It is now well established that since the beginning of the 20th century, the growing season worldwide has grown longer. The amount of extra time each season varies from country to country, but in general the growing season is longer by approximately 2 weeks.
Indigenous plants tend to not adapt to the longer growing season as well as exotic or non-native plants do. This factor results in the exotic or invasive species of plants to flower earlier, and to take in nutrients that otherwise native plants would consume.
Purple loosestrife is a good example of this in action, as well as taking up more space and overwhelming other plants, purple loosestrife also chokes out many plants that wildlife tend to like which further exacerbates the problem.
It is well known that invasive species of plants are more adaptable than native species of plants, they take advantage of climate change while other plants don’t. Nobody could have predicted the effects these plants would have on wildlife and nature in general.
Plants are not the only type of invasive species that is turning heads. Insects are also causing a lot of damage, and particular care needs to be addressed to this growing problem which is going out of control.
Climate change is making the land more suitable for the red imported fire ant which is gaining new territory rapidly.
You wouldn’t know it but poison ivy is also becoming more of a pest. Poison ivy is becoming more toxic because of the high levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.This article would be amiss if we didn’t mention the pine bark beetle which is responsible for killing billions of trees in the United States.
The pine bark beetle is venturing into new forests where it was previously too cold for them to go. As a result of their devastation they are also making the environment worse by killing billions of trees that produce oxygen. It is also well known that trees sweat to cool themselves just like humans do. Now that those trees are dead the solar radiation that was used to evaporate the tree sweat is now focused entirely on just warming the surface of the earth.
There is no easy fix to getting rid of these invasive species. It would seem that the only logical way to fix the problem would be to figure out a way to reverse climate change and global warming. One scientist proposed a sort of vacuum-like invention that could suck out all the greenhouse gases of the atmosphere. The result would cool the earth and the polar ice caps would stop thawing and things could eventually return to normal.
Instead of only looking at the problems climate change is creating, we need our scientists to also focus on a solution to tackling climate change at it’s source.