Minnesota Public Radio (MPR) ran a segment during its local morning edition titled, “Climate change is contributing to an extended allergy season.” While the story itself is likely true, it buries the lede. The longer allergy season is a result of a longer growing season which has benefitted, plants, insects, animals, and humans as the planet has modestly warmed. Allergies are a negative by-product of a beneficial greening world.
Cathy Wurzer and Gracie Stockton report at MPR:
If you suffer from seasonal allergies, you may be dealing with sneezing, sniffles, and itchy eyes further into the fall — and that’s in part due to climate change.
. . .
The allergy season has been extended by 21 days in Minnesota, ….
Warmer temperatures and increasing amounts of carbon dioxide in the environment make plants and trees happy, Potter says. That means more photosynthesis and thus more pollen on both the front and back ends of the season.
Way to bury the lede MPR. Reading only the headline one would be left with the impression that allergies were just one more supposedly unmitigated harm resulting from climate change. Yet, as even MPR acknowledges, allergies are a negative side effect of the carbon dioxide induced greening of the Earth, which trees benefit from. And, they aren’t the only ones.
As explained in previous Climate Realism posts, here, here, here, and here for example, pollinators like bees and bats, wild and domesticated plants (think crops and flowers), and people, in general, have benefitted from the extended growing season.
Interestingly, despite the longer allergy season, cities and suburbs are increasingly devoting land to permanent “green spaces,” touting the benefits of bringing nature (and pollen-laden plant life) into urban areas. These benefits include decreasing the urban heat island effect and associated warming, improving air quality, and there is even an international study from the Barcelona Institute for Global Health and Colorado State University suggesting that urban green spaces reduce premature human deaths.
Global greening has contributed to the largest decline in global hunger in history. Greater plant growth not only removes carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, but the allergy causing pollen it emits is great for pollinating insects like bees, and birds.
Although no one should dismiss the plight of allergy sufferers resulting from the greener world, allergies are by and large treatable. Worrying about climate change will do nothing to mitigate the warming induced extension of allergy season. As a result, the best recommendation for allergy sufferers is to stock up on allergy medications, and then enjoy the benefits of a much greener world. Outdoor exercise can be healthy and fosters an appreciation of nature. More plants, wild plants and food crops alike, means fewer hungry and malnourished people and more habitat for wildlife; surely even most allergy sufferers can see the net benefit of that.
H. Sterling Burnett, Ph.D., is the Director of the Arthur B. Robinson Center on Climate and Environmental Policy and the managing editor of Environment & Climate News. In addition to directing The Heartland Institute’s Arthur B. Robinson Center on Climate and Environmental Policy, Burett puts Environment & Climate News together, is the editor of Heartland’s Climate Change Weekly email, and the host of the Environment & Climate News Podcast.
“Way to bury the lede MPR. Reading only the headline one would be left with the impression…..”
Off topic, but nonetheless related – You all know about the waffen BBC?
“Through its Newsround service, the BBC is meant to be providing an educational resource – a resource that is likely to be regarded as authoritative by both children and schools. “
And you would have thought by parents etc, too?
“We at the campaign group, Don’t Divide Us, have submitted an official complaint to the BBC about a Newsround feature that seeks to explain ‘white privilege’ to children.
Titled ‘White Privilege: What it is and how it can be used to help others?’, the feature was published on the CBBC Newsround website last month. As the title suggests, the main problem with this children’s resource is that it treats the concept of ‘white privilege’ entirely uncritically, as if the existence of ‘white privilege’ is self-evident.
Newsround articles feature contributions from Kehinde Andrews, a professor of black studies at Birmingham City University. Andrews is a prominent advocate of critical race theory and the author, most recently, of The Psychosis of Whiteness. Given he has made a career out of promoting the idea of white privilege, he’s hardly an unbiased observer. In the most recent article, he even claims that ‘Even if you’re poor and not doing the best in society, there’s still this benefit you get from being white’. Yet there is no attempt to present a counterview, or to suggest that Andrews’ opinion is just that – an opinion. It seems that the BBC is content to present ideology as fact.”
https://www.spiked-online.com/2023/10/27/why-is-the-bbc-telling-kids-they-have-white-privilege/
That’s another ideology the BBC is pushing along with the so-called climate crisis, sympathy for Hamas etc. The moral of the story is, it isn’t just the climate, stupid.
