Study: Global plant growth surging alongside carbon dioxide (2017)
noaa.gov
noaa.gov
[0] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S037811271...
Some people seem to have the attitude that if you aren't saying something negative about an environmental topic, you shouldn't be saying anything.
That's complete bullshit. What's causing the distrust is lobbying by some of the largest industries in the world and major media companies making money hand over fist selling lies.
The fact that scientists disagree on details or some might hedge what they say so folks don't get the wrong idea I imagine has little to no ill effect in comparison.
No. Unless it was lobbyists that made my history books in school.
Still whenever I tried in the past to get an answer to why Greenland was so warm 1000 years ago I get labeled a shill.
It is somewhat maddening and absolutely not something that helps trust.
Same goes with how it is impossible to get raw numbers in any discussion.
probably a change in the strength of north atlantic thermohaline circulation.
that was a regional shift in local climate and not due to worldwide climate change. it isn't reflected in global proxies like antarctic ice cores.
hurricane activity in the atlantic basin increased, and its likely that la nina (cool) conditions persisted across the pacific.
it also may have caused draught that caused the collapse of the Maya civilization.
you probably get labelled a shill because you use it to cast doubt on anthropogenic causes of climate change and you argue that warmer temperatures benefited northern europe, while ignoring the drought and destruction of a civilization in central america.
Ironically you perfectly prove my point: it is impossible to seek information in progressive circles without getting to know the branding iron.
The other side welcomes everyone and presents their ideas politely.
And you wonder why people listen to them?
I'll spell it out: one side is possibly right but rather nasty if you don't agree immediately, the other is nice and patient even if they are wrong.
For me a big part of it comes from frustration that I (we, science) know the answer to things, and someone refuses to accept it.
We don't know everything of course. And most of the time the excuses use are illogical, paradoxical, or easily disproven, and yet the person refuses to understand that theatre wrong. Hence frustration.
I never feel frustrated if my child doesn't understand something or refuses to, because she's a child. But treating adults like children is condescending, hence frustration.
> The other side welcomes everyone and presents their ideas politely.
This is a huge problem. It's just like how people selling snake oil are fantastic listeners and make people feel welcomed and understood, just to sell them literal water disguised as medicine.
We are hardwired to trust nice people over logic of facts :/
I see it.
Just remember that each time you brand someone asking questions to you, you almost definitely won't win that person and there is a fair chance you drive them away.
Edit: Also, sometimes, like with the lab leak theory it turns out the questions weren't crackpot after all. I've seen no apologies from anyone over that either so I guess a fair number of those have learned a lesson too about who to talk to.
Hah my wife has been shoving off the lab leak thing at me, she said it was like that and I said nah at the beginning of the pandemic.
Our newspapers tell us the same, as well as reporting different opinions during the whole thing. We recognize opinion as opinion, not propaganda or fact.
Why are everyone on the net seemingly living with insane politics and media? And what is so hard about saying the words: "I don't know, yet.."
To me that seems to be a core problem in public discourse today. People have been conditioned by modernity to receive instant gratification. In the realm of information they want to know what is factual and what is not even when it is too early to draw conclusions. One can also see this in the whole Trump Russia scandal and before that the Iraq WMD fiasco. There was no "there" there (a phrase I hate btw.) But never the less people were led to believe there was by the manufacturers of "facts."
Online material we read like facts, even when it's opinion, we rarely check dates and don't think of the content as dated. Also anyone can publish anything, including deceptive texts, as the barrier to entry is much lower. The cost is next to free.
People also engage more actively with online material, internalizing anything, even when it's garbage and transitory.
As has been said here with social media, there's lack of quality controls, but also distrust in quality measures.
Somehow, I'm not convinced all the online material is worth reading, but the trick is how to make sure people engage in quality without reducing freedom and differing opinions.
Edit: unless of course if they have a time machine, but in that case we have a bigger problem.
This used to be true. In 1995 this was definitely true. But today it just isn't. Look at the primary promulgators of vaccine misinformation. They're not lobbyists for anyone, they're just amateurs who think they're smarter than they are.
You can point to plenty of similar stuff with republican partisans and Fox.
Both should be abhorrent equally to people who lean democrat as republican.
So who do you believe? For any sensible person the answer is obviously neither.
How about Fauci or the CDC?
The Street: So, why weren't we told to wear masks in the beginning?
