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Scientists Surprised to Find Earth's Biosphere Booming
radioweather writes "An article from the Financial Post
says that recent studies of
biosphere imaging from the NASA SEAWIFS satellite indicate that the
Earth's
biomass is booming: 'The results surprised Steven Running of the University of Montana and
Ramakrishna Nemani of NASA, scientists involved in analyzing the NASA satellite
data. They found that over a period of almost two decades, the Earth as a whole
became more bountiful by a whopping 6.2%. About 25% of the Earth's vegetated
landmass — almost 110 million square kilometers — enjoyed significant
increases and only 7% showed significant declines. When the satellite data zooms
in, it finds that each square meter of land, on average, now produces almost 500
grams of greenery per year.' Their 2004 study, and other more recent ones, point to the warming of the
planet and the presence of CO2, fertilizing the biota and resulting in the
increased green side effect."
... is whether this outweighs the negative aspects of global warming or not.
I'd say it's too early to say for sure, but it would definitely be interesting to find out.
Consider the source. The summary links to two rather untrustworthy sources of global warming information. Why are there no links to the actual study? Maybe the lack of appropriate links is, in it's own way, part of the story. Colour me sceptical.
The subject who is truly loyal to the Chief Magistrate will neither advise nor submit to arbitrary measures (Junius)
An "ice age" is defined as a period where ice sheets cover land in both hemispheres. In the south, we have Antarctica; in the north, we have Greenland. Guess what that means? We're in an ice age. Guess what it means that the ice sheets are melting? We're coming out of one. Guess what happens to temperatures when you come out of an ice age? They rise. I shit you not. We've been coming out of an ice age for 11,000 years. If the warming trend that began after the peak of the last ice age were a day, the industrial revolution happend at thirty minutes to midnight. CO2 is good. That's what TFA says. The mean surface temperature of Mars is rising also--that's not the industiral revolution and that's not some gas-leak on our little rovers.
Thank you, that is all.
"Furthurmore, last time I checked, Carbon was not exactly a limiting factor in plant growth. I've seen plants die from pH, salt poisoning, incorrect water levels, heat, cold, you name it. However, I don't think I've ever seen a plant suffer from lack of CO2..."
CO2 IS a limiting factor in plant growth. The current concentration, around 350 ppm, is actually at the lowest end for plant survival. Dendrochronologists have to factor in extra growth caused by the recent CO2 blip into their calculations. Why do you think polytunnel farmers inject extra CO2 into their tunnels?
To people who know about these things, this is a non-story.
If you don't know what you're talking about, please don't post on slashdot as if you do.....
The situation you describe looks like a new equilibrium that's seperated from the existing ones by a kinetic barrier; Before algae grazers can move in, the bloom peaks, dies, and creates a dead zone phenomenon.
The posting headline is misleading: the article author has written a book attempting to debunk global warming. This is not a scientific consensus, but one man pushing a contrary position. Check it out, and make your own evaluation:
The Deniers
Lawrence Solomon is author of a new book from the new Richard Vigilante Books. The book is The Deniers: The World Renowned Scientists Who Stood Up Against Global Warming Hysteria, Political Persecution, and Fraud *And those who are too fearful to do so. And that about tells you everything you need to know. In The Deniers, Solomon focuses on profiling the scientists Al Gore conveniently doesn't engage. In the run-up to the hottest holiday of the year, Earth Day, he took questions from National Review Online editor Kathryn Lopez.
Remain calm! All is well!
Well, yes, but at the same time those plants absorb some CO2 out of the atmosphere to grow. And then you eat them, shit it, and it's not going back into the atmosphere. Or they get turned to clothes, paper (quick-growing trees are used as crops to produce paper), etc, which end up in a landfill and again it's not quite going back into the atmosphere.
So while some CO2 _is_ produced in raising those crops, yes, including in creating their fertilizer, they also remove some CO2 from the air. So the balance isn't as doom-and-gloom as you seem to assume.
Second, we're talking fertilizers, not plastics. Most of what those plants need is nitrogen, which actually comes from the air. (Fossil fuels don't contain much nitrogen.) E.g., ammonium nitrate is nitrogen, hydrogen and oxygen. There is no carbon in it at all. (And even if there were, it would go into the plant, not back into the air.)
