Scientists Surprised to Find Earth's Biosphere Booming 692
radioweather writes "An article from the Financial Post
says that recent studies of
biosphere imaging from the NASA SEAWIFS satellite indicate that the
Earth's
biomass is booming: 'The results surprised Steven Running of the University of Montana and
Ramakrishna Nemani of NASA, scientists involved in analyzing the NASA satellite
data. They found that over a period of almost two decades, the Earth as a whole
became more bountiful by a whopping 6.2%. About 25% of the Earth's vegetated
landmass — almost 110 million square kilometers — enjoyed significant
increases and only 7% showed significant declines. When the satellite data zooms
in, it finds that each square meter of land, on average, now produces almost 500
grams of greenery per year.' Their 2004 study, and other more recent ones, point to the warming of the
planet and the presence of CO2, fertilizing the biota and resulting in the
increased green side effect."
The pertinent question... (Score:3, Interesting)
I'd say it's too early to say for sure, but it would definitely be interesting to find out.
Yeah and then there are "dead zones" (Score:3, Interesting)
Yes I know the story: nutrients create algae blooms which then die and decay thereby robbing the ocean of oxygen.
What I'm referring to as a seeming "paradox" is not only the fact that the base of the food chain is dramatically expanded by nutrients --
but that the organisms making up this foundation produce _oxygen_ from photosynthesis supporting algae grazers with both food _and_ oxygen.
Why don't the smaller, rapidly-reproducing zooplankton take up the gauntlet?
Virtually all of the articles I've read on hypoxic waters and dead zones fail to address this paradox. I've only read one paper that
mentioned even an _hypothesis_ of how algae grazers fail to flourish -- referring to algae species that protect themselves with toxins.
But this doesn't ring true: Why would the most pioneering of algae species be the most protective of themselves when there is so much
opportunity to evolve optimizations for growth rather than defense against grazers?
Consider the source (Score:5, Interesting)
Consider the source. The summary links to two rather untrustworthy sources of global warming information. Why are there no links to the actual study? Maybe the lack of appropriate links is, in it's own way, part of the story. Colour me sceptical.
Re:Is biodiversity also booming? (Score:4, Interesting)
Thank you, that is all.
Re:Yeah and then there are "dead zones" (Score:3, Interesting)
Why don't the smaller, rapidly-reproducing zooplankton take up the gauntlet?
Because algae consume oxygen when there is no sunlight, just like any other plant. If there's sufficient quantities of algae, they will suffocate any higher life form that requires oxygen.
Re:Twisted Conclusion (Score:5, Interesting)
CO2 IS a limiting factor in plant growth. The current concentration, around 350 ppm, is actually at the lowest end for plant survival. Dendrochronologists have to factor in extra growth caused by the recent CO2 blip into their calculations. Why do you think polytunnel farmers inject extra CO2 into their tunnels?
To people who know about these things, this is a non-story.
If you don't know what you're talking about, please don't post on slashdot as if you do.....
Re:Yeah and then there are "dead zones" (Score:5, Interesting)
Not unreasonable but not very hopeful (Score:2, Interesting)
2 * pi * 6.38e+6**2 * 20% * 0.5 kg * (1 - 1/1.062))
or 1.5e+12 kg as the increase in biomass over 20 years.
At the same time, the DOE [doe.gov] reports that we emit 7e+12 kg of carbon every year. Even assuming the bulk of the biomass increase consists of carbon, we can see that Mother Nature has been capable of absorbing only 1% of our emissions in land vegetation and wildlife.
! "Scientists" (Score:5, Interesting)
The Deniers [nationalreview.com]
Lawrence Solomon is author of a new book from the new Richard Vigilante Books. The book is The Deniers: The World Renowned Scientists Who Stood Up Against Global Warming Hysteria, Political Persecution, and Fraud *And those who are too fearful to do so. And that about tells you everything you need to know. In The Deniers, Solomon focuses on profiling the scientists Al Gore conveniently doesn't engage. In the run-up to the hottest holiday of the year, Earth Day, he took questions from National Review Online editor Kathryn Lopez.
Re:meh... (Score:3, Interesting)
1 to 2 degrees, times the mass of the atmosphere (really, really big number) is a frickin' huge amount of additional energy available that's just waiting to cause storms and other extreme weather.
And tell me the world isn't better off being even 10 degrees warmer (less snow, less infrastructure costs).
