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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."
Green Side Effect as a result of the greenhouse effect. So are we all gonna die or not already?
Do it yourself, because no one else will do it yourself. [beta blockade 10-17 Feb]
Do it yourself, because no one else will do it yourself. [beta blockade 10-17 Feb]
Looks like just this will happen. But before CO2 levels decrease, there may be mass extinctions.
Extreme Programming - Redundant Array of Inexpensive Developers
Biodiversity is declining and that's a bad thing even if more weeds are growing in Oshkosh.
The arctic ice pack is melting and that will ultimately change the earth's albedo in a bad way. I don't see much optimism in that, even if some plants in some places grow better due to changing climate conditions.
You can't send a takedown notice to an already printed newspaper.
Moderator: How are we going to turn this into something that will scare the masses - we have a few more anti-privacy bills to pass..
Jeff: We'll be attacked any minute by a muslim man-eating creeper and..
Jill: What about we are all going to starve because.. uhh..
Tony: We're gonna be taken over by weeds..
Jill: Weed!
Jeff: Man eating weed..
All together: Muslim-man-eating-weed!
Moderator: Great, let's write that one down.
Do it yourself, because no one else will do it yourself. [beta blockade 10-17 Feb]
Quote from article "massive programs in an effort to remove as much as 80% of the carbon dioxide emissions from the atmosphere.
If these governments are right, they will have done us all a service. If they are wrong, the service could be all ill, with food production dropping world wide, and the countless ecological niches on which living creatures depend stressed."
Bollocks, governments are not removing emissions, they are reducing emissions. Thus we will still keep all the CO2 in the atmosphere, we will just pump less new CO2 into the atmosphere.
Thus the plants can keep growing all they like, we won't be removing their food anytime soon. All we are doing is slowing down the pace at which we are overfeeding them.
So how much of this increased biomass is due to higher yielding farming techniques over the past 20 years? And how much of the higher farm yield is due to fertilizers from crude oil? (hint, in 1st world countries, you cannot profitably farm bulk crops without oil originated fertilzer)
Remain calm! All is well!
... 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.
And after CO2 levels have decreased, there may be mass extinctions.
Perhaps mass extinction is the preferred process to upgrade the biopshere to cope with new conditions?
That's a good point. I read an article a while ago stating that some parts of the oceans are experiencing a "return of the slime" - the higher life forms are disappearing, while simpler life forms are booming.
Probably not something we want to have. I'd rather have fish and seafood than algae slime, thank you very much.
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 excellent example of taking raw data and jumping to a conclusion. Certainly, if the numbers show that plant biomass is up, then biomass could very well be up, but is that a good thing?
This does not take in to account bioDIVERSITY. While we may be increasing crop density, causing giant algol blooms, is monoculture something that we really want?
You can introduce an exotic species of grass to populations in the Moaje desert which are extremely prone to burning, but will grow back from the ground. All of the native plants, which are not accustomed to fires die off. What you're left with is an exotic grass that any number of animal species may need be able to utilize. Destroy biodiversity at the bottom and everything above it falls apart.
Same goes for giant algae blooms in the Gulf of Mexico due to high nitrogen runoff from agriculture. Sure there's a metric fuck-ton of algae growing there, but at what cost? If the death of every other living thing (or nigh on) in the surrounding area is good, then... great!
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.
In short: To say that plant biomass alone accounts for a healthy ecosystem and that increased carbon levels confers from magical "nutrients" to plants is far-fetched at best.
You think the universe would be even remotely interesting without at least one really evil species?
We could be the Vogons of the galaxy. I'd like the shouting part.
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.
In addition to losing oxygen, the water becomes more turbid,and the proportions of species in the community is damaged.
Some of these algal/cyanobacteria blooms are actually toxic to plants & animals. Why don't the smaller, rapidly-reproducing zooplankton take up the gauntlet? Because they suffocate near the alleged food source. That of course assumes the food source firstly isn't toxic to them.
Ever seen a dead mouse in a mouse-trap? Food surrounded by lethal conditions is hardly food. Why don't the smaller, rapidly-reproducing zooplankton take up the gauntlet?
