Trees and Land Absorbed Almost No CO2 Last Year 86
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:5, Insightful)
Exxon predicted this in 1970. Others did too. Nobody did the right thing.
Re:Exxon predicted this in 1970 (Score:5, Interesting)
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
Re:Exxon predicted this in 1970 (Score:5, Informative)
Not really true. Conservatives did help, but the original campaign of lies and denial are from Big Oil.
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The GOP are not the only "conservatives" on the planet and this happens to be a global problem.
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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,
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Note to down-moder: By denying reality, you become complicit in the evil.
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Re: Exxon predicted this in 1970 (Score:4, Interesting)
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US President Carter in the late 70s tried to get things started to mitigate the issue. But Regan took over in 1981 and undid what little Carter did. Plus he doubled down on fossil fuels. So blame the people who voted GOP the 1980 and in the future for this.
Granted the Democrats gave up on fixing this when Clinton took over in 1992. Gore did get religion on Climate Change, but SOTUS installed Bush in 2000. So here we are.
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Yep. Bill Clinton was a corporatist trash bag and oh yeah, a fucking sexual criminal, and we are STILL being subjected to appearances from him by the "Democratic" party.
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If we really want to date our fuckery as a species, scientists first started predicting climate instability from carbon in the 1870s when spectography first revealed what CO2 does to IR light alarming industrial chemists that coal and steam industry might have unpleasant effects on the climate. We knew at least the outlines of the problem 150 years ago.
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Re:perhaps we can save co2 (Score:5, 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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You do know that the hole in the ozone layer is being cooperatively fixed worldwide by governments and corporations working with the scientists, right?
It's not fearmongering to point out facts.
FTFY. We have another 40 years or so to go.
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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.
It was just switching the chemicals around in products. It didn't impact the "way of life". It was a minor disruption and probably a quick method to capture even more market.
This is different.
Ozone hole [Re:perhaps we can save co2] (Score:2)
You do know that the hole in the ozone layer was cooperatively fixed worldwide by governments and corporations working with the scientists, right?
It was just switching the chemicals around in products. It didn't impact the "way of life". It was a minor disruption and probably a quick method to capture even more market.
It was a technological fix. The technology we were using caused problems, we switched to different technologies.
This is different.
Nope, same principle applies. The technologies we are using cause problems, we need to switch to different technologies.
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It didn't impact the "way of life".
Reducing CO2 emissions doesn't impact "way of life", at least not if you ask anyone other than Fox News or your local republican rep. Yes it's a technological change and change costs money, but it's not a way of life change.
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Is it fearmongering when the fearmongering doesn’t come true for a period of time?
You got it. The predictions of bad effects from global warming have always been that the effects get serious decades in the future. Things that we do now have effects decades down the line. We still haven't reached the time scale of the earliest predictions of the first IPCC report, 34 years ago, for example.
This is the real problem: the effects are very slow. Humans turn out to be not very good at dealing with things that cause problems in the future.
... Remember when it was all those Aqua Net junkies killing us with their ozone hole? I do.
And we solved that problem. It was a technological prob
Re:perhaps we can save co2 (Score:4, Informative)
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, CO2 blocks all temperature radiation from below the tropopause. Earth's atmospheric temperature in the troposphere follows an adiabatic law, which means that a higher tropopause means higher surface temperatures. Or to be more clear, the tropopause appears, because of the absorption properties of Earth's troposphere.
Those are facts you can check yourself too. Fill a balloon with hydrogen or helium, use a thermometer and an antenna as payload and record a temperature profile of Earth's atmosphere!
You can also check at what rate different type of plants absorb CO2 at which temperatures. You will notice that for instance monocots, which include most of our common crops like wheat, corn and rice, have their optimum at lower temperatures than eudicots. which means that at higher temperatures, we would have to shift our nutrition to new types of plants. Ever wondered why most ancient civilizations we know of started out in subtropic or moderate climate? Because monocots in general generate higher yields from farming - also a fact you can check for yourself.
No, this is still not fearmongering. It's a list of facts. The fear might arise if you are wondering what this means for our future.
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> It's at first a statement of fact. "Not much of CO2 absoption by forests, soil and oceans in 2023".
The article linked by the article to the article wasn't very helpful.
Some mish-mash about "preliminary emulation of data-driven models" by someone focused more on climate policy changes than data collection. I'm not sure what standard models you are using that report on and predict how much carbon dioxide a tree "breathe's" in a given year, but I have trouble with the idea that a tree can simply cease to
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Carbon uptake by plant life is quantitative and follows mass law conservation. The basic statement that "not much" CO2 uptake happens couldn't be true unless the plant life is in dormant state which could happen in winter or trapped under sea ice but not in summer for just about every spot on the planet.
Science will only help your case if you use it properly.
Re: perhaps we can save co2 (Score:2)
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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What's your plan for China and India?
How much money should go into prevention vs. adaptation?
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Tax all imports to raise the price to be equivalent to local production, with all environment, social and climate costs accounted for. Or simply ban some imports.
You're not scared to do it on EVs when it threatens the sacred car industry, do it for a better reason. There being no world dictator, that's the best one country can do.
It's too late for major prevention, adaptation is where we're at now. Unfortunately all the prevention stuff still has to be done, otherwise the ecosystem is toast. Basically every
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What kind of argument is that? China and India have lax environmental laws so that means everyone else can too?
