Estimates of plant CO2 uptake rise by nearly one third
ornl.gov
ornl.gov
> The research, detailed in the journal Nature, is expected to improve Earth system simulations that scientists use to predict the future climate, and spotlights the importance of natural carbon sequestration for greenhouse gas mitigation.
Too bad that we are currently doing the exact opposite (cutting down more forest than is regrown)...
https://research.wri.org/gfr/forest-extent-indicators/forest...
> Even though the world gained 130.9 Mha of tree cover between 2000 and 2020, it still lost much more, with an overall net loss of 100.6 Mha. While the global numbers report a negative trajectory, there are distinct regional patterns or “hotspots” of net gain. At least 36 countries gained more tree cover than they lost over the 20-year time period. As a continent, Europe gained 6 million hectares of tree cover by 2020. Asia also had a large proportion of countries with net gain, particularly in Central and South Asia. The drivers of much of this gain (for example, what proportion is due to intentional restoration interventions versus land abandonment) are still difficult to determine using the available data, but are a key area for future research. Additionally, even though tree cover gain is occurring in many places, it doesn’t “cancel out” the impacts of loss. Primary forests in particular serve as critical carbon stores and support an intricate network of wildlife, none of which can easily be replaced once lost.
Barring mistakes, it balances if we had avoided reducing the planet's vegetation by 20% since 1900. So much for that.
That's obviously not "the" solution, but it seems like reducing fuel burn while increasing forestation would benefit us beyond what is commonly expected.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PGgovWTBoWY (Hossenfelder) https://lenr-canr.org/ (Library)
This dashboard is good for that https://www.globalforestwatch.org/dashboards/global/?categor...
This visualization is also good: https://ourworldindata.org/deforestation
Interestingly, the first forest watch loss (pink blob) I zoomed in on there turned out to be a project initiated by a local environmental organization to restore an island to its original farmland (as it had been up until a century ago and for centuries before) with wild sheep keeping the trees down, small bushes and wide range of local flowers instead of deep tree cover. And the nearest "forest gain" (blue blob) was a park tree. As Yolland the disenchanted mapmaker said, "Something is being eroded."
This also doesn't really matter.
Russia, Canada, Brazil, the US, and China are about ~60% of the world's trees.
Their forest areas could grow by only 2-3% and dozens of small countries could lose substantial percentages of their forests, and we'd still end up with a ton more trees and forest area.
Many of the forests in North America need to burn every year in that low intensity fire. Their seeds won't even sprout until after a fire (when all the dead undergrowth has been burned away thus leaving the new sprout with sunlight). However this doesn't apply to all forests in North America, and I know even less about other countries.
Moral of the story: consult a forester who knows the local forest before talking about anything. In many places we have been badly mismanaging forests and there is no nice way out. We probably do need to burn down and start over with large parts of North America because of all the harm decades of "Smokey the bear" have done to our forests.
They found that digging holes in the desert functionally accumulates enough water to promote diverse plant life. It’s apparent an ancient practice. They organize groups to do it. Ecological stewardship is, I hope, a key shift in mindset from the current totalizing view of global warming.
I didn't spend too long on the website but this page https://justdiggit.org/dig-in/farmer/start-regreening/ seems to be the closest to that, yet it's still no instructions and just marketing. I don't want to sound too negative or make a judgment call with too little information but wanted to share my worries as it has become all too common for grifters to take advantage of the situation in a sort of partnership with huge corporation leadership teams. They get free money and the leadership team gets to greenwash whatever they do in their core business.
I never researched this specific one in detail other than a few minutes now, but the company I worked for previously used to do this style of donations and we found a lot of projects like this.
https://justdiggit.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Justdiggit...
Sorry I shared the main link— they are an NGO that raises money, that’s how it works.
https://www.decadeonrestoration.org/
Instructions:
https://amshaafrica.org/index.php/building-water-bunds-a-ste...
And in the U.S. at least, many states have a concept of a conservation easement where you get a tax advantage by promising not to disturb or develop land you own. This is used by some wealthy individuals to lock up a bunch of land undisturbed. But again, so far it is not remotely close to offsetting the overall human behaviors that are forcing warming. (As evidenced by the directly measured rising CO2 levels and temperature anomalies.)
Carbon is captured when trees grow. Lumber binds carbon into buildings and constructions.
