[stemmer]

The followers of priest Al Gore should love carbon dioxide.

http://homeharvest.com/carbondioxideenrichment.htm


Increasing Carbon Dioxide is a common practice in the commercial greenhouse industry.

Raising carbon dioxide levels increase growth rates of all plants.


Carbon Dioxide (Co2) Enrichment
Air Fertilization

The Importance of Carbon Dioxide (Co2)
for Healthy Plant Growth

Most of the applied research on greenhouse crops has dealt with effects of environmental conditions on plant growth. Factors such as water, light, temperature and nutrients are more easily controlled for optimum growth. It is now possible to also control and accurately measure Carbon Dioxide concentrations in greenhouse and Controlled Environment Garden (CEG) atmospheres.

Carbon Dioxide (CO2) contributes to plant growth as part of the miracle of nature known as photosynthesis. This enables plants to combine Carbon Dioxide and water with the aid of light energy to form sugar. Some of these sugars are converted into complex compounds that increase dry solid plant substances for continued growth to final maturity. However, when the supply of carbon dioxide is cut off, or reduced, the complex plant cell structure cannot utilize the sun's energy fully and growth or development is curtailed.

Although carbon dioxide is one of three main components which combine to produce the products necessary for plant growth, the amount of carbon dioxide in the air is only 0.03% (250 to 330 parts per million). This compares to 78% nitrogen, 21% oxygen and 0.97% trace gases in normal air. Numerous tests have proven that during the winter months carbon dioxide concentrations inside greenhouses is invariably much lower than in outside air. This same phenomenon has been shown in controlled environment gardens.

CARBON DIOXIDE (CO2)
IMPROVES PLANT GROWTH AND QUALITY
Research has shown that in most cases rate of plant growth under otherwise identical growing conditions is directly related to carbon dioxide concentration.

The amount of carbon dioxide a plant requires to grow may vary from plant to plant, but tests show that most plants will stop growing when the CO2 level decreases below 150 ppm. Even at 220 ppm, a slow-down in plant growth is significantly noticeable.

Colorado State University conducted tests with carnations and other flowers in controlled CO2 atmospheres ranging from 200 to 550 ppm. The higher CO2 concentrations significantly increased the rate of formation of dry plant matter, total flower yield and market value.

CARBON DIOXIDE (CO2)
CUT OPERATING COSTS
WHILE INCREASING PRODUCTION
During the winter months, plants near the middle of greenhouse beds generally do not grow as rapidly as plants at the edge. Tests have shown CO2 concentration lower in the center of greenhouses than near the outer walls. Outside air leaking in through small openings around windows carries enough carbon dioxide to satisfy requirements of plants at the edge of beds. The lack of adequate CO2 lowers the average plant yield quality and market value.

Costly methods of stimulating plant growth, in order to market them at optimum profit, are presently being used. One of these is extra heat (with open vents). This, however, increases operating costs and decreases profit. On the other hand, growers using CO2 are cutting their heating costs as much as 50% while realizing extra profit from increased crop production.

SAMPLE RESULTS FROM CO2 ENRICHMENT STUDIES
BIBB LETTUCE
By adding CO2 to the atmosphere around the plant, a 40% crop increase was achieved. Whereas previous crops averaged 22 heads per basket, lettuce grown in the increased CO2 atmosphere (550 ppm) averaged 16 heads of better quality per basket.

CARNATIONS
CO2 levels to 550 ppm produced an obvious increase in yield (over 30%), but the greatest benefits were earlier flowering (up to 2 weeks) with an increased percentage of dry matter.

ROSES
The addition of controlled carbon dioxide provided a remarkable improvement in blossom quality, number and yield. Plants consistently produced many more flowers with 24 to 30 inch stems. Average yield was increased by 39.7%.

TOMATOES
Work in experimental stations has shown that crop increases of as much as 29% have been obtained by increasing the CO2 concentration. More desirable firmness and more uniform ripening are also observed.

[herbie]

That's about the dumbest post I've seen yet.

[stemmer]

But CO2 is not the poison Gore and Suzuki make it out to be... Sorry it is beyond your grasp....

