>The researchers point out that the gain in greenness seen around the world, which is dominated by India and China, does not offset the damage from loss of natural vegetation in tropical regions, such as Brazil and Indonesia. So is it a net gain or not?
It is, although replacing forests with pastures should not be indicative of CO2 sequestration, but the opposite.
In Brazil there's a biome called cerrado[0], characterized by low trees and shrubs, from the sky might seem brown but there's a lot of biodiversity and flora. Replacing it with soy fields should not be a net gain in my book.
> “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 fo…
It's kind of an obvious implication to there being more CO2 in the atmosphere. Plants like it. If it gets warmer at higher latitudes, there will also be more plants able to grow there. There was a 200 page report on global warming from the 1980s on HN a few days ago which had several sections on this as upsides to global warming. I only read 50 pages of it, but it is a remarkably clear and level headed document. http…
One serious caveat about the "plants like more CO2" idea:
The increase in CO2 strongly disfavors slow-growing old groth and established ecosystems, and favors fast growing plants, which are typically invasive species that take over and destroy established ecosystems, and reduce biodiversity.
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..
The space station was an arc traveling to the new planet they found.
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…
I basically agree. I've always felt that Trump's most strident critics reached too hard for sensationalism, missing many opportunities to make valid criticisms while preserving their credibility.
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…
I believe in global warming with all my heart but just to be balanced the heat also gives you a longer growing season and let’s plants thrive in higher latitudes. Edit funny the downvotes. I’m on your team guys! Just think we can’t ignore counter facts.
Just because you believe something doesn't make it a fact.
"Global warming" would be better named "wilder temperature swings" (which is why we hear the phrase "global climate change"). Larger temperature swings (colder winters, hotter summers, no real spring or fall seasons) are not good for growing crops.
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..
People also got sick and died from dust particles, I guess the conjecture was that earth would soon become uninhabitable.
The dirty secret is that plant growth is most optimal around 1200 - 1500 ppm CO2. Likely because plants evolved in in epochs of much higher level. If levels were to drop below 120 ppm, I believe we would see mass plant die off. Pre-industrial levels were already around 180 to 200 ppm I believe (All these numbers are off the top of my head). So even if we can stabilize around 400 ppm now with renewable, AND start to sequester back to pre-industrial levels, we would need to also make sure we can turn that sequestration OFF at some point. It bugs me to see future nascent industrial applications that want to pull CO2 out of the air for products. We could very well get into a situation in the future where we are begging industry to STOP pulling CO2 out of the atmosphere for fear or crop failure, instead of pumping it out. It may take 1000 years, but levels will come down a bit naturally if we can stabilize. That stability will only come from technological advances like electric cars, planes, trucks and lab grown meats. No amount tax or cap and trade is going to make any sense unless India and China are also on-board.
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...
Ahh that’s what I figured, too bad
nitrogen fixing cover crops is the way in agriculture I guess
Even if you did that, unless you bury the trees after they grow, they'll just rot and release the co2 back in the atmosphere. Trees aren't supposed to be a buffer for increasing co2 levels. They just use co2 as a reusable resource.
Normally if you get a forest going, it would replenish itself, not just grow old and then vanish - thus being a buffer.
I agree, but a tiny one. You can't pump half the oil out of the earth's crust that formed there after millions of years, burn it into the atmosphere, and recover the co2 by growing a forest on the surface, no matter how big it is.