The climate math of lumber works if you’re talking about “productive forests” where trees are allowed to grow to replace trees cut down. It doesn’t work for situations when a forest is cleared and not replaced, which is mostly what is happening where rainforest is being cleared.
Simply think of the number of tons of wood in an acre of forest, compared with the number of tons of wood in a housing development.
It doesn't matter that some trees die and release their carbon, other trees grow. Instead of thinking of individual trees, simply think of the entire biomass of the forest.
Meaning the forests are kept forests and new trees are planted to replace the ones that are cut down. The land the trees are farmed from is kept forested because it provides a income source for the owners. Also the trees tend to grow much faster then they do in natural forests because things like spacing out trees is optimized.
This is a big complaint for wood working folks, ironically. Because natural grown trees grow slower the wood grain is much tighter and ends up being generally higher quality. Where as modern farmed wood has huge rings.
Although it isn't too bad because you don't use soft woods much for things like furniture making. Where as construction lumber is almost all soft wood.
So at least in the USA the ratio of grown-to-cut wood is about 1.92. So we plant trees nearly 2 to 1 versus what we cut down.
It is far from straightforward whether it is better to leave the forests standing or cut down and replant. The forestry industry is of course claiming that a cultivated forest is better for the climate. The environmentalists are claiming that old forests that are left alone are better for the climate and in addition better for ecological diversity.
I tend to believe the side whose income doesn’t depend on their claim.
How do you figure, exactly?
Earth isn’t the same kind of living organism as man, but it’s an organism just like AI isn’t the same intelligence as that of man’s, but it is intelligence.
Hmm, anyone has data on this? I've seen many people claiming the opposite of that opposite.
This is not true. Sustainable forestry practices have been increasing forest coverage for some time now.
I currently teach woodland management and arboriculture (I also run a weird hybrid business doing software and arboriculture) in the UK and the idea that we cut down more than we plant is a common misconception that I spend a lot of time (and I mean a lot of time) correcting with the public and general layperson. Felling trees for forestry purposes requires a felling license[1], which always comes with a re-stocking clause.
As for urban green infrastructure (basically private and municipal trees and hedges), that comes with it's own issues, and there's a lot of wins to be had there but there are also lots of challenges. I know the Arboricultural Association in the UK are doing some great work here to advocate for finding ways to retain private and municipal trees whilst managing risk to the public (the main reason trees are normally removed second only to "aesthetic").
Biodiversity Net Gain (BNG) is also a thing in the UK which broadly translates to ensuring that any private building works or developments must now have a demonstrable positive effect on local biodiversity and where that's not possible, then developers can "offset" by commissioning biodiversity projects elsewhere. For example, I've just taken delivery of 1200 trees (oak, hazel) today, which will be planted into semi-ancient woodland that I manage.
So basically the idea that we're cutting down forest ahead of what can restock isn't accurate, in fact in the UK at least, it is quite the opposite.
A good news story for you.
[0]: https://www.forestresearch.gov.uk/tools-and-resources/statis....
[1]: unless it is a) less than five cubic metres in a twelve week period (basically "thinning" woodland so that other trees have room to grow / habitat improvement for priority habitats). b) a private tree without a preservation order/ fruit tree, c) diseased or dying or d) a suitably high risk to public safety.
That being said, personally, I favour the continuous cover approach of mixing up natives broadleaves with non-native conifers as long as the site isn't ancient or semi-ancient natural woodland (ASNW) or plantation on ancient woodland site (PAWS). For those sites, they're too important for use as a commercial forestry site and arguably the ecology needs to be restored, maintained and managed. Those sites are precious and should be managed properly in-line with their identified [NVC identifier][2]. The one exception to this is coppicing. Having a coppice on ancient sites where coppicing was practised is one of the few woodland management techniques that adds to ecology over all four woodland layers over all time frames.
I never thought I'd answer that question on HN. I appreciate you asking. What's your take on forestry monocultures?
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pando_(tree) [2]: https://jncc.gov.uk/our-work/nvc/
My preconception (not a botanist) was that monocultures were automatically worse for local ecologies. I wonder if lumbering practices in America are similar. Obviously, it's a mix of good and bad, but it would be cool to find some research that suggests how we're doing.
I also just like an eclectic, vibrant forest, and personally, monocultures ruin that vibe for me. I'm pretty spoiled though, having lived much of my life in heavily-wooded areas.
