Wouldn't an increase in co2 in the atmosphere spur a massive plant growth, both on land and in the oceans? I have no qualifications nor merit in this field as well, so anyone please feel free to correct me if I am wrong.
Yes it already has. Earth has greened considerably, agriculture, forests have all been boosted the last forty years.
Here chat 4:
Piao, S., Liu, Z., Wang, Y. et al. (2020). Plant phenology and global climate change: Current progresses and challenges. Global Change Biology, 26, 1928–1940. https://doi.org/10.1111/gcb.15004
This review paper discusses the impact of global climate change on plant phenology, which includes effects of elevated CO2 levels.
Zhu, Z., Piao, S., Myneni, R. B., Huang, M., Zeng, Z., Canadell, J. G., ... & Zeng, N. (2016). Greening of the Earth and its drivers. Nature Climate Change, 6(8), 791-795. https://doi.org/10.1038/nclimate3004
This article provides evidence for the 'greening' of the Earth over a period of 33 years, attributing roughly 70% of this greening to increased atmospheric CO2.
Smith, P., House, J. I., Bustamante, M., Sobocká, J., Harper, R., Pan, G., ... & Popp, A. (2016). Global change pressures on soils from land use and management. Global Change Biology, 22(3), 1008-1028. https://doi.org/10.1111/gcb.13068
This article discusses the effects of global change pressures on soils, including the impacts of increasing CO2.
Just to makes sure no one things that this means that extra CO2 is good because of this: Elevated CO2 levels drastically change the climate and will make Earth inhabitable for humans at some point if not reduced. It's good for some plants in some places but their growth does not fix the underlying and future issues with CO2 in our atmosphere.
Please stop "making sure" when it comes to MY thinking. Also on behalf of everyone who doesn't like being told what or how to think, please stop "making sure".
If you really need to "make" something "sure" please pick something real and not a political football.
In the early 70's alarmists were "making sure" everyone was panicking about an ice age.
See..no ice...
Wait a while....I predict the alarmists will change to something else when people no longer buy the current looming disaster.
Please stop participating in the most recent fashionable doomsday fantasy.
In the 70s the gradually forming consensus was still that global warming was real. The popular press just ran with cooling more, so the lay person believed it. The modern "the 70s predicted cooling so can we believe anything these 'scientists' say?" talking point is based upon a false premise.
But there is considerable evidence that this warm period is passing and that temperatures on the whole will get colder. For example, in the last 100 years mid‐latitude air temperatures peaked at an all‐time warm point in the 1940's and‐have been cooling ever since.
[Climatologists] are predicting greater fluctuations, and a cooling trend for the northern hemisphere.
The most imminent and far reaching [danger] is the possibility of a food‐climate crisis that would burden the well to do countries with unprecedented hikes in food prices, but could mean famine and political instability for many parts of the non-industrialized world.”
So writes Stephen Schneider, a young climatologist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo., reflecting the consensus of the climatological community in his new book, “The Genesis Strategy.”
If you're using that as evidence that media over-represented bad science, then I think that's a great example. Even before 1976 Schneider had already apologized and said that his assumptions regarding global cooling were overestimated and heating underestimate. Wikipedia also mentions that the book considers both global warming and cooling, it seems like the review was aiming at a particular popular angle. I don't know if I'd use a book review as an indicator of the actual scientific consensus of the time, but rather the media's understanding of the scientific consensus.
It's not a "talking point." It's my point of view because the preponderance of evidence seems to indicate that the media, as a group, cannot be trusted.
It's not a debate. Wake up. Much (most?) of the info going into your brain is not just false, it's deliberately manipulative.
> the media, as a group
Is a ridiculously false assumption. You are also consuming some media, who are you to decide which publications fall into the bad group and which into the good group? Feelings of trust? Feelings of familiarity? Feelings of reassurance of existing viewpoints?
> It's not a debate.
I am glad you do realise that human-induced climate change is real and a threat.
> Much (most?) of the info going into your brain is not just false, it's deliberately manipulative.
You might want to find better sources of information then.
I imagine one must spend most time running in particular self-confirming circles to expect to be taken seriously when retorting with "in the 70's 'they' said there would be a new ice age, yuk, yuk, yuk", especially around HN. It's been refuted repeatedly, and I see someone already got to it while I was typing this.
I mean, in the 70's people had leaded gasoline in cars, lead paint in the walls, washed their hands with DDT, blew a hole in the ozone layer and doused countries in unknown chemical blends, so relying on the things that were common ideas at that time as signs of good ideas may not be the right call.
It probably would, but if you're implying this would absorb a lot of CO2, I don't think so, plants die and when they do they decompose and release the CO2 back into the atmosphere. The conditions are not really met for a new carboniferous era right now and it took millions of years.
No because plant levels settle at a higher equilibrium. Plants may decompose but there are more plants growing at the same time, so it still ends up being more.
