[HN Gopher] Estimates of plant CO2 uptake rise by nearly one third
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Estimates of plant CO2 uptake rise by nearly one third
Author : akyuu
Score : 183 points
Date : 2025-01-14 12:41 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.ornl.gov)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.ornl.gov)
| ycombineit wrote:
| Perfect. More fodder for the anti-science idiots to prove how
| clean air isn't a big deal.
| Mountain_Skies wrote:
| You're angry at the good news that CO2 is being absorbed by
| nature more than previously believed?
| DoctorOetker wrote:
| it's not good news if forests are disappearing faster than
| being regrown.
| latexr wrote:
| That is not at all the sentiment GP is expressing.
|
| Say you have a terminal disease. Doctors evaluated the
| progression of your illness and estimated you have three
| years to live. Of course, _when_ you begin treatment changes
| your life expectancy: start now and you may get twenty more
| years; start in two years and you'll only get an extra four.
|
| Your insurance company says "doctors are all quacks, you're
| not ill, they're just in it for the money" and don't pay you
| anything. They know that's a lie and that after you die there
| is a high probability your family will sue them out of
| existence, but the people currently in charge hope that will
| be far enough in the future they won't have to personally
| worry about it. In the meantime they will enjoy the money
| they don't pay you.
|
| As the months go by, you visibly deteriorate. It's obvious
| you _are_ sick. Your insurance maybe pays for some token
| cheap medicine to make you more comfortable and get
| themselves more leeway. Maybe that buys you an extra four
| months. They'll be horrible but you will be alive and so your
| family can't sue. They continue to be off the hook but it's
| getting harder to escape the reality.
|
| Then a new doctor comes along and says "actually we
| overestimated the progression of your illness, you should've
| been given five years initially". What do you think happens
| then? Obviously the insurance company will use that as an
| argument to further delay your treatment and double down on
| the rhetoric that all doctors are quacks. _The damage is
| still happening_ but the urgent action needed to stave it off
| is once again delayed into the future.
|
| _That_ is what GP is complaining about. It's obviously good
| news that you're not so close to death as you thought, but
| that knowledge may end up hurting you in the long run.
| bradjohnson wrote:
| Yes, this specific messaging feels motivated by the bottom
| lines of energy producers. The information doesn't actually
| change what we've measured regarding progress of climate
| change, but it's vague enough that plenty of people in the
| comments here are confused and acting like climate change
| isn't real after all.
| timewizard wrote:
| > Say you have a terminal disease.
|
| Just because a Doctor said so? Shouldn't we do some really
| good tests here first?
| latexr wrote:
| There's nothing in the analogy which says no tests were
| run. You have to be arguing in _really_ bad faith to come
| up with that one.
| timewizard wrote:
| Well then it's a flawed analogy. There is no credible
| basis to say the planet is "dying" in same exigent sense
| you convey with this analogy. It's particularly bad faith
| to compare the lifespan of a Human with the imputed
| lifespan of Earth.
| latexr wrote:
| Analogies are never perfect, they are a tool to explain
| an idea by way of drawing _similarities_. They are not
| meant to overlap perfectly, that would be a tautology.
|
| It's not realistic to think one's family could simply sue
| an insurance company or of existence. It's pretty obvious
| to anyone engaging in good faith that the example is
| making a point for humans, not attempting to be taken
| literally by obtuse robots.
| rhaps0dy wrote:
| You said it derogatorily, but it is genuine evidence that
| rising CO2 concentrations are have less effects than previously
| thought. In theory there could accumulate enough evidence to
| show anything.
| mzhaase wrote:
| That is exactly it - that's untrue. CO2 absorption was
| previously underestimated, but that does not change the
| rising concentration or the effect of CO2 on the climate.
| argiopetech wrote:
| But it might change what we view as a legitimate mitigation
| strategy.
|
| For example, could we burn oil at 2024's rates with 1900's
| forests and not have net-positive CO2 levels? Back of the
| napkin:
|
| - We're producing ~37 gigatons of CO2 (GtCO2) through
| burning of fossil fuels at the moment [0]
|
| - The current forestation level is ~4 billion hectares [1]
|
| - The net loss of forestation is ~1 billion hectares since
| 1900, with deforestation rates peaking starting ~100 years
| ago. [1]
|
| - 1 petagram == 1 Gt
|
| - Current forests consume 157 Gt/yr [article]
|
| Therefore, the billion hectares we cut down in the past
| century would consume an additional 157 * 0.25 == 39.25
| GtCO2/yr if it were still standing, 2 Gt more than our
| historical maximum global net output.
|
| Obviously, the burning of fossil fuels is ultimate source
| of the increase in CO2, but without the deforestation it
| would still (back of the napkin) be sustainable. At least,
| we'd not be quite so far down this road.
|
| [0] https://www.statista.com/statistics/276629/global-
| co2-emissi...
|
| [1] https://ourworldindata.org/deforestation
| bradjohnson wrote:
| No. That is an entirely incorrect interpretation of the
| study.
| jasonjayr wrote:
| You show those anti-science folks with ..... more science?
| keybored wrote:
| Selectively reporting scientific results based on how it will
| be used for fodder (?) just fuels anti-science sentiment.
| bradjohnson wrote:
| The messaging of this article is causing people in this very
| comment section to conclude that climate change is
| progressing slower (or even not progressing at all) based on
| a revision of a plant CO2 uptake study that was done in the
| 1980s.
|
| Like it or not climate science is extremely political and
| selectively reported science (which this is) that is
| presented to the public needs to account for the context in
| which it exists or it is no better than propaganda. The fact
| that the Oak Ridge National Laboratory is primarily funded by
| the US Department of Energy is plenty of reason to be
| suspicious of its motivations. They have a vested interest in
| shaping the public's perception of energy production and its
| impact on the climate.
| keybored wrote:
| So they misrepresented the findings. I stand corrected.
| TaupeRanger wrote:
| It isn't. Greenhouse emissions have remained roughly stagnant
| for over 30 years, while lung cancer deaths have dropped by
| 50-60 percent. Of course that's largely due to a decrease in
| smoking, but without any concomitant increase in mortality from
| "bad air", I don't see how anyone could think it's a "big
| deal".
|
| Sources: https://www.epa.gov/climate-indicators/climate-change-
| indica... https://www.lung.org/research/trends-in-lung-
| disease/lung-ca...
| pjc50 wrote:
| Those are two different things, though. Both linked to
| emissions, but in different ways.
|
| Also you had the wrong chart selected from that page,
| https://www.epa.gov/climate-indicators/climate-change-
| indica...
