So how exactly are the terrors of global warming taking their toll on tomatoes? Well according to this article, they're not. The recent severe cold across North America has had the most drastic affect on the availability of this red delight. However, a battle against the tomato is not the only problem caused by harsh winters, studies suggest that power outages, travel disruptions, and injury are likely to be problematic during the cold season. Now, jokes aside perhaps CO2, the evil atmospheric agent of anthropogenic global warming, is having negative affects on tomatoes...well, no. Not at all, CO2 apparently helps tomatoes grow. Larger dry weight biomasses have been found in CO2 enriched gardens. So it would appear that the tomatoes will win this battle, however we may just have to cut back on tomato consumption until the crop returns to normal.
Tuesday, March 1, 2011
Global Warming vs. Tomatoes
So how exactly are the terrors of global warming taking their toll on tomatoes? Well according to this article, they're not. The recent severe cold across North America has had the most drastic affect on the availability of this red delight. However, a battle against the tomato is not the only problem caused by harsh winters, studies suggest that power outages, travel disruptions, and injury are likely to be problematic during the cold season. Now, jokes aside perhaps CO2, the evil atmospheric agent of anthropogenic global warming, is having negative affects on tomatoes...well, no. Not at all, CO2 apparently helps tomatoes grow. Larger dry weight biomasses have been found in CO2 enriched gardens. So it would appear that the tomatoes will win this battle, however we may just have to cut back on tomato consumption until the crop returns to normal.
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Thank you Mr. Holben for this wonderful blog posting. I must say that I did learn something new from this article, which is always good. I now know that if I wanted to be a tomatoe farmer than I should stock up on some CO2. I'm not sure how I'm going to do that, but anything is possible, right? It also seems like almost every article is about Global Warming these days. Job well done Nathan.
ReplyDeleteHonestly, I expected this post to be from Kate haha, she loves tomatoes. But this is very interesting, actually a interesting article about global warming
ReplyDeleteIt's interesting to see that even something simple as tomatoes are affected by global warming. It's probably not a big deal to a lot of people to cut back on how much tomatoes they eat so I don't see this as being such a big issue.
ReplyDeleteLol, i agree with Caitlin! This screams Kate. but otherwise, I must say that this is very informative and original. I've never heard of this before and it reminds me that we're not the only ones affected by global warming.
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