more stressed and less productive. Precipitation changes will also reduce crop yields.
Barbara Hollingsworth never mentions that better farming techniques, better crop seeds and better fertilizers have done much to increase crop yields. Why is it that she never mentions this and just attributes the better crop yields to increased CO2 levels? Could it be because it is an OP-ED piece and facts do not matter?
Well I guess it depends if you believe a quote about an IPCC report in a right wing rag,
or actually go and look at what AR4 says.
E.g. the right wing rag claims Ar4 is projection to 2020, with a 50% loss of crops
The actual AR4 is talking about possible losses (by 2020) of 2.5% - 10%
But I wont use a third party site, but the actually IPCC report
http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data...
The phase "virtual certainty" used in the rag is not in fact even in the IPCC report
With nonsense like this being posted where are all those deniers who claim they are really skeptics, they seem to go very quite when this sort of fiction is posted.
no amount of icreased co2 is going to help with climate problems. it certainly did not help crops during droughts.
there is also coincidence of higher crop yields with fertilizer increase and plant genetics- nothing relatedto co2
Plants love higher CO2 levels. In fact some greenhouses have taken the levels up to 19 times the normal level and have had great success in yields. It is expensive to do that, so why would they do that? It takes no genius to deduct that their profit margin is increased by the use of this elevated CO2 level. A fact for which no greenie has a sane reply.
I would be happy to see it rise to anything under 1000ppm, CO2 cannot alter precipitation, and temperature changes are not such a problem, as farmers have a wide range of seeds which tolerate different conditions, lots of them also change crops to what does best with the climate they have.
Anyway CO2 helps crops in other ways, they become more resistant to drought as they transpire less and need less water, their robust growth also helps them to overcome disease and insect pests.
Yes.
http://skepticalscience.com/global-warmi... has a nice list of the positive and negative (mostly negative) effects of global warming.
and as several of us have pointed out, bumper crops are due to a lot of things, increased CO2 is only one of them.
Record CO2 Coincides With Record-Breaking Crop Yields, 'Greening of Globe' http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/barbara-hollingsworth/record-co2-coincides-record-breaking-crop-yields-greening-globe
But my school teacher told me that CO2 was bad for us.