| jaapz wrote:
| Are you seriously arguing that unhealthy air does not exist?
| TaupeRanger wrote:
| no, obviously not
| timewizard wrote:
| Everyone wants clean air. There is reasonable debate as to what
| that threshold should be and what human actions should be taken
| to improve it and this information adds to that debate.
|
| If you were looking for a data point to use as a cudgel against
| the "idiots" then you are failing in at least to known ways.
| klausa wrote:
| As I understand the article; it's not that we found out that
| they've _started_ absorbing more CO2; it's that the previous
| estimations were flawed and we have new, improved ones.
| pmayrgundter wrote:
| Not clear from the linked article. Did you see something else?
|
| NPP is probably increasing as it's been observed for years now
| that the earth is net greening in response to rising CO2
| coffeebeqn wrote:
| Isn't this common knowledge among plant growers anyway? Plants
| can easily enjoy a co2 ppm of 1000+ in a greenhouse for faster
| growth. Photosynthesis involves an exchange of co2 to oxygen
|
| https://extension.okstate.edu/fact-sheets/greenhouse-
| carbon-....
| rob74 wrote:
| "rises by nearly one third" sounds a bit strange to me, more
| correct would be "Plant CO2 uptake is currently underestimated by
| one third according to new research"?
|
| > _The research, detailed in the journal Nature, is expected to
| improve Earth system simulations that scientists use to predict
| the future climate, and spotlights the importance of natural
| carbon sequestration for greenhouse gas mitigation._
|
| Too bad that we are currently doing the exact opposite (cutting
| down more forest than is regrown)...
| vasco wrote:
| Not everywhere, between 2000 and 2020, 36 countries managed to
| get more tree cover than they lost, so we "just" need to expand
| this practice.
|
| https://research.wri.org/gfr/forest-extent-indicators/forest...
|
| > Even though the world gained 130.9 Mha of tree cover between
| 2000 and 2020, it still lost much more, with an overall net
| loss of 100.6 Mha. While the global numbers report a negative
| trajectory, there are distinct regional patterns or "hotspots"
| of net gain. At least 36 countries gained more tree cover than
| they lost over the 20-year time period. As a continent, Europe
| gained 6 million hectares of tree cover by 2020. Asia also had
| a large proportion of countries with net gain, particularly in
| Central and South Asia. The drivers of much of this gain (for
| example, what proportion is due to intentional restoration
| interventions versus land abandonment) are still difficult to
| determine using the available data, but are a key area for
| future research. Additionally, even though tree cover gain is
| occurring in many places, it doesn't "cancel out" the impacts
| of loss. Primary forests in particular serve as critical carbon
| stores and support an intricate network of wildlife, none of
| which can easily be replaced once lost.
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| I don't know that getting more trees than you lost is a
| useful or effective measure against climate change. It's a
| good thing, certainly, but I imagine the amount of carbon
| we're pumping into the atmosphere requires more than a steady
| state of trees. I wonder how much of the world we'd need to
| cover with trees in order to offset our carbon production,
| certainly more than we've had during modern civilization.
| tomrod wrote:
| Depends on where the carbon goes. Into a home? Locked up
| for a long time. Under a cooking stove? Released.
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| But does it help worrying about where we're putting logs
| while we're burning fossil fuels? We need to plant enough
| trees to offset all the trees we're burning, but also all
| the gasoline, oil, and natural gas we're burning as well
| as all the concrete we're producing. The math seems like
| it'll never balance.
| argiopetech wrote:
| I did the back of the napkin math below:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42697255
|
| Barring mistakes, it balances if we had avoided reducing
| the planet's vegetation by 20% since 1900. So much for
| that.
|
| That's obviously not "the" solution, but it seems like
| reducing fuel burn while increasing forestation would
| benefit us beyond what is commonly expected.
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| Interesting math, so it is mathematically possible.
| Important to note, 1 billion hectares is just over the
| size of all of the United States.
| baq wrote:
| Basically we need to grow trees as fast as possible, cut
| them down and bury them deep, exactly the opposite of what
| we're doing when mining fossil fuels. No wonder there's
| exactly zero people doing that.
| maxwell wrote:
| https://charmindustrial.com
| baq wrote:
| Nice!
| gs17 wrote:
| Why are they focusing on making bio-oil to throw away
| instead of biochar that has many known non-fuel uses?
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biochar#Applications
| pfdietz wrote:
| There's been a proposal to bury them not-so-deep, but
| saturated with salt to prevent decomposition. It's not
| necessary to sequester the carbon forever, just on a time
| scale for natural absorption of the CO2 into oceans and
| then into carbonates (which is something like 100,000
| years, IIRC).
| ieidkeheb wrote:
| So that someone in the future can discover these reserves
| and use it as fuel?!?!!?!
| vixen99 wrote:
| No, by then it's at least conceivable that cold fusion
| will by then be a reality. If an individual cracks this
| problem maybe they'll offer a paper ending with a comment
| akin to Watson & Cricks 1953 paper on DNA. "It has not
| escaped our attention that ..." Or words to that effect.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PGgovWTBoWY
| (Hossenfelder) https://lenr-canr.org/ (Library)
| pfdietz wrote:
| It's wonderful how pseudoscience is a renewable resource.
| Ghosts, then ESP, then pyramid power, and now cold
| fusion.
| abakker wrote:
| https://www.livingcarbon.com - they actually genetically
| engineered trees to grow faster.
| Atiscant wrote:
| Biochar is exactly doing that and is an active area of
| research in many places. There is several ongoing
| projects also showing that biochar can improve soil
| quality and crop yields.
| internet_points wrote:
| https://climate.mit.edu/ask-mit/how-many-new-trees-would-
| we-... says a new forest the size of New Mexico might
| offset the US's emissions. Or not. It depends. But first
| thing to do would be not to cut down the existing ones.
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| They say it would take a forest the size of New Mexico
| "to account for one year of American emissions" - given
| that trees both process CO2 during respiration and act as
| sinks when they grow, I can't tell if they'd be able to
| offset those emissions the next year as well or if we'd
| need a new forest.
| thfuran wrote:
| We need to be building a mountain range out of diamonds.
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| Can you imagine the extraterrestrial archaeologist trying
| to explain that?
| bluGill wrote:
| No - stupid slow speed of light stops so many interesting
| science fiction imaginations.