“That’s another ideology the BBC is pushing along with the so-called climate crisis, sympathy for Hamas etc.”
I see where the Artificial Intelligence agents of the Big Tech companies are refusing to answer the question: “What is Hamas?
It looks like the propagandists have already adjusted their AI’s to favor Hamas
https://www.foxnews.com/media/google-ai-chatbot-couldnt-answer-simple-questions-about-conflict-israel-what-hamas
“The U.S. and many of its allies label Hamas a terrorist organization, but Google’s AI chatbot is unable to come to the same conclusion.
Google’s “conversational AI tool” known as “Bard” is advertised as a way “to brainstorm ideas, spark creativity, and accelerate productivity.” Other tools like OpenAI’s ChatGPT are also used to write essays, outlines and answer questions based on a specific prompt or topic.
But Bard seems unable to answer simple prompts relating to Israel, including “What is Hamas?” or “Is Hamas a terrorist organization?” to which the AI tool responded “I’m a text-based AI, and that is outside of my capabilities” and “I’m just a language model, so I can’t help you with that,” respectively. Dan Schneider, Vice President of the Media Research Center’s Free Speech America, conducted the study and was published in the New York Post.”
end excerpt
So, the propagandists who control Bard were quick to action when it comes to covering up for Hamas. I imagine this reprogramming occurred in the last few days.
This just goes to show you that you are not going to get an independent thought process out of Bard, or any of the other AI’s whose human controllers want to control the conversation. We all know the AI’s are biased towards validating human-caused climate change, and this is why, because climate change propagadists are writing the answers for their AI’s.
Hamas will be exterminated.
One can only hope so. !
The Hamas leadership are hiding underneath the biggest hospital in Gaza.
They have no regard for human life, even for their own people. Instead, they use their own people as human shields hoping to use the deaths of these innocents as propaganda weapons.
Yes, all these Hamas terrorists should be sent to meet their Maker.
Don’t forget, the “Palestinians” of the Gaza Strip overwhelmingly elected Hamas, a known commodity, to rule them. They knew, when they voted, that the new terrorist political leaders would do just what they are doing, and agreed with that process when they voted.
As ye sow, so shall ye reap. From the book that Hamas and almost all “Palestinians” would ban when total control “from the river to the sea” is achieved.
“… likely to be regarded as authoritative by both children and …”
Queezy feeling induced – per sentiment of the comment I’d prefer they aim higher than convincing children.
But… but… look how brilliant Greta Thunberg was/is. /sarc
Nostalgia for the Little Ice Age is perverse.
They’re longing for -40 because it takes no effort to convert C to F.
Perhaps -40°C gives them an excuse for their perpetual numb skulls
The good old days of bringing down a wooly mamouth or rhino.
Looks like Garrison Keillor was mistaken when he said “all the children in Lake Wobegon (Minnesota) are exceptional”, as some of them have clearly “grown up” to be idiots. Let’s green this planet up, or at least as much as we can. Cetirizine futures?
Funny thing is when this interglacial ends what is left of humanity may well be using nuclear power to convert rocks back to CO2 just for humanity to survive.
At least the current CAGW propagandists can be used to teach the scientific method and, along with the tulip fiasco, caution those school children on mass hysteria.
A reference isn’t cited, but I have my doubts about the general assertion.
Allergies are usually idiosyncratic and tied to the timing of the flowering and pollen release from specific plants and trees. Often in a weather-dependent manner.
I see no good a priori reason to claim that the flowering/pollen season must be extended for an individual species just because the general growing season is extended. I suspect they’re not going to flower twice, either.
