Much publicity is currently being given a paper entitled “Increasing CO2 Threatens Human Nutrition,” which was recently published in the British journal Nature, where a team of 20 scientists reports the results of experiments they conducted at seven different Free-Air CO2 Enrichment or FACE facilities, at the conclusions of which they harvested the edible portions of six major food crops — which they had grown in both ambient and CO2-enriched air, and which they analyzed for their concentrations of Zinc (Zn) and iron (Fe), dietary deficiencies of which are said by them to be “a substantial global public health problem.” But is this really the case?… Read More
An Unanticipated Benefit of Drought in Certain Forests (24 Jun 2014)
Under scenarios of moderate drought, “N2 fixation may alleviate the N constraints resulting from low soil moisture and improve the competitive ability of N2-fixing species, and as a result, supply more new nitrogen to [certain ecosystems]”… Read More
The Recent History and Imminent Future of Global Flooding (24 Jun 2014)
According to the researchers of this study, “although media reports of both floods and global flood damage are on the increase, there is still no … record that shows a global increase in flood frequency or magnitude.” Thus, they write that “blaming climate change for flood losses makes flood losses a global issue that appears to be out of the control of regional or national institutions,” which they indicate is not the case… Read More
Old Growth Forests Still Socking Away Carbon and Nitrogen (24 Jun 2014)
The authors of this study conclude their work “supports earlier studies indicating that the old-growth forest at the Hainich National Park is still accumulating OC in soil.” And they say “it adds to the growing number of studies showing that soils of temperate forests are currently C sinks”… Read More
Fifteen Hundred Years of European Forest Stand Dynamics (25 Jun 2014)
Forest stands today “presently grow quicker and accumulate a defined standing volume earlier than a century ago.” They also grow “along modified self-thinning lines and move quicker through such trajectories than in the past.” In fact, certain threshold sizes are reached decades earlier compared with the past, and the level of tree growth rate vs. tree size allometry has “increased significantly”… Read More
Searching for Megadroughts in CMIP5 Climate Models (25 Jun 2014)
Are the odds in the models’ favor that they might find some?… Read More
Future Winter Wheat Yields on the North China Plain (25 Jun 2014)
Are they apt to be enhanced, degraded or little affected by predicted climate change?… Read More
Dr. Idso is the founder, former president, and currently chairman of the Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change.