The problem is that not only does the average temperature rise, but the standard deviation rises, too. So you'll end up with even more extreme temperature swings. The increase also isn't evenly distributed (some areas will actually end up becoming colder). You'll have to deal with tropical and subtropical diseases in areas that were formerly temperate. I don't want to have to deal with frikkin' malaria, dengue fever, yellow fever and whatnot. Then you have ocean acidification from the CO2 that starts negatively impacting (read: killing) useful (read: valuable) fish and seafood stocks. Coastal areas will become flooded, making people move further inland.
"Oh, but then in 200 years, we'll turn into Venus" Meh, prove it.
We don't need to turn into Venus to make Earth a really shitty place to live.
I agree (Score:2, Interesting)
I'm convinced that humans can't ruin the world by using CO2 admitting sources of power (perhaps if we burned it all at once not for energy). My reasoning:
1) Humans are not very the best at surviving extremes in weather. Thus:
2) If CO2/other green house gases screw up the air humans will die off before most other life forms.
3) The ones that survive will tend to be CO2 digesting lifeforms which will bring things back to normal and in the meantime probably have a hayday with all the extra food.
Environmentalists bitch about the selfishness of man to burn plant harming fuels etc. But then most of their arguements revolve around how it affects people. Oh look at this poor tribe that had to move from the coast presumably because of the ocean level rising (it has in fact declined on average). Oh there is draughts in Africa (but they don't mention that it was a record crop year in the Americas when we had all that warming for the El Nino, also better fishing conditions etc).
Re:Absorbing CO2 (Score:2, Interesting)
It depends (Score:5, Interesting)
So while some CO2 _is_ produced in raising those crops, yes, including in creating their fertilizer, they also remove some CO2 from the air. So the balance isn't as doom-and-gloom as you seem to assume.
Second, we're talking fertilizers, not plastics. Most of what those plants need is nitrogen, which actually comes from the air. (Fossil fuels don't contain much nitrogen.) E.g., ammonium nitrate is nitrogen, hydrogen and oxygen. There is no carbon in it at all. (And even if there were, it would go into the plant, not back into the air.)
Technically, some carbon is used there, but at least for the Haber process that's methane gas from natural gas fields. There's buggerall need to start from oil to produce it. And it's recycled back into methane by the end of the process, so it's basically used more as a catalyst than "OMG, dumping CO2 into the atmosphere." The Odda Process is even more fun, in that at least one variant of it can actually use CO2 and fix it to CaCO3.
So all that remains as a source of pollution there is that, like any factory, it needs some energy. It doesn't necessarily mean oil, though. I'm sure you can use nuclear power instead, which, for whatever other sins it may have, has exactly zero CO2 emissions.
Re:The pertinent question... (Score:5, Interesting)
Increasing temperatures over equatorial oceans drive increased humidity and increased storm formation, resulting in an increased number of more powerful hurricanes/typhoons/cyclones. Rising humidity in tropical regions is also extending the range of tropical disease-carrying insects northwards.
The addition of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere is altering the equilibrium acidity of the oceans, as more of it dissolves into top layers of the ocean and forms carbonic acid. This makes it more difficult for diatoms to grow their carbonate-based bodies. If the acidity increases sufficiently, it could cause diatom populations to crash as their bodies dissovle and effectively nuke the entire oceanic ecosystem from the bottom floor.
Underneath the permafrost in much of the north are unimaginably massive deposits of methane calthrates, consisting of a crystal of methane and water molecules that is only thermodynamically stable at low temperatures and high pressures. If rising temperatures induce a massive decomposition (blowout) of calthrates, the result would be catastrophic beyond measure; Methane has thousands of times the greenhouse effect of carbon dioxide, and there are billions of tons of it locked up in calthrates.
There is a now famous picture, showing an image of a Himalayan ice pack taken circa 1910 alongside an image taken today; The ice has all but disappeared. If reduced snow accumulation and increased melting takes place, many borderline parts of the world will be tipped into being outright deserts due to reduced river flow. Guess what feeds the world's rivers?
So... would you like to know more?
Re:meh... (Score:3, Interesting)
But hurt as in cause increased human suffering. Not because the conditions are nessecarily worse, that may or may not be a tossup. But simply because they are DIFFERENT. Lots of stuff that we do is adapted to local sealevel, rainfall, wind, sun etc, so a big CHANGE will disrupt a lot.
It wouldn't have been a problem settling Norway (say) at 3 degrees higher temperature, 10 meters higher sealevel, 100-year-storms every 10-years and 10-year-storms every year. Not in the sligthest, migth even have been easier than it was.
But nevertheless it -IS- a problem if we get these things now, or within a few decades. A significant portion of all buildings and infrastructure needs to be moved or secured to deal with that sealevel, for example.