Higher CO2 levels are said to have led to a "global greening", in which crop yields have gone up a lot. This is especially true in Africa, so that reduces global hunger and increases wealth. The idea that more CO2 = less life is not as simple as it's made out to be. Climate doomers ignores this type of thing because they are convinced society can't handle complexity, so have to insist that CO2 is always bad even when it's not.
Oh my.. few serious educated persons would refute the increased greening, yes, but there it stops already.
Crop yields have gone up a lot? Unfortunatly our farming has even more problems, but let's leave it at the increased greening: How much have crop yields increased by that please, any numbers? Or at least how much the increase of greening is?
Do you know our crops vs the plants that mostly benefit from this and will also thrive in the future weather conditions, that is more than the CO2 level?
Hunger in Africa has already reduced? Please wtf, any numbers?
And that this will outweigh the other bad consequences.. no comment.
Even your reference doesn't get to anything more concrete than wishful but hilarious extrapolation based on ... just opinion (vs facts of.. but I think it is not worth continiueing, right? :/ )
Some people can handle complexity, but I think they're in the minority. I'm not sure that tacking on "oh, but also climate change will be good in a few ways" is helpful in getting people to take action. So there are sure to be some misinformed climate activists out there who don't know about greening, but that may be a preferable situation to everyone being very informed about the nuance and therefore feeling like this is a smaller problem than it really is.
... ideally, during a carboniferous epoch, you have lots of bogs and places where plants can decompose into oil for future civilizations to enjoy... And re-release I to the atmosphere.
From what I've read that can't really happen again. In the prehistoric past, plants could die and would build up into massive layers. Over time those wound up in various geologic processes that caused them to become oil. Nowadays the Earth has plenty of microbes that will quickly decompose the plants into something that is not oil and that's the end of the process.
Yes, we expect increased some degree of photosynthesis. However, we hardly expect to see an proportionate increase of photosynthesis (or plant mass?) - if nothing else, we'd expect there to still be a bottleneck from nitrogen.
Logically, yes. The energy will be transformed by nature if humans don't do it. However, this might not happen in a timely fashion for us to survive as a specie. Remember, earth timelines are wildly different than human ones.
An incredibly strong feedback mechanism exists (see article above).
Societal problems, yes. Extinction to the human species? I think that’s extreme hyperbole. What would the mechanism even be, to eradicate all humans, across the globe?
Climate change is real, things will be bad, etc, but the possible end of the species is an incredible claim, that doesn’t follow logic.
Okay so it won't make us go extinct. What if it makes life full of significant suffering. I find this kind of argument quite annoying. It's the same thing was happened with COVID19. Sure, I'm not going to die from it. That doesn't mean I want to live a life without my taste or smell. I enjoy those things. Likewise I want to live on a good Earth and leave that to the people after me.
What is "this kind of argument"? Something ridiculous was stated, and I pointed out an apparently annoying reality. The argument that you seem to want to have is unrelated to what was said and my response to it. I don't think hyperbole has a place on meaningful discussions. Relevant points should be made without theatrics.
No one justified lockdowns based on people losing taste or smell though. If the justification turned out to be incorrect, it is reasonable to be mad about that. While you personally may be fine with lockdowns based on whatever percent of people lose taste or smell permanently, if that was the justification provided for lockdowns instead of risk of death I think a majority would have been opposed, don’t you?
Yes, but in the worst way. Giving large amounts of CO2 to plants is kind of like giving huge doses of steroids to athletes. They grow abnormally and become unhealthy and short lived.
My cannabis plants flower with 15 to 20% yield improvement and no abnormalities at 1500ppm CO2.
Edit One of the side effects of CO2 infusion ironically, is tolerance of higher temperatures.
Here chat 4:
Piao, S., Liu, Z., Wang, Y. et al. (2020). Plant phenology and global climate change: Current progresses and challenges. Global Change Biology, 26, 1928–1940. https://doi.org/10.1111/gcb.15004 This review paper discusses the impact of global climate change on plant phenology, which includes effects of elevated CO2 levels.
Zhu, Z., Piao, S., Myneni, R. B., Huang, M., Zeng, Z., Canadell, J. G., ... & Zeng, N. (2016). Greening of the Earth and its drivers. Nature Climate Change, 6(8), 791-795. https://doi.org/10.1038/nclimate3004 This article provides evidence for the 'greening' of the Earth over a period of 33 years, attributing roughly 70% of this greening to increased atmospheric CO2.
Smith, P., House, J. I., Bustamante, M., Sobocká, J., Harper, R., Pan, G., ... & Popp, A. (2016). Global change pressures on soils from land use and management. Global Change Biology, 22(3), 1008-1028. https://doi.org/10.1111/gcb.13068 This article discusses the effects of global change pressures on soils, including the impacts of increasing CO2.