Plants May Be Absorbing 20% More CO2 Than We Thought, New Models Find (newatlas.com) 81
An anonymous reader writes: Using realistic ecological modeling, scientists led by Western Sydney University's Jürgen Knauer found that the globe's vegetation could actually be taking on about 20% more of the CO2 humans have pumped into the atmosphere and will continue to do so through to the end of the century.
"What we found is that a well-established climate model that is used to feed into global climate assessments by the likes of the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) predicts stronger and sustained carbon uptake until the end of the 21st century when extended to account for the impact of some critical physiological processes that govern how plants conduct photosynthesis," said Knauer.
Mathematical models of ecological systems are used to understand complex ecological processes and in turn attempt to predict how the real ecosystems they're based on will change. The researchers found that the more complex their modeling, the more surprising the results – in the environment's favor.
Current models, the team adds, are not that complex so likely underestimate future CO2 uptake by vegetation... [T]he modeling makes a strong case for the value of greening projects and their importance in comprehensive approaches to tackling global warming.
"What we found is that a well-established climate model that is used to feed into global climate assessments by the likes of the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) predicts stronger and sustained carbon uptake until the end of the 21st century when extended to account for the impact of some critical physiological processes that govern how plants conduct photosynthesis," said Knauer.
Mathematical models of ecological systems are used to understand complex ecological processes and in turn attempt to predict how the real ecosystems they're based on will change. The researchers found that the more complex their modeling, the more surprising the results – in the environment's favor.
Current models, the team adds, are not that complex so likely underestimate future CO2 uptake by vegetation... [T]he modeling makes a strong case for the value of greening projects and their importance in comprehensive approaches to tackling global warming.
So plants... (Score:2, Insightful)
Like plant food.
Good to know!
Going to just laugh at the doomsayer prophets.
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Or, you could read the article. The title here is pure clickbait (thanks, editors!)
The full title is "A new version of the CABLE land surface model (Subversion revision r4601) incorporating land use and land cover change, woody vegetation demography, and a novel optimisation-based approach to plant coordination of photosynthesis" and says NOTHING about increased carbon absorption.
This is amateur science reporting at its worst. This is how "Fake News" happens.
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This is how "Fake News" happens.
Which "fake nes"? The fake news that says humanity will die in a few years or the fake news that says nothing abnormal is going on?
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If you cant tell, then that is your problem to deal with.
Actually the problem lies with the people who fail to realize both are fake. They impede learning the actual truth and moving on with the science and engineering necessary to solve the problem.
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This is how "Fake News" happens.
Which "fake nes"? The fake news that says humanity will die in a few years or the fake news that says nothing abnormal is going on?
Both. WTF? I know being reasonable and acknowledging that there's a problem is a real head-scratcher for some. Almost as much of a headscratcher as not running around screaming about how we're all gonna die tomorrow. But, believe it or not, facts do show there is something happening, and it's something we most likely need to figure out a way to address if we'd like to keep our home habitable. I think the doomsday shit is sometimes a bit hyperbolic, but it's EXCEEDINGLY clear that the head-in-the-sand crowd
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This is how "Fake News" happens.
Which "fake nes"? The fake news that says humanity will die in a few years or the fake news that says nothing abnormal is going on?
Both. WTF? I know being reasonable and acknowledging that there's a problem is a real head-scratcher for some.
Its almost as big a problem as poor reading comprehension. I assume you are twisted up over "humanity will die in a few years". Please go back and re-read that line. Your reading comprehension seems to be failing quite spectacularly. You implied guesswork is also failing quite spectacularly. I suggest taking off you political lens while re-reading.
Re: So plants... (Score:2)
The article cites multiple articles. The relevant article for said claim is:
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adh9444
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You're worse than a NAZI.
So he's a Vegan, an extreme NAZI, like Hitler himself?
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Interesting... for decades the scam has been that CO2 acts as a greenhouse gas and warms the earth.
NOW that we find CO2 levels aren't increasing as fast as we thought you CLAIM temperatures are still rising!?
Sounds like they aren't correlated. And that the earths temperature is the result of natural cycle. VERY INTERESTING. Almost like what every "climate denier" has been saying for years. WELCOME TO THE CLUB. :)
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Interesting... for decades the scam has been that CO2 acts as a greenhouse gas and warms the earth. NOW that we find CO2 levels aren't increasing as fast as we thought you CLAIM temperatures are still rising!?
