Trees and Land Absorbed Almost No CO2 Last Year 31
The Earth's natural carbon sinks -- oceans, forests, and soils -- are increasingly struggling to absorb human carbon emissions as global temperatures rise, raising concerns that achieving net-zero targets may become impossible. "In 2023, the hottest year ever recorded, preliminary findings by an international team of researchers show the amount of carbon absorbed by land has temporarily collapsed," reports The Guardian. "The final result was that forest, plants and soil -- as a net category -- absorbed almost no carbon." The Guardian reports: The 2023 breakdown of the land carbon sink could be temporary: without the pressures of drought or wildfires, land would return to absorbing carbon again. But it demonstrates the fragility of these ecosystems, with massive implications for the climate crisis. Reaching net zero is impossible without nature. In the absence of technology that can remove atmospheric carbon on a large scale, the Earth's vast forests, grasslands, peat bogs and oceans are the only option for absorbing human carbon pollution, which reached a record 37.4bn tonnes in 2023.
At least 118 countries are relying on the land to meet national climate targets. But rising temperatures, increased extreme weather and droughts are pushing the ecosystems into uncharted territory. The kind of rapid land sink collapse seen in 2023 has not been factored into most climate models. If it continues, it raises the prospect of rapid global heating beyond what those models have predicted. "We're seeing cracks in the resilience of the Earth's systems. We're seeing massive cracks on land -- terrestrial ecosystems are losing their carbon store and carbon uptake capacity, but the oceans are also showing signs of instability," Johan Rockstrom, director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, told an event at New York Climate Week in September.
"Nature has so far balanced our abuse. This is coming to an end."
At least 118 countries are relying on the land to meet national climate targets. But rising temperatures, increased extreme weather and droughts are pushing the ecosystems into uncharted territory. The kind of rapid land sink collapse seen in 2023 has not been factored into most climate models. If it continues, it raises the prospect of rapid global heating beyond what those models have predicted. "We're seeing cracks in the resilience of the Earth's systems. We're seeing massive cracks on land -- terrestrial ecosystems are losing their carbon store and carbon uptake capacity, but the oceans are also showing signs of instability," Johan Rockstrom, director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, told an event at New York Climate Week in September.
"Nature has so far balanced our abuse. This is coming to an end."
Exxon predicted this in 1970 (Score:3)
Exxon predicted this in 1970. Others did too. Nobody did the right thing.
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More than that, they actively discouraged of doing the right thing. ... Until they created political roadblocks to force us into this path.
There was political will in 1988
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They didn't, Conservatives did. When they realized Democrats were advocating for changes to fix the problem, they thought it would be a good idea to politicize it. They could easily sell it to their yokels as, "see, with us, you won't have to change your lifestyle." 'twas but a short step from that to "they do not understand 'America', real Americans do not believe in anthropocentric global warming."
Now we have a certain political class that wants to return to the beliefs of 60 years ago, when everyone they
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Not really true. Conservatives did help, but the original campaign of lies and denial are from Big Oil.
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Indeed. These people, in particular the Exxon ones, are the most evil people in human history. Even the Nazis or Stalin only killed a few million people. Aggressive lies about what they knew, will kill several orders of magnitude more and make life miserable for the rest,
perhaps we can save co2 (Score:2, Insightful)
not saying this isn't a thing....but fuck me - every day with the fearmongering.
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The internet is, indeed, a substantial contributor to CO2 emissions.
Is this fear mongering? I think not, actually. Any discussion on CO2 someone will pop up and say "CO2 is plant food", as if this is a major revelation. This research also suggests that there are limits to the number of options we have for reversing this; planting more trees is not enough.
Re:perhaps we can save co2 (Score:4, Insightful)
You do know that the hole in the ozone layer was cooperatively fixed worldwide by governments and corporations working with the scientists, right?
It's not fearmongering to point out facts.