[Jarem]

Yeah, sure, increase of CO2 is great. If you live in Russia, Alaska or southern Patagonia. What about the rest of the world?

[hwacker]

Jarem wrote:

Yeah, sure, increase of CO2 is great. If you live in Russia, Alaska or southern Patagonia. What about the rest of the world?

no C02, no people, no food.


kinda like the O2 thingy.

[Blue_Nose]

Apparently stemmer just learned that greenhouses use CO2 and thinks it's been a big secret this whole time

People and plants need water, too - why do people complain about flooding?

[C.M. Burns]

Sure, CO2 is super for plants.
Are you a plant?

Excess CO2 is bad for oceans where 70% of our oxygen comes from as a product of photosynthesis (phytoplankton produce it). Increased uptake of atmospheric CO2 by the oceans lowers the pH of the water thus creating an inhospitable environment for these important little guys. Less of them means less oxygen.
I'm a big fan of oxygen.

Increasing ocean temperatures decreases phytoplankton number which also affects the entire ocean food web, reducing populations of everything from shrimp to whales and I happen to like sushi a lot. People all over the world depend on the ocean as their main source of protein.

Phytoplankton also take up dissolved CO2 from the ocean and less of them means more CO2 in the atmosphere.

Look, the CO2 cycle on the earth had been working fine for billions of years. Many gigatons of it were naturally produced and processed and recycled successfully by the atmosphere, biosphere and lithosphere. Now we've come along and thrown the whole thing out of whack.

Gore, Suzuki et al didn't mention this because they're NOT STUPID.

[CanAm1]

Great post Stemmer, It's amazing how the other side dismisses evidence contrary to their position. Increased co2 = better plant growth, better plant growth = more oxygen. Kinda defeats their position in a very easy and simple way.

[DrCaleb]

CanAm1 wrote:

Great post Stemmer, It's amazing how the other side dismisses evidence contrary to their position. Increased co2 = better plant growth, better plant growth = more oxygen. Kinda defeats their position in a very easy and simple way.

You are 90% water, but you can still drown. Increasing CO2 concentration in air stops humans' breathing reflex.

[N_Fiddledog]

Here we go again. Small blips of factoids are used to tell large scary lies. The latest use of the scarification process is seen in CM Burns post where it's suggested the oceans are acidifying and we're meant to believe from that life there will all die soon. Not going to happen.

What CM neglects to tell you is the oceans tend to right themselves.

Quote:

Even if you allow CO2 to dissolve in the whole deep ocean - which may normally take some time (deep ocean circulation takes 2000 years, if you wanted to wait for it) - you see that a small fraction of CO2 is in the ocean, about 1/4. At fixed temperature, the ocean only absorbs a small portion of the man-made CO2 and it never absorbed much more. Henry's law says that in the long run, the ratio is fixed. An article that something is changing about the ratio right now inevitably violates this law of Nature.

Observations show a lot of other short-term effects because we are not at equilibrium. But these effects certainly can't be extrapolated into the future.

Source

Were a long ways away from acid oceans right now.

Quote:

the oceans' pH was around 8.17 in 1800, now it is around 8.10. The figure is decreasing as we are adding carbon dioxide (or carbonic acid, if you allow me to combine it with water) to the system. It will stay above 7.8 at least until 2100.

The neutral value of pH is 7.0 and it is the average optimal pH for living creatures. While Coke has around 2.5 , fish tend to tolerate pH between 5.0 and 9.0. The readers with an aquarium know much more. Some of the fish prefer the lower values and some of them prefer the higher values. You should not be surprised that I think that 7.0 might be the optimal "democratic" value of pH. We are helping the oceans to get closer to the optimal value but we are still extremely far from it.

However, the environmentalist conclusion is very different. The pH is changing and everything that is changing is always changing in the bad direction. By definition, a change is bad. That's the main reason why the tautology known as "climate change" should also become a reason for concern, according to some people. But is the decrease of the pH a bad thing?

Source

Are some types of plankton dying. Sure, but at the same time others are thriving.

Here's a link to a study

or as Roy Spencer says...