Technically, some carbon is used there, but at least for the Haber process that's methane gas from natural gas fields. There's buggerall need to start from oil to produce it. And it's recycled back into methane by the end of the process, so it's basically used more as a catalyst than "OMG, dumping CO2 into the atmosphere." The Odda Process is even more fun, in that at least one variant of it can actually use CO2 and fix it to CaCO3.
So all that remains as a source of pollution there is that, like any factory, it needs some energy. It doesn't necessarily mean oil, though. I'm sure you can use nuclear power instead, which, for whatever other sins it may have, has exactly zero CO2 emissions.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
"Because, frankly, the stated aims of environmentalists - improving the forests, saving the fuzzy animals, and so on, is actually served by the increasing CO2 in the atmosphere, as plants grow better in richer CO2 atmospheres and that leads to a stronger biosphere all round." Hold up there buddy, that is simply not true, many animals depend on icy habitats (polar bears, penguins) which are going to disappear with increasing temperature. Increased melting will disrupt the north Atlantic drift which will completely change the climate of northern Europe to something like the previous ice age. Increased levels of CO2 interacting with the sea will cause the oceans to become more acidic, this is already happening. Whatever the result, the planet is likely to be going through the most rapid period of change to its internal distribution of gases ever recorded, as a direct result of pollution from burning fossil fuels. As a species, humanity has emerged in a relatively calm period in the earth's climatic history, now, our children and their children, and heaven forbid, maybe even we, will have to deal with the consequences of these actions, which I doubt will "lead to a stronger biosphere all round."
prepare the survey weasels.
Pre-historic ecosystems, such as the massive hadrosaur herds, required far more abundant plant growth than is possible in any modern ecosystem.
Animals such as hadrosaurs would grow extremely rapidly from hatchlings to full grown. That took a LOT of plant material for them to eat. And their population density was fairly high. In order for hadrosaur herds to thrive as they did the vegetation had to be extremely fast growing and abundant.
Modern ecosystems are, by comparison to pre-historic ecosystems, virtually deserts.
There is just nothing like the hadrosaur in the modern world, there just isn't the carbon in circulation to sustain the plant life required to support them.
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
The problem is: The process works for the Earth as a whole, but is catastrophic for the individual.
Most of our technology is used to create a non changing environment for us: steady food and water supply, steady temperatures without summer or winter extremes, steady health etc.pp...
We are not very good equipped with technology to deal with constant change. And global warming, followed by a global cooling might be complicated to deal with.
As somewhat of a socialist (the Western European kind, not the Soviet kind), I sometimes find it funny how "left" or "liberal" (which in most of Europe actually means "right") has become a blanket insult in the USA for anyone and anything who's not for giving more money and unchecked power to the corporations and billionaires. Especially how it's supposed to be some kind of monster hell-bent on destroying the industry and humanity.
The "left" is mostly about how you divide the pie, so to speak, not about trying to destroy industry. We're all Keynesians, yes, both Europe and the USA, we all live in a massive overproduction potential, and we all have our governments spend some of that excess to keep it going. Essentially any first world country can produce orders of magnitude more than it needs, and has to find a way to (A) use that surplus for something useful, and/or (B) keep some people busy doing something that doesn't produce anything. Giving corporations more money just results in B. More and more people are hired to engage in nearly zero-sum games, like marketing past a point. Yes, it stimulates consumption a bit too too, but even that (1) only goes so far, and past a point the effects are infinitesimal, and (2) is ultimately a way to waste some production capacity instead of just dumping those resources off a hill.
There's something inherently heartless to argue that someone poor should be denied healthcare, so someone else who's already rich can buy a new barbecue grill. Or that you should dump that excess into having more lawyers and marketers, instead of having a few more doctors.
And no, it hasn't destroyed the industry so far. Germany for example was doing great with a socialist economy, until it had to absorb the obsolete industry of East Germany. Now it's recovering pretty nicely from that again. All the leftist stuff like good welfare, good medical care, unions being officially a part of the corporate management, etc, haven't really resulted in anything bad so far.