Virtually all of the articles I've read on hypoxic waters and dead zones fail to address this paradox. I've only read one paper that
mentioned even an _hypothesis_ of how algae grazers fail to flourish -- referring to algae species that protect themselves with toxins.
But this doesn't ring true: Why would the most pioneering of algae species be the most protective of themselves when there is so much
opportunity to evolve optimizations for growth rather than defense against grazers? The evolution of life doesn't care about optimizations for growth. Evolution does not seek to form a more perfect creature. Either the environment kills it before it reproduces or it doesn't. Their goal is survival, not being efficient at it. An organism's life can be amazingly cruel and miserable, yet still perfectly succeed in this function. Optimizations and perfections aren't on the agenda unless the consequence of not adopting such things is extinction.
It's very simple, unthinking, and without any sort of goal orientation save for existing. If the algae can exist successfully without such optimizations, they will continue to do so. Kinda like how massive numbers of people will continue to buy large inefficient vehicles until gas gets expensive. They could have used optimized & efficient vehicles, but they don't unless they perceive it to be absolutely necessary to get by.
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!
I will write poetry, I'm really bad at this :D
"Ode to extinctions:
O thy, which is extinct,
Don't ever come back,
Because for you the race is over,
Use burma shave".
Extreme Programming - Redundant Array of Inexpensive Developers
First of all, note that the auhtor here does have an agenda. From the end of the article:
"Lawrence Solomon is executive director of Energy Probe and author of The Deniers"The book he wrote does make a clear statement about how he feels about the current debate.
In any event, none can say that this development is linear. Beyond a certain point, maybe the balance between heating caused by CO2 and the increased plant consumption looks very different, and turns around. The complexity of these systems are not to be underestimated, and reading this article as "Some more CO2 might be good for us!", or at least reading it as a excuse not to do anything (like all those SUV owner might), would be bad.
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.
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.
Yes. It's one of many self-regulating systems you'll find in nature. It's negative feedbacks like this that keep the climate stable-ish. If a volcano belches out a vast cloud of carbon, the trees will devour it, and not much will change overall. Read up Lovelock's 'Gaia' theory: modelling the Earth's whole biosphere as a distributed organism, and its interconnected feedbacks as homeostatic mechanisms that stabilise internal conditions.
Trouble is that we're putting out far more carbon than any volcano ever dreamed of. And, er... we're cutting down the trees at the same time. That's really not a good idea.
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
Stating objectively verifiable facts is not trolling, fucktard mod. Sea levels are confirmed as haven risen some inches between 1900 and 2000, and are likely to rise half a foot to a foot this coming century (assuming no catastrophes like the collapse of the Ross ice shelf), which would endanger numerous low-lying islands in the Pacific.
What level of catatastrophe has to befall us before you'll consider the case "proven?"
If he's like most people, it will have to cause noticeable damage within a few miles of his house.
Anything else is 'someone elses problem'
A learning experience is one of those things that say, 'You know that thing you just did? Don't do that.' - D. Adams
The trouble with digging up carbon and burning it, is that you're adding it to what is essentially a closed loop cycle. This leads to changes in climate and impacts life all over the planet. The more you alter the environment, the bigger the change in the inhabitants of that environment.
Have you noticed how mass extinctions often happen at the boundary between one geological period and another? I don't think it's a coincidence.
My advice is to be extra specially careful around those times.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
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.
More CO2 => increased temperatures => more greenery => more CO2 absorption => more biomass to decompose => more more oil => ??? => Profit!
There are two countries that have everything to gain from this warming, Canada and Russia. For the most part, they will not suffer from desertification like the USA, but they will benefit greatly from the limits of agriculture moving steadily northward. And in both countries, the huge forests will produce 6% more wood than a few years ago. Of the two, Russia is in the better position with bigger oil reserves compared to Canada's tarsands, and with a larger educated population that can leverage the benefits of being resource rich. Also, China is a resource poor country when you factor in its population size, but this market is much easier for Russia to reach than for Canada.
Couple this with political factors such as former Soviet countries now full members of the EU, increasing cooperation between the EU and former Soviet countries in Asia, Russia applying the EU model in a building up a dozen treaty organizations throughout former Soviet countries and beyond, and you have the makings of a real superpower. The hawkish position of many American politicians is the fuel that spurs Russia to take this road.