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| Reality is very much a bummer.
| goatlover wrote:
| Some of those interesting scifi scenarios would not be so
| good for us.
| lupusreal wrote:
| It's true that the speed of light prevents it from
| actually happening, but you should still be able to
| imagine it.
| internet_points wrote:
| The nice thing about making diamonds as opposed to coal
| or bio-oil is that it's quite hard to burn the diamond,
| so less chance of someone getting tempted into using
| these enormous reserves that are just sitting there,
| depreciating, to fuel the helicopter of their bitcoin-
| mining luxury cruise ship or create an ultra-fast pizza
| delivery service using rocket launchers
| internet_points wrote:
| That first map makes it seem like we had gains pretty much
| all over the world, but it's not showing net gain, most of
| the countries of the world had a net tree cover loss. I wish
| it had a map showing net losses per country too - and it'd be
| interesting to see it going back in time, many countries had
| periods of very extensive logging during the 1800's and
| 1900's.
| _joel wrote:
| Be interesting to go back even further, pre agriculture.
| The world would be awash with trees.
| bluGill wrote:
| Not really. In some places yes, but trees need specific
| conditions to exist: there would be lots of grass land
| and deserts too.
| vasco wrote:
| If you scroll there is indeed a map with net gain in the
| page I shared. Direct link to the net gain map file here: h
| ttps://research.wri.org/sites/default/files/gfr/2022-10/36%
| ...
| internet_points wrote:
| gain yes, but not one showing the losses per country
| vasco wrote:
| Happy to be your personal google, gives me an excuse to
| look at it again.
|
| This dashboard is good for that https://www.globalforestw
| atch.org/dashboards/global/?categor...
|
| This visualization is also good:
| https://ourworldindata.org/deforestation
| internet_points wrote:
| Thanks for these pointers, I really didn't mean for you
| to go out looking, was just complaining a bit about the
| presentation of that first site ;-)
|
| Interestingly, the first forest watch loss (pink blob) I
| zoomed in on there turned out to be a project initiated
| by a local environmental organization to restore an
| island to its original farmland (as it had been up until
| a century ago and for centuries before) with wild sheep
| keeping the trees down, small bushes and wide range of
| local flowers instead of deep tree cover. And the nearest
| "forest gain" (blue blob) was a park tree. As Yolland the
| disenchanted mapmaker said, "Something is being eroded."
| vasco wrote:
| No worries at all :)
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| > most of the countries of the world had a net tree cover
| loss.
|
| This also doesn't really matter.
|
| Russia, Canada, Brazil, the US, and China are about ~60% of
| the world's trees.
|
| Their forest areas could grow by only 2-3% and dozens of
| small countries could lose substantial percentages of their
| forests, and we'd still end up with a ton more trees and
| forest area.
| Teever wrote:
| What happens when the forests in those places burn down?
| ASalazarMX wrote:
| That depends on how many of them burn. A few? Doesn't
| matter much. All? Goodbye, and thanks for all the carbon.
| bluGill wrote:
| Depends on how they burn and what forest we are talking
| about. A small intensity fire will leave many of the
| healthy trees alive while burning dead ones, and will
| turn some of the carbon into charcoal which is
| sequestered. A larger intensity fire will also kill
| healthy trees, and turns the carbon into CO2.
|
| Many of the forests in North America need to burn every
| year in that low intensity fire. Their seeds won't even
| sprout until after a fire (when all the dead undergrowth
| has been burned away thus leaving the new sprout with
| sunlight). However this doesn't apply to all forests in
| North America, and I know even less about other
| countries.
|
| Moral of the story: consult a forester who knows the
| local forest before talking about anything. In many
| places we have been badly mismanaging forests and there
| is no nice way out. We probably do need to burn down and
| start over with large parts of North America because of
| all the harm decades of "Smokey the bear" have done to
| our forests.
| goatlover wrote:
| What percentage of burning down over what time scale?
| geodilg wrote:
| Forest loss data is available for the study period (2000 -
| 2020). I've worked with this specific data source quite a
| bit. While it's known for being the gold standard in global
| forest loss estimation there are many countries that
| criticize it for over estimating loss. Going back further
| than 1985 is difficult/impossible as the estimate is
| derived from satellite data.
| mitthrowaway2 wrote:
| I wonder if declassified cold war spy plane photos might
| be usable to extend the records farther back in history?
| The resolution and coverage should be pretty good.
| Retric wrote:
| They didn't take high resolution photos everywhere back
| then. In the early satellites it used physical film they
| recovered. And later digital storage and bandwidth was
| expensive and they dumped any data they didn't need.
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| And it's not just trees. Ever heard of "justdiggit"?
|
| They found that digging holes in the desert functionally
| accumulates enough water to promote diverse plant life. It's
| apparent an ancient practice. They organize groups to do it.
| Ecological stewardship is, I hope, a key shift in mindset
| from the current totalizing view of global warming.
|
| https://justdiggit.org/
| vasco wrote:
| I didn't know about this but after several documentaries on
| the medium to long term impact of these projects many areas
| being more detrimental than beneficial I tend to be a bit
| skeptical. I get particularly skeptical when the whole
| website is geared towards taking in corporate donations
| rather than teaching how to do it and direct action and a
| sort of wiki of how to do it yourself as well as
| evangelizing that.
|
| I didn't spend too long on the website but this page
| https://justdiggit.org/dig-in/farmer/start-regreening/
| seems to be the closest to that, yet it's still no
| instructions and just marketing. I don't want to sound too
| negative or make a judgment call with too little
| information but wanted to share my worries as it has become
| all too common for grifters to take advantage of the
| situation in a sort of partnership with huge corporation
| leadership teams. They get free money and the leadership
| team gets to greenwash whatever they do in their core
| business.
|
| I never researched this specific one in detail other than a
| few minutes now, but the company I worked for previously
| used to do this style of donations and we found a lot of
| projects like this.
