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Earth's Plants Are Countering Some of the Effects of Climate Change (economist.com)
A new study published in Nature Communications has found that Earth's plant life between 2002 and 2014 has absorbed so much carbon dioxide that the buildup of CO2 in the atmosphere has slowed down, despite humans pumping out more CO2 than ever before. The study also found that between 1982 and 2009, "about 18m square kilometers of new vegetation had sprouted on Earth's surface, an area roughly twice the size of the United States." The Economist reports: In 2014 humans pumped about 35.7 billion tons of carbon dioxide into the air. That figure has been climbing sharply since the middle of the 20th century, when only about 6 billion tons a year were emitted. As a consequence, the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere has been rising too, from about 311 parts per million (ppm) in 1950 to just over 400 in 2015. Yet the rate at which it is rising seems to have slowed since the turn of the century. According to Dr Keenan, between 1959 and 1989 the rate at which CO2 levels were growing rose from 0.75ppm per year to 1.86. Since 2002, though, it has barely budged. In other words, although humans are pumping out more CO2 than ever, less of it than you might expect is lingering in the air. Filling the atmosphere with CO2 is a bit like filling a bath without a plug: the level will rise only if more water is coming out of the taps than is escaping down the drain. Climate scientists call the processes which remove CO2 from the air "sinks." The oceans are one such sink. Photosynthesis by plants is another: carbon dioxide is converted, with the help of water and light energy from the sun, into sugars, which are used to make more plant matter, locking the carbon away in wood and leaves. Towards the end of the 20th century around 50% of the CO2 emitted by humans each year was removed from the atmosphere this way. Now that number seems closer to 60%. Earth's carbon sinks seem to have become more effective, but the precise details are still unclear. Using a mix of ground and atmospheric observations, satellite measurements and computer modeling, Dr Keenan and his colleagues have concluded that faster-growing land plants are the chief reason. That makes sense: as CO2 concentrations rise, photosynthesis speeds up. Studies conducted in greenhouses have found that plants can photosynthesis up to 40% faster when concentrations of CO2 are between 475 and 600ppm.
Yes plants release much of the CO2 they absorb back into the atmosphere - but most of it is stored in the very slowly decomposing parts of the plant, and some will remain in the soil.
However - over time as plants die new plants grow to replace them, basically making the net CO2 a slow reduction from the amount not released when dead... but on top of that as the Earth warms it will encourage more growth and therefore greater ongoing CO2 sequestration in living plants, and that means a greater ongoing reduction of CO2 from CO2 that remains in the soil.
What is missing from the equation are estimates of how much greater the biomass will become with higher temperatures and more CO2 (which greatly encourages plant growth). I don't know I'veever seen that factored in, and to me if nothing else figured in, that absolutely puts the breaks on any kind of runaway warming scenario from CO2 - the only reason we were supposed to be scared of CO2 to begin with. The Earth (and people) can handle a 2-4C warming just fine, and will in fact thrive because of it.
I wish people would just get past the voodoo nonsense that CO2 is the problem, when real pollution is the danger because it could affect plant life in the negative instead of the positive. Luckily much greater adoption of solar energy is inevitable now so even worries about future pollution are reduced, on top of that self-driving cars mean much more efficient use of a vehicles engine so that too leads to an automatic future reduction in real pollution.
It may be that we might yet escape the next ice age cycle if we can really boost the global temperature enough, though I'm doubtful we can really break free of a cycle that is so fundamental.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
While I agree that is true and while I agree that life actually put it into the resevoirs you are talking about, *our species* evolved after the coal and oil resevoirs were created. I would mention that life was common on earth prior to the introduction of free oxygen in the atmosphere. The "natural state" does not involve O2 in the atmosphere.
Avoid Missing Ball for High Score
Back in the 70s a friend had a couple pot plants growing in his closet. He had a grow light and everything. About once a week we'd walk to the local Baskins Robbins, where they would give us a 1-2 lb chunk of dry ice. Mike would suspend this chunk some 3 feet over his plants, his plants seemed to love the hell out of it (hard to tell, they don't purr, or roll over for a belly rub, or anything, they just grow faster).
// Died 5/15 of Lou Gehrig's disease
/// A much better person than I am
/ RIP Mike
This is not news to people that have paid attention to the science of global warming. As much as the AGW alarmists scream about "science" you'd think that they'd stop screaming once in a while and do some actual science. But then if they had then they wouldn't be AGW alarmists.
The correlation between plant growth and CO2 concentration is not news to anyone that has even minimal knowledge of biology. CO2 is plant food, if you make more food available to them they tend to grow faster, stronger, and higher. It should be only a small leap in logic that natural plant growth will place a limit on the speed in which CO2 concentrations can grow and how high those concentrations can get.
What is finally making the AGW types pay attention to the science is that we haven't seen any real warming for two decades. What we'll see next is some articles about scientists noticed that the recent sea level rise has been happening for a very long time and at a rate that has been relatively constant for centuries.
I will stop just short of calling AGW a hoax because everyone involved knows very little on how the climate works. What I am quite certain about is that people have been using AGW as an excuse to grow government power and/or personally enrich themselves with "fixes" to AGW that are hoaxes.
A bad car analogy is having car troubles and focusing on only the left rear tire valve stem. With all the complexities to the climate it is madness to attribute any climate changes to only CO2 produced from human fossil fuel consumption. It is then further madness to not recognize the natural systems that have kept this system stable for so long and how that might interact with that increased CO2 output.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.