Pollen at its worst

I have been telling my wife for the month of April that this has been the worst year for pollen since we moved here in 1984. At times I think I can feel the pollen in my eyes when I blink. Its something Atlantans have come to know (and hate!).  The yellow pine pollen is too big to cause allergies, but its pretty obnoxious when it gets in your eyes or on your car and when you fly into Atlanta early in April you can see the dome of yellow over our city. Go spring.

One day last week the pollen count hit 8000, which is the third highest count ever, the other two being the 8,163 recorded on March 19, 2012 and the record count of 9,367 on March 20, 2012. Even though they happened a year ago, this year is definitely worse for me.

Meanwhile, scientists are struggling to explain the slowing in the rise of worldwide temperatures. The average global temperature has fallen in the last two years, and is getting closer to the 100-year average. Greenhouse gases including CO2 are not decreasing, but the temperatures are. I have to wonder if the term "global cooling" will be in our future.

I was searching the other day and found this quote on one of those mis-information sites that have such a presence on the web:

As you increase CO₂, it tells the allergenic plants to produce more pollen to the tune of three to four times more, and the pollen itself, we think, may actually be more potent.

So, apparently CO2 is the culprit and its causing the allergenic plants to produce more of the much maligned pollen. Wait a second, how does the CO2 know which plants produce allergens? So now that carbon dioxide is not causing global warming it must be causing pollen. So when we find out this is a bunch of crap we'll have to call it pollen-gate.  A few years ago climategate exposed problems in the way research groups were using weather data.