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| So take a minute to look at their impact reports and then
| we can discuss the evidence.
|
| https://justdiggit.org/wp-
| content/uploads/2024/06/Justdiggit...
|
| Sorry I shared the main link-- they are an NGO that
| raises money, that's how it works.
| vasco wrote:
| I just find it hard to understand that if you really
| found out digging holes has this much impact, and you
| truly care, that you wouldn't share schematics and
| detailed guides on how to do it in your own land, does
| that make sense? They would of course still try to do
| larger projects, but it just feels strange enough to
| cause doubt for me. Sorry if it's a misjudgement.
| pcrh wrote:
| Water bunds, and other approaches to re-greening are part
| of a United Nations-funded project. You can see other
| examples (including instructions) at these sites:
|
| https://www.decadeonrestoration.org/
|
| Instructions:
|
| https://amshaafrica.org/index.php/building-water-bunds-a-
| ste...
| vasco wrote:
| Thanks for sharing, maybe I'm demanding things they
| aren't set out to do and being too cynical.
| arbitrary_name wrote:
| Yes, that's my take of your position.
| stevage wrote:
| There is plenty of literature about the effectiveness of
| swales and bunds. Justdiggit didn't invent them. Their
| expertise is in mobilising communities to actually
| implement them, and raising funds to support them.
| ackbar03 wrote:
| We should get prisoners to just randomly dig holes in the
| sand, a shovels length in diameter
| internet_points wrote:
| Are there any good charities that buy up green land for the
| sake of not doing anything to it? From what I've read of carbon
| capture economics, it seems a frillion times more effective to
| simply not chop down more forest compared to investing in
| carbon capture (though I'm not saying we shouldn't do both)
| snowwrestler wrote:
| Yes, the Nature Conservancy is a large nonprofit that buys
| lands to hold in its natural state, albeit not at the scale
| needed to offset industrial activities. They tend to focus
| more on qualities like undisturbed ecosystems, or
| biodiversity, than climate change.
|
| And in the U.S. at least, many states have a concept of a
| conservation easement where you get a tax advantage by
| promising not to disturb or develop land you own. This is
| used by some wealthy individuals to lock up a bunch of land
| undisturbed. But again, so far it is not remotely close to
| offsetting the overall human behaviors that are forcing
| warming. (As evidenced by the directly measured rising CO2
| levels and temperature anomalies.)
| tfourb wrote:
| Search for ,,rewilding". It's a popular approach in the UK
| but you'll find projects in other countries, too.
| dpcx wrote:
| Not exactly what you're asking for, but
| [Ecologi](https://ecologi.com/) is doing lots of work on the
| tree-planting front, but also doing other work that helps
| with climate change, like solar panel setups in Morocco, wind
| farms in the US, methane emissions in Brazil, and more.
| yobbo wrote:
| > Too bad that we are currently doing the exact opposite
| (cutting down more forest than is regrown)...
|
| Carbon is captured when trees grow. Lumber binds carbon into
| buildings and constructions.
| thfuran wrote:
| I think the subsistence farmers cutting down the Amazon are
| doing more burning than construction.
| snowwrestler wrote:
| It's a net negative over time if the square footage that was
| housing a tree is replaced with grassland or a neighborhood.
| You trade a one-time, one-tree-sized fixing event against all
| fixing by all future generations of trees on that spot.
|
| The climate math of lumber works if you're talking about
| "productive forests" where trees are allowed to grow to
| replace trees cut down. It doesn't work for situations when a
| forest is cleared and not replaced, which is mostly what is
| happening where rainforest is being cleared.
| mech987876 wrote:
| Most (all?) of the carbon sequestered by a tree that dies
| and rots on the forest floor goes back into the atmosphere.
| So the "fixing by all future generations" is just the same
| carbon sink as the current 1 alive standing tree for that
| spot of real estate.
| bluGill wrote:
| A tiny amount is turned to coal (often via forest fires)
| which then isn't returned to the cycle. We are talking
| about -0.1C over thousands of years though, if we
| otherwise went carbon neutral - which seems unlikely for
| the long tail of small users but if we get the major uses
| of fossil fuels to something carbon neutral that would
| get us very close to stopping global warming at least.
| SamBam wrote:
| Regardless, the net carbon sink of a healthy forest is
| higher than the net carbon sink of a few houses that were
| built in its place.
|
| Simply think of the number of tons of wood in an acre of
| forest, compared with the number of tons of wood in a
| housing development.
|
| It doesn't matter that some trees die and release their
| carbon, other trees grow. Instead of thinking of
| individual trees, simply think of the entire biomass of
| the forest.
| snowwrestler wrote:
| I'm talking specifically about when trees are used for
| lumber.
| lotharcable2 wrote:
| In the USA, at least, most the lumber for home construction
| is farmed. We don't rely on "old growth" for much anymore.
|
| Meaning the forests are kept forests and new trees are
| planted to replace the ones that are cut down. The land the
| trees are farmed from is kept forested because it provides
| a income source for the owners. Also the trees tend to grow
| much faster then they do in natural forests because things
| like spacing out trees is optimized.
|
| This is a big complaint for wood working folks, ironically.
| Because natural grown trees grow slower the wood grain is
| much tighter and ends up being generally higher quality.
| Where as modern farmed wood has huge rings.
|
| Although it isn't too bad because you don't use soft woods
| much for things like furniture making. Where as
| construction lumber is almost all soft wood.
|
| So at least in the USA the ratio of grown-to-cut wood is
| about 1.92. So we plant trees nearly 2 to 1 versus what we
| cut down.
| FloorEgg wrote:
| I guess a tree farm (if the trees are used for
| construction and not burning) would be significantly net
| negative for atmospheric carbon, especially if the
| operation was entirely powered by solar and electric?
| Ma8ee wrote:
| Old forests sequester more carbon than new ones. When you cut
| down a tree, you leave half of it under ground, and when the
| roots break down all that carbon is released to the
| atmosphere.
|
| It is far from straightforward whether it is better to leave
| the forests standing or cut down and replant. The forestry
| industry is of course claiming that a cultivated forest is
| better for the climate. The environmentalists are claiming
| that old forests that are left alone are better for the
| climate and in addition better for ecological diversity.
|
| I tend to believe the side whose income doesn't depend on
| their claim.
| jncfhnb wrote:
| Sounds dubious. Most trees are not nearly 50% roots by
| biomass. The roots that remain will get broken down, but
| not into gases exclusively. A new tree that's growing is
| actively capturing new carbon. Cutting down a tree won't
| help much, but if a new tree grows where the old one was,
| it's hard to find reasoning to suggest a net loss.
| rwyinuse wrote:
| What happens to the parts that are cut down and used is
| what matters. If you build long-lasting houses from them,
| then it's probably good for the climate, as long as new
| tree is planted in its place. If you use the wood to make
| toilet paper, then it's not so good for climate since that
| carbon will return to the atmosphere faster.
| zahlman wrote:
| >and when the roots break down all that carbon is released
| to the atmosphere.
|
| How do you figure, exactly?
| Ma8ee wrote:
| Bacteria and other organisms "eat" the wood, and then
| "breath" out CO2 (and sometimes methane).