Personally, I am concerned about the survival of as many life forms as possible, all of whom are being affected by Homo sapiens stomping blindly, willy-nilly all over the place, many spouting selfish bullshit like yours, eating up the world and being smug and self-satisfied with their designer beer. Whatever "favors" we may be doing by releasing carbon into the atmosphere are more than mediated by the fact that we are as a collective quite an ugly phenomenon vis a vis the rest of the biosphere.
Think of everything that life has learned up to now. It's all in the DNA. The DNA is everything life has learned about surviving and prospering and experiencing itself and the universe around. Evolved over billions of years, invaluable, irreplaceable information that interacts to sustain life. We are erasing that information, burning it up. We're not making a backup, and it sounds like you're saying it doesn't matter, it'll all work out in the end so it doesn't matter what we do. That's utter crap, because it does matter. It matters because what we do defines us, and as I look around, it seems that what we humans consider valuable runs quite counter to that which upholds the biosphere that sustains all life.
To me it seems like nothing less than a deep imperative to be concerned about all life and to treat all species as our beloved friends. At any rate, we should not dismiss every other species with banal cartoon characterizations like "fuzzy animals." Sure, you'll find plenty of people who'll pat you on your clever head for that one, but the biosphere is giving you the finger, pal. Life happens to be full, profound, and challenging for all living beings, whether you consider them cute, fuzzy, and ridiculous or not. To dismiss the deep experience of every other species, while exalting our own relatively banal imitation of life is hilarious to behold.
You should endeavor to give the deepest possible respect to all living beings. It may lead you to a deeper appreciation of life, where your concerns aren't bound purely by stylistic considerations: how large, how many fingers and toes, whether the being is fuzzy or "cute" or ugly, whether it can do calculus or get voted off American Idol.
Until you as a person give up your thoughtless species-oriented prejudices, you limit your access to the living world, make everything about "us" and "them," focus on differences, make life a war and a struggle, and closed off in a homo-sapien bubble.
You don't have to make it such an adversarial thing between you and those like me who are trying to love more broadly, but I can understand that some people prefer it that way, because they feel reasonably comfortable that they have the upper hand.
Well, congratulations on your hard-won success!
It just sounds like all you care about is you and yours, and you've got a very limited idea of who fits in that little group. Why would you not try to be an advocate for as many beings as possible? Most higher animals are quite helpless and oblivious in the face of all our madness, and without the intervention of concerned humans, they have no hope. Aren't the helpless, the voiceless, and the downtrodden exactly those who need us to wake up and work harder for them?
I mean, if you feel contempt or indifference towards the helpless.... well it has a fascist kind of spirit, doesn't it?
-- thinkyhead software and media
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.
But I have this to say... you're a blatant biased pig.
I mean, you're getting on the case of a sovereign nation Israel threatening military surgical strikes against a nuclear weapons program at a neighboring sovereign nation that keeps expressing the intent to destroy their neighbor Israel.
You are the same sort of idiot as some of my elementary school teachers were who believed that the kid being picked on by bullies was just as much to blame as the bully and therefore should be suspended.
No, you'll raise your voice to decry Israel for their statements, but sit back and blindly ignore Iran's statements.
Sorry, you're thinking is just great for college classrooms. But gets people killed in the real world. Why don't you go put a "Free Tibet" bumper sticker on your car. Cause we all know that's going to help free Tibet.
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
You missed the several thousand articles about Iran declaring their intent to wipe Israel and every Jew off the face of the planet.
And the fact that they are actively engaged in weapons development programs toward the accomplishment of that fact.
Or the fact that this will be one of a number of times the world has silently thanked Israel. You see, the chicken powers (U.S., U.K., Russia, France, etc) sit back going "We REALLY do not want this nutcase to have nukes. But we'll cause an international incident if we act. Let's just wait and see - knowing Israel will have to act since they're the target."
And then Israel does a surgical strike. The world condemns them publicly and thanks them behind closed doors for doing what none of us western nations have the balls to do.
From what I've read, current CO2 levels are at the low end of what plant life can tolerate.
Past CO2 levels have been documented in peer-reviewed journals:
This discussion may prove enlightening: