The Greening of Planet Earth

Thanks mojo, I knew this was out there, just couldn't find it. Its been read 68 time without one comment which seems unusual. I get the feeling this is deliberately being ignored in the hope it'll go away. LoL!

 

but is a green planet a good thing?

 

No video access for me

There have been several research articles about increased forest productivity, where and why and when. Also about recent increases in forest mortality. On balance there are currently net biological carbon sinks on land and at sea, about equal sizes, reducing the CO2 increase to but half of the fossil fuel combustion.

It would be reasonable to hope that these sinks keep doing what they're doing. If they don't early news will come from the Mauna Loa CO2 monitoring. So far, there is an increase in the annual amplitude of the CO2 cycle, for which which nobody seems to have suggested a cause. But an increase in magnitude of the cycle is not a change in the slope.

 

Yes deforestation, is typically bad, reforestation good

Perhaps we can buldoze the vacant neighborhoods of detroit and plant trees and flowers. Roaming packs of wild dogs living in abandoned buildings not good. Then again developers look at green places and think, I could put a building there and "improve the land". There are always too sides to every coin.

 

just paint the buildings green.

 

They may work in alaska but not in much of the world.

In austin we need to keep our green spaces. They help reduce the urban heat island effect which is much worse in much less green Dallas. They also provides sources of recreation for people and critters More native plants or xeroscaping require much less water than those imported things. We do have big problems with invasive species of plants that are trying to kill off our native ones. Higher c02 levels can allow more drought resistance in plants.

 

Very uninformative energy industry commercial proven wrong by 25 years of climate science by independent climate scientists as you can see on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change website. IPCC - Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change

Oil company geologists paid to express the corporate sales point, pondering decades old data that has been proven wrong by 25 of years of climate science only tells us that the climate change deniers are out of date and reduced to digging up old energy company commercials as a last ditch defense against reality.

 

^ You cite an entire web site on climate to support your claim that vegetation has not increased? Weak, lazy, misleading and typical.

Vegetation In Arid Regions Increased Since 1982 Due To Carbon Fertilization

 

A greener planet has tastier plants, for insects and microbes in addition to humans

BBC News - Climate change 'driving spread of crop pests'

this study of crop-pest records in some ways complements the forest-damage studies I alluded to above. I didn't give a reference for those but if you search Van Mantgem, you'll get enough.

I have no argument with greener per se, but food security is arguably numero uno.

 

Hey!

I want to cut down my carbon footprint.. does anyone know anything about renewable energy?! I have heard such mixed things in the news

 

So, mojo, is your message that global warming is occuring, that it is manmade, and that it is good because a portion of the fossil-fuel carbon is sequestered in additional plant growth?

 

Regardless of whether climate change is occurring or man-made, we are in unchartered territory and isn't it better that we stop debating whether it is happening, whether it is good or bad and do something about it rather than take the risk though? That is why I bought myself a prius anyway, because I want to do something about it.

 

I was motivated by climate change but I must admit I have mainly only done the minimum. I recycle and so on just so I have done my bit (and because the Government makes me), and I thought that by buying the Prius that was another bit done.
I never thought about whether it would change me, but I feel that having the monitor has really changed the way I drive and I guess it has made me think more about renewable energy

 

Had I linked before to the BAMS state of the climate report? I can't recall. But it is easy to find, and includes graphics about atmospheric water-vapor trends.

Would like to emphasize some aspects of plants and CO2, and this is the greening thread, so here goes.

About a quarter of the fossil-CO2 releases don't show up in the atmosphere (trends) because land plants are sequestering it. About another quarter for the oceans. So absolutely this is a major factor. I expect we all hope that plants keep doing that. If they can access the other essential resources (water nitrogen and phosphorus most importantly), they will.

However, plant growth is not the way to reduce CO2 from 800 to 400 ppm (just to pick two numbers). Most of land area would have to be relinquished to forests allowed undisturbed growth for that. This is impractical, given that humans eat crops that need land to grow.

OTOH, mineral weathering can absolutely turn 800 into 400. Has done so in the geological past. There the catch is that thousands + years are required.

Plants did a really amazing thing between 350 and 300 million years ago - they reduced atmospheric CO2 to an even greater extent. Made more than half of the coal formation, simply because they did not biologically decompose. Now it is clear that fungi 'figured out how' to decompose wood 300 million years ago, and since then coal formation has been much more limited. This won't happen again. Fungi will not allow it (though I'll tell you an amazing fungus story soon).

Anyway, now that plant decomposition is firmly in place, they are going to continue operating near equilibrium. The long-term control on CO2 (excluding fossil-fuel burning from the discussion) are the rate at which weatherable minerals are uplifted. In a few past events (also known as mass extinctions), the oceans got messed up and returned a lot of CO2 (and CH4) to the atmosphere. Earth got overly warm. Eventually, over geological time scales, mineral weathering cleaned that up.

So, there is the CO2 governor story. Except for the fungus part I have not yet told. I am waiting to see more 454 pyrosequencing data for that Not much of a hint, but my lips are sealed.

 

Climate report struggles with temperature quirks

AP News | The Times-Tribune | thetimes-tribune.com

 

Excellent example of the flat earth climate deniers convoluted conspiracy theories in the face of 20 years of hard science proving them wrong.

 

El Dobro, we really want you here but posting in big font may not indicate that you have something new.

Decadal air-T increases since 1970 were linearly up until about 2000. Thence they have been about flat, obviously influenced by the 1997/1998 Big El Nino. That air T is now sitting higher than those earlier decades should tell you something. It should compel you to look for some mechanisms. That is, if you are somebody who wants to understand things.

Referring to other threads here, the ocean is important in controlling how much of of 'newly CO2 trapped energy' remains in the atmosphere and increases T. We should look at Berkeley's new paper in JGR Atmospheres for more on that in a new thread.

But we should not suppose that the media is handling this complicated situation well. They pitch to below the middle, add spice (Scientists confused...) and don't we all know that is so?

If we are to do anything differently at PriusChat, we'd better look at the published papers. Call them out, good or bad, and say why.

There is no need for 'here' to be yet another internet chat where people shout past each other in the hope of gaining followers. Here, reasonable interpretations of published data should gain followers, Dontcha think? I do.

We may find reasons to believe that air T will not respond strongly to +CO2 during the next few decades. I look for evidence of that in the journals EVERY DAY, and I post what I find. What do you do, that you want PC readers to know about. Tell us please.