Menacing ‘famine weed’ grows more toxic as carbon levels soar

Re:Menacing ‘famine weed’ grows more toxic as carbon levels ... by CodeWriter23 on Sunday June 13, 2021 @11:52AM (#27493585)

“Julie Wolf at the US Department of Agriculture in Beltsville, Maryland, and her colleagues conjectured that surging carbon-dioxide levels in the atmosphere could have contributed to the weed’s success by providing building blocks for the plant to ramp up its parthenin production.”

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Re:Menacing ‘famine weed’ grows more toxic as carbon levels ... by jzebedee on Sunday June 13, 2021 @11:54AM (#27493609)

Only if you leave out the paragraph directly afterwards, where they tested it experimentally:

> The researchers grew two types of famine weed, one invasive and the other non-invasive, and exposed them to the atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide recorded in 1950 and 2020. In the invasive variety, parthenin concentrations peaked at the highest carbon levels. The results suggest that modern levels of carbon dioxide have contributed to the noxious weed’s toxicity.

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Re:Menacing ‘famine weed’ grows more toxic as carbon levels ... by CodeWriter23 on Sunday June 13, 2021 @12:12PM (#27493785)

Thanks for pointing that out; I stopped reading at that point. They kind of buried the lede.

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Re:Menacing ‘famine weed’ grows more toxic as carbon levels ... by orf on Sunday June 13, 2021 @11:53AM (#27493601)

I think reading the article always helps.

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