The Great Global Warming Blunder

If only we still lived on Gondwana or Euramerica. lol

It's not so simple as saying higher temps and higher CO2 levels would be good for plants because you failed to mention which plants it would benefit and to which plant such conditions would be detrimental. Nor does this take into account precipitation changes throughout the world. Not all plants respond the same to higher CO2 levels and the studies I have read lead me to believe invasive plants would benefit the most. That could potentially add to the billions of dollars (approx. $120 billion/yr) we already spend on invasive species control and lost agricultural revenue. You also failed to reveal how long those plants, that were alive during the Carboniferous and Jurassic period, had to evolve adaptations to high temps and CO2 levels. Until we completely stop growing our food on farms and ranches, I would not take things like higher temperatures, more CO2 or precipitation changes lightly.

In my line of work I monitor how changes in precipitation levels and/or timing can affect vegetation growth by favoring different species over others. Plants are not just plants.

Invasive Species - Invasive Species 101

Invasive Species: Economic Impacts - National

 

"had to evolve adaptations"

What? Plants and animals adapt by evolving? Where did you come up with this crazy idea? Next thing you will try to tell me is the earth is round!

 

Plants migrate, too. Not as in 'flying South for the Winter', but they respond to changes by becoming more plentiful in some areas and less in others. The trouble with the speed of the current climate changes is that the plants simply can't keep up, and will die off as their favoured climate moves on without them. So no, rapidly increasing CO2 and temperatures are not 'good for plants'.

 

*sigh* Save a planet: shoot a denier.

 

I like that.

 

Sorry friends, been out of the chat for a while, doing carbon-cycle research (of all things).

It certainly makes sense to attend to Roy Spencer and similar, because the clouds closing up is about the only hope remaining, against 3 degress C per doubling of CO2. It doesn't fit well with the paleodata, though, so hope cautiously.

Now if one wants to consider recent temperature trends, please include this on your reading list:

Data.GISS: GISS Surface Temperature Analysis: July 2010 — What Global Warming Looks Like

The relationships between plant (especially edible plant) growth and CO2 are not as murky as some might imagine. There are plenty of scientific publications about it but that may not be what most PC readers are after. So I promise to post a general-audience summary if I can find one. Scientific American really ought to get after that.

Meanwhile, gotta run, need to shop for spare fuses for the infrared CO2 analyzer. It went offline today during an important (in my opinion) set of incubations and made me nervous about backup plans.

Climatologically, in a much broader sense, I remain nervous about backup plans. The Earth system does not appear to be nearly as fixable as this gadget from Licor in Lincoln Nebraska. Yes even in China, earth-system scientists do their shopping in Nebraska. Darn good gadgets...

 

Doug, wasn't there a tremendous amount of fern growth during the PMT that eventual (over the course of 800K years or so) absorbed a lot of the CO2 that had accumulated in the atmosphere? I seem to remember reading something on GreenCarCongress to that effect.

I share your concerns about plans B, C, D etc. None of them will be cheap and we haven't a bloody clue what we're really doing. That's the thing that people don't seem to grasp... the downside of the climate debate is massive... massively expensive and will have a huge impact on global standards of living.

 

Are we talking about the paleocene-ecocent thermal max, about 55 million ybp? That was one sharp temperature rise, it seems. Several competing theories to explain, with perhaps the most likely being a large marine release of methane (from hydrates) to the atmosphere.

From about 50 to 30 million ybp, there was a large decrease in atmospheric CO2, coinciding with the dominance of angiosperms (seed plants) on land. But at about the same time, the Himalayas were getting bumped up and such orogenies always make lot of silicate rocks available for weathering, also consuming atmospheric CO2. As usual, not a simple picture.

The time was not right for a major expansion of ferns though, I do not think. That is a very old plant group, and likely did play a role in the largest drawdown of atmospheric CO2 that we know of, about 400 to 300 million ybp. familar to many from natural history museum dioramas, that is illustrated as trees falling in swamps (eventually becoming coal) and dragonflies with 75-cm wingspans.

In between those two, there was another CO2 drop that seems to correspond with the proliferation of modern gynmosperms (conifers). Of course, every time land plants figure out how to occupy more habitats (or furher fill up old ones) there is the potential to increase mineral weathering and further consume CO2.

All this ultra-long-term science is very interesting, but it may not help us much to deal with the current situation. Reading about 'stabilization wedges' will give you a pretty good handle on that.