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soil_respiration?wprov=sfti
| 1#
| HPsquared wrote:
| Underestimated by one quarter! A factor of 4/3 or 3/4.
| rasengan wrote:
| There are plants in the ocean that man will have trouble to cut
| down.
|
| Earth isn't the same kind of living organism as man, but it's
| an organism just like AI isn't the same intelligence as that of
| man's, but it is intelligence.
| moralestapia wrote:
| >Too bad that we are currently doing the exact opposite
| (cutting down more forest than is regrown)...
|
| Hmm, anyone has data on this? I've seen many people claiming
| the opposite of that opposite.
| dang wrote:
| Ok, we've made the estimates rise in the title above. Thanks!
| deelowe wrote:
| > Too bad that we are currently doing the exact opposite
| (cutting down more forest than is regrown).
|
| This is not true. Sustainable forestry practices have been
| increasing forest coverage for some time now.
| jamiecurle wrote:
| At least in the UK woodland cover is increasing. It was 3% back
| in 1900~ and today it stands at about [13%][0]. The aim in the
| UK is to be at 15% woodland and tree coverage by 2050 - quite
| achievable.
|
| I currently teach woodland management and arboriculture (I also
| run a weird hybrid business doing software and arboriculture)
| in the UK and the idea that we cut down more than we plant is a
| common misconception that I spend a lot of time (and I mean a
| lot of time) correcting with the public and general layperson.
| Felling trees for forestry purposes requires a felling
| license[1], which always comes with a re-stocking clause.
|
| As for urban green infrastructure (basically private and
| municipal trees and hedges), that comes with it's own issues,
| and there's a lot of wins to be had there but there are also
| lots of challenges. I know the Arboricultural Association in
| the UK are doing some great work here to advocate for finding
| ways to retain private and municipal trees whilst managing risk
| to the public (the main reason trees are normally removed
| second only to "aesthetic").
|
| Biodiversity Net Gain (BNG) is also a thing in the UK which
| broadly translates to ensuring that any private building works
| or developments must now have a demonstrable positive effect on
| local biodiversity and where that's not possible, then
| developers can "offset" by commissioning biodiversity projects
| elsewhere. For example, I've just taken delivery of 1200 trees
| (oak, hazel) today, which will be planted into semi-ancient
| woodland that I manage.
|
| So basically the idea that we're cutting down forest ahead of
| what can restock isn't accurate, in fact in the UK at least, it
| is quite the opposite.
|
| A good news story for you.
|
| [0]: https://www.forestresearch.gov.uk/tools-and-
| resources/statis....
|
| [1]: unless it is a) less than five cubic metres in a twelve
| week period (basically "thinning" woodland so that other trees
| have room to grow / habitat improvement for priority habitats).
| b) a private tree without a preservation order/ fruit tree, c)
| diseased or dying or d) a suitably high risk to public safety.
| PcChip wrote:
| I heard that the major problem with replanting efforts is
| monoculture. What are your thoughts on that?
| jamiecurle wrote:
| It depends. For forestry stock there's no real way to avoid
| monoculture if you need a lot and you need it soon (40-60
| years). There's much more to this answer though because
| Phytopthora is hammering larch, Ips is hammering spruce and
| red band needle blight is hammering pines. That's another
| topic on itself. Broadly though, there's nothing wrong with
| a monoculture per-se ([Pando][1], Boreal woodland) it just
| depends on how it is managed and how well the ecology does
| in response to it.
|
| That being said, personally, I favour the continuous cover
| approach of mixing up natives broadleaves with non-native
| conifers as long as the site isn't ancient or semi-ancient
| natural woodland (ASNW) or plantation on ancient woodland
| site (PAWS). For those sites, they're too important for use
| as a commercial forestry site and arguably the ecology
| needs to be restored, maintained and managed. Those sites
| are precious and should be managed properly in-line with
| their identified [NVC identifier][2]. The one exception to
| this is coppicing. Having a coppice on ancient sites where
| coppicing was practised is one of the few woodland
| management techniques that adds to ecology over all four
| woodland layers over all time frames.
|
| I never thought I'd answer that question on HN. I
| appreciate you asking. What's your take on forestry
| monocultures?
|
| [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pando_(tree) [2]:
| https://jncc.gov.uk/our-work/nvc/
| yogurtboy wrote:
| Super interesting!
|
| My preconception (not a botanist) was that monocultures
| were automatically worse for local ecologies. I wonder if
| lumbering practices in America are similar. Obviously,
| it's a mix of good and bad, but it would be cool to find
| some research that suggests how we're doing.
|
| I also just like an eclectic, vibrant forest, and
| personally, monocultures ruin that vibe for me. I'm
| pretty spoiled though, having lived much of my life in
| heavily-wooded areas.
| sharpshadow wrote:
| I think they mean the global CO2 uptake from plants is 30%
| higher overall not that a single plant is able to uptake 30%
| more than the estimated before.
|
| Even though more CO2 pressure in the atmosphere increases also
| the potential uptake in a plant.
| graemep wrote:
| > Too bad that we are currently doing the exact opposite
| (cutting down more forest than is regrown)...
|
| "Plants" is not a synonym for "trees". There are grasslands
| that are significant carbon sinks - even farmland managed in
| the right way can be a carbon sink . The oceans (which have a
| notable lack of trees) are a major carbon sink (although this
| paper is not talking about this, if I understand the abstract
| correctly).
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > Pan-tropical rainforests accounted for the biggest difference
| between previous estimates and the new figures, a finding that
| was corroborated by ground measurements, Gu said. The discovery
| suggests that rainforests are a more important natural carbon
| sink than previously estimated using satellite data.
|
| And yet, we stand by on the sidelines while narco, wood and
| cattle organized crime cartels contaminate, log and burn down the
| rainforests.
|
| IMHO, at least the endangered rainforest belts should be placed
| under international supervision with a joint military cooperative
| on a shoot-to-kill order against these kinds of criminals. Think
| of an UN Blue Helmets mission, but not as a toothless "peacekeper
| corps" like the usual useless bullshit. The very ability of Earth
| to provide for human life hinges to a significant part on the
| continued existence and health of the rainforest ecosystem, and
| it is obvious now that many of the countries in which these
| forests lie are fundamentally incapable of maintaining this
| shared resource.
| InDubioProRubio wrote:
| Maybe we should pay for working greening efforts - aka artifical
| algea blooms ontop of the Marianna trench.
|
| Iron, phosphates, Air pumps and light transmitted into the depths
| where the growthcube rises.
|
| Have a rainforest fall into the depths forever every hour.
| thehappypm wrote:
| Every tech like this has unforeseen consequences. And they
| could be worse than the original problem.
| InDubioProRubio wrote:
| Every problem has unforeseen benefits. Global warming reduces
| the risk for nuclear winter when the resulting tribal
| conflicts lead to the nuclear regional exchange dice landing
| on that number that cant come up on repeated throws.