Quote:

Still, the main worry has been that the extra CO2 could hurt the growth of plankton, which represents the start of the oceanic food chain. But recent research (published on April 18 in Science Express) has now shown, contrary to expectations, that one of the most common forms of plankton actually grows faster and bigger when more CO2 is pumped into the water. Like vegetation on land, it loves the extra CO2, too!

It is quite possible that the biosphere (vegetation, sea life, etc.) has been starved for atmospheric CO2. Before humans started burning fossil fuels, vegetation and ocean plankton had been gobbling up as much CO2 out of the atmosphere as they could, but it was like a vacuum cleaner trying to suck through a stopped-up hose.

Now, no matter how much CO2 we pump into the atmosphere each year, the biosphere takes out an average of 50 percent of that extra amount. Even after we triple the amount of CO2 we produce, nature still takes out 50 percent of the extra amount.

More Carbon Dioxide Please

On Carbon dioxide stopping the human breathing reflex - CO2 is not even the main Greenhouse gas. 95% of Greenhouse gas is made up of water. You can't breath water in high concentrations either. If you're talking about levels of CO2 in the atmosphere which could actually kill people, it plain and simple is not possible with the levels man is capable of adding. On the other hand Wikipedia tells us "Concentrations higher than 1,000 ppm will cause discomfort in more than 20% of occupants". Still that's more than double the 385 ppm in the atmosphere right now and even at the projections of the most radical alarmist science you'd be talking 100s of years into the future. Dinosaurs thrived at rates of CO2 4 times what we have today.

Another thing that's lost in all this is the comparatively miniscule amounts of CO2 we're talking about. If you watch one of the fright bytes in the recent 300 million dollar, Al Gore, advertising, scare campaign he talks about CO2 in terms of Gigatonnes, and displays the gas graphically as elephants falling from the sky. However, off the top of my head I remember it more like this. Only 4% of the Earth's atmosphere is made up of Greenhouse gases. 4% of those GHGs is CO2. 3% of that CO2 is man-made through industrial activity. It, like everything depends on how you look at it, and what information you choose to use.

[C.M. Burns]

N_Fiddledog wrote:

Here we go again. Small blips of factoids are used to tell large scary lies. The latest use of the scarification process is seen in CM Burns post where it's suggested the oceans are acidifying and we're meant to believe from that life there will all die soon. Not going to happen.

What a fucking liar you are!

C.M. Burns wrote:

affects the entire ocean food web, reducing populations of everything

[PluggyRug]

I see all the lemmings are running scared again.


More CO2 please my carrots will thank you.

Gore and Suzuki are laughing all the way to the bank on the backs of those who scare easily.

[C.M. Burns]

N_Fiddledog wrote:

Another thing that's lost in all this is the comparatively miniscule amounts of CO2 we're talking about. If you watch one of the fright bytes in the recent 300 million dollar, Al Gore, advertising, scare campaign he talks about CO2 in terms of Gigatonnes, and displays the gas graphically as elephants falling from the sky. However, off the top of my head I remember it more like this. Only 4% of the Earth's atmosphere is made up of Greenhouse gases. 4% of those GHGs is CO2. 3% of that CO2 is man-made through industrial activity. It, like everything depends on how you look at it, and what information you choose to use.

Here we go again indeed!

Yes, gigatonnes. 7 man-made gigatonnes and 36,000 gigatonnes naturally occuring and cycling through the lithosphere, atmosphere and biosphere. The natural system WAS in balance.

You think that miniscule amounts don't have an effect?

Ever had a shot of tequila?

one ounce shot of tequila is 40% alcohol by volume.
alochol weighs 0.8 kg per liter
one liquid ounce is about 30 ml
tequila content is 40% or 12 ml
0.8 * 0.012 = 0.0096
the tequila weighs about 10 grams.
Let's say you weigh about 176 lbs or 80 kg.
The tequila weighs 1/8000th of your body mass and, on a full stomach, you can feel it right away. Ever taken 200 mg of advil? Works well, doesn't it! It's 50 times smaller than the tequila! Ever taken LSD? Average dose is 100 micrograms or 100,000 times smaller than the tequila shot.
Chemistry. It's all chemistry.

[N_Fiddledog]

385 parts per million of CO2 in the atmosphere is not tequilla, and does not affect you. In fact double it. You're still going to be just fine.