
The biggest thing nature did to fight climate change is no longer working - stevekinney
http://qz.com/108534/the-one-thing-nature-did-to-fight-climate-change-is-no-longer-working/
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tankenmate
_“When they get warmer than average, forests in the tropics do not like it,
and overall they tend to put more CO2 into the atmosphere than they take out,”
says study co-author Pep Canadell, executive officer of the Global Carbon
Project._

This particular statement strikes me as spin; if forests were producing more
CO2 than they were consuming then by the necessities of chemistry the plants
would start to die due to lack of sustenance (sugars, including cellulose,
which are made from CO2 and photosynthesis).

Either the forest gets to a homeostasis, it start to expand, or it dies back
vis a vis the partial derivative of impact of CO2 levels. If indeed the CO2
levels being produced are more than consumption then where are the plants
getting their energy from? And don't say animals, because if that was the case
then the animals would have to be eating more and more of the forests. The
only case I can see is wide scale felling, but then wide scale felling is not
a case of plants producing more CO2.

CO2 levels are a problem, but this short description of this report seems to
be muddying the waters not making them more clear.

~~~
michaelwww
"Other important biophysical changes alter the amount of water that evaporates
or transpires from plants and the soil, the roughness or unevenness of the
plant canopy, and ultimately the extent of convective clouds and rainfall."

I think the author misreads the referenced science reports, in which it seems
to me they are suggesting the forest becomes less of a carbon sink as it gets
warmer.

[http://www.globalcarbonproject.org/global/pdf/Canadell_2010_...](http://www.globalcarbonproject.org/global/pdf/Canadell_2010_Interactions%20of%20carbon%20cycle-
human%20activity-climate%20-%20Research%20Portfolio.COSUST.pdf)

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davidvaughan
Possibly on the plus side, increasing concentration of CO2 may be encouraging
the growth of vegetation in previously bare regions.

"Satellite observations reveal a greening of the globe over recent decades.
The role in this greening of the “CO2 fertilization” effect—the enhancement of
photosynthesis due to rising CO2 levels—is yet to be established. The direct
CO2 effect on vegetation should be most clearly expressed in warm, arid
environments where water is the dominant limit to vegetation growth. Using gas
exchange theory, we predict that the 14% increase in atmospheric CO2
(1982–2010) led to a 5 to 10% increase in green foliage cover in warm, arid
environments. Satellite observations, analyzed to remove the effect of
variations in precipitation, show that cover across these environments has
increased by 11%. Our results confirm that the anticipated CO2 fertilization
effect is occurring alongside ongoing anthropogenic perturbations to the
carbon cycle and that the fertilization effect is now a significant land
surface process."

[http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/grl.50563/abstrac...](http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/grl.50563/abstract)

~~~
motters
The amount of CO2 being absorbed by plants is far less than the rate at which
it is accumulating within the atmosphere. You can get a good idea of how much
CO2 is absorbed by looking at the seasonal variation in atmospheric CO2.

[https://github.com/fuzzgun/ccg](https://github.com/fuzzgun/ccg)

~~~
Gravityloss
[http://woodfortrees.org/plot/esrl-co2](http://woodfortrees.org/plot/esrl-co2)

This is a better graph.

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stiff
One of the biggest problem humanity currently has in general is that morality
only kicks-in in most people when there is a very direct link between their
actions and some negative consequences. Once there is enough degrees of
separation and abstraction nobody cares anymore. Most people would not
slaughter an animal without really having to do it, but once it becomes a
cheeseburger or a fur clothing nobody gives it a second thought. The problem
is that the world of human affairs is getting more and more abstract as we
specialize more and more and develop more complex technology, so more and more
things get affected by this.

It is especially sad given that sometimes sacrificing a small convenience for
one person would be able to make a huge change in somebody else's life. But
again, once there are enough degrees of separation, we do not feel "in
position" to help and we do not view it as our problem to do it.

~~~
saraid216
This would have made more sense if your example wasn't one so painfully biased
in presentism. Animal slaughter was sort of a commonplace until we
industrialized it; people weren't squeamish about it until the last few
hundred years. Being squeamish is a status marker.

~~~
mayanksinghal
Well, if by few hundred years you mean at least ~2.2 millenia then yes,
because Buddhism's dont-take-life preaching is at least that old.

And since when did the ethics and normalities of past become the standards by
which our present should be governed? If animal slaughter is alright because
it was okay a few hundred years ago then slavery, child marriage and hundred
other nonsensical stuff should be alright as well. What we do now should be
determined by how our society feels now and how it wants to invest in the
future. Arguing that that our present actions should be governed by medieval
ethics is lazy.

~~~
Dewie
Your parent didn't talk about ethics at all, only about the supposed
squeamishness that people have towards killing animals. If I am _afraid_ of
killing animals, that has nothing to do with my ethical _stance_ on killing
animals.

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oneandoneis2
I call BS on this article.

Tropical forests do next to nothing for global carbon fixation - they're about
as far as you can get from "the biggest thing nature did"

Ocean plankton is by far the most important place for carbon sequestration.

~~~
StavrosK
Ice caps melting -> more ocean -> more plankton -> less CO2.

The problem practically fixes itself!