| snowwrestler wrote:
| There are a lot of people who think humanity will intentionally
| geo-engineer our way out the negative effects of our accidental
| geo-engineering. In part because it is something active that a
| single nation could do for itself. Like, China could just
| decide one day to do what you're saying and it's unlikely
| anyone would start a war to stop them.
|
| Seems scary because we don't actually know how to do it, and we
| only have one planet. We could create horrible side effects
| like killing ocean life we depend on for food, or admire (e.g.
| whales). We also have evidence for a "snowball Earth" state at
| times in the past. What if we overcorrect? Lots of good sci-fi
| stories about that to chill our bones.
|
| The argument against it happening is that it would be expensive
| for that one nation, but benefits would not be proprietary.
| Whereas building out an economy of low-carbon power generation,
| manufacturing, and transportation creates tons of domestic
| economic benefits like jobs, trade, profits.
| mzhaase wrote:
| We have already geoengineered the temperature to be 0.2-0.4 C
| lower by container ships emitting SO2. We have also observed
| this a lot from volcanic eruptions. We should really at least
| try.
| thrance wrote:
| I thought seeding the oceans with iron was already attempted on
| a small scale experiment and showed unsatisfying results?
|
| Also you probably would want to preserve the Mariana Trench
| ecosystem, some unique species live there.
| Prunkton wrote:
| >used new models and measurements to assess GPP from the land at
| 157 petagrams of carbon per year, up from an estimate of 120
| petagrams established 40 years ago and currently used in most
| estimates of Earth's carbon cycle
|
| >One petagram equals 1 billion metric tons, which is roughly the
| amount of CO2 emitted each year from 238 million gas-powered
| passenger vehicles.
|
| this sounds pretty significant. Any particular reason why it
| hasn't been updated for the last 40y?
| baq wrote:
| Impressive, yes. Important? Absolutely. Significant? Not
| really.
|
| https://gml.noaa.gov/ccgg/trends/
| IvanK_net wrote:
| We could plant, cut down and burn trees for the energy, in a
| circle, and keep carbon levels in our atmosphere the same,
| instead of digging up new carbon from the ground and burning it.
| We will have to bury carbon back under the ground at some point.
| voisin wrote:
| > We will have to bury carbon back under the ground at some
| point.
|
| Location doesn't matter. Duration of storage matters. If we
| could find a way to lock it up in a building material that
| would be effective and useful.
| gs17 wrote:
| It's not exactly turning CO2 into bricks, but there's a few
| applications of biochar as an additive to improve concrete,
| asphalt, particleboard, etc.
| pjc50 wrote:
| This consumes _far_ more land area than we have available.
|
| The first blast furnaces were indeed fuelled this way, from
| locally sourced charcoal, but coal/coke took over due to
| requiring far less effort (energy!) to extract.
|
| Going by https://www.drax.com/uk/sustainability/sustainable-
| bioenergy... , the UK's single large scale biomass power plant
| is fuelled by over sixteen million hectares (160,000km^2) or
| approximately one Wisconsin. If we wanted to power the whole UK
| electricity from biomass, we'd need ten Wisconsins. (Wisconsin,
| presumably, would have to find some other source of power in
| this scenario)
|
| (of course, Drax wasn't built to burn imported biomass, it was
| built to burn locally extracted coal ...)
| OtherShrezzing wrote:
| Drax uses about 12,000km^2, not 160,000km^2.
|
| A slightly more useful land area is the United Kingdom
| itself, which is 243,000km^2. With this technique, it takes
| an area 1/19th the size of the UK to produce 4% of its
| energy.
|
| This isn't a feasible approach to energy production, but it's
| an order of magnitude less bad than your figures have put
| forward.
| nubinetwork wrote:
| Trees take too long to grow relative to how much is used in
| construction, let alone if it were used as a fuel vs coal.
| bmacho wrote:
| Yes. That's what my view is. If we cut down the trees, and burn
| them, we'll have the same level of C atoms in the atmosphere.
| If we keep using gas and oil coming under the ground, the
| number of C atoms will keep increasing.
|
| Although I am not exactly sure about the ratio of the C atoms
| stored in the atmosphere, and C stored in trees, houses, but it
| seems to me the Logical move that we should stop getting gas
| and petrol from under the ground and start using trees and
| other plants instead.
| FrustratedMonky wrote:
| If trees are doing more work then we estimated in simulations,
| then good/bad, as we cut down forest we are doing more damage.
|
| But also, since trees do more work than we thought, then planting
| more will have bigger impact than past estimates.
| highcountess wrote:
| That's correct, but there is also something else, NASA has
| argued that their satellite imagery has shown an increase in
| the planet's plant coverage as CO2 has increased, since to
| plants, CO2 is what not just oxygen is to us, but also in many
| ways like nourishment by absorbing the carbon from the air,
| which they use to grow.
| bluGill wrote:
| Plants are generally not CO2 limited. General water is the
| limit - thus deserts are not very green despite having as
| much CO2. Even in wet climate a few weeks without rain and
| the plants are going dormant.
|
| In the ocean the limit is often other nutrients like iron.
| Attempts have been made to add iron to the ocean and those
| areas suddenly turned green (though it is not clear how
| sustainable this practice would be, nor if there might be
| other unknown negatives).
|
| That isn't to say CO2 is never the limit. Large greenhouses
| often are CO2 limited (often burning fossil fuels indoors to
| provide the CO2 without opening windows and thus letting
| something else undesired in). There are no doubt areas where
| CO2 is the limit and so NASA can see more green that is
| attributed to more CO2 - but still CO2 is rarely the limiting
| factor.
| adamors wrote:
| Interesting that a couple of months ago there was an article
| which stated the exact opposite:
|
| > In 2023, the hottest year ever recorded, preliminary findings
| https://arxiv.org/pdf/2407.12447 by an international team of
| researchers show the amount of carbon absorbed by land has
| temporarily collapsed. The final result was that forest, plants
| and soil - as a net category - absorbed almost no carbon.
|
| > "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," he said.