Sounds like they aren't correlated. And that the earths temperature is the result of natural cycle. VERY INTERESTING. Almost like what every "climate denier" has been saying for years. WELCOME TO THE CLUB. :)
It isn't a "claim", numbnuts. It's a verifiable fact.
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Well, yes. Plants *in general* will grow larger and faster with more CO2. However not all plants are *carbon* limited; some very important ones are *nitrogen* limited. Experiments have been done raising crops in high CO2 environments, and it turns out wheat, corn, rice, and soybeans all yield *less*.
However, carbon limited plants like poison ivy and sumac will add a lot of biomass, sure.
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Trees are weeds (Score:2)
Science changes (Score:2)
That is an inherent feature in the design.
In this case, however, it's irrelevant. The 20% extra was already being taken up, yet the climate has been in the worst possible extreme end of IPCC predictions during that time.
If the IPCC had included the extra, all that would have happened is that the climate would have followed a path worse than the worst possible extreme predicted by the IPCC. It wouldn't make anything better.
However, if you include the extra 20%, then it means CO2 absorption by the rain forest
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That's not what the article says. It says the 20% will start to show at higher temps "not before 2040".
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You have citations for any of those rather bold and authoritative assertions?
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One of the easiest ways to check if person is here to learn, vs being a concern bro, is to see if they bothered to do a single google search on the topic before asking for sources.
You clearly didn't, as both the historic reckoning at IPCC in the wake of models running ridiculously hot compared to reality, which team under IPCC was closest to reality during this scandal, and its fallout are quite well documented. And yet, you found nothing. Nothing at all. In fact, you probably didn't find what IPCC even is.
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I make a point of providing none for things well documented and easily found, yes. It helps me separate people who are interested in a discussion from trolls.
This is why I usually reply to "I searched for this and found this" people who have problems finding the source, even if they searched for something that is really offtopic, and pointedly tell "fuck off" to people who demand to be given things without trying to search for it themselves first.
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One of the easiest ways to check if person is here to learn, vs being a concern bro, is to see if they bothered to do a single google search on the topic before asking for sources.
You clearly didn't, as both the historic reckoning at IPCC in the wake of models running ridiculously hot compared to reality, which team under IPCC was closest to reality during this scandal, and its fallout are quite well documented. And yet, you found nothing. Nothing at all. In fact, you probably didn't find what IPCC even is.
Fine I did a google search, the first link suggests you're wrong [carbonbrief.org].
With a little more looking I think I know why you got confused [science.org]. Some climate models were predicting too hot, the model authors warned people about that at the time, and the IPCC took measures to compensate. I'm guessing a couple rounds through the denialist echo chamber turned that into the IPCC estimates themselves running hot.
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First of all, I applaud you being open to actually looking for things rather than demanding they be given to you. Most people on slashdot used to be like you and me, and now they're mostly demanding things are given to them without ever trying.
Onto the point. Notice that you fully confirmed my claims. Allow me to provide context that you seem to have missed due to the bias you indicate in your last sentence of the post:
Date on first article you found:
> 5 October 2017
The reckoning was around 2018. Article
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Date on first article you found:
> 5 October 2017
The reckoning was around 2018. Articles like the one you cite were the pre-emptive wave of attempts by the political wing of IPCC to block discussion of their models running ridiculously hot.
So you claim, you've still failed to provide any evidence of this.
Hence your second article from 2022 clearly states:
>and the IPCC took measures to compensate.
Yes, that is what I said above. There's zero confusion on my part.
There's total confusion on your part.
The problem started in 2019. From the second link.
The problem of the too-hot models arose in 2019 from the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP), which combines the results of the world’s models in advance of the major IPCC reports that come out every 7 or 8 years. In previous rounds of CMIP, most models projected a “climate sensitivity”—the warming expected when atmospheric
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That's just IPCC itself "investigating itself". There has been a large body of others investigating them as well, and finding a lot of problems. Again, the problem is "IPCC was supposed to be a scientific body, and became a political body".