Fauci: "Well, the reason for that is that we were concerned the public health community, and many people were saying this, were concerned that it was at a time when personal protective equipment, including the N95 masks and the surgical masks, were in very short supply. And we wanted to make sure that the people namely, the health care workers, who were brave enough to put themselves in a harm way, to take care of people who you know were infected with the coronavirus and the danger of them getting infected." [1]
If you believe Fauci, he lied, he said so himself. (For what he thought was the greater good, sure. It's very understandable and human error.) And in so doing undermined the trust there too pretty badly. Which comes at great cost.
Tell the truth people. Warts and all. Even if it provides some small amount of short term ammunition to liars, thieves, confidence tricksters and so on because the truth is the only weapon that works long-term. We see the consequences of not respecting that right now and its very worrying.
[1] https://www.thestreet.com/video/dr-fauci-masks-changing-dire...
Stop making excuses for it no matter who does it. It's wrong on Fox, on CNN, by Republican partisans, by Democrat partisans. It's equally wrong when done for ulterior motive by non-partisans.
Considering that climate scientists have seen their emails hacked, quote-mined, and used to produce climate FUD (not to mention global harassment campaign), I have to say nah, not really.
https://www.theguardian.com/theobserver/2019/nov/09/climateg...
I mean every year we keep pumping more carbon into the atmosphere, but unless biomass turns into coal, it is just a temporary buffer for carbon, right?
The IPCC predicts by 2100 the land is going to convert into a net source rather than sink of carbon -- so the positive feedback loops will exceed the negative feedback stabilizers.
The increase in biomass also comes at a decrease in nutrient density as well, so its not like this is magic sauce for croplands.
Thinking that controlling the narrative and lying for the “greater good” is corruption.
It is very easy to generate an opposition movement by turning a reason-driven effort into moral drum beating nonsense.
"Trust the science, and by the way, 'the science' won't ever publish real evidence that contradicts its beliefs" is why you get deniers that have very legitimate reasons to doubt people who tell them what's real and what isn't.
How do we fix this? Why is society having such a hard time processing things that aren't simple?
You simply have to stop optimizing for the lowest common denominator and push things out that you think some people won't understand.
Small children are perfectly capable of understanding very complex things, just ask a kid about pokemon or whatever kids are into these days and you'll be able to find huge pockets of complexity all over the place.
Treat people like they're dumb and can't understand anything that doesn't fit into a headline though... and they'll get accustomed to that.
The biggest targets should be news room editors trying to sell ads.
Is there anything else you're intentionally keeping quiet about?
That is going to backfire terribly on you. The only thing worse than sharing information that you deem "unhelpful" is being caught hiding it.
These are reports based on peer-reviewed scientific papers, that yes sometimes have to discount and dispute eachother. The presence of conflicting information does not change the overall picture of greenhouse gases like CO2 which can be tested in any simple lab. It does not change how solar input has increased over millions of years, making the planet much more sensitive to warming due to greenhouse effects.
Demo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kwtt51gvaJQ
If you put water on the stove and max the temperature, it is not hard to predict you don't want to keep your hand in that water for too long.
This is not about discounting or disputing information, this is about intentionally hiding it.
"Those of us who understand these issues aren't going out of our way to provide an excuse for dissonance to the masses or worse, easily misrepresented ammunition for the talking heads."
They clearly stated they are involved in research and are actively not sharing information.
Anyways, no poster or researcher ever owed you anything. If you want information, you have the responsibility to seek it out yourself. What the poster thinks about could very well be false and unverified information, so may not be the gold you seek.
When seeking knowledge about this, dismissing peer-reviewed research and experts would lean heavily over to Dunning-Kruger effect. Why would so many researchers be so stupid as to overlook simple effects, or collaborate in some elaborate scheme. After so many decades of verified results, I would rather ask who are feeding people misinformation and discounting credible research without substantial proof and debunked claims [1]? I would be very sceptical of those who seek to distract for personal gain. People are also inclined to take in information that is somehow reassuring, moreso than factual.
There are research I've been following for many years, ie. Henrik Svensmark's papers looked promising. But the research don't explain the added accumulating warming after 1930's and the funding and reasoning is looking suspect and fail to be leading. It would be nice though, if some of the results can be shown to dampen effects of CO2.
But I'm no expert either, so will have to trust the consensus of those who work with this deeply in the field, though also read other sources. Both with pinches of salt.
Anyways, my main point is, please don't take random online posts too seriously as to think they represent the scope of credible researcher work.
