Trees grow more quickly in cities than rural areas, a new study has found.
Researchers analyzed tree rings in ten cities around the world, and discovered that urban and rural trees have undergone accelerated growth since the 1960s – and say climate change may be the reason for this.
The results revealed urban trees are growing even faster than rural trees, and it could be due to the urban heat island effect, which involves higher temperatures in cities compared to the surrounding landscapes – and that may stimulate photosynthesis to help the plants grow.
No, it doesn’t change my general view. But it is fun, isn’t it, how many different feedback effects we find?
It’s all almost as complex as an economy, you know, those things we know we cannot plan in any detail, all that’s possible to to set a few general rules and leave it to then get on with everything.
The one intervention, a carbon tax, then leave well alone……after all, a revenue neutral carbon tax isn’t going to do any harm either.
So there were no urban heat island effects fifty years ago? The “urban heat island” is a relative difference in temperature between cities and rural areas – why would relative differences only have appeared in the past five decades or so?
Plants consume carbon dioxide…cars emit carbon dioxide…more cars concentrated in cities. Possible?
Rob nails it.. Traffic is going to give a local boost to CO2 levels which as every commercial grower well knows increases growth quite substantially.
As Rob says, UHI is fuck all to do with climate change, if anything its the opposite. WUWT came about because Anthony Watts wanted to show that a lot of the weather stations being used to prove the rise in temperatures were suffering from UHI effects caused by urban sprawl.
Cars produce nitrate pollution which would also help trees grow faster.
UHI is a real thing – who knew that plants grew faster in warmer, CO2-richer environments?
If they didn’t, there’s be no basis for greenhouses for growing plants…
Trees grow faster in cities.
More people live in cities than in rural areas.
Therefore trees grow faster around people.
That’s as sound as the claim made in the article.
Bollocks to carbon tax.
NO intervention and then leave well enough alone.
Mr Ecks nails it.
No, it doesn’t change my general view. But it is fun, isn’t it, how many different feedback effects we find?
What do you mean “find”? Of course we knew even back in the prehistoric 1970s that warmer, more CO2-rich environments produced faster plant growth.
“why would relative differences only have appeared in the past five decades or so”
Because cities grew out to smother weather stations.
“WUWT came about because Anthony Watts wanted to show that a lot of the weather stations being used to prove the rise in temperatures were suffering from UHI effects caused by urban sprawl.”
Which he proved quite well. MOST U.S. weather stations were no better than Class 3. Meaning their data is scientifically JUNK. As Tony Heller shows daily.
But the government uses the data, anyway. Because it’s not science they are engaged in.
“why would relative differences only have appeared in the past five decades or so?”
Two possible reasons:
1. Cities are larger than they were.
2. Less smog, which tends to block sunlight and (likely) cool things down.
“a revenue neutral carbon tax isn’t going to do any harm either”
Got any evidence for that remarkable theory? Because for damn sure a carbon tax will cause us to have/use less carbon, and for equally damn sure the substitutes we will wind up using will be more expensive.
Am I the only one who has noticed that the fucking politicians always find quasi-religious excuses for higher taxes on the stuff we really, really like? Booze, smokes, sugar, cars, air travel, warm homes. It’s always for our own good or the good of the children or the planet or some other pile of bullshit.
@Mr Ecks, November 17, 2017 at 11:46 am
+1
A couple of unpleasant, almost pavlovian responses on here to carbon taxes.
The logic is impeccable – producing CO2 does a small amount of long-term harm, set a price on that, and get rid of all the other interventions in the market.
You might still calculate a number far far lower than Stern after allowing for all the benefits of warmer wetter air ( on average ). But no – apparently the principles of Pigou taxation are ‘bollocks – let’s have no intervention’
So when it is calculated that producing CO2 is a net POSITIVE, will the government fvcking PAY US?
“The logic is impeccable – producing CO2 does a small amount of long-term harm”
Prove it. You can’t.
I live in Canada. I know what cold is. It’s deadly. Warmth is either a positive or, at worst, a minor inconvenience. One can grow crops on a hot wet windy day with rising sea levels. Go on, plant a seed in snow, or permafrost, tell me how it did.
When I am King, you will spend 2 years at Tuktoyaktuk University, in penal servitude, naked, with two strokes of the rat whisk every day, learning about cold.