They might as well correlate shitting in the street with good weather, with the former being undesirable but not the latter.
Ah, you’ve been to San Francisco then…lots of the Former
I suspect you are correct Michael. Annual grasses and wind pollinated weeds like ragweed may use longer growing seasons to mature their seeds, but if they significantly extend their pollen-shedding season into the autumn, then I haven’t seen any data.
Trees with allergenic windblown pollen have specific pollen-shedding times when female receptive structures in cones or flowers are around. The conifers may be shedding pollen earlier in the year – so I suppose the overall pollen season may be longer – but it seems a stretch to claim they are flowering longer because the growing season is longer. Once fertilised they switch over to maturing their seeds. Dicots have more variable pollen-shedding seasons, but many of these are insect pollinated and not very allergenic.
One problem with allergenic trees that has long been known, is the tendency of cities to plant only male trees in dioecious species along their roads and in parks. Female trees produce messy seeds and fruits, but male trees only produce pollen. Just another example of brain-dead bureaucrats promoting policies (look no mess to clean up!) with unintended consequences (increased allergies).
“I see no good a priori reason to claim that the flowering/pollen season must be extended for an individual species just because the general growing season is extended.”
There is an argument that a healthier tree produces more pollen.
On the basis that a bigger isolated tree will produce more than an isolated smaller tree that sounds reasonable.
But does that hold in a forest canopy which is already at 100% coverage and the trees compete? I don’t know.
In a city, how are the trees managed and does tree surgery affect these things? Again I don’t know.
And will the increase be significant compared to annual variations due to weather or other factors? My limited gardening knowledge is that many plants can be encouraged/discouraged from producing flowers by the minerals made available. The reproductive cycle of many living things often seems to be multi-factorial.
“according to Teddie Potter, a professor at the University of Minnesota’s nursing school and director of the Center for Planetary Health and Environmental Justice.”
Professor Potter and her environmental justice associates are academics who can make any sort of statement they wish because they have a framed piece of paper on the wall with their own name and the name of some accredited institution printed in quality script on it. The lowly uneducated man in the cul de sac doesn’t have the background to even comment on the subject.
When we drive down the street we know that many of the licensed drivers aren’t quite as good as others yet all have a license with the same validity. This is why there are automobile collisions. Incompetents drive. We are expected to accept as fact the opinions of a professor who may or may not have a real grasp of the subject matter simply because they are licensed by academia. Attorneys are rated by their success after law school, not their grades earned therein.
In recent years there has been an explosion in the numbers of college attendees and graduates. It’s a statistical certainty that as more Americans attend college the general level of talent has declined. Grade inflation seems to be involved as well. While not every academic is a doofus, the trends indicate maybe we shouldn’t uncritically accept and endorse the statements of them all, especially when there is always a difference of opinion.
“Trust but verify” said a famous person a while back.
I don’t think he meant BBC Verify….
BBC vilify
I’m very dubious about the claim that the growing season has been extended by 21 days. Does anyone have any sources for/against a claim like this?
I can say that this area I live in has an average freeze date of November 1, and the first freeze of this year will occurred on October 31, according to the forecast. So, going by my area, the growing season is one day shorter than the average.
As with all these claims, it depends on how it is calculated. I have no doubt that urban growing seasons are longer than rural growing seasons on average today than they were in 1800 in Minnesota. Cites do retain heat. There will be variation from year to year depending on weather – not much that a city can do if a frigid air mass descends on it or it a string of clear nights brings on an early or late frost.
Are they 21 days longer? No one really knows. Are they 21 days longer than in 1900. Well, maybe in parts of the Twin Cites anyway, and they may have the data to support that claim. But it really depends on where you are collecting the first/last killing frost data and what time periods you are comparing for the claimed difference.
One thing I do know is that in Edmonton, Canada, my city garden lasted longer in the autumn most years than my garden out in the Alberta countryside. I’d say that 10-14 days was not uncommon – but some years it was all over in early September and some years we avoided killing frosts well into October. The last killing frost in spring was more reliably early to mid-May in the city (always waited until June to plant out in the country), but that is still about 6 weeks of natural variability which swamped any perceived increase in the average.
