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Why you can’t grow cool-climate plants in hot climates

crimepaysbutbotanydoesnt.com

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Re: Why you can’t grow cool-climate plants in hot climates

#71

Post by notepad0x90 »

Wouldn't a hydroponic setup help the author with this?

Dumb question, but is it difficult to setup a temperature and humidity controlled box or room where you could stow away the plants at night? A possibly dumber question, why do hydroponics always seem to involve indoor/UV lighting? Why are there no container-sized setups that you can place outdoors, but the climate and sun-light is controlled, and it's all powered by solar energy?

(sorry for all the dumb questions, i don't know anything about this topic)

Re: Why you can’t grow cool-climate plants in hot climates

#72

Post by thfuran »

i_k_k wrote: post #34
griffzhowl wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the connection? I thought the Ci would be Koppen climate classification but it's actually alternate carbon-fixing photosynthetic processes

Plants build three-carbon sugars during photosynthesis by fixing a CO2 molecule onto a two-carbon chain with an enzyme called RuBisCO. In a typical "C3" plant, this happens relatively directly. But RuBisCO can screw up and fix an O2 molecule instead, and the erroneous result costs the plant energy to repair. As the temperature rises, so does the error rate. At a high-enough temperature, the plant loses energy overall…

Isn’t rubisco also weirdly slow?

Re: Why you can’t grow cool-climate plants in hot climates

#73

Post by thfuran »

griffzhowl wrote: post #62
anon84873628 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you read the article it explains why.

Yeah, ok. I read about half the article and it was just talking about growing tomatoes in Texas rather than their homeland of the northern Andes. Now I see in the last paragraph it says C4 photosynthesis is more efficient in hot climates and C3 more efficient in cooler climates. I don't see though what's the benefit of bioengineering C3 plants to operate with C4, rather than to utilise C4 plants where the climate is…

Wouldn’t the benefit be getting to still grow the crops that are now C3?

Re: Why you can’t grow cool-climate plants in hot climates

#74

Post by bikelang »

mythrwy wrote: post #15

You can, if you keep them cool with shade and water if it's not excessively humid. I practice zone denial with a shade house and have things like rhubarb, cilantro and lettuce growing right now. It's been over 100F many days this summer and these would not make it outside. I also have many varieties of tomatoes and pretty sure I'm the only one the region who does because they would not set fruit outside in these temp…

Can you tell us a bit more about your greenhouse/hoop house? I’m in the CO front range - so very dry, cool nights, but quite hot in the sun. Our patio is getting re-done and I’m thinking about how I might rebuild our planters to better support growing tomatoes.

Re: Why you can’t grow cool-climate plants in hot climates

#75

Post by griffzhowl »

lumost wrote: post #11
lazide wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not that you’re wrong, but I find it darkly amusing that rather than than cut back on all the crazy things we’re doing, it would make sense to instead bio engineer a bunch of plant life to deal instead.

What is the proposed mechanism for implementing a cut back? A global population with 8 billion people and 1950s carbon emissions implies an average living standard somewhere in the realm of the 1900s. Are you volunteering to move back to the horse and buggy? Bear in mind that the industrialized world of 1950 was only inhabited by a small portion of the global population at most a billion people. The only path forward…

> The only path forward is technological innovation to reduce or remove carbon emissions.

Jared Diamond said a funny thing in his book 'Collapse', when talking about the last person on Easter Island to have cut down a tree.

Easter Island had at one point been densely forested and supported a dense human population. When Europeans found it there were no trees and it was sparsely populated. It's thought that their famous Moai statues were rolled to the shore on logs, and trees were found plentifully according to the pollen record there.

Anyway, Diamond envisages the person cutting down the last tree as thinking "It's ok, technology will save us!"

Re: Why you can’t grow cool-climate plants in hot climates

#76

Post by NooneAtAll3 »

notepad0x90 wrote: post #71

Wouldn't a hydroponic setup help the author with this? Dumb question, but is it difficult to setup a temperature and humidity controlled box or room where you could stow away the plants at night? A possibly dumber question, why do hydroponics always seem to involve indoor/UV lighting? Why are there no container-sized setups that you can place outdoors, but the climate and sun-light is controlled, and it's all powered…

do you mean greenhouse?

I guess in this case it would have to be greenhouse with good AC?

Re: Why you can’t grow cool-climate plants in hot climates

#77

Post by tcoff91 »

oorza wrote: post #49
tcoff91 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The moment anyone tries anything on that scale of geoengineering, they will immediately be blamed for whatever weather-based natural disasters that follow. I just don’t see how this can work without creating massive diplomatic tensions.

I mean, if I had Elon Musk money, I'd build some kind of giant carbon capture mechanism. Perhaps I'd buy the largest basalt quarry I could find and start sequestering carbon at a planetary scale. It would cost a ton of money, but I'd do it in secret. If it worked, eventually it would show up on the scales, and I'd emerge from the shadows. This particular method of carbon capture could potentially work at a planetary…

Carbon capture is probably the only geoengineering thing you could do that isn’t going to be massively controversial. Probably not practical though.

The other options mentioned like messing with the atmosphere to make it reflect more heat into space will likely cause wars due to lack of global consensus

Re: Why you can’t grow cool-climate plants in hot climates

#78

Post by oceanplexian »

anon84873628 wrote: post #57
exoverito wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disturbingly authoritarian impulses for a dubious prescription. The climate goes through natural cycles, we are actually coming out of a global temperature low after the ice age. Cold eras are actually far more dangerous throughout human history, for example the Little Ice Age during the Dark Ages which caused widespread crop failures and famine in Europe. Warm eras are correlated with the golden ages of civilization…

>Warm eras are correlated with the golden ages of civilizations Yeah, and hot eras kill civilizations. There's a famous one called the 4.2 kiloyear event. Does modern mesopotamia seem like a great place for the birthplace of agriculture? I don't necessarily agree with the parent's politics, but you seem to be completely ignoring the categorical difference of CO2 emissions and associated risks of climate tipping point…

> Does modern mesopotamia seem like a great place for the birthplace of agriculture?

Actually yes, if not for the massive cultural and political dysfunction.

Modern Day Mesopotamia would be one of the most agriculturally productive regions in the world if managed. Like the California Central Valley and Central Arizona which share similar climate classifications and are the most productive regions (per Acre) on the planet.

Re: Why you can’t grow cool-climate plants in hot climates

#79

Post by i_k_k »

thfuran wrote: post #72
i_k_k wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plants build three-carbon sugars during photosynthesis by fixing a CO2 molecule onto a two-carbon chain with an enzyme called RuBisCO. In a typical "C3" plant, this happens relatively directly. But RuBisCO can screw up and fix an O2 molecule instead, and the erroneous result costs the plant energy to repair. As the temperature rises, so does the error rate. At a high-enough temperature, the plant loses energy overall…

Isn’t rubisco also weirdly slow?

Huh - I guess it is. I didn't know that! I guess that's why the world needs so much of it.

https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.01.19.633714v1

Re: Why you can’t grow cool-climate plants in hot climates

#80

Post by griffzhowl »

cityofdelusion wrote: post #58
manoDev wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“Horse and buggy”. How dramatic. If at least the US got in line with the rest of the world, we would be half-way there. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/co-emissions-per-capita The problem is not the 8 billion people, is the handful that have an disproportionate impact.

Disingenuous. Here is the correct chart to link if you want to assert emissions by country: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/annual-co2-emissions-per-...

How does that make sense? The US reduced their emissions by shifting production to China, and China gladly lapped it up (in massive amounts).

It would be good to have a graph showing where the ultimate products of these emissions ended up.

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