Hi KC. The pine trees I see around here are vicious! They kill anything that grows under them, carpeting young flora with pine needles and gooey stuff.
Pines seem to do okay in really cold climates, keeping their frost-resistant chlorophyll reactors going, while broad-leaved plants have given up until spring.
With more CO2, as you say, the pines will be really happy. Canada will be able to produce megatons of timber at low cost. But that will be just when paper goes out of fashion in favour of pixelation, which is bad luck for pulp wood producers.
In the wild, I suppose pines will increase their range at the expense of the more leafy plants whose great CO2 sucking techniques will be irrelevant in the richer CO2 atmosphere. But as far as crops are concerned, they will ALL do better with carbon dioxide enrichment. The world's productive capacity, with genetic engineering, soil nutrition and CO2 bonus, will be at record levels. Hunger will continue to be a political issue, not a Malthusian issue.
Everyone who wants to will be able to eat meat [instead of being stuck with cheap plant crops such as potatoes, rice, wheat, millet and barley].
Mqurice |
