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Study: Global plant growth surging alongside carbon dioxide (2017)

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Re: Study: Global plant growth surging alongside carbon dioxide (2017)

#21

Post by toomim »

DJBunnies wrote: post #3

Did anybody else expect this? Plants love CO2, seems like excess will lead to crazy plant growth and a rebalance.

Yes, many scientists have predicted this, but unfortunately the act of articulating a positive effect of CO2 tends to get you labeled "climate denier" and censored from many parts of the media, and thus we aren't very aware of the bigger picture of climate change. Here's an articulation from one of the Greenpeace Cofounders: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WDWEjSDYfxc

He also notes that increased CO2 can help boost agriculture productivity, making it easier to feed the world's population.

Re: Study: Global plant growth surging alongside carbon dioxide (2017)

#22

Post by Inhibit »

jmclnx wrote: post #6

I have been noticing were I live, it has been getting greener and greener for many years 30+. First time I saw conformation on this.

Certainly the same here for the past 20 years. Although not the same year to year the plants do seem to be growing more vigorously overall.

So we now have a sample size of two :).

Re: Study: Global plant growth surging alongside carbon dioxide (2017)

#23

Post by kibwen »

Nbox9 wrote: post #18

We’ve known about this effect for awhile. Tree growth has increased on volume but decreased in density since the industrial revolution[0]. A small bump in plant growth can not be seen as anything but the smallest of a silver lining. [0] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S037811271...

Saving people a click for the abstract:

"Forest stand growth dynamics in Central Europe have accelerated since 1870 due to a rise in temperature, extended growing seasons, and other components of climate change. Based on wood samples from the oldest existing experimental plots in Central Europe, we show that the dominant tree species Norway spruce (Picea abies (L.) H.Karst.), Scots pine (Pinus sylvestris L.), European beech (Fagus sylvatica L.), and sessile oak (Quercus petraea (Mattuschka) Liebl.) exhibit a significant decrease in wood density since more than 100 years. While stand and trees grow faster with respect to wood volume, we can show that wood density decreased by 8–12% since 1900. These results object a naïve direct transformation of volume growth trends into an accelerated biomass production. Since 1900, stand biomass increment increased 9–24 percentage points less compared to volume increment (29–100% increase reduces to 20–76%). For a given stem diameter and annual ring width, tree stability against windthrow, wood strength, energy content and C sequestration are even reduced under recent conditions. The generally decreased late wood density, partly going along with an increased early wood fraction, suggests the observed extension of the growing season and fertilization effect of dry deposition as the main causes. Our results indicate that current increased wood volume growth rates must not be straightforwardly converted into sequestrated C and biomass harvest potentials assuming historic values for wood density. This should be taken into account in monitoring, modeling, and utilization of carbon and biomass in forests under global change."

Re: Study: Global plant growth surging alongside carbon dioxide (2017)

#24

Post by jacobwilliamroy »

toomim wrote: post #21
DJBunnies wrote: post #3

Did anybody else expect this? Plants love CO2, seems like excess will lead to crazy plant growth and a rebalance.

Yes, many scientists have predicted this, but unfortunately the act of articulating a positive effect of CO2 tends to get you labeled "climate denier" and censored from many parts of the media, and thus we aren't very aware of the bigger picture of climate change. Here's an articulation from one of the Greenpeace Cofounders: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WDWEjSDYfxc He also notes that increased CO2 can help boost a…

I have no idea what happened to Patrick Moore. He's not actually an environmentalist anymore. He just uses his past affiliation with Greenpeace to make money being a spokesman for companies like Exxon and Monsanto. He doesn't actually care if you live or die. He just wants you to spend more money on fossil fuels.

Re: Study: Global plant growth surging alongside carbon dioxide (2017)

#25

Post by thaumasiotes »

nealabq wrote: post #15

I assume plant life is constrained by different things in different locations: - lack of water - too hot - too cold - not enough light (ground level of the rain forest?) - lack of soil nutrients (rain forest?) - too much salt I'll add CO2 levels to my mental list, a constraint that's independent of location.

> I assume plant life is constrained by different things in different locations:

> - lack of water

> - too hot

> - too cold

Hmm. There are lots of examples where plants do not grow in an area that (1) has a lot of water; and (2) is very cold. Are there any examples of a place that is too hot, as opposed to too dry?

Even the cold examples might be driven more by a lack of liquid water than by temperature requirements.