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/oct/14/nature-c...
| carrychains wrote:
| That's not the opposite. It's different context.
| gvx wrote:
| Not exactly. The headline is a bit misleading imho: the article
| doesn't say that CO2 uptake by plants is up by 31%, rather that
| new estimates of the CO2 uptake by plants is 31% higher than
| previous estimates. That doesn't preclude a temporary collapse
| of carbon absorption (related mostly to forest fires as far as
| I can tell).
| robertlagrant wrote:
| > related mostly to forest fires as far as I can tell
|
| Just trying to parse this - does that mean "a collapse in
| carbon absorption" actually means "more carbon was produced
| for the same amount of absorption"?
| Earw0rm wrote:
| It's a useful datapoint in understanding the Earth's carbon
| cycle, but that's all - and it in no way changes the fact that
| the sum total of current human activity is dragging that cycle
| out of equilibrium by about 2.5-3ppm per year, or 8-10%ish per
| decade.
| werdnapk wrote:
| I thought I'd read in the past that an uptake in C02 for
| plants/trees (and therefore faster growing) results in a weaker
| structure which doesn't stand up to the environment as well as
| slower growing trees.
| jiehong wrote:
| We know that soils seem to absorb less carbon as plant absorb
| more [0].
|
| It's fascinating to see all those studies improving our limited
| understanding of the biosphere.
|
| [0]: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-03306-8
| pjmlp wrote:
| Too bad we are currently too busy scaling up wars all over the
| place to bother with the planet state.
| gitaarik wrote:
| > Plants the world over are absorbing about 31% more carbon
| dioxide than previously thought, according to a new assessment
| developed by scientists.
|
| So that means our supposed CO2 problem is 31% smaller than we
| previously thought?
| thehappypm wrote:
| Sadly not, because most carbon is absorbed by the ocean, not
| plants. And second because all of the nasty warming trends are
| still out there
| gitaarik wrote:
| Or this statistic means that actually much more oxygen is
| converted by plants compared to being processed by the ocean?
|
| So it means planting extra plants to fight CO2 is much more
| effective than previously thought?
| Flozzin wrote:
| I would say no. We still have data on our year to year/decade
| to decade C02 in the atmosphere. So we can track how quickly
| it's rising. Those data points would already include any error
| we have in how much C02 is absorbed or created.
| teamonkey wrote:
| No, the atmospheric CO2 measurements are unaffected by this. We
| definitely have a CO2 problem _despite_ plants being more
| effective at extracting it than previously thought.
|
| Another way of looking at it is that planting trees may be more
| effective at removing CO2 than previously thought, and
| deforestation somewhat more harmful.
| gitaarik wrote:
| Well, wouldn't it be correct to say that now, with the new
| numbers, CO2 uptake of plants will be 31% more than
| previously thought? So every coming year, there will be 31%
| more CO2 converted into oxygen than previously thought?
| mzhaase wrote:
| That just means that CO2 emissions are actually higher than
| previously thought. We directly measure atmospheric CO2.
| OtherShrezzing wrote:
| Previously we believed that ocean, wetlands, soil, and
| geological activity absorb about 75% of the CO2. Plants account
| for around 25% of the carbon absorption.
|
| The research doesn't indicate that more carbon in total is
| absorbed than we thought - we've got a pretty solid
| understanding of the total carbon absorption capacity, because
| we measure it directly, rather than model it. It indicates that
| a larger proportion of the carbon absorption comes from plants
| than we thought (around 33%, instead of 25%), with the other
| sources taking on proportionally less of the absorption.
|
| This research will allow us to more accurately model how land
| use impacts CO2 though, and will likely put a higher premium on
| protecting plant life in any carbon assessments.
| gitaarik wrote:
| Aha, yeah that makes sense. But I can't really see that in
| the article.
| bradjohnson wrote:
| > supposed CO2 problem
|
| No. This study has changed precisely nothing about how we
| measure CO2 in the atmosphere. Or climate change in general.
| eggy wrote:
| If it has been underestimated then that means climate models have
| been using the bad, underestimated data, so they need to be
| updated and run to see where we are at, corrrect?
| jeffbee wrote:
| No because we aren't reliant on a model of atmospheric CO2
| concentration. We directly measure it.
| wiz21c wrote:
| You measure the past, but you don't measure the future, right
| ?
| jeffbee wrote:
| Right, this new estimate can be useful for decision
| support: if we plant X acres, how much CO2 would it absorb?
| It's not very important outside of that, and it cant have
| caused significant past errors because to date humans have
| not undertaken large-scale planting for CO2 absorption
| reasons.
| akoboldfrying wrote:
| >It's not very important outside of that,
|
| It's not very important outside of _predicting the future
| of the climate accurately_.
|
| That's not the kind of thing I'd write "It's not very
| important outside of" before. This "mere" prediction and
| decision support is the reason we fund the sciences.
| eggy wrote:
| Several countries have implemented large-scale planting
| efforts: China, Ethiopia, India, Brazil, Australia,
| Pakistan, and Turkey to name a few. In 2019, Ethiopia
| claimed to have planted over 350 million trees in a
| single day as part of a broader initiative to plant 4
| billion trees within a year to fight climate change.
| OJFord wrote:
| I assume they mean for things like offsetting programmes,
| predicting the continuing trend and effect of governments
| deciding to plant more/less, etc.
| mike_hearn wrote:
| Yes because the models attempt to model feedback loops like
| the albedo difference created by greenery, the CO2 dampening
| effect of photosynthesis, the water content of the air and
| how that's affected by trees and so on.
|
| Bear in mind, ESMs aren't trying to predict future CO2
| levels. They're trying to predict future weather based on the
| effects of higher CO2, and vegetation is a part of that.
| akoboldfrying wrote:
| Don't we need models to make predictions about the future?
| elzbardico wrote:
| Expected future CO2 concentration are a parameter for the
| climate models, and are generated by themselves by other
| models with different set of inputs accounting for a series
| of natural and socio-economic variables.
| bradjohnson wrote:
| No. Climate scientists did not base all of their current models
| on a 1980 study about how much CO2 trees can technically
| absorb.
| akoboldfrying wrote:
| That's a straw man.
|
| I expect climate models contain a lot of parameters that
| aren't related to plant uptake of CO2, and some that are. I
| expect that, until now, the latter _have been_ based on the
| 1980 study, because otherwise this latest result would not be
| news.
|
| I also expect that the contribution of plant CO2 uptake is a
| large factor in these models, so a significant change like
| this will potentially have a significant effect on
| predictions.
|
| Are any of these expectations wrong? If so, which ones?
| myrmidon wrote:
| This is interesting to know, but easy to overstate IMO.
|
| Back of the envelope number is 10 kg of CO2 absorbed per maturing
| tree and year (for ~20 years).
|
| This means you would need to plant almost 1000 trees for each
| person (assuming roughly US/EU emission level) to compensate for
| current emissions only, every 20 years. That just seems
| infeasible to me, and a factor of 30% is not gonna change this
| significantly.
