One of the benefits of kerfuffle about AGW and emissions is that we are learning a lot about natural emissions. For example, we have only recently learned that plants emit methane. No one had ever thought to test for that before. It was assumed not to occur since it violated some priors about how methane is produced. It seems that they also emit aspirin.

Researchers had not previously thought to look for methyl salicylate in a forest, and the NCAR team found the chemical by accident. They set up specialized instruments last year in a walnut grove near Davis, Calif., to monitor plant emissions of certain volatile organic compounds (VOCs).

These hydrocarbon compounds are important because they can combine with industrial emissions to affect pollution, and they can also influence local climate.

When the NCAR scientists reviewed their measurements, they found to their surprise that the emissions of VOCs included methyl salicylate.

The levels of methyl salicylate emissions increased dramatically when the plants, which were already stressed by a local drought, experienced unseasonably cool nighttime temperatures followed by large daytime temperature increases.

Instruments mounted on towers about 100 feet above the ground measured up to 0.025 milligrams of methyl salicylate rising from each square foot of forest per hour.

Karl and his colleagues speculate that the methyl salicylate has two functions. One of these is to stimulate plants to begin a process known as systemic acquired resistance, which is analogous to an immune response in an animal.

This helps a plant to both resist and recover from disease. The methyl salicylate also may be a mechanism whereby a stressed plant communicates to neighboring plants, warning them of the threat. Researchers in laboratories have demonstrated that a plant may build up its defenses if it is linked in some way to another plant that is emitting the chemical.

Now that the NCAR team has demonstrated that methyl salicylate can build up in the atmosphere above a stressed forest, scientists are speculating that plants may use the chemical to activate an ecosystem-wide immune response.

"These findings show tangible proof that plant-to-plant communication occurs on the ecosystem level," says NCAR scientist Alex Guenther, a co-author of the study. "It appears that plants have the ability to communicate through the atmosphere."

It seems obvious to me that plant communities are in constant, intimate communication but it isn't a common view, probably because it is chemical rather than visual or auditory and people have a poorly developed and under utilized sense of smell. People are likely to ignore smells or mask them with perfumes rather than gleaning information from them. Perhaps it is that smells are too much information. We really don't want to know what chemicals are telling us.

Whatev. Plant communication is done not only by chemicals wafting through the air, they are also seeping through the soil. When we add in the better understood response of plants to visual information - i.e. light, their source of energy - it makes me suspect that there may be more response to sound - vibrations - than we currently perceive.

I can can wax SF and speculate that there may be a sort of slow but powerful intelligence of sorts that results from the inexorable state changes stepped through by plant communities as they in effect do calculations driven by environmental inputs. 42. The idea gets richer when we consider the epigenetic effects of environmental stressors on plants, some of which are heritable and cumulative over generations. This is one of the reasons that I mock naive scientists who do abrupt change type studies and then claim to have learned something. (see Twaddle)

And, Animals are laughing at us.

Update:

Tangentially . . .

The Montreal water treatment plant dumps 90 times the critical amount of certain estrogen products into the river. It only takes one nanogram (ng) of steroids per liter of water to disrupt the endocrinal system of fish and decrease their fertility. . .

The presence and effects of estrogen residues on aquatic wildlife are well documented. However, this research is unique because it didn't only consider natural hormones and those used in oral contraceptives – it also included products used in hormone therapy that is prescribed to menopausal women. Data indicates that 128 million contraceptive pills and 107 million doses of hormone therapy are consumed every year in Quebec. . .

He also stresses that 80 to 90 percent of antidepressants remain in the water after treatment. These molecules can have a variety of effects on aquatic wildlife. . . . ozone treatment could destroy these molecules.

I wonder what this says to plants?