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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.
Good for my gardens, my forest, my pastures.
Oh, wait, all of them are sequestering carbon to the tune of 1.4 to 2.7 tons of carbon a year. Hmm... This could be counter productive. The plants might use up all that carbon dioxide. Better startup your SUVs to make up for this and keep the farms flourishing!
That slowdown is on the second derivative. The acceleration has slowed if the paper is right. Here's what that looks like: http://woodfortrees.org/plot/e... . The red curve is CO2.
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.
... until the plant dies, and wood/leaves either burn or rot, at which point the CO2 is released into the atmosphere again.
We'll also need some way of getting the plant material back under the ground if we want to keep the CO2 permanently out of the atmosphere. (yes, I realize that does happen, as that's where all the coal deposits came from, etc, but I do wonder what percentage of the new plants will end up that way)
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
Unfortunately, photosynthesis is not the only CO2 sink, as noted in the article: Oceans also take their share, and that cause their pH to drop, which in turns kills coral, and make coasts more vulnerable to erosion.
Somewhat misleading summary. CO2 only increases growth substantially when nutrients and sunlight are also in abundant supply. It does not affect all plant life equally. So not all areas will see the benefit of increased growth. Also as others have mentioned the mass of CO2 stored in plant mass is important but unless that mass keeps increasing quickly without dying out then it can't keep up with the supply. As it decomposes it is released back into the atmosphere.
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
Coral flourishes in lower pH conditions, and the ocean is used to higher levels at times that it will ever see from atmospheric CO2.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
There's an easier and more useful method - make biochar out of it. Charcoal is far more stable than biomatter, and makes the soil more fertile at the same time, boosting future growth.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
The fact that the CO2 level in the atmosphere has been growing more slowly than expected, based on how much CO2 is being created due to human activity, is not new knowledge. We've known that's the case for several decades... but identifying the "sink" has been problematic. For a long while it was assumed to be the oceans, but that was shown not to be true back around 1990-ish.
It looks like this paper is claiming to have at least partially identified the missing sink.
#DeleteChrome
That's nice. That's not sustainable, though.
The 350.org people are not living in reality, if they are your source of info, then you're just living in fantasy land.
Quote from your link:
âoeIf humanity wishes to preserve a planet similar to that on which civilization developed and to which life on Earth is adapted, paleoclimate evidence and ongoing climate change suggest that CO2 will need to be reduced from [current levels] to at most 350 ppm.â
There is zero chance of that happening in the next 100 years, none, ziltch... It will hit 500 ppm long before it has a chance to stop climbing... it probably will hit 600 ppm before the end of this century...
Those people are insane. Notice they don't actually state what will be required to do that, they just say "conserve and stop burning stuff", but they never say HOW MUCH.
Do you know why? Because they know the truth, they know that if they actually publish the number, they'll get ignored.
The number HAS been published... the Western world has to cut 80% of its power consumption and the developing world 60% of its power consumption, and the whole planet has just 32 years to do it.
Now before you scream solar and wind, read the above sentence, then read it again, because I'm 99% sure you won't read it correctly the first few times.
There is zero chance of that happening.
Tamino makes a good case that these researchers are mostly wrong.
a,e,i,o,u and sometimes w and y (at be if of up cwm by)
I just received this text:
That's how I planned for it to work.
~God
Shhhh! You're threatening taxpayer funding for #ClimateChange!