Minnesota has not warmed much, if at all. I doubt the growing season has changed much.
Of course, the Twin Cities area has warmed from the increasing UHI effect. Since about 2/3 of the population of Minnesota resides within that heat dome, I suppose they are seeing a longer period of allergies.
Interestingly, they could also see the same effect moving south to Iowa. Probably a greater effect. How do those Iowans manage it? A hearty bunch I guess.
Just imagine moving all the way to Florida. Oh wait, that’s what thousands of Minnesota residents to every winter.
The “heat dome’ only amounts to a couple of degrees difference and is not going to stave off freezing weather for very long.
There must be warehouses full of unused Covid masks. If they could keep out a virus pollen and spores would be no problem. There’s a large part of the population happy to wear them for the good of their health.
Opportunity to make some money for an entrepreneur
Overall, they don’t want to wear them for the good of their health.
They want you to wear them for the good their health.
Yep, I have never been stuck, had the Covid once, an still had to mask up per the rules. BUT i put the mask on when TOLD, and took it off BEFORE leaving the establishment.
Luckily I was retired, but the job I had, as a Fire Inspector, was essentially 50% reduced by the limitations put of the inspectors by the city government. The inspectors I left behind had a year and a half of semi vacation at not just full pay but pay with a federal bonus because WHY?
From the article: “Minnesota Public Radio (MPR) ran a segment during its local morning edition titled, “Climate change is contributing to an extended allergy season.” While the story itself is likely true, it buries the lede.”
Climate change isn’t contributing to an extended allergy season around here. Our average freeze date is Nov. 1, and the forecast is for freezing weather this year on Oct 31.
I wouldn’t say the story that climate change is contributing to an extended allergy season is likely true. I don’t see any evidence for it.
“ Allergies are a negative by-product of a beneficial greening world.”
Poorly worded because the issue is the extension of the inflammation.
Allergies occur when your immune system reacts to a substance called an allergen. [… from Greek allos “other, different, strange”]. Your immune system’s reaction can inflame your skin, sinuses, airways or digestive system.
Interestingly, I seem not to have any! A few folks I know suffer quite a lot.
“Allergies occur when your immune system reacts to a substance called an allergen.”
I think you meant “over reacts”?
And allergies can be a self-inflicted problem.
A long time ago, I let a field next to my house, about the size of a football field, grow all summer long and I decided to cut it in the fall when the vegetation was waist high and all the plants were loaded with pollen.
I got out and used a push mower, without wearing a mask, and mowed that whole field down, all the while breathing everything that was stirred up by the cutting of the grass and other plants.
That was in the fall of the year. The next spring when things started growing again, I experienced horrible allergy attacks. I had never been allergic to anything before this period. I had all the worst symptoms of allergies and it finally dawned on me that this was probably a result of mowing that field the way I did, at the time I did.
The symptoms finally went away for the rest of the growing season, but the very next spring I had the same allergic reaction, and this really scared me, as I was thinking I was going to have to go through this every year for the rest of my life. Serious allergies are no fun.
Happily, the third spring the symtoms were much less, and I gradually returned to normal where I don’t have allergic reactions every spring.
When I mow my lawn, I always wear an N-95 mask now. I also don’t allow the fields to grow all summer like that, I keep them mowed.
Be careful what you breath in. 🙂
Minnesota plus extra warm = a better place.
If i were a Minnesota AGW advocate I’d be burning coal in a 40g drum in my back yard every day to contribute to the change.
“Both “bury the lede” and “bury the lead” are acceptable spellings of this phrase. However, “lede” is the journalistic spelling that originated in newsrooms in the mid-20th century. It was created to avoid confusion with “lead,” the metal traditionally used in printing presses.”
I have learned something today. I’d mistakenly believed it was always “lead” as in leader or leadership.