The problem started in 2018, when publicly ran models for "warming by 2020" were all just so wildly off the mark, that people started to notice even with the political pressure not to notice. And by 2019 is became so acute with 2020 there, that it finally broke the ice an
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you went with "everybody knows the hockey stick was debunked" AND the Russians. lol.
I can't believe you didn't just tell us all it's due to variations in the solar output and not CO2.
You might as well go for all the denialist tropes if your not going to bother providing any evidence at all.
Another embarrasing climate related moderator fail.
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Not "the Russians". The Russian side of IPCC. Remember the "I" in IPCC? It stands for "international". Shocking, I know. How could they let in...
Checking notes
Second best team in terms of climate science because of their huge nation and extreme climates found across it, requiring good understanding of climatic changes not just for PR, but actual survival of many key cities.
Turns out that experience allowed them to do far more realistic models. Objectively. Google it. This is common knowledge for those who a
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Study you found is from 2006, from the time when many of the "utterly wrong, on the side of running far too hot" models were also "confirmed" by the same crowd.
The reckoning came in 2018. Part of the reckoning was discovering all the falsified data on the "hockey stick", where flat side straight up omitted several massive spikes from the data.
If you look at other responses, you'll find the man who did search for more recent studies and found confirmation for my claims of it running too hot. If you look for
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20% is a huge enough number to be questionable. If the models and the actual uptake are differing that much, then the models should show significant deviation from actual conditions - we should be performing way better at reducing CO2 by a rather large amount. I mean, this is huge news - that people are doing better at reducing CO2 than expected.
But it's obviously not happening, because the situation isn't improving unexpectedly. It's still getting worse. So it's either the 20% is somehow already built into
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20% is a huge enough number to be questionable. If the models and the actual uptake are differing that much, then the models should show significant deviation from actual conditions - we should be performing way better at reducing CO2 by a rather large amount.
Except this isn't supposed to kick in until higher temperatures and CO2 concentrations. Not until 2040's
It is worth noting that the simulations start to diverge not sooner than 2040–2050, under a substantially warmer and higher CO2 environment according to the RCP8.5 scenario. [science.org]
It doesn't change anything happening now, or in the past.
The rest of your post is therefore irrelevant.
Getting science and politics mixed up (Score:2)
We have used the same models for decades and they have been confirmed accurate by the highest scientific standards. There is no way the models can be wrong. That would ruin too many careers, embarrass too many people and destroy the Narrative. Someone needs to fire that entire group and revoke their degrees and charge them with a crime. This is just right wing propaganda.
I thought science was a process of moving from low information and poor modeling to more information and better modeling, repeat. I think you are getting scientific careers and political careers mixed up. :-)
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Nobody in science minds changing the model (Score:2)
So su
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We still can't plant our way out of climate change.
True
Any more than we can carbon capture our way out of it.
Well we can't cut our way out of it. So capturing is going to be our only potential way out of it.
Lets hope we figure something out that works.
Very misleading title (Score:2, Informative)
That is, assuming I can understand the paper well enough (there are a lot of acronyms I am unfamiliar with). It points to the under-estimate of CO2 uptake in some places, and the over estimate in others. If I understand the conclusings correctly, it is not proposing that we're sinking more carbon than previously thought, but that the inter-annual variation in carbon uptake and effect of greenhouse gases is more than thought - i.e. plants breathe more then we thought they did - maybe more in the summer, less
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Hm, I read through their paper looking for what you're saying but what I read matches the article title and summary.
Where did you get that this is just a wider variant range based on season and not a total greater uptake? I'd like to review that section if you could please identify the section or page number. Thank you.
(There were a few graphs I didn't fully understand at first glance but they didn't seem to say anything different, it's possible I didn't spend enough time on them).
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I was reading the wrong article apparently. My mistake. The one I was reading was this [copernicus.org], the last linked article.
Oops.
And these elite, stick up the wazoo vegetarians (Score:2)
Oh, good! (Score:1)
Re:Oh, good! (Score:4, Informative)
Tropical forests may be a positive or a negative in terms of global warming. We actually don't know. They emit a lot of CO2 and water vapor, and they soak up a lot of CO2 as well. It's a very aggressive cycle.
The forests we know are very good absorbers of CO2 are temperate region ones.
