CO2 and Plant Pests

Researchers are finding that rising levels of carbon dioxide in the air might be bad for our gardens and food prices, even though plants need CO2 to breathe. As this ScienCentral News video explains, research is showing that too much CO2 can make at least one major crop more vulnerable to pests. http://www.sciencentral.com/video/

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• carbon
• dioxide
• CO2
• greenhouse
• gas
• global
• warming
• plant
• pests
• crop
• soybeans
• pesticides
• sciencentral
• science
• video
• and
• Plant
• Pests

[mekubic3]

The problem with interpreting this sort of result is that they have an island of CO2-enriched plants in a sea of "normal" plants. If insects from all over the field que in on something they like about the CO2-enriched plants, they will migrate there. This really doesn't say much about how insects will respond to an entire landscape of CO2-enriched plants.

[nickfalzone]

You have no idea what you're talking about.

[oomblikkies]

What is the big deal here? Of course will plant pests increase, but what the researchers should have done is to increase the duration of the experiment. In nature it does take a while for the natural predators to sense the increase in food supply and hence produce larger (numbers) offspring.

[konynunez]

Let's eat the insects, maybe that is the solution.

[w4csc]

Oh, how proud they must be to find something negative against all the rich CO2 plant growth research. How do they control CO2 to the plants OUTSIDE, with those tiny pipes?? I smell an environazi rat!

Stop by the house and help me devour some of my cantelope-sized tomatos grown at 5000 ppm in the plant-stuffed greenhouse. The earth will be fine, once the communists and socialists leave Cancun so the place can thaw!

[maslabud]

i'm sure the scientist at the university know more about how they conducted the experiment then what most of us interpreted watching this 2 minute video.

[jenn1ifer]

exactly. they should have 2 fields in the same city, so its the same climate the city has. one ENTIRE filed with c02 enrichment. then compare the the field on the other side of the city with the c02 that naturally occurs in the air. then compaer before and after pest populations between the two. Also they need to take in to account the area, and state, i bet for example beetles are not a problem in calfironia vs. ohio for example.

[zobcity01]

what if your "implied" forcasted co2 levels do Not go up?

The "global warming" record SNOW STORMS we just had in the USA in winter 2010 didn't support you Ideology hypothasys whatsoever.

What about ALL the core samples showing co2 appears years-decades After any temp swings?

Just be honest , just once pls!!

[zoticus1]

WHAT A LIE!

laws of adaptation shoot this nonsense down

[thinkpolicy]

You hit the nail on the head. They ignored the dozens of studies proving that doubling CO2 increases soy bean growth rates, soy bean vitamin content.

Those things are all good for humans and bugs. If i were a bug, I'd go to the better growing plants, too, if there were a difference between one plot and another.

What it really shows is that CO2 enriched plants are preferable to CO2 starved plants.

.

[sammierox88]

I have an idea why dont we just introduce a biological control for japanese beetles and just hope that it doesn't become a pest and want everything else but what its suppose to be controlling.  hahaha