And regardless, any effect that increased plant growth rates provide is already factored into our runaway atmospheric carbon rate.
Plant growth by itself is not a carbon sink. It just adds to the "buffer size" for the short-term carbon cycle. For some of that carbon to be "sunk" it has to either be removed and used/stored in a way that doesn't put that carbon back into the atmosphere, or transformed into long-term stable humic and vulvic substances, or buried in an anaerobic environment under pressure so it'll eventually turn into petroleum.
Also the CO2 fertilization effect also has negative consequences... enough so that it's really far from clear whether it's a net postive, even a small one. For one thing it's one of the reasons why modern food has significantly lower nutrient density (plants, including crop plants are growing faster, but the additional mass is almost pure carbohydrates, very little additional proteins, minerals, etc.). And in the tropical rainforests, the plants that are most benefiting from CO2 fertilization are fast-growing vines, and they are literally choking off tree growth (there have been papers published about this).
- https://www.nature.com/articles/nature00926
- https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/j.1461-0248...
Second, doubling of gas concentration in a system as large as an entire planet should be mind boggling. The fact that it isn't means you aren't thinking about it hard enough. Imagine if the ocean suddenly had twice as much salt, or if there was suddenly twice as much water, or if there were suddenly twice as many cars on the road. These would all be pretty amazing events.
From 1 to 2 is a 100% increase while from 20 to 21 is a 5% increase.
The concentration of salt in the Ocean is roughly 4% while the concentration of CO2 in air is about 0.4% (400 ppm)...
"Forest stand growth dynamics in Central Europe have accelerated since 1870 due to a rise in temperature, extended growing seasons, and other components of climate change. Based on wood samples from the oldest existing experimental plots in Central Europe, we show that the dominant tree species Norway spruce (Picea abies (L.) H.Karst.), Scots pine (Pinus sylvestris L.), European beech (Fagus sylvatica L.), and sessile oak (Quercus petraea (Mattuschka) Liebl.) exhibit a significant decrease in wood density since more than 100 years. While stand and trees grow faster with respect to wood volume, we can show that wood density decreased by 8–12% since 1900. These results object a naïve direct transformation of volume growth trends into an accelerated biomass production. Since 1900, stand biomass increment increased 9–24 percentage points less compared to volume increment (29–100% increase reduces to 20–76%). For a given stem diameter and annual ring width, tree stability against windthrow, wood strength, energy content and C sequestration are even reduced under recent conditions. The generally decreased late wood density, partly going along with an increased early wood fraction, suggests the observed extension of the growing season and fertilization effect of dry deposition as the main causes. Our results indicate that current increased wood volume growth rates must not be straightforwardly converted into sequestrated C and biomass harvest potentials assuming historic values for wood density. This should be taken into account in monitoring, modeling, and utilization of carbon and biomass in forests under global change."
"A new study published in the April 6 edition of the journal Nature concludes that as emissions of carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels have increased since the start of the 20th century, plants around the world are utilizing 30 percent more carbon dioxide (CO2), spurring plant growth."
...by the way perhaps not more than we thought (dunno?), but more than the 19th century.
30% is a decent point estimate for 20-76%.
It could also be seen as a bad thing. Forest fire season in the PNW is a lot worse in years with a wetter spring followed by a dry summer. This is because the extra moisture encourages thicker brush growth, which then dries up and serves as tinder and fuel for the fires later in the season.
I would think extra plant growth in dry areas combined with any sort of warming trend, would end up acting similarly.
Also, the article itself doesn't mention trees even a single time. Only the study it references does.
One such model is aptly named TRIFFID [1]
[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_cycle
[1] https://www.nature.com/articles/35041539
Edit: non-paywall link to TRIFFID paper [3]
https://www.azimuthproject.org/azimuth/show/Carbon+dioxide+f...
> The details of CO2 fertilization matter a lot. It could make the difference between their original plan being roughly good enough… and being nowhere near good enough!
Check the page for more info on young vs old trees, nitrogen limits, etc.
There's also this page, which has an even more pessimistic take.
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2004/11/co_2-...
Anyway after reading this I think I can answer my original questions a bit: Yes increased plant growth is a critical and part of climate change models. IPCC is predicting an increase of 6G tons of carbon consumed by plants by 2050 and without this we could not hit our carbon goals. Hopefully this research shows that our models are not overestimating here.
- lack of water
- too hot
- too cold
- not enough light (ground level of the rain forest?)