Re: Study: Global plant growth surging alongside carbon dioxide (2017)

#26

Post by heavyset_go »

DJBunnies wrote: post #3

Did anybody else expect this? Plants love CO2, seems like excess will lead to crazy plant growth and a rebalance.

Depends on what happens with the vegetative growth. If it is cut down or otherwise dies, decomposition will release CO2. Systems like that can often be carbon neutral if they regrow again. Human development is destroying what could be longterm carbon sinks, though, and so is climate change.

Re: Study: Global plant growth surging alongside carbon dioxide (2017)

#27

Post by syops »

toomim wrote: post #21
DJBunnies wrote: post #3

Did anybody else expect this? Plants love CO2, seems like excess will lead to crazy plant growth and a rebalance.

Yes, many scientists have predicted this, but unfortunately the act of articulating a positive effect of CO2 tends to get you labeled "climate denier" and censored from many parts of the media, and thus we aren't very aware of the bigger picture of climate change. Here's an articulation from one of the Greenpeace Cofounders: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WDWEjSDYfxc He also notes that increased CO2 can help boost a…

Do you know of any examples of a climate scientist or biologist predicting this and being labeled a climate denier for stating this prediction? I would be very much surprised if it wasn't common knowledge amongst climate scientists that this is one result of the increase in CO2 in the atmosphere.

Re: Study: Global plant growth surging alongside carbon dioxide (2017)

#28

Post by p1necone »

toomim wrote: post #21
DJBunnies wrote: post #3

Did anybody else expect this? Plants love CO2, seems like excess will lead to crazy plant growth and a rebalance.

Yes, many scientists have predicted this, but unfortunately the act of articulating a positive effect of CO2 tends to get you labeled "climate denier" and censored from many parts of the media, and thus we aren't very aware of the bigger picture of climate change. Here's an articulation from one of the Greenpeace Cofounders: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WDWEjSDYfxc He also notes that increased CO2 can help boost a…

This is nonsense. More CO2 === faster plant growth is not some suppressed secret, this is basic science that people have known about for ages, and nobody is going to get labelled anything unless they're mentioning it as part of some bad faith argument.

Climate change deniers love stuff like this though, you can bring it up in a bullet point list of "why climate change isn't a big deal" or whatever and push your false narrative without any of the individual points being false. People who bring this fact up and are subsequently labelled climate change deniers are being labelled that because of the context and content of their whole argument, not because one specific true fact was mentioned.

It's also a bit disingenuous to talk about Patrick Moore as a Greenpeace Co-founder without any context about what he's been up to since 1986 when he left the organization. This is just an appeal to authority that's only tenuously linked to reality.

Stop being disingenuous just so you can feed your persecution complex with strangers on the internet.

Re: Study: Global plant growth surging alongside carbon dioxide (2017)

#29

Post by Robotbeat »

stupendousyappi wrote: post #20
gmuslera wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plants get more carbon, but not more minerals or elements that are only in the soil. And that may mean more volume, maybe more calories, but less food. That, even if we assume that we get to an stable and livable weather plateau, and not an ever increasing global warming, extreme weather, and livable conditions for every animal and plant. And even in that plateau, if the ecosystem that make that plants to live (I don…

Over the very long term, I see no reason to think that higher CO2 levels are fundamentally worse for life than pre-industrial levels. In general, plants are the foundation of the food chain, and higher CO2 levels are better for them. In addition, life depends on liquid water, and given that surface temperatures are generally closer to the freezing point of water than the boiling point, I could see how higher temperat…

Good for plants, but not necessarily for humans. Human mental performance seems to reduce at higher CO2 levels, which makes sense as humans (by any definition... behaviorally modern humans ~50,000 years ago, anatomically modern humans 300,000 years ago, the overall genus homo within about 2 million years) have never experienced CO2 levels near the current level, let alone what they may be by the end of the century. Perhaps CO2 levels will be higher than ever experienced by great apes since we first evolved 14 million years ago: https://earth.org/data_visualization/a-brief-history-of-co2/

Re: Study: Global plant growth surging alongside carbon dioxide (2017)

#30

Post by xyzwave »

nealabq wrote: post #16
DJBunnies wrote: post #3

Did anybody else expect this? Plants love CO2, seems like excess will lead to crazy plant growth and a rebalance.

Plants also love humidity. It seems likely that global warming leads to more water vapor in the air.

Yes, as oceans warm, more water vapor is being released into the atmosphere. Water vapor is far more effective than CO2 at trapping heat, and is therefore driving one of global warming’s most extreme positive feedback loops [1].

1. https://www.acs.org/content/acs/en/climatescience/climatesci...

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