Anyway, standing against all evidence to the contrary are Spencer and Lindzen. Just maybe, they are right and massive increases in cloud cover will keep us from getting too toasty. However, that would be accompanied by less light at the earth's surface, and this is another resource that the plants (we eat) require. AFAIK nobody has tried to work out that scenario, or the more general matter of reduced photosynthesis in general. Decomposition is not dependent on light, so it wouldn't slow. Come to think of it, being 'saved' by clouds might not be such a good thing after all...

 

yeah, I meant PTM, not PMT. D'oh. That's for the illumination. There never is a simple answer in this universe, is there.

 

Back to that Licor infrared gas analyzer for a moment, if I may. At the core it is a differential spectrometer, measuring absorbance at 3.95 and 4.24 microns. The former is in a CO2 band and the latter is not. It reads with amazing accuracy from 0 to 20,000 parts per million. If you swap in the shorter path length optical cell you can measure up to about 50,000 ppm.

The point is that, if CO2 absorption bands in the infrared were saturated (and you can read any number of websites that claim this to be the case), then such high-ppm measurements would not be possible. But they are, and I think that evidence speaks for itself.

Some other time we might talk about how Keeling made CO2 measurements in Hawaii, before infrared gas analyzers were capable of the task. He used manometry, among the most difficult analytical techniques I can imagine.

With the Licor it's much easier, and the students' record here so far has been 315 measurements in a single day. So if you ask a sufficnetly simple question (how fast is CO2 being relseased by microbes in this incubation?) the answer is indeed simple.

 

Ah, another open minded liberal - just like the Discovery Channel terrorist.

 

Yes, Lamarkian evolution is the currently accepted theory, not the that pesky descent through modification

I a little fascinated by the latest study out of mizzoula, and wonder if its RTM, a limiting response, or actual declining trend of plants with temp and CO2 that is becoming apparent this decade.

 

BTW, I think the spelling has evolved and is spelled Lamarck.

Icarus

PS Mizzoula has also evolved to Missoula I think!

 

lol. The 20th century is yesterday. We don't need that old skool spelling on the internet. A dead Frenchman doesn't really need that superfluous 'c' to make his theory heard.

 

Austin, I do not understand RTM in your question above. Zhao and Running strongly favored the drought interpretation.

Even with the same total global rainfall (the zero-sum game) distribution matters. More than average rain (in many biomes) will do little to increase NPP. Less than average rain has a stronger limiting effect.

Now, one of the secondary benefits of increased CO2 was supposed to be the (partial) drought-proofing of plants. Because they can keep their photosynthetic enzymes full of CO2 with reduced stomatal apertures. The Z&R could be interepreted as evidence against that, but they did not say it.

Maybe that is OT for PriusChat or this thread in particular though. We are supposed to be talking about blunders...

 

I've been reading about forage productivity for annual rangelands and keep finding charts like this that are useful for comparing CO2 levels (separate data), precipitation levels and plant growth. CO2 and trace gas local distribution and concentrations could make comparisons difficult though.

As one would expect, there seem to be large jumps in productivity during wet El Niño years such as 1998 and 2005 growing seasons. The data for 2005 was found in another document that is hiding from me on our server. I'll add then when it is found.

 

Forgot to add the original documents.

California Forage Quality - From Grass to Poop - http://ceplacer.ucdavis.edu/files/7691.pdf

Agriculture’s Role in Greenhouse Gas Emissions & Capture - https://www.soils.org/files/science-policy/ghg-report-august-2010.pdf

 

Okay, this is mildly hilarious. Denying global warming is so insane, im confused.

a] global temperatures on average have been going on an upward trend for at least the past 200 years
b] carbon dioxide levels today are higher than they ever were
c] we know carbon dioxide makes planets warmer. Look at venus and its 98% CO2 atmosphere.

And lets say for arguments sake, Global warming wasn't true. What is the harm in using less gasoline? burning less coal? conserving electricity? recycling?? Burning fossil fuels causes air pollution, causes smog, causes respiratory problems for many. THATS REAL...??

 

And don't forget the national security issue! Buying less imported oil, stimulating the economy both with R&D in RE, but also investment in conservation.

Oh, wait, we have made these arguments for months and years, and it seems there is a significant denial community who don't want facts to get in the way of their beliefs.

 

Conservation isn't good for business. There's strong incentive (profit) for the petrochemical industries to stir the FUD. After reading last week's New Yorker, I wonder if the Koch brothers are involved, too.