[HN Gopher] A warmer planet, less nutritious plants and fewer gr...
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A warmer planet, less nutritious plants and fewer grasshoppers?
Author : dnetesn
Score : 38 points
Date : 2023-05-24 14:38 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (worldsensorium.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (worldsensorium.com)
| __MatrixMan__ wrote:
| > Scientists have also posited that when carbon dioxide is high,
| plants are less efficient at taking up minerals and other
| elements because the root molecules that normally pull in these
| elements are acting at a lower capacity
|
| Nutrient absorption is often mediated by fungi and bacteria in
| the soil, it would be interesting to see a breakdown about how
| sensitive they are to elevated CO2. If we find that the process
| is bottlenecked by a certain soil organism, we might be able to
| find ways to help.
| tfourb wrote:
| Turns out messing with the composition of the atmosphere has some
| unexpected consequences ...
| adamisom wrote:
| Yep, for example: it'll be _better_ for a lot of agriculture -
| unexpected indeed
| it_citizen wrote:
| If they still have enough water that is. Spain might have
| some thoughts on that.
| syngrog66 wrote:
| My brain parsed that first as "less nutritious grasshoppers." Ew!
|
| Speaking of the accelerating impacts of the carbon climate crisis
| -- esp on ecosystems and the food supply -- I've been building an
| educational comedy adventure game [SB: see below] (set about 80
| years in the future) which makes several assumptions about the
| food supply as a core premise. Assumptions not unlike those in
| the films Mad Max or Idiocracy.
|
| Namely that several new types of artificially grown/manufactured
| food are created and promoted. Among them, a fictional slimy,
| fruity white "slurm" drink and a mystery meat-like goo named
| "glerm." Both or which smell and taste awful, of course, yet are
| loaded with healthy nutrients and vitamins. Most importantly,
| easy to mass produce and distribute, esp in a world with poisoned
| soils and degraded logistical infrastructure.
|
| ----
|
| [SB] - https://synystrongames.itch.io/slartboz
| Breadmaker wrote:
| Leaf Brix maybe be a concern,if grasshoppers specific
| preferences. https://joegardener.com/podcast/understanding-brix-
| how-it-af...
| globalreset wrote:
| [flagged]
| ravenstine wrote:
| I suppose this means the Carboniferous Period must not have had
| many insects.
| JadeNB wrote:
| It did--they were enormous.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Carboniferous_insects
| alfor wrote:
| Also: more food, more plants, less deserts, more carbon captured.
| croes wrote:
| How? Higher temperatures, less glaciers, more extreme weather,
| dry lakes and rivers, more deserts.
|
| It's a complex system and we don't know how it ends.
|
| We could become food too for fungi and insects that spread
| because of higher temperatures.
| beerpls wrote:
| The Earth has many systems which help maintain a balance.
| It's happened many times in the past
|
| Perhaps whatever is happening now is too extreme for it to do
| that, but it seems unlikely. The ecosystems of the planet
| share many deep symbioses
|
| I know i'll be downvoted, and i'm expecting no one will
| actually address what i've said while doing it. There's no
| real conservation in this topic anymore.
| 6LLvveMx2koXfwn wrote:
| Nice Freudian slip!
| croes wrote:
| But in the past we weren't 8 billion people who travel
| around the world.
|
| Pretty large food base for a more temperature adapted
| predator, especially the tiny ones we don't see.
| photochemsyn wrote:
| This seems questionable on several grounds.
|
| (1) Greenhouse growers often raise CO2 levels to ~1000 ppm to
| optimize growth (note this only works because all other nutrients
| are supplied at ideal levels to sustain growth, however). These
| crops are not known to be nutritionally deficient and I'm pretty
| sure we'd have heard about it if they were.