Even though more CO2 pressure in the atmosphere increases also the potential uptake in a plant.
"Plants" is not a synonym for "trees". There are grasslands that are significant carbon sinks - even farmland managed in the right way can be a carbon sink . The oceans (which have a notable lack of trees) are a major carbon sink (although this paper is not talking about this, if I understand the abstract correctly).
NPP is probably increasing as it's been observed for years now that the earth is net greening in response to rising CO2
https://extension.okstate.edu/fact-sheets/greenhouse-carbon-....
> In 2023, the hottest year ever recorded, preliminary findings https://arxiv.org/pdf/2407.12447 by an international team of researchers show the amount of carbon absorbed by land has temporarily collapsed. The final result was that forest, plants and soil – as a net category – absorbed almost no carbon.
> “We’re seeing cracks in the resilience of the Earth’s systems. We’re seeing massive cracks on land – terrestrial ecosystems are losing their carbon store and carbon uptake capacity, but the oceans are also showing signs of instability,” Johan Rockström, director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, told an event at New York Climate Week in September.
> “Nature has so far balanced our abuse. This is coming to an end,” he said.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/oct/14/nature-c...
Just trying to parse this - does that mean "a collapse in carbon absorption" actually means "more carbon was produced for the same amount of absorption"?
Back of the envelope number is 10 kg of CO2 absorbed per maturing tree and year (for ~20 years).
This means you would need to plant almost 1000 trees for each person (assuming roughly US/EU emission level) to compensate for current emissions only, every 20 years. That just seems infeasible to me, and a factor of 30% is not gonna change this significantly.
Renewables + electrification seems much more realistic, when countries like France are already under 5 tons CO2/year/person by relying on carbon-free electricity (US is at 15!).
But it's still nice to know because at least planting/conserving trees apparently helps even more than expected...
That’s 50 trees each year for each person, or, in the USA, about 17 billion trees, for a total new forest of 340 billion trees.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/20... says the USA has about 280 billion trees, so we’d ‘only’ have to grow that by 120%. That would grow forest in the USA from about 33% to about 75% of land area.
Infeasible, but not completely impossible, I would think, from a ‘could we do it?’ viewpoint. ‘Is there a decent chance we’ll do that?’ probably has the answer “no”, though. For the USA, I guess cutting combining forestation with decreasing energy usage would be the easier option.
The numbers/ratios should be even worse for Europe where the population density is higher. But I can totally see the approach working after scaling CO2 emissions down.
I think going over single digit percentages of land area in forestation levels is already politically almost impossible-- agriculture alone is gonna meet any such attempt with ridicule at best and copious amounts of buckshot at worst...
> On a global scale, oceans and other water bodies absorb approximately 25-30% of the CO₂ emitted by human activities each year. This absorption occurs primarily through two mechanisms:
> - Physical Dissolution: CO₂ dissolves in water and reacts to form carbonic acid, bicarbonate, and carbonate ions.
> - Biological Processes: Aquatic organisms, especially photosynthetic ones, play a significant role in capturing and sequestering CO₂.
>One petagram equals 1 billion metric tons, which is roughly the amount of CO2 emitted each year from 238 million gas-powered passenger vehicles.
this sounds pretty significant. Any particular reason why it hasn't been updated for the last 40y?
It's not very important outside of predicting the future of the climate accurately.
That's not the kind of thing I'd write "It's not very important outside of" before. This "mere" prediction and decision support is the reason we fund the sciences.
Bear in mind, ESMs aren't trying to predict future CO2 levels. They're trying to predict future weather based on the effects of higher CO2, and vegetation is a part of that.
I expect climate models contain a lot of parameters that aren't related to plant uptake of CO2, and some that are. I expect that, until now, the latter have been based on the 1980 study, because otherwise this latest result would not be news.
I also expect that the contribution of plant CO2 uptake is a large factor in these models, so a significant change like this will potentially have a significant effect on predictions.
Are any of these expectations wrong? If so, which ones?
It's fascinating to see all those studies improving our limited understanding of the biosphere.
So that means our supposed CO2 problem is 31% smaller than we previously thought?
So it means planting extra plants to fight CO2 is much more effective than previously thought?
Another way of looking at it is that planting trees may be more effective at removing CO2 than previously thought, and deforestation somewhat more harmful.