~~~
jonsen
Ice caps melting -> more ocean _depth_

more ocean _surface_ -> more plankton

~~~
maratd
Well, technically, if the ocean level rises, you will end up with more
_surface_.

~~~
StavrosK
Especially since current land mass will be turned into sea. I _was_ joking,
though.

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negamax
Umm.. nature's goal is not to sustain human life. It's our goal. If we screw
up the planet, we literally will be screwing ourselves. Earth doesn't need us.
It will reset in few million years by earthquakes and volcanoes and go again
for better life.

~~~
sgwooduk
The Revenge of Gaia?
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaia_hypothesis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaia_hypothesis)

~~~
negamax
Revenge insinuates vindication for our actions by Earth. But Earth don't care.
I like to think of it as a giant and complex spaceship rather than a living
being.

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gngeal
_" The biggest thing nature did to fight climate change..."_

...has always been the absorption of CO2 in the rocks of the Earth's crust. Or
hasn't it? Well, _this_ process is still working, but it won't be working for
long, since there's almost no CO2 to absorb anymore.

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ommunist
There is no global warming. Period. Humans are not geological force. Period.

living organisms mass= 6,57×10^18g humanity mass = 2,27×10^14g total biosphere
mass = 5,2×10^25g

Humans are not geological factor, I am afraid.

Globally plants and CO2 concentrations are in homeostatic relationship. Forest
ecosystems of the temperate zone are very (very-very) resilient to average
temperature changes.

What you really have to be afraid of is the new Ice Age. It happens regularly
and suddenly.

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jjindev
The simplest observation is that the Mauna Loa data series for atmospheric CO2
has been very consistent and shows a steeper curve over time. That simply must
be net-net all of the environmental changes going on around the world. Really
based on that data set no one should have ever hoped that "the plants could
keep up," because they never have. That is not in the record.

As an aside, and for the HN audience, boy ... "long read" pages that require
the mouse to be mid screen for the scroll wheel to work are really pretty
annoying.

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Grue3
Because the nature did so well to fight climate change before. You know, mass
extinctions, ice ages...

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ommunist
Did volcanoes stopped everywhere? This is single most inadequate topic in my
news feed today. Climate is always changing. And it is the Sun and the Earth's
core which are the most powerful drivers of it. Did the Sun stopped shining?

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loceng
Seems we're creating conditions to revert things to before the tipping point
was reached - what it looks like before the tipping point, I'm sure someone
has a more educated guess than not..

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altero
One thousand years ago there were farms in Greenland. Just two hundred years
ago there was Little Ace Age and river Thames would freeze every winter.
Single vulcano explosion releases more CO2 than entire mankind in a decade.

Yet somehow it is 110% sure that our CO2 emissions are responsible for global
warming. It is even crime to disagree with scientific hypotheses. And
governments will happily `solve` this problem by taking away our rights. F*k
this.

We should be solving other problems than cow farts; Urbanization, slums,
fusion, wealth distribution...

~~~
tomjakubowski
> One thousand years ago there were farms in Greenland. Just two hundred years
> ago there was Little Ace Age and river Thames would freeze every winter.

One fairly well-supported theory of the cause of the Little Ice Age is that
reforestation that due to a decline in Eurasian and American human populations
led to an uptake in CO2 absorption [1] [2]. This suggests that at least
partially anthropogenic climate change is a phenomenon which existed even
before the Industrial Revolution. In any case,

> Single vulcano explosion releases more CO2 than entire mankind in a decade.

No [3]. Moreover, volcanic eruptions tend to have an overall dimming effect
due to their release of sulfur-containing compounds which form sulfuric acid
aerosol. There have even been some radical/crackpot geoengineering proposals
to release sulfur into the atmosphere to combat global warming [4].

1:
[http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/full/10.1175/EI157.1](http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/full/10.1175/EI157.1)
2:
[http://hol.sagepub.com/content/early/2011/06/11/095968361140...](http://hol.sagepub.com/content/early/2011/06/11/0959683611404578.abstract)
3: [http://www.skepticalscience.com/volcanoes-and-global-
warming...](http://www.skepticalscience.com/volcanoes-and-global-warming-
intermediate.htm) 4:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stratospheric_sulfate_aerosols_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stratospheric_sulfate_aerosols_\(geoengineering\))

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crazytony
I wonder what the biochemistry behind this would be? Maybe the plants create
carbon structures more efficiently at higher temps?

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guard-of-terra
I'm looking forward positively on the perspective of all-year seaside resorts
of Barentz see.

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beedogs
The next "biggest thing" nature will do will be population collapse.

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m3rv
You can pay to All Gore and others to have a false, but good feelings. It's
just another propaganda to get You under control... Free society is "no good"
for some people.

Hey, check this out:[http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-
nasa/2003/07...](http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-
nasa/2003/07aug_southpole/)

And send All Gore there to introduce Global Climate Tax for Mars!

~~~
babuskov
You meant: Al Gore, right?

~~~
m3rv
Yes, sorry.