|
| (2) Plants have a relatively stable ratio of nutrient
| requirements, with CHOPKNS CaFe Mg (mighty good) being an easy-
| to-remember acronym. We might be moving to a scenario in which
| CO2 is rarely if ever the limiting nutrient, however. Note also
| certain plants (C4 metabolism) have built-in CO2 concentration
| mechanisms, so rising CO2 might help C3 plants compete
| effectively. See:
|
| https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/14757584/
|
| "Terrestrial plants require nutrients in similar proportions"
| (2004)
|
| It's more probable that there's a bit of a CO2 fertilization
| effect, so you get a slight increase in carbon fixation while
| nutrient uptake remains stable, which isn t really a 'decline' as
| we'd normally think of it. Basically you'd get a bit more
| cellulose and carbohydrate formation, but each cell still needs
| its normal amount of N, P, K etc. to sustain protein and DNA
| metabolism etc.
|
| Incidentally, the decline in insect populations mentioned in the
| article is largely attributable to extensive use of broad-
| spectrum insecticides, in particular the neonicotinoids, which
| are organic compounds based on the nicotine molecule with various
| additions (chlorine, etc.) to make them more persistent and
| toxic, and which were introduced in the 1980s.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neonicotinoid
| Eric_WVGG wrote:
| a while back (too long to recall the sources), I was reading
| about extinctions and thinking, "well, _something_ or other is
| going to thrive under these changing conditions. "
|
| Turns out that the biggest winners of climate change are likely
| to be spiders and jellyfish. Great time to be an octopod.
| chrisco255 wrote:
| No, plants are not less nutritious as a result of CO2
| fertilization. As CO2 doubles overall plant yield increases and a
| single digit percentage shift in macro nutrient profile occurs.
| From [1],
|
| Elevated CO2 increased Cu, Fe, and Zn, but lowered Mn
| concentration in grass leaves. Tree leaf responses were strongly
| related to N status: CO2 significantly decreased Cu, Fe, Mg, and
| S at high N, but only Fe at low N. Elevated CO2 decreased Mg and
| Zn in crop leaves grown with high N, and Mn at low N. Nutrient
| concentrations in crop roots were not affected by CO2 enrichment,
| but CO2decreasedCa,K,MgandPintree roots. Crop seeds had lower S
| under elevated CO2.We also tested the validity of a ''dilution
| model.'' CO2 reduced the concentration of plant nutrients 6.6%
| across nutrients and plant groups, but the reduction is less than
| expected (18.4%) from carbohydrate accumulation alone.
|
| A lot of gnashing of teeth over an at most 7% shift in nutrient
| profile (and it takes a doubling to observe this) while a
| significant double digit percentage increase in crop yield is
| observed, making more food available for consumption.
|
| https://ecoss.nau.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/Duval-et-al...
| fsn4dN69ey wrote:
| just fyi this paper was retracted for glaring data errors
|
| https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11258-015-0541-1
| mrguyorama wrote:
| Why does this matter when food scarcity has never been the
| problem? Americans throw away a huge portion of the food they
| buy.
| jxramos wrote:
| since California made this compost rule I visually see how
| much food waste there is, a lot being unedible for sure.
| However there sure is a lot when you see it all in one place
| concentrated in a bucket.
|
| It would be neat to convert it to other things like chickens
| and larger insects beyond the fruit and house flies and
| occasional soldier flies that pop up.
| maffydub wrote:
| Agreed. We compost fruit and vegetable waste in our garden,
| but it is scary how much other food waste (as well as meat
| and fish bones goes in our "blue bin" for external
| composting.
|
| Entocycle (https://entocycle.com/) is one startup looking
| at this - using black soldier flies to convert food waste
| into high-protein animal food. (I'm not affiliated, but I
| think it's a neat idea!)
| jxramos wrote:
| awesome stuff, I love this line
|
| > Secure protein supply while valorising organic waste
| streams.
| alfor wrote:
| More plant grow more CO2 captured. It's a natural
| stabilisation cycle and a positive side effect. But we
| shouldn't talk about it because we should be so so afraid all
| the time of the green apocalypse.
