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Nasa Happily Reports the Earth Is Greener

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Re: Nasa Happily Reports the Earth Is Greener

#111

Post by bewo001 »

manmal wrote: post #84
ajuc wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> plants love CO2 In artifical conditions in laboratory there is a significant effect, up to 20% when doubling pre-industrial CO2 concentration. But, in practice for wild plants nitrogen quickly becomes the bottleneck, so the real gains are much smaller. And even for farming plants (which have fertilizer providing additional nitrogen) the real gains diminish, and are more in 5-10% range. For some crops CO2 has very l…

In the movie Interstellar, mildew was the straw that broke the camel‘s back for agriculture. From what I‘ve read, this can be a possibility if CO2 rises too high.

And it was somehow easier to move people and farms to a giant space station than to build climate controlled greenhouses on earth. But it looked stunning in the movie..

Re: Nasa Happily Reports the Earth Is Greener

#112

Post by jessaustin »

jshevek wrote: post #76
spiderfarmer wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Democrats conceding on these issues will leave the US with an orange clown as president for four more years.

These kinds of comments damage the quality of discourse on HN.

Besides which, it's the ongoing fake brouhaha about "Russian collusion" that has already guaranteed Trump's reelection. Regular people don't believe that BS anymore, and they will remember it, no matter how savagely the Ds attempt to discredit the theoretically-soon-to-be-released Mueller report. If Ds had just moved on to important matters, Trump would have little hope, but as it is he will appear to be the adult in Washington.

To be clear: Trump is a corrupt person so there probably is lots of corruption to report. We all hung our hats on a particular flavor of corruption that involved him working with the Kremlin to get elected, which did not happen.

Re: Nasa Happily Reports the Earth Is Greener

#113

Post by jessaustin »

skilled wrote: post #37
jewelry wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

technically, we have no stand to blame them on developing their economy...

Who is them ? I didn't know countries had divinely invoked certificates for owning the planet. It is all in your head buddy.

It is generally recognized that people who inhabit a particular region rightfully determine what happens in that region. That may mean that multinational corporations have more difficulty subsuming and consuming particular local economies as quickly as you might prefer, but that's just tough.

Re: Nasa Happily Reports the Earth Is Greener

#114

Post by jessaustin »

acqq wrote: post #69
marcus_holmes wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I kinda find it weird, though. Because we only know what prehistoric climate conditions were because of tree rings (and ice cores, but they're measuring different things). So predicting future tree ring growth based on climate changes, when we estimate the historical climate based on tree ring growth, means we can make up any relationship we want.

That shows lack of understanding in purpose and use of the tree rings and it is not relevant to the topic. What I read from your statements is just that you don't understand how the past climates are scientifically reconstructed, and want to express the doubt in the results of all the work of all the scientist that agree (which is effectively all of them, minus the ones directly or indirectly funded by fossil fuel co…

...more then the half of all readily available oil from the Earth's crust in just 100 years.

We've been hearing this Peak Oil crap for years. Maybe eventually it will be true...

Re: Nasa Happily Reports the Earth Is Greener

#115

Post by sametmax »

FriedPickles wrote: post #18

From what I understand, the increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide will have a massive greening effect on the Earth (plants love CO2). But it seems this fact is usually omitted so as not to complicate the intended message. I always found it ironic that the "eco" mode button in many cars is a leaf icon.

Of course. I've seen people using the "when an ice melt in a glass, the glass doesn't overflow" argument. They can't see the ice on the land, the albedo effect, the salt concentration, the sea temperature, the gulf stream... If you make things complicated, the truth lose a lot of people to convenience.

That's something the geeks have still a hard time to understand. They won't convince anybody by being right. That's not how public opinion work.

Re: Nasa Happily Reports the Earth Is Greener

#116

Post by kingkawn »

ajuc wrote: post #68
FriedPickles wrote: post #18

From what I understand, the increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide will have a massive greening effect on the Earth (plants love CO2). But it seems this fact is usually omitted so as not to complicate the intended message. I always found it ironic that the "eco" mode button in many cars is a leaf icon.

> plants love CO2 In artifical conditions in laboratory there is a significant effect, up to 20% when doubling pre-industrial CO2 concentration. But, in practice for wild plants nitrogen quickly becomes the bottleneck, so the real gains are much smaller. And even for farming plants (which have fertilizer providing additional nitrogen) the real gains diminish, and are more in 5-10% range. For some crops CO2 has very l…

If you seeded an ecosystem with nitrogen supplements would it allow the plant life to grow at an accelerated rate and capture carbon?

Re: Nasa Happily Reports the Earth Is Greener

#117

Post by ThomPete »

sethammons wrote: post #100
ThomPete wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So when it has hotter previously in history it wasn't a good sign either? Not sure I understand why it's bad this time around and wasn't bad last time around?

Rate of change is the super scary part.

The rate of change of emission is not the same as rate of change of temperature so not sure what it is you are worried about exactly. Keep in mind the models aren't actual predictions they are models which give us a range from no problem at all to really scary. But none of them are actual scientific predictions and there is plenty of argument for why it's not going to be a big issue and certainly not something we can't deal with.

Re: Nasa Happily Reports the Earth Is Greener

#118

Post by graeme »

ph0rque wrote: post #92
ajuc wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> plants love CO2 In artifical conditions in laboratory there is a significant effect, up to 20% when doubling pre-industrial CO2 concentration. But, in practice for wild plants nitrogen quickly becomes the bottleneck, so the real gains are much smaller. And even for farming plants (which have fertilizer providing additional nitrogen) the real gains diminish, and are more in 5-10% range. For some crops CO2 has very l…

Here's where a management that aims for diversity of plants comes in handy. If care is taken to plant the correct proportion of nitrogen-fixing plants, and other plants (such as comfrey) that will grow really deep roots to extract trace minerals, the nutrient density can be increased. There are techniques to increase the soil fertility with the correct selection of plants. There is a design science, permaculture, tha…

That applies to farming, but not to nature. All current animals evolved with the amount of nutrients in plants on average now. If that changes quickly, they'll have a hard time adapting.

Re: Nasa Happily Reports the Earth Is Greener

#119

Post by setgree »

> “When the greening of the Earth was first observed, we thought it was due to a warmer, wetter climate and fertilization from the added carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, leading to more leaf growth in northern forests, for instance. Now, with the MODIS data that lets us understand the phenomenon at really small scales, we see that humans are also contributing.”

That global warming may induce more agriculture, and forest growth, in the global North is something I'd like to learn more about. Anyone have any further reading to recommend?

Re: Nasa Happily Reports the Earth Is Greener

#120

Post by gepoch »

kingkawn wrote: post #116
ajuc wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> plants love CO2 In artifical conditions in laboratory there is a significant effect, up to 20% when doubling pre-industrial CO2 concentration. But, in practice for wild plants nitrogen quickly becomes the bottleneck, so the real gains are much smaller. And even for farming plants (which have fertilizer providing additional nitrogen) the real gains diminish, and are more in 5-10% range. For some crops CO2 has very l…

If you seeded an ecosystem with nitrogen supplements would it allow the plant life to grow at an accelerated rate and capture carbon?

You use ammonia to add nitrogen to crops. Making ammonia is an extremely energy intensive process that already contributes about 2-3% of global carbon emmissions. [1]

So you could spray ammonia everywhere to promote growth, but it's not clear that you'll offset the carbon emissions from making so much ammonia in the first place.

[1] https://m.phys.org/news/2018-07-electrochemically-produced-a...

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