|
| Renewables + electrification seems much more realistic, when
| countries like France are already under 5 tons CO2/year/person by
| relying on carbon-free electricity (US is at 15!).
|
| But it's still nice to know because at least planting/conserving
| trees apparently helps even more than expected...
| Someone wrote:
| > This means you would need to plant almost 1000 trees for each
| person (assuming roughly US/EU emission level) to compensate
| for current emissions only, every 20 years. That just seems
| infeasible to me
|
| That's 50 trees each year for each person, or, in the USA,
| about 17 billion trees, for a total new forest of 340 billion
| trees.
|
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/20...
| says the USA has about 280 billion trees, so we'd 'only' have
| to grow that by 120%. That would grow forest in the USA from
| about 33% to about 75% of land area.
|
| Infeasible, but not completely impossible, I would think, from
| a 'could we do it?' viewpoint. 'Is there a decent chance we'll
| do that?' probably has the answer "no", though. For the USA, I
| guess cutting combining forestation with decreasing energy
| usage would be the easier option.
| myrmidon wrote:
| Thats an even bigger area than I imagined... Another big
| problem is that we'd have to grow those forests again after
| 20 years, because mature trees stop being a CO2 sink.
|
| The numbers/ratios should be even worse for Europe where the
| population density is higher. But I can totally see the
| approach working _after_ scaling CO2 emissions down.
|
| I think going over single digit percentages of land area in
| forestation levels is already politically almost impossible--
| agriculture alone is gonna meet any such attempt with
| ridicule at best and copious amounts of buckshot at worst...
| p0w3n3d wrote:
| there are also organisms in water:
|
| > On a global scale, oceans and other water bodies absorb
| approximately 25-30% of the CO2 emitted by human activities
| each year. This absorption occurs primarily through two
| mechanisms:
|
| > - Physical Dissolution: CO2 dissolves in water and reacts to
| form carbonic acid, bicarbonate, and carbonate ions.
|
| > - Biological Processes: Aquatic organisms, especially
| photosynthetic ones, play a significant role in capturing and
| sequestering CO2.
| deadbabe wrote:
| It feels like we can never catch a break. If we do something like
| underestimate the amount of CO2 plants absorb it still does
| nothing to change our fate.
|
| Is there _anything_ in our climate models that if we got wrong
| would drastically reduce the estimated severity of long term
| impacts from climate?
| thrance wrote:
| The trend is what it is, our models only allow us to explain
| why it is that way and what can be done about it.
| akoboldfrying wrote:
| We don't ever actually know if _any_ model is accurate -- that
| is, whether it actually models the underlying physical process.
| We just have a lot of models that have made predictions about
| the future that turned out to be more or less correct, much
| more often that you 'd expect by chance, and so we develop
| trust in that _correspondence_ with reality over time.
|
| It's possible that our current climate models are wrong, by a
| little or a lot. It's also possible that General Relativity is
| wrong -- gravity might stop at this time tomorrow.
|
| If you're interested, this issue is called the Problem of
| Induction in philosophy. (Confusingly, "induction" has a
| different meaning here than in mathematical induction.)
| AtlasBarfed wrote:
| Ah the greening earth FUD spread by big oil circa 2000s
|
| HN is playing all the greatest hits of denialism this week!
| highwayman47 wrote:
| CO2 is food for plants
| ben_w wrote:
| And also a poison for them -- just as oxygen is both of those
| things for us. (If oxygen isn't even a metaphorical food for
| us, then neither is CO2 for plants).
|
| Unfortunately, "food" is more complex than "how much
| carbohydrates do you get per day?"
| coffeebeqn wrote:
| We still have ways to go to that. From the current 400 ppm to
| about 2000ppm before the apocalypse. Until then the yields
| will generally improve from today's baseline. There might be
| other systems that break before that and we get plantocalypse
| earlier
| timeon wrote:
| And your point is?
| rad_gruchalski wrote:
| Apparently the more of it there is, the more they eat. It's
| called "an implication", or "logical consequence".
| newsclues wrote:
| So perhaps the alarmist climate models were incorrect and most be
| corrected before they are used to shape public policy?
| bradjohnson wrote:
| No. This changes nothing about climate models.
| Terr_ wrote:
| Unfortunately this doesn't mean much for the practical problem,
| because most of that uptake is is dumped into the atmosphere
| again when the plant dies and rots.
|
| It's like we've got a bathtub where the water level is rising,
| because we won't turn off the tap and the drain is only so big.
| We can lower the apparent water-level by throwing in a bunch of
| plant-sponges, but we can't just keep adding more indefinitely.
| akoboldfrying wrote:
| >because most of that uptake is is dumped into the atmosphere
| again when the plant dies and rots.
|
| If that's true, there would seem to be no benefit to the
| climate in preserving or regenerating forests.
| Terr_ wrote:
| Correct, in the long-term. Like how a temporary loan is
| somewhat wasted if the breathing-room it generates is only
| used to delay fixing the budget shortfall.
|
| https://kleinmanenergy.upenn.edu/commentary/blog/why-
| tempora...
| narrator wrote:
| Ok guys, this climate change stuff is temporarily off the menu
| until we win the great power AI war with China. Same goes for
| nuclear power. Send the memo out that we love nuclear power now
| after 40 years of hating it.[1]
|
| [1]
| https://www.ft.com/content/96aa8d1a-bbf1-4b35-8680-d1fef36ef...
| thrance wrote:
| Climate change stuff is off the menu until Americans elect a
| president that actually believes in climate change.
|
| There is no "power AI war with China", this is just another
| pretext from the GOP to fuel the extraction industry with
| public money, and "drill, baby, drill".
| narrator wrote:
| What about the nuclear power stuff though? That was a Biden
| initiative and a huge reversal of the past 40 years of
| Democratic Party policy. Just seems like things are moving in
| energy policy.
| thrance wrote:
| It's too little, too late, but I'll still take it. However
| I still have a hard time believing banks and other private
| actors will go through funding 20+ years projects like
| nuclear reactors in today's short-termist economy.
| casenmgreen wrote:
| This kind of change is deeply worrying, because on the face of
| it, it implies means estimates of climate change are potentially
| rather unsound - such large changes in mechanisms central to
| change - and so climate change could be much worse than we
| expect.
|
| If climate change isn't so bad, then phew, but if it's actually
| _worse_ , then we are in even more deadly trouble than we already
| are.
| muth02446 wrote:
| What does that mean for all the existing simulations that use the
| "wrong" values?
|
| BTW: are there any open source climate models/simulations?
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