I don't see any cause for bitterness, we're materially richer than humanity has ever been, and up until now we've spent a completely IGNORABLE part of our richness for dealing with climate change.
40 trillion is a number out of thin air. (by whom, over which time-frame ? How much would the damage of the alternative cost ?), but I do note that paying my part of that bill would mean, in essence, one year of zero pay-raise. Or if I was supposed to pay that over the next 2 decades, it'd mean my average pay-rise would be something like 3.1%/year rather than 3.2%/year. Cry me a river.
(yeah, yeah, I do realize the average Chinese can't pay as much as the average Norwegian)
Re:So now we have the (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Return of the slime (Score:1, Interesting)
You actually think the fish in the ocean mosquitoes? When was the last time you saw mosquito eggs in the ocean?
Re:great (Score:5, Interesting)
Animals such as hadrosaurs would grow extremely rapidly from hatchlings to full grown. That took a LOT of plant material for them to eat. And their population density was fairly high. In order for hadrosaur herds to thrive as they did the vegetation had to be extremely fast growing and abundant.
Modern ecosystems are, by comparison to pre-historic ecosystems, virtually deserts.
There is just nothing like the hadrosaur in the modern world, there just isn't the carbon in circulation to sustain the plant life required to support them.
Re:The cycle.... (Score:4, Interesting)
Most of our technology is used to create a non changing environment for us: steady food and water supply, steady temperatures without summer or winter extremes, steady health etc.pp...
We are not very good equipped with technology to deal with constant change. And global warming, followed by a global cooling might be complicated to deal with.
Re:meh... (Score:3, Interesting)
This isn't like urban planning, where you can see how various schemes panned out elsewhere, because there are no elsewheres to compare ourselves with. It isn't like increasing the police budget in the hopes of preventing crime next year. It's not like intermediate chemistry lab, where you can just get more acid from the big jug if you mess this one up.
Earth is a one-off, irreplacable prototype. We can't react to dangers, we have to be proactive or it's going to become, if not uninhabitable, very unpleasant.
Re:Not unreasonable but not very hopeful (Score:3, Interesting)
Leftist? (Score:5, Interesting)
The "left" is mostly about how you divide the pie, so to speak, not about trying to destroy industry. We're all Keynesians, yes, both Europe and the USA, we all live in a massive overproduction potential, and we all have our governments spend some of that excess to keep it going. Essentially any first world country can produce orders of magnitude more than it needs, and has to find a way to (A) use that surplus for something useful, and/or (B) keep some people busy doing something that doesn't produce anything. Giving corporations more money just results in B. More and more people are hired to engage in nearly zero-sum games, like marketing past a point. Yes, it stimulates consumption a bit too too, but even that (1) only goes so far, and past a point the effects are infinitesimal, and (2) is ultimately a way to waste some production capacity instead of just dumping those resources off a hill.
There's something inherently heartless to argue that someone poor should be denied healthcare, so someone else who's already rich can buy a new barbecue grill. Or that you should dump that excess into having more lawyers and marketers, instead of having a few more doctors.
And no, it hasn't destroyed the industry so far. Germany for example was doing great with a socialist economy, until it had to absorb the obsolete industry of East Germany. Now it's recovering pretty nicely from that again. All the leftist stuff like good welfare, good medical care, unions being officially a part of the corporate management, etc, haven't really resulted in anything bad so far.
But anyway, I digress. That's really what the "left" is about: how you distribute the wealth. The GINI index. The idea that someone below poverty line can use an extra buck on his wage, more than the CEO needs another ten millions on an already ridiculously high wage.
The "Greens" are something else. It's something orthogonal to it all. Yes, they too want some taxes, but then they want to spend it on their own ideas, not on (immediately) improving the lot of the poor. I'm not necessarily saying that it's good or bad, just that it's something orthogonal.
Basically what I'm trying to say is that the political spectrum consists of a hell of a lot of variables, not just one axis between left and right. The ecological agenda is just another axis in that multidimensional space, rather than something inherently leftist.
Re:corn, wheat, soybeans, rice, are biomass (Score:3, Interesting)
I've had farmers not 15 miles away from that organic farm tell me it is impossible, so I understand why you would think so, but I assure you it can be done.
Re:What Could Be More Darwinian? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:The cycle.... (Score:4, Interesting)
Exactly. Amazing how it all balances out.
Yes folks, we're here because the biosphere is in a state of equilibrium, with any change tending to produce a compensating effect.
Thing about equilibria is that some of them are stable - no matter how far you push them they'll roll back - wile others are metastable - push them a bit too far and crash. Think of a pencil balanced on end...