- lack of soil nutrients (rain forest?)
- too much salt
I'll add CO2 levels to my mental list, a constraint that's independent of location.
1. https://earthwiseagriculture.net/grower-s-toolbox/law-of-min...
You also have to account for insects and microbes, which can either totally destroy a plant or help, in the case of soil fungi, earthworms or pollinators.
Too much light can be a problem, too. Not only from heat, but simply overexposure.
> - lack of water
> - too hot
> - too cold
Hmm. There are lots of examples where plants do not grow in an area that (1) has a lot of water; and (2) is very cold. Are there any examples of a place that is too hot, as opposed to too dry?
Even the cold examples might be driven more by a lack of liquid water than by temperature requirements.
So do we have an example of a place that is?
For a given species of plant, yes.
For cold-adapted plants, like those in the arctic, too warm of a winter could mean carbohydrate exhaustion due the increased metabolism, which would mean spring starvation. With climate change we see such species retreating to higher elevation or toward the poles.
Google [corn yield too hot].
Or more helpfully, it's a problem with a plant experiencing temperatures outside its natural range. There's a huge difference between "the temperature here is too hot for plants to grow" and "the temperature here is too hot for cold-weather plants to grow".
So we now have a sample size of two :).
Certainly green in Denver this year but it’s because we have received 50% more rain than usual.
1. https://www.acs.org/content/acs/en/climatescience/climatesci...
Another negative feedback is the increased intake of CO2 by oceans, through difussion. Also the plankton consumes more CO2.
It makes sense, think about it: if the planet didn't have negative feedbacks, absolutely any event would potentially cause a runoff through positive feedback in warmings and throw the climate out of balance. Even something like a vulcanic eruption or forest fire in the middle ages: without the negative feedback, CO2 would cause warming, which causes more water, which causes warming...there must be some serious negative feedback loops, which is why we've almost doubled the warming effect of CO2 with (so far) very small influences on the climate.
But is that statement reasurring in any way?
No, because in between the limits of those feedback loops there's enormous potential for devastation and human suffering.
These levels of CO2 are pretty low on a geological scale, increases to 400-800ppm CO2 have not caused a runaway global warming a la Venus ever before. More of the Earh's life as a living planet was spent above 1000 ppm than under.
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Henning-Haeupler/public...
In fact, there was a period in the past when the Earth warmed 10 degree Celsius (18 F) in 10 years, and there was no runaway global warming.
There will be warming, there will be positive and negative feedbacks, we don't know for sure how big each will be.
The true pity is that we're in the midst of a mass extinction event. Between pollution, loss of habitat and rapid warming - we're killing off species like we're a killer meteor...and there's no coming back for the Amazon rain-forest and countless species. Once they're gone they're gone.
I am saying there have been swings in CO2 levels and we haven't seen runaway warming from them. The temperature stabilizes after a while. Do you have sources that contradict that? The updated temperature graph is shown very briefly at 5.57, what do they mean by that? why not put it side by side with the CO2 graph? The new temp graph is basically the same, just with a higher resolution.
The updated graph is probably just to show there's more nuance to the graph than the old version. It doesn't make sense to use very old graphs outdated by the author.
CO2 emissions are accellerating over time:
https://gml.noaa.gov/ccgg/trends/gl_gr.html
The runaway effects will be from thresholds being broken, like acification of the ocean, burning of the tundra, deglacification and other events that humanity cannot influence or stop directly.
https://www.quora.com/When-will-the-world-s-oceans-lose-thei...
https://www.noaa.gov/education/resource-collections/ocean-co...
https://knowledge.insead.edu/blog/insead-blog/the-ocean-cann...
While we do have negative feedback loops, lately, temperature looks to be accellerating as well:
https://climate.nasa.gov/vital-signs/global-temperature/
https://www.climate.gov/news-features/understanding-climate/...
Netflix has this documentary that explains further, ie. why biodiversity is needed.
David Attenborough: A Life On Our Planet - "vision for the future" on 'how to fix' climate change :
I have the feeling you didn't read what I wrote in the thread, I specifically decried the loos of biodiversity in my first comment.
My question and point of view was: is there evidence of previous runaway global warming caused by CO2. There were enough CO2 induced global warming events, but not runaway. My point being that at some point it will stabilize, we're not going to end up like Venus.
If you're not going to talk specifically about what I'm saying, what's the point of flooding me with links? I am aware and agree with what's in there.
http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20151130-how-hot-could-the-ea...