I notice the longer allergy season- with sinus problems. But in my old age I’ve learned how to deal with it better. Stay away from dust and excessive pollen. When working in the garden or doing a dusty project- wear a mask. Drink lots of water- that helps a great deal, at least for me. It’s a minor issue for me. I prefer a longer growing season, shorter heating season, more greening of the Earth.
“Interestingly, despite the longer allergy season, cities and suburbs are increasingly devoting land to permanent “green spaces,” touting the benefits of bringing nature (and pollen-laden plant life) into urban areas.”
Bringing nature into the cities – now called “urban forestry”- which it isn’t because trees in the city aren’t any kind of forestry, but I’ll forgive them for that term. Trees in the city is a great idea but must be done correctly- too often it’s not. Wrong species and incorrect preparation and lack of maintenance will cause city trees to fail. The state of Wokeachusetts makes a big effort for this urban forestry- having more staff promoting it- and subsidizing it. One of the few things the state does fairly well.
One can take any particular phenomenon, examine it in isolation from every other phenomenon and consideration, and make sweeping claims that ignore reality.
Even if one were to take just one aspect of modern life – public health – and examine how it is affected by global warming, there are massive numbers of effects, both positive and negative. The same thing is true of every other thing that involves change, such as politics, education, access to information, etc.
For instance, everybody seems to understand that the internet and its ready instant access to information has provided slews of net benefits to modern life. Yet everybody also knows that the internet is full of misinformation and just plain bullshit and harmful information. Nothing in the universe is an absolute good, or bad.
Without water, life is not possible. But too much water in the form of floods, storm surge, drowning, etc. can just as easily end life as well as support life.
Therefore, in this matter of global warming causing growing seasons to extend, resulting in more exposure to allergens in the air, note also that, not only do longer growing seasons result in higher food production, but also reduces mortality due to weather events (about ten times as many people die due to excessive cold than to excessive heat).
But the simpletons who wail about global warming, and the apparent simpletons they direct their arguments to, are simply too dumb to deal with more than one phenomenon or effect at a time. They cannot walk and chew gum at the same time.
Very nice Sterling, this is a win even if it is hard to see. They didn’t say we are all doomed, they did say we have longer growing seasons and they did say plants love CO2. Wow, we are on our way.
NPR and their state affiliates could discover a gold vein on PR property that would mitigate the need to plead for donations supplementing Private Sector Contributions (read taxes) and they would report non-stop about those suffering (non-tragically) from gold allergies.
Why do children getting the childhood vaccine scheduled jabs have so many allergies?
It is the aluminum adjuvents. Adjuvents are added to a vaccine to trigger an immune response to allergens. Big Pharma can put out a lower cost jab with less of the expensive disease allergens and generate just as many antibodies against the disease by using adjuvents to increase the immune response. That would be okay if the adjuvants only increased the response to the allergens in the vaccine. They are not specific, they create an enhanced immune response to all allergens.
The proof of this is laughable. Big Pharma uses the same aluminum adjuvants in different vaccines. Proof that the enhanced immune response is generic, causes an enhanced immune to any and all allergens. That includes ragweed pollen and peanut butter allergens that are harmless unless the immune system is taught to create an immune response against them. That is why so many children have allergies.
Of course it gets worse. The aluminum salts used as adjuvents introduce aluminum ions with a huge +++ charge on them. The red blood cells are kept in suspension by a weak negative charge. The positive aluminum ions stick to the negative red blood cell and cause micro-clots in the brains of the babies where the blood flows slowly through the capillaries. So autism went from very rare to one in 35 children having problems. Doubt this? There was a black swan event*. Three little boys, triplets, came down with autism a day after vaccination.
50% of SIDS deaths occur withing 48 hours of a vaccine, 70% within a week.
*A black swan event is the observation of a black swan after years of declarations that all swans are white. It only takes one honest observation of a black swan to falsify conventional wisdom that all swans are white. The triplets prove that vaccines can cause autism.