The biosphere may have weathered past storms (although some of them were bad news for many species) but its never dealt with a dominant species with sophisticated tools intent on digging up and burning every last bit of carbon they can winkle out of the crust.
Now, maybe the biosphere is stable enough to cope - maybe it isn't, but what with all this confusion and irrational debate, we don't really know, so the question is: do we feel lucky?
Well, do yah?
Re:So now we have the (Score:5, Interesting)
My take: it's called the greenhouse effect for a reason. Plants thrive in a greenhouse because of the trapped moisture, the tropical conditions, etc. We've increased CO2 which plants "breath". The temperature is rising which actually helps most plants. etc. etc. etc. More plants means more CO2 converted to 02. Humans have become more aware of the problem and will make a few better choices. I think the planet will make some swings back and forth, but we'll adapt and move on.
Layne
Read up on the Little Ice Age (Score:4, Interesting)
I had to do some research on the Little Ice Age a few years ago and every single source I found came back to the same thing, that we're still warming back up and that it's still significantly colder than it was 1,000 years ago.
Disclaimer: No, referencing research by various groups that contradict "the sky is falling" mentality of global warming is NOT flaimbait. Yes, temperatures most likely will go up. No, we will most likely not have a huge catastrophe that destroys mankind.
Re:corn, wheat, soybeans, rice, are biomass (Score:3, Interesting)
Human shit is pretty unpleasant, but no more dangerous than any other. And if you're talking about drugs and such, I really doubt many would survive passing through the food chain. While those we piss out can enter the water supply in measurable (though minuscule) quantities.
There are a few vegetable farms nearby, in Hong Kong, where the farmers slop out buckets of shit on their fields. A lot of them are over 70 years old (the youngsters all have office jobs). The circle of life includes shit.
Re:The cycle.... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:So now we have the (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:So now we have the (Score:3, Interesting)
Of course, the case could be made that off shore drilling could cause an environmental problem that would affect the land owners in areas such as CA and FL, but this doesn't explain the stink over ANWR, where no one lives.
As for CO2 and global warming, the plants seem to dig the extra CO2 and warmth and will thrive, soaking up the excess CO2 and growing in areas that were previously unfriendly to plants.
Re:So now we have the (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:No fecal matter for skull filling... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:So now we have the (Score:4, Interesting)
Hold up there buddy, that is simply not true, many animals depend on icy habitats (polar bears, penguins) which are going to disappear with increasing temperature. Increased melting will disrupt the north Atlantic drift which will completely change the climate of northern Europe to something like the previous ice age. Increased levels of CO2 interacting with the sea will cause the oceans to become more acidic, this is already happening.
Whatever the result, the planet is likely to be going through the most rapid period of change to its internal distribution of gases ever recorded, as a direct result of pollution from burning fossil fuels. As a species, humanity has emerged in a relatively calm period in the earth's climatic history, now, our children and their children, and heaven forbid, maybe even we, will have to deal with the consequences of these actions, which I doubt will "lead to a stronger biosphere all round."
It seems to me that when we see something happen, we immediately try to figure out what WE did to cause it. It's the same kind of self-centered belief system that led Native Americans to believe that a certain dance or sacrifice would lead to rain.
high O2 or CO2 in life's past (Score:3, Interesting)
Its not whether life life can survive in such conditions, but what happens when this changes occur in a century or two instead of hundreds of thousands of years. Some species may have a lot of trouble adapting to quick change, including coastal-dwelling humans.
Re:So now we have the (Score:5, Interesting)
Environmentalism [wikipedia.org] as a modern movement is usually said to start around the industrial revolution, i.e. around 1800.
Global warming [wikipedia.org] was first discussed by Svante Arrhenius before 1900 (Svante considered GW a good thing, being a Swede, but of course he did not know about chaos theory and run away temperatures).
The war on science where all science that don't fit a fundamentalist view is smeared, seems to be a quite new tactic, invented in the USA.
Re:So now we have the (Score:3, Interesting)
Thanks for the newsflash, Einstein!
Seriously, wtf does that have to do with my comment? I see you got modded "informative", but realistically you should probably be modded redundant, since I think there's very few people who aren't aware of England's role in the partitioning of the Ottoman Empire. That's got very little to do with the modern-day conduct of certain nations in that region.
Or are you saying that those damn Eh-rabs are too dumb to do anything on their own, and that therefore all of their mistakes and misbehaviour must be blamed on the white man? That seems to be a pretty popular way of thinking in certain circles, but I personally find it despicable.
Re:So now we have the (Score:2, Interesting)
I could go on and on and on, but I think these few examples from just the past 30 years should do the trick.
