31–40 of 65 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Several of the reports I've seen have said we will get more biomass, but most of it will be plants we generally refer to as weeds.
Makes sense, considering that most of the plants we have already match that description.
Not so much in reasonably well-run parks or woodlands.
Sounds like it's a bit more nuanced than the headline would suggest. More CO₂ only means more growth when CO₂ is the limiting factor on growth in the first place. Water, nutrients, and sunlight all play a role as well.
Bingo. While not usually the limiting factor in nature, it can still be a benefit when it is. Just ask all the 1000s of pot growers literally burning propane to produce it indoors and vent it to atmosphere. Grr.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Greenhouses are controlled environments where everything else is abundant too. In more natural environments, plants are limited by availability of water and nutrients in the soil. On top of that, plant growth can be reduced by heat stress. They also have to contend with insects and disease, and may not have good defenses when climate change has brought invasive organisms to the area.
Sure, but what that suggests is that the existing established understanding is correct (or at least still plausible): even if the particular trees studied here aren't CO2-limited and don't grow more with more CO2, total plant biomass will or at least might (outside of climate change denial fantasies this doesn't mean increases in CO2 will automatically be neutralized by plant growth, because it doesn't imply that the…
"climate change is generating warmer, drier conditions that could make them grow less in many places"
Overall, conditions are definitely getting warmer on average, and many places are also getting drier, sometimes with occasional very heavy rainfalls that wash away topsoil.
Another factor I didn't mention is forest fires, brought about by drier conditions, as we've been seeing in California.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The climate skeptics don't say tree trunks will get wider, they say there will be more plant biomass. Speculating that plant biomass might help mitigate global warming doesn't really deserve the label "climate skeptic." It's already confirmed that rising CO2 affects crop growth rates.
What do you mean by mitigate global warming? I think what they argue is that there will be winners and losers, and it isn't some kind of black and white issue. For instance, the Saharan desert seems to be greening.
I hadn't heard about that, and my first few Googles came back without any good, definitive articles; do you have more information?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sure, but what that suggests is that the existing established understanding is correct (or at least still plausible): even if the particular trees studied here aren't CO2-limited and don't grow more with more CO2, total plant biomass will or at least might (outside of climate change denial fantasies this doesn't mean increases in CO2 will automatically be neutralized by plant growth, because it doesn't imply that the…
Sure, if everything else is ideal then many plants will grow more with more CO2. Even this study's authors don't deny that; they say that other factors will often not be ideal: "climate change is generating warmer, drier conditions that could make them grow less in many places" Overall, conditions are definitely getting warmer on average, and many places are also getting drier, sometimes with occasional very heavy ra…
It's important, because the fertilizer for anti-science attitudes exploited by groups like climate denialists is a false impression of radical flip-flops in science conveyed by popular media which uses exaggerated contradiction to overplay the impact of stories and draw eyeballs.
This is a subject of interest to scientists, but not to the general public, because nothing being studied here changes the central message in the slightest, which is that we are undoubtedly headed for climate apocalypse and we are accelerating into it rather than decelerating.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
What do you mean by mitigate global warming? I think what they argue is that there will be winners and losers, and it isn't some kind of black and white issue. For instance, the Saharan desert seems to be greening.
> For instance, the Saharan desert seems to be greening. I hadn't heard about that, and my first few Googles came back without any good, definitive articles; do you have more information?
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-018-04616-8
The study is about sub saharan Africa, mostly the African savanna, and the identified drivers are human causes (decline in burned area, changes in herbivores density). They explicitly exclude CO2 levels increase as a driver.