“Poison ivy, poison oak and poison sumac plants are becoming larger and stronger, a trend that’s been developing over recent years, according to researchers. That may be a combination of the plant’s nature to cause more severe reactions over time and the increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere as a result of global warming.”
“Poison ivy, poison oak becoming stronger over time”
If there is one useful thing that Science Committe could do, it would be educating the public about poison ivy.
@Opcide
Do you have a link to the original paper cited by that news article? I am curious what they are using as their basis that the leaves are getting larger by 60% (which seems excessive) and that the oil is more potent.
Walter
This is the best I can do for you:
A slightly different article, stating that they don’t know what global warming would do specifically to poison ivy:
You might also have a look at the bibliography at the end of the following report:
Thanks! I am mostly curious what size and where they obtained their comparison data for stating that the difference has occurred over 50 years. I will take a look at these and see if I can answer my question.
I have found two frequent causes of problems with a disturbing number of modern research papers and their reporting. The first is the reporting, where the author frequently seems to misunderstand or misparaphrase the research. Which is not surprising. But in my experience a disturbing trend in modern research papers is a distinct failure to perform the basic mathematical analysis (particularly the statistical analysis) properly.
In this case, I would be really surprised to find that they have sufficient data to make a claim that either the leaves are 60% larger (based upon the relatively small increases in CO2 in our atmostphere, or that the toxin is significantly more potent then it was 50 years ago. They may well be correct, but I am a skeptic! 
No harm in being a skeptic of published reports. According to other research, most published research has fundamental flaws that invalidate their conclusions.
Yes, I have read some of those as well.
This is why I buy farm-sized jugs of Honcho (Roundup/Glyphosate).
Poison ivy is evil and must be dee-stroyed.
I know someone who reviews research grant proposals. It is disappointing how often he finds fairly basic flaws in the proposed experimental method, and failures to account for and isolate the effects of already well characterized mechanisms.