The research doesn't indicate that more carbon in total is absorbed than we thought - we've got a pretty solid understanding of the total carbon absorption capacity, because we measure it directly, rather than model it. It indicates that a larger proportion of the carbon absorption comes from plants than we thought (around 33%, instead of 25%), with the other sources taking on proportionally less of the absorption.
This research will allow us to more accurately model how land use impacts CO2 though, and will likely put a higher premium on protecting plant life in any carbon assessments.
No. This study has changed precisely nothing about how we measure CO2 in the atmosphere. Or climate change in general.
It's like we've got a bathtub where the water level is rising, because we won't turn off the tap and the drain is only so big. We can lower the apparent water-level by throwing in a bunch of plant-sponges, but we can't just keep adding more indefinitely.
If that's true, there would seem to be no benefit to the climate in preserving or regenerating forests.
https://kleinmanenergy.upenn.edu/commentary/blog/why-tempora...
I think the part of the page you linked that is relevant to this topic is:
>But when forest carbon is released—which could happen when trees die in a changing climate, or when short-term carbon offset contracts expire and allow landowners to clear their forests—temperatures inevitably go up.
The first part ("when trees die in a changing climate") links to a National Geographic article behind a paywall. Before the paywall appeared, I noticed it said something about "drought or fire", which leads me to wonder whether the loss of forest carbon occurs only under those conditions. Is that right? If so, by avoiding those conditions, we coughs avoid that loss.
If climate change isn't so bad, then phew, but if it's actually worse, then we are in even more deadly trouble than we already are.
Location doesn’t matter. Duration of storage matters. If we could find a way to lock it up in a building material that would be effective and useful.
The first blast furnaces were indeed fuelled this way, from locally sourced charcoal, but coal/coke took over due to requiring far less effort (energy!) to extract.
Going by https://www.drax.com/uk/sustainability/sustainable-bioenergy... , the UK's single large scale biomass power plant is fuelled by over sixteen million hectares (160,000km^2) or approximately one Wisconsin. If we wanted to power the whole UK electricity from biomass, we'd need ten Wisconsins. (Wisconsin, presumably, would have to find some other source of power in this scenario)
(of course, Drax wasn't built to burn imported biomass, it was built to burn locally extracted coal ...)
A slightly more useful land area is the United Kingdom itself, which is 243,000km^2. With this technique, it takes an area 1/19th the size of the UK to produce 4% of its energy.
This isn't a feasible approach to energy production, but it's an order of magnitude less bad than your figures have put forward.
Although I am not exactly sure about the ratio of the C atoms stored in the atmosphere, and C stored in trees, houses, but it seems to me the Logical move that we should stop getting gas and petrol from under the ground and start using trees and other plants instead.
But also, since trees do more work than we thought, then planting more will have bigger impact than past estimates.
In the ocean the limit is often other nutrients like iron. Attempts have been made to add iron to the ocean and those areas suddenly turned green (though it is not clear how sustainable this practice would be, nor if there might be other unknown negatives).
That isn't to say CO2 is never the limit. Large greenhouses often are CO2 limited (often burning fossil fuels indoors to provide the CO2 without opening windows and thus letting something else undesired in). There are no doubt areas where CO2 is the limit and so NASA can see more green that is attributed to more CO2 - but still CO2 is rarely the limiting factor.
I do not subscribe to the insane CO2 Bad religion that you appear to subscribe to because it is yet another dumb religion to harness the naive and gullible peasants, but you go right ahead. How about you stop being horrible to other people about it though and stop traveling and using technology that all produces CO2.
And yet, we stand by on the sidelines while narco, wood and cattle organized crime cartels contaminate, log and burn down the rainforests.
IMHO, at least the endangered rainforest belts should be placed under international supervision with a joint military cooperative on a shoot-to-kill order against these kinds of criminals. Think of an UN Blue Helmets mission, but not as a toothless "peacekeper corps" like the usual useless bullshit. The very ability of Earth to provide for human life hinges to a significant part on the continued existence and health of the rainforest ecosystem, and it is obvious now that many of the countries in which these forests lie are fundamentally incapable of maintaining this shared resource.
[1] https://www.ft.com/content/96aa8d1a-bbf1-4b35-8680-d1fef36ef...
There is no "power AI war with China", this is just another pretext from the GOP to fuel the extraction industry with public money, and "drill, baby, drill".
Is there anything in our climate models that if we got wrong would drastically reduce the estimated severity of long term impacts from climate?
