Weather is always more violent compared to past weather that was less violent.
Weather in this year may be more violent than the weather you remember 10 years ago, but lees violent than the weather you don't remember 20 or 30 years ago.
If you've read my posts you should be aware of an important point on this issue. Whenever there is a claim that a particular weather event is the worst in living memory, or the worst on record, this is found to be usually untrue when the turbulence has settled down and the true, historical records are examined.
I can tell you categorically that the
derecho we experienced back in 2012 was the worst thing I've experienced and that includes the 2010 Snowmageddon. I've been living here since 1978 and never experienced anything such as that before. The Washington Post Weather Gang do an excellent job of documenting current trends and comparing those with past trends.
The fact that CO2 might be a tremendous asset for mankind, and help reduce food shortages in undeveloped countries, and be a free fertilizer everywhere, is a disturbing fact for alarmists.
I don't think CO2 can be defined as a fertilizer as the conventional definition is something that is applied to the soil to promote plant growth.
Because the nature of such alarmists is to create alarm, they respond to this fact that CO2 increases plant growth, which can be demonstrated without doubt, by implying that there are negative consequences in terms of reduced nutrients in food that are grown in elevated CO2 levels, which is another scare.
I'm a biochemist by training (FWIW) and don't buy into this "scare" thesis.
If you search the internet, you will find many reports of this problem, and I've read them because I always try to get both sides of the story.
Basically, if you grow food in the same soil with the same nutrients and the same amount of water, but change only the level of CO2, as in a greenhouse, you will find that a doubling of CO2 in the greenhouse will result in a 30% increase in plant growth, or biomass.
However, when analysing the nutrient value of such food, such as rice, for example, it has been found that the uptake of nutrients by the rice, and the creation of proteins, does not match the total increase in biomass.
Greenhouse data is seldom applicable to what happens out in the real world. It may be useful data for those that cultivate in greenhouses or hydroponic farms but it's doubtful that it applies to field crops which are the biggies in agriculture.
In other word, the carbohydrate biomass increase of, say, 30%, may be matched by only a 20% increase in protein and micronutrients. There's still an over all increase in protein and micronutrient compared with the rice grown in lower levels of CO2, but it's not as great as the increase in carbohydrates.
This is useful information for anyone interested in nutrition. However, the solution is not to reduce CO2 levels, at great expense, but to add more minerals to the soil, at less expense. Got it?
It is extremely doubtful that you will see field corn, soybeans, or wheat with a 30% increase in biomass as a result of increased CO2 levels. Kudzu maybe so.