Since Earth is not like Venus now, this wouldn't have happened as Earth would've lost most of its atmosphere. But Earth have been a fireball very early on, and cooled down from that since solar output was much lower then.
As the solar output continue to increase, Earth will become like Venus or a fireball, before it's engulfed.
As solar output "only" increased 4% over some hundred of million years it would seem unlikely to occur from greenhouse gases alone.
I traveled from Ontario to British Columbia two years ago when the forest fires out west were really peaking.
I noticed smoke in the air as far as Winnipeg, and it only got thicker as I approached Vancouver.
Surely all of those white/reflective particles in the upper atmosphere are reflecting the sun's rays.
Also, weather predictions that year where WAY off. Predictions were always much higher than the actual high of the day. I assume this is resultant from historical weather data being a poor source for an altered state weather season.
The smoke covered almost all of north america at some points and it really got much cooler than seasonal averages.
By contrast, when I lived in Texas (no fires), June and July would be in the low 100s, and the first two weeks of August would be 107 - 112.
Unlike volcanoes, any temporary cold effect from clouds would be negated by the permanent destruction of the forest.
He also notes that increased CO2 can help boost agriculture productivity, making it easier to feed the world's population.
Climate change deniers love stuff like this though, you can bring it up in a bullet point list of "why climate change isn't a big deal" or whatever and push your false narrative without any of the individual points being false. People who bring this fact up and are subsequently labelled climate change deniers are being labelled that because of the context and content of their whole argument, not because one specific true fact was mentioned.
It's also a bit disingenuous to talk about Patrick Moore as a Greenpeace Co-founder without any context about what he's been up to since 1986 when he left the organization. This is just an appeal to authority that's only tenuously linked to reality.
Stop being disingenuous just so you can feed your persecution complex with strangers on the internet.
Hey mate, please remember the guidelines[0] when you comment.
[0]https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
But to your point about Patrick Moore, he really isn't a credible authority on this matter at all. The positive effects of carbon dioxide are true for the most part. However, this does nothing to invalidate the mountain of negative effects that destabilising the climate currently has and will continue to worsen.
> He also notes that increased CO2 can help boost agriculture productivity, making it easier to feed the world's population.
In cooler countries, this is indeed the case. However, most of the world's population lives in warmer regions, meaning even if we have plenty of food, it's poorer countries that will lack it, so we'll still get climate refugees.
Patrick Moore is proof that with enough money, you can buy whatever you want, including an "ecologist" who says that climate change is a good thing and not caused by humans.
His 33-page "Ravens & Rainbows" collection has this and several other great short sci-fi stories in that old "Heavy Metal" comic style that's rarely seen these days, but same NSFW disclaimer applies: https://imgur.com/a/M0JUTSx
Crazy plant growth does not matter if we have unprecedented megafires each year and in several continents at the same time.
I can assure you that Google earth still show trees that were chopped some years ago; and sadly both wildfires and megafires are very real currently.
As for the net loss or gain, you'd have to subtract how many trees died in the fires from how many new saplings there are annually. The world is a big place. It's perfectly possible for a billion trees lost in one region to be offset by a billion new trees elsewhere.
That, even if we assume that we get to an stable and livable weather plateau, and not an ever increasing global warming, extreme weather, and livable conditions for every animal and plant.
And even in that plateau, if the ecosystem that make that plants to live (I don't know, bees, worms, bacteria and so on) don't make it the plants won't be good for long neither.
Yes, I do have sources that human mental performance suffers at elevated CO2 levels (800-1000ppm, not uncommon in buildings... but could be the CO2 level outdoors and even if it's not quite that high, it'll be harder and harder to keep building CO2 levels below that as external CO2 levels increase). https://www.nature.com/articles/s41370-018-0055-8
https://ehp.niehs.nih.gov/doi/10.1289/ehp.1510037
Current levels aren't really problematic except in stuffy buildings. But if we don't stop changing the chemistry of the atmosphere, it becomes a problem.
It not may stop till the yearly global average temperature is several degrees over what is it now, CO2 in the air or not, and that will not bring nice living conditions. And as a difference of the other times in Earth's history that it happened without massive extinctions, it is happening too damn fast at geological/evolution times. If species doesn't adapt fast enough, they get extinct.
Yes, at the other side of that process, some millions of years after, they could be a new age for life. But we won't be there.
Human consumption and population growth needs to level flatline. Now.