CO2 fertilization – like smog fertilization via a rain of nitrogen that makes grasses and shrubs spurt – is pretty well known as a way to get some plants that are not already suffering other nutrient choke points to grow faster. This week the University of Wisconsin-Madison put out a press release saying that study of quaking aspen in that state – not lab rat plants, but out in the countryside – reveals that they are growing faster. Extra CO2 is the best explanation for it.

The Tracker saw  the press release (in Grist below) and thought, “what about all those aspen dying in Colorado and elsewhere? “  I wondered whether, if anybody picked this story up, they’d look for some broader perspective than in the press release.

Bingo. Look and ye may get lucky. At the Minneapolis Star-Tribune staffer Tom Meersman saw the local angle and added broader perspective and balance. The local angle is that aspen plantations are big business for the state’s paper industry. Thus the reported 53 percent growth acceleration in the last half century is good news for the local economy.

His story wraps up with a section that starts off, “What happens in the woods will be much more complicated and unpredictable…” and gets succinctly into simultaneous truths. While the Midwest’s farmed quaking aspens are doing great, the trees are dying by droves and groves from drought in Canada, and from “sudden aspen decline” in Colorado wrought by both insects and climate change. And, he writes, other studies of oak and pine see no such dramatic spike in growth in the CO2-enhanced air. This is sensible reporting.

What he gets from readers’ commentary is, natch, hardly any gratitude at all. But lots of blowsy spume and spittle on the global warming hoax.

Grist for the Mill: UWisc-Madison Press Release via EurekAlert!. ;

Pic – source (rather interesting one too);

- Charlie Petit

This entry was posted on Friday, December 4th, 2009 at 12:25 pm and is filed under Environment & Energy Stories. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.