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Then there is another fact: CO2 does absorb electromagnetic waves in the near Infrared, especially between wavelengths of 13 to 17 micrometers, which corresponds to a black body of a temperature between 170 K and 220 K. The actual average temperature of Earth's surface is about 290 K, but 170 K - 220 K is the temperature range of Earth's tropopause. Basically,
Re: perhaps we can save co2 (Score:1)
If we're on a sinking ship, exactly how much panic is too much panic?
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Apparently any panic is too much panic.
Re: perhaps we can save co2 (Score:1)
People who appear to know there's a problem and downplay it puss me off even more than the ignoramuses who deny the problem altogether.
I guess people don't understand just how colossally fucked we are at this point. They think that just because this isn't happening in the timeframe of a 120 minute movie that it's all just chicken little fear mongering.
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Accurate statements aren't fear mongering.
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You mean everyday reveals new evidence that there is a major problem and we should get off our asses to deal with it.
Neighbor: there's someone trying to break into your house when you aren't home.
You: Sheesh, you told me that yesterday and the day before and the day before. Wait until they succeed and then I'll worry about it.
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without the daily fearmongering posted online, which uses my electricity to download...
not saying this isn't a thing....but fuck me - every day with the fearmongering.
Maybe if many scientists are constantly trying to warn us of something we should pay attention? Or how about we could ban the term because it makes people feel uncomfortable? https://www.miamiherald.com/ne... [miamiherald.com]
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Nope. "Fearmongering" and delivering more information about a massive problem that may well end human life and will most likely end human civilization are different. Takes a non-idiot to see that, though.
420 (Score:2)
Take Note (Score:2)
Consider carefully and in the near future, hopefully your mob will make the right choice of who to tear limb from limb.
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Try reading the article (Score:2)
I'll grant you it should have put the word "net" in the title to avoid confusion, but a cursory glance at the article makes it's obvious that:
It's clearly talking about forest, plants and soil CO2 absorbtion vs forest, plants and soil output.
As in we added more CO2 last year, and plant and forrest life produced as much CO2 as it absorbed (Due to forst, plants, and soil expelling CO2 due to drought/fire/deforestation) etc.
So we add it... nothing takes it away.
I asked Claude (Score:1)
I asked Claude. I'm guessing AI will be nuclear powered so discounting it for now.
Actually, it was the most serious chat I've had with an LLM and I'm impressed.
While a DOJ page suggested that transportation and industrial use were the biggest fossil fuel using sectors, if you just ask (Claude) about CO2 emissions it was much more enlightening. And Claude creates these little "artifact" documents which is quite useful.
For one thing, coal and gas power plants overshadow everything else. If you can switch coal
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> While a DOJ page suggested that transportation and industrial use were the biggest fossil fuel using sectors, if you just ask (Claude) about CO2 emissions it was much more enlightening. And Claude creates these little "artifact" documents which is quite useful.
For one thing, coal and gas power plants overshadow everything else.
So do the overshadowing coal/gas emissions also include electricity run industry? How big a consumer of electricity is it? How would time of use pricing affect those industries?
A
Get rid of food fertilizing with fossil fuel. (Score:2)
A big one is to get rid of food fertilizing with fossil fuel.
Will not be easy, but we have the means to do it.
Besides : Halving meat production will free up so much space for new forests it's unbelievable.
Hah ok (Score:1)
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This indicates that trees didn't grow last year
It means there was no net growth.
Some trees grew. Others rotted or burned.
2023 was a record year for forest fires.
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Doom! (Score:2)
Misleading headline here and on source (Score:2)
Tree continued to grow and forests continued to absorb billions of tonnes of CO2.
But the natural output of CO2 by said forests has increased so that forests are no longer large net CO2 reducers.
Forests used to be considered to take up about 2x more CO2 than they emitted: "Forests emitted on average 8.1 billion metric tonnes of carbon dioxide and absorbed 16 billion between 2001 and 2019." but that dynamic is what is being highlighted here.