| stouset wrote:
| More CO2 captured is meaningless if that CO2 is shortly
| released as the dead plant decays.
| slibhb wrote:
| It's not meaningless if there's consistently more plant
| biomass (which there is, see
| https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2016/carbon-dioxide-
| fer...).
|
| Leaving aside its magnitude, it seems clear that CO2 ->
| more plants is a negative feedback loop.
| stouset wrote:
| The amount of living plant biomass is _trivial_ compared
| to the amount of excess carbon we're putting into the
| atmosphere.
|
| Consider that we're unearthing _millions of years_ worth
| of sequestered carbon. The planet could be covered pole
| to pole in lush forest and it wouldn't account for what
| we burn today.
|
| The only realistic answer here is permanent sequestration
| by e.g., repeatedly growing and burying entire forests'
| worth of dead trees.
| slibhb wrote:
| Google says that about 25% of global CO2 emissions are
| captured by plants. That's not trivial.
| 11235813213455 wrote:
| but you eat a part of that plant, which itself grew by
| capturing carbon, but then you poop and breath out CO2.
| Yea in reality CO2 just keeps increasing until we stop
| extracting hydrocarbures
| mrguyorama wrote:
| Food crops do not sequester carbon. They will either be
| eaten and exhaled as CO2, or decompose into CO2. Unless you
| have a link to someone planning on growing fields of corn
| just to bury it in an anaerobic environment?
| bequanna wrote:
| Trees have entered the chat.
|
| Living trees will grow faster and harvested lumber
| successfully sequesters carbon indefinitely.
|
| Even crops we consume have non-negligible amounts of
| carbon sequestered in soil as they decompose.
| croes wrote:
| This natural stabilisation cycle leads to a different flora
| and fauna, some species adapt, some don't and go extinct.
|
| So life as such isn't in danger but life as we know it,
| because we could be the one to go extinct.
|
| Just look how it seems that fungus adapt to higher
| temperatures so they now survive in humans too.
| monero-xmr wrote:
| Nothing is static in nature. We were in an ice age a
| blink-of-an-eye ago in geologic terms. Animals migrate.
| Something may or may not be caused by a warming
| temperature, but immediately assuming all changes are
| caused by co2, or that all changes are inherently bad, is
| an unnatural understanding of natural processes.
| notfish wrote:
| 1. "Climate scientists are claiming that all changes from
| climate change will be bad!" is quite the strawman. No
| scientist really believes this, but almost all agree that
| the average change will be very bad for humans.
|
| 2. Climate change does not mean "increasing CO2". It
| means changes in global climate as a result of human
| activity - things like dumping waste in the ocean count
| too. CO2 isn't causing the Anthropocene, Humans are.
|
| 3. Arguing in poor faith against climate change because
| the idea of global catastrophes scares you is a poor
| evolutionary strategy and you should reconsider your
| outlook.
| riku_iki wrote:
| > when food scarcity has never been the problem?
|
| food scarcity in America is not a problem. Then you have
| logistical challenge to transfer this food to other region
| and efficiently distribute it. Then you have financial
| problem who will pay for all of this.
| saiya-jin wrote:
| Tell it to all those millions of malnourished children all
| over the world, being stripped of their future and adult
| lives as we discuss this. Even if we ignore those dying from
| hunger outright. Seriously?!?
| bequanna wrote:
| What proof do you have that this is true?
|
| What persistent global shortages currently exist strictly
| because of climate change and are not related to the
| Ukraine war or COVID?
| AstralStorm wrote:
| The double digits yield increase only happens if water is
| available. Unfortunately climate change makes droughts,
| freezes, hurricanes and other freak weather events much more
| likely, actually resulting in huge reduction in productivity.
|
| Especially droughts. Some parts of USA are already feeling the
| water squeeze, and it's just the beginning...
| bequanna wrote:
| What the parent states is backed by solid research.
|
| Your argument is pure speculation trying to disqualify their
| remarks by moving the goalposts.
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