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It's the utter madness of the late state denialism; the advocating of the Tragedy of the Commons as an economic policy.
Re: perhaps we can save co2 (Score:1)
I propose we stop asking everyone to do the right thing before we do anything.
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We are already reducing our own CO2 while the Chinese who do everyone's manufacturing get a free pass.
don't credit Canada [Re: perhaps we can save co2] (Score:2)
Why does the US emit 10x the CO2 as Canada?
Because the US ha ten times higher population than Canada does.
In terms of CO2 emissions per person, Canada and the US are about the same.
(Canada is actually slightly higher in per capita emissions, but the difference is in the noise).
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Blind panic interferes with being able to do anything useful during a crisis.
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If we're on a sinking ship, exactly how much panic is too much panic?
The problem is that it is a very slowly sinking ship.
We're not good at fixing problems that will only get critical far in the future.
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Accurate statements aren't fear mongering.
Re:perhaps we can save co2 (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Yes, it's a problem. No, it won't end human life (Score:2)
Saying it's a problem and is getting worse is delivering information about a problem.
Saying it "may well end human life and will most likely end human civilization" is fearmongering.
None of the predictions by actual scientists say it's likely to end human life. None. That really is fearmongering, and making such clearly absurd statements ends up tending to discredit the people trying to alert the population to the real problem. It may make the world a worse place to live in, but it's not ending human life
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Which is kind of like the equivalent of a guy bitching about the tsunami sirens...
420 (Score:2)
Take Note (Score:5, Insightful)
Consider carefully and in the near future, hopefully your mob will make the right choice of who to tear limb from limb.
Re: Take Note (Score:2)
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If the mob could act intelligently, we wouldn't be in this situation, or at least not to this degree.
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.
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The text doesn't say that individual plants aren't absorbing CO2. It says that the natural sinks--forests, oceans, and soils--as a whole aren't absorbing CO2.
Individual trees in a forest can absorb CO2 and yet the forest as a whole not be absorbing CO2 (if the release of CO2 is equal or greater than the absorption).
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.
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Interesting, but the answers are fixated on what could cause CO2 reduction in a time scale of one or two years.
We need more reductions on a longer term scale.
(It also looked at electrical generation, which is part, but only part, of the total emissions.)
Hah ok (Score:2)
Re:Hah ok (Score:4, Informative)
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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I think the concern is that climate change has increased the amount of fires (record hot year) and therefore making it harder to use the forests as a sink.
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You can also only count on growing so many trees, and that each of those trees is going to have a limit on how much CO2 they can absorb and sequester. And then yes, when you count deforestation, either through human activity or wildfires, even where everything else is equal, you're going to start hitting those limits.
We keep looking for some sort of Get Out Of Jail free card, some magical solution, whether it's carbon sequestration, tree planting, iron filings in the sea, increasing cloud cover, space mirro
Doom! (Score:1, Troll)
Misleading headline here and on source (Score:3)
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.
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I think forests being carbon sinks is only a short term artifact of the fact that we have so many young forests due to reforestation after the deforestation of the last 500 years. A mature forest is going to have as almost as much gradual CO2 release due to decay as there is capture due to growth, with an occasional rapid release due to fires. The only exception is if there is some mechanism that sequesters organic material before it can rot or burn, like a peat bog, or rivers carrying fallen trees out to
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So......cut old trees and plant fresh ones is the answer ? I know people in other countries, regular people have started taking matters in their own hands and many plant trees themselves (when the governments do not do it) in spaces previously occupied by trees that have burned down.
Yes, if those old trees are used/stored in a way that doesn't release the carbon stored in them back in to the atmosphere. There was a recent suggestion to bury that wood: https://sciencemediacentre.es/... [sciencemediacentre.es]
Re:Misleading headline here and on source (Score:4, Interesting)
Every bucket has a top, every system has a maximum carrying capacity. This idea that somehow because fossil fuels are relatively cheap and high density energy storage mediums, that thermodynamics somehow is magically suspended is the very core of the magical thinking of defenders of such energy sources. The physical laws of our universe don't care about our economic systems or are short term interests, or hell even our long term interests. Increase the thermal equilibrium of any system, whether a pot of water or the atmosphere and oceans of our planet, and things will heat up (in other words, more energy in the system). To deny it is to basically deny bedrock physical laws we've known about since the 19th century.
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Oh no! My unsustainable lifestyle might be curtailed! It's my Supply Side Jesus-given right to fuck the future for my own personal amusement!
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LOL
Dirty peasants under the thumb of a socialist oligarchy can create and worsen CO2 emissions just as easily as free people. Unsustainable lifestyle my ass.
How come there's no effect on the Keeling curve? (Score:2)
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First of all, I am a firm believer in the effects of climate change, to the point that I'm very familiar with the
Keeling curve [ucsd.edu]. A shift in 8 Gigatons per year should be noticeable,
Should it? 8 gigatons is a little over one part per million of the atmosphere. The winter to summer variation is about 6 ppm.
Looking at the Keeling curve https://gml.noaa.gov/ccgg/tren... [noaa.gov] the slope is definitely increasing.
The curve itself doesn't say whether the increase in slope is a decrease in absorption or an increase in emission, but sites I see tend to say emissions aren't increasing (e.g., https://www.carbonbrief.org/an... [carbonbrief.org] . The headline here is misleading; the text says "emissions “are appro
Bad News: Temperature is a lagging indicator (Score:2)