Don't get me wrong, there are a few times that environmentalist have been correct. But more times than not, their attempts to save the world ends up doing more harm than good. Take their successful resistance nuclear power for example. A more modern example would be the successful blocking of using Yucca Mountain for nuclear waste storage. OK, so there is a remote possibility that something bad may happen in Yucca Mountain. There is a greater risk of something WORSE happening when nuclear waste is stored all over the country. So what happens? We store our nuclear waste all over the country. Thank you, tree huggers!
Any time a group of so-called scientists need to resort to exaggeration and fear mongering to get public opinion on their side, take with much sodium chloride as they are always full of shit.
Re:So now we have the (Score:3, Interesting)
The scientific method does give us, at least most of the time, data on what is happening in the real world. Through observation and experimentation we do get some evidence of what is going on around us in nature.
It is in the interpretation of this evidence in the believing of it, that differences arise. These differences arise mainly, because as human beings we have differences in our worldview. Everything we do and observe is filtered through the eyes of our worldview, which is of course shaped by our core beliefs.
The modern worldview is that we live in a universe shaped and controlled by impersonal forces of time and natural law. The far older worldview, extant over most of humanity's existence, it is that the universe was created by and is controlled by a transcendent, personal, intelligent God.
All evidence brought forth by the scientific method is filtered through either one or the other of these two worldviews. Those that have the naturalistic worldview believe that humanity can control the forces of nature on a global scale and must do so. Those that believe that God is in charge of the universe, including this Earth, also believe that this intelligent God has a purpose in mind, just as we humans have a purpose for the things we make.
Thus while science and the scientific method may be neutral on these issues, the interpretation of the data that the scientific method produces is anything but neutral.
Re:So now we have the (Score:3, Interesting)
Countless effects and phenomena have been discovered and explained by science, and not once, despite the best efforts of many brilliant people, have those explanations suggested the actions of a transcendent, personal, intelligent God.
I'm not going to get into a debate over whether such a god exists or not, I'll merely point out that even if such a god does exist they are either not interfering in the world directly, or are not making changes in an area that science has thoroughly investigated.
Regardless the evidence is overwhelming, if every one of a thousand coin flips comes up heads, you'd best not count on the next flip coming up tails. That doesn't necessarily mean it's a two headed coin, but if there is a tail it isn't showing itself and it's a really bad idea to bet on the next flip violating that rule.
Re:So now we have the (Score:3, Interesting)
Not slightly, but entirely. For every single piece of data that you can interpret as evidence for impersonal processes, a creationist can interpret that same data from the point of view of the existence of a Creator God.
I challenge you to come up with a single piece of scientific evidence, that cannot be interpreted either way.
Sure, you can probably find some ambiguity, maybe the Romans were lying, all the rocks and fossils are an elaborate fraud by god or the devil. But there's a difference between a rational explanation and making excuses.
One of the big litmus tests for a theory is not how it explains the cases we've already looked at, but how well it explains the things we haven't looked at yet.
The secular interpretations of science have been getting the predictions right for several hundreds of years. The religious interpretations have been doing far worse, and even in the distant past when they did get part of something right the religious part was quickly found to be superfluous and often a source of error.
There's a reason why virtually every prominent creationist turns out to be flagrantly dishonest. When your worldview allows you to do draw those conclusions you're no longer working in reality.
So sure, the interpretation of data can depend entirely on your worldview, but you only get a significant deviation from the realm of secular science if that worldview is a fantasy.
Re:So now we have the (Score:3, Interesting)
It always bothered me that 'scientists claim' that global warming will lead to ocean rises... why? first thing i learned in geology class, really, Plate Tectonics. if we drop a 100 billion tons of snow and ice off Greenland, Antarctica, etc what happens to the pacific and Atlantic tectonic plates? doesn't that 100 billion tons of water Do Something to those tectonic plates?
i would really like for someone to run a computer model on what all that weight shifting rapidly or slowly would do to plate tectonics. would hawaii erupt in magma flows over the whole chain? would there be massive quakes? would part of California finally fall into the ocean?
i don't think that that Much Weight could have no impact on plate tectonics, i just don't believe it. the ocean rise problem although a problem i think is off the mark, will the oceans only rise an inch? and cause double the world wide earthquakes and volcanic eruptions? or will the oceans rise 10 inches? or will California dropping into the seas create a nice handy pocket for all the 'water' to go into in death valley?
it's a complex scenario, and nobody Really Knows what would happen. I really hope we never find out what would happen, but I'm afraid we Will find out, and in my lifetime the rate we're going.