If you need a map, take a look here: https://research.wri.org/sites... [wri.org]
Functionally, temperate forests are best, boreal and subtropical forests are great (we're not sure which one is better, mainly due to subtropical starting to have a small version of tropical problem explained below), and tropical forests are a huge question mark, either net good (but worst of the four types) or actual net bad. There's an active debate on the topic right now. You can find both sides well represented, (though political argument is still on the side of them being best ever "lungs of the earth" nonsense, due to longstanding well entrenched activism on the topic of Amazon).
The main problem with tropical forest is the very same that makes tropical agriculture so difficult. Lots of sun + high temperature + lots of humidity = extremely active insects and microbiome. Most organic matter is consumed long before it can sink into the soil. Activity is so extreme that soil quality remains poor, and emissions of things that insects and microbes emit (many of which are greenhouse gasses more potent than CO2) as they devour this organic matter are very high. So there's a very good chance that tropical forests actually emit more greenhouse gasses as a function of "total effect towards warming the planet through greenhouse effect" than they take in CO2.
As you go to colder climates, this extreme activity is absent, which makes soils richer as they get to absorb said organic matter that isn't all aggressively devoured before it gets a chance to go deeper, which also makes agriculture much more efficient. This also means less emissions and more capture by plants as various compounds needed for plant growth. You can see this in how much fertilization is needed for efficient growth in relevant soils.
So if you want more reduction, plant trees in zones that are suitable for temperate forests first and foremost. Then go for subtropical and boreal. Good news for the planet is that boreal forests are being pushed out in favor of temperate across massive landmass of Eurasia and North America as planet warms, which is primarily boreal right now. The speed at which the "belt" is moving is round 150-300m per year last I checked. Which across Fennoscandic countries, Russia and Canada means massive boon to absorption.
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The takeway is... (Score:2, Funny)
...that we must fund deforestation and lock up anyone who plants a tree. Throw those logs onto the pile of burning books, along with the trannies and the libs.
Re: The takeway is... (Score:2)
Aquarium Plants (Score:2)
In the aquarium trade, it's become all the rage to inject CO2 into your aquarium. The idea is that the plants will grow faster/healthier using the extra CO2 in their environment. This is so popular there's a whole cottage industry of CO2 injection systems for aquariums now. A bunch of citizen scientists have done side-by-side experiments. While not scientifically rigorous, the benefits seem to be at least 20% if not 50% improvement in growth.
it seems to track that plants not in aquariums would absor
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Aquariums generally have lots of other nutrients such as nitrates so it works well and actually cleans the water. Wilderness, not so much and adding CO2 is like adding sugar to our diet, sure we get bigger but we also get less healthy. Same things happen to plants generally, you get more leggy growth and sickly plants due to only increasing one nutrient, namely carbon.
Greenhouses are similar, semi-closed environment where you can crank up all the nutrients in a balanced way and increase growth.
The facts (Score:1)
Earth has been getting greener for last 30 years, mostly in semi-arid regions. More CO2 means plants can close pores tighter to retain moisture.
Stop the hysteria, doomers.
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Oceanography (Score:1)
Plants are absorbing CO2, but (Score:2)
They are not sequestering it. Over a lifetime of a tree (including the decomposing phase), the net CO2 impact is close to zero.
The only way to affect CO2 in the atmosphere is to stop digging out the already sequestered carbon. All new sequestration efforts are several orders of magnitude away from the current extraction rate.
Oops in your logic (Score:1)
They are not sequestering it. Over a lifetime of a tree (including the decomposing phase), the net CO2 impact is close to zero.
Doens't matter, if you plant a million NEW trees that will remove more CO2 from the atmosphere.
Also the existing trees finding more CO2 in the atmosphere, will as noted in this study accelerate growth and consume even more CO2.
Yes maybe they release that later after they die, but in the meantime they consume more.
Munchen (Score:2)
validating the monetization of fear ... (Score:2)
what this article reveals:
a) the models get better when they are more complex (surprise!)
b) current models aren't complex
c) we're still discovering important stuff about how aspects of the climate system work
d) we predict as if we know how everything works.
It is crazy scary absurd as exemplified by the hue and cry over sequestering spent radioactive material while embracing sequestering CO2. Biology is not science ... and nor is the climate debate.
So why don't they? (Score:2)