It's possible that our current climate models are wrong, by a little or a lot. It's also possible that General Relativity is wrong -- gravity might stop at this time tomorrow.
If you're interested, this issue is called the Problem of Induction in philosophy. (Confusingly, "induction" has a different meaning here than in mathematical induction.)
Iron, phosphates, Air pumps and light transmitted into the depths where the growthcube rises.
Have a rainforest fall into the depths forever every hour.
Seems scary because we don’t actually know how to do it, and we only have one planet. We could create horrible side effects like killing ocean life we depend on for food, or admire (e.g. whales). We also have evidence for a “snowball Earth” state at times in the past. What if we overcorrect? Lots of good sci-fi stories about that to chill our bones.
The argument against it happening is that it would be expensive for that one nation, but benefits would not be proprietary. Whereas building out an economy of low-carbon power generation, manufacturing, and transportation creates tons of domestic economic benefits like jobs, trade, profits.
Also you probably would want to preserve the Mariana Trench ecosystem, some unique species live there.
BTW: are there any open source climate models/simulations?
Unfortunately, "food" is more complex than "how much carbohydrates do you get per day?"
HN is playing all the greatest hits of denialism this week!
Say you have a terminal disease. Doctors evaluated the progression of your illness and estimated you have three years to live. Of course, when you begin treatment changes your life expectancy: start now and you may get twenty more years; start in two years and you’ll only get an extra four.
Your insurance company says “doctors are all quacks, you’re not ill, they’re just in it for the money” and don’t pay you anything. They know that’s a lie and that after you die there is a high probability your family will sue them out of existence, but the people currently in charge hope that will be far enough in the future they won’t have to personally worry about it. In the meantime they will enjoy the money they don’t pay you.
As the months go by, you visibly deteriorate. It’s obvious you are sick. Your insurance maybe pays for some token cheap medicine to make you more comfortable and get themselves more leeway. Maybe that buys you an extra four months. They’ll be horrible but you will be alive and so your family can’t sue. They continue to be off the hook but it’s getting harder to escape the reality.
Then a new doctor comes along and says “actually we overestimated the progression of your illness, you should’ve been given five years initially”. What do you think happens then? Obviously the insurance company will use that as an argument to further delay your treatment and double down on the rhetoric that all doctors are quacks. The damage is still happening but the urgent action needed to stave it off is once again delayed into the future.
That is what GP is complaining about. It’s obviously good news that you’re not so close to death as you thought, but that knowledge may end up hurting you in the long run.
Just because a Doctor said so? Shouldn't we do some really good tests here first?
It’s not realistic to think one’s family could simply sue an insurance company or of existence. It’s pretty obvious to anyone engaging in good faith that the example is making a point for humans, not attempting to be taken literally by obtuse robots.
For example, could we burn oil at 2024's rates with 1900's forests and not have net-positive CO2 levels? Back of the napkin:
- We're producing ~37 gigatons of CO2 (GtCO2) through burning of fossil fuels at the moment [0]
- The current forestation level is ~4 billion hectares [1]
- The net loss of forestation is ~1 billion hectares since 1900, with deforestation rates peaking starting ~100 years ago. [1]
- 1 petagram == 1 Gt
- Current forests consume 157 Gt/yr [article]
Therefore, the billion hectares we cut down in the past century would consume an additional 157 * 0.25 == 39.25 GtCO2/yr if it were still standing, 2 Gt more than our historical maximum global net output.
Obviously, the burning of fossil fuels is ultimate source of the increase in CO2, but without the deforestation it would still (back of the napkin) be sustainable. At least, we'd not be quite so far down this road.
[0] https://www.statista.com/statistics/276629/global-co2-emissi...
Like it or not climate science is extremely political and selectively reported science (which this is) that is presented to the public needs to account for the context in which it exists or it is no better than propaganda. The fact that the Oak Ridge National Laboratory is primarily funded by the US Department of Energy is plenty of reason to be suspicious of its motivations. They have a vested interest in shaping the public's perception of energy production and its impact on the climate.
Sources: https://www.epa.gov/climate-indicators/climate-change-indica... https://www.lung.org/research/trends-in-lung-disease/lung-ca...
Also you had the wrong chart selected from that page, https://www.epa.gov/climate-indicators/climate-change-indica...
If you were looking for a data point to use as a cudgel against the "idiots" then you are failing in at least to known ways.