But anyway, I digress. That's really what the "left" is about: how you distribute the wealth. The GINI index. The idea that someone below poverty line can use an extra buck on his wage, more than the CEO needs another ten millions on an already ridiculously high wage.
The "Greens" are something else. It's something orthogonal to it all. Yes, they too want some taxes, but then they want to spend it on their own ideas, not on (immediately) improving the lot of the poor. I'm not necessarily saying that it's good or bad, just that it's something orthogonal.
Basically what I'm trying to say is that the political spectrum consists of a hell of a lot of variables, not just one axis between left and right. The ecological agenda is just another axis in that multidimensional space, rather than something inherently leftist.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Exactly. Amazing how it all balances out.
Yes folks, we're here because the biosphere is in a state of equilibrium, with any change tending to produce a compensating effect.
Thing about equilibria is that some of them are stable - no matter how far you push them they'll roll back - wile others are metastable - push them a bit too far and crash. Think of a pencil balanced on end...
The biosphere may have weathered past storms (although some of them were bad news for many species) but its never dealt with a dominant species with sophisticated tools intent on digging up and burning every last bit of carbon they can winkle out of the crust.
Now, maybe the biosphere is stable enough to cope - maybe it isn't, but what with all this confusion and irrational debate, we don't really know, so the question is: do we feel lucky?
Well, do yah?
In a survey of 100 programmers, 111111 thought that duck-typing was a good idea.
Whether right or wrong, his point was made in answering the question "Are we going to die?" (with the assumption being because of how poorly we've treated the planet on which we live). The GP's point was that, barring war, most of us will make it to at least 70.....and very likely that our children will as well. Or, in short, his answer was "no, not any time soon".
My take: it's called the greenhouse effect for a reason. Plants thrive in a greenhouse because of the trapped moisture, the tropical conditions, etc. We've increased CO2 which plants "breath". The temperature is rising which actually helps most plants. etc. etc. etc. More plants means more CO2 converted to 02. Humans have become more aware of the problem and will make a few better choices. I think the planet will make some swings back and forth, but we'll adapt and move on.
Layne
I had to do some research on the Little Ice Age a few years ago and every single source I found came back to the same thing, that we're still warming back up and that it's still significantly colder than it was 1,000 years ago.
Disclaimer: No, referencing research by various groups that contradict "the sky is falling" mentality of global warming is NOT flaimbait. Yes, temperatures most likely will go up. No, we will most likely not have a huge catastrophe that destroys mankind.
"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants." ~Thomas Jefferson
Hold up there buddy, that is simply not true, many animals depend on icy habitats (polar bears, penguins) which are going to disappear with increasing temperature. Increased melting will disrupt the north Atlantic drift which will completely change the climate of northern Europe to something like the previous ice age. Increased levels of CO2 interacting with the sea will cause the oceans to become more acidic, this is already happening.
Whatever the result, the planet is likely to be going through the most rapid period of change to its internal distribution of gases ever recorded, as a direct result of pollution from burning fossil fuels. As a species, humanity has emerged in a relatively calm period in the earth's climatic history, now, our children and their children, and heaven forbid, maybe even we, will have to deal with the consequences of these actions, which I doubt will "lead to a stronger biosphere all round." I'm curious. The climate has changed much faster in the past than it is changing today. Of course, this was before SUV's and even man were on the planet. So, if man didn't cause it then, isn't it even remotely possible that man is not causing it today? This is backed up when you consider that the earth has heated and cooled all on its own throughout history. When it was warm, it cooled. When it was cool, the earth warmed. Seeing as we are in a historical cool spell, doesn't it makes sense that the earth would warm itself, with, or without our help?
It seems to me that when we see something happen, we immediately try to figure out what WE did to cause it. It's the same kind of self-centered belief system that led Native Americans to believe that a certain dance or sacrifice would lead to rain.
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
Environmentalism as a modern movement is usually said to start around the industrial revolution, i.e. around 1800.
Global warming was first discussed by Svante Arrhenius before 1900 (Svante considered GW a good thing, being a Swede, but of course he did not know about chaos theory and run away temperatures).
The war on science where all science that don't fit a fundamentalist view is smeared, seems to be a quite new tactic, invented in the USA.
--- guns don't kill people, people with guns kill people ---