
‘Earthworm Dilemma’ Has Climate Scientists Racing to Keep Up - malshe
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/20/science/earthworms-soil-climate.html
======
tony_cannistra
What's perhaps more alarming in the original paper [0] is that earthworms were
shown to increase nitrous oxide (N2O) emissions even __more __than they
increased CO2 emissions from soil (42% and 33%, respectively).

In terms relevant to the greenhouse effect, N2O is 298 times more potent than
CO2 in the atmosphere [1]. I wonder about how increasing the _entire boreal
forest_ 's emissions of N2O by 42% would affect the current projections.
Seems...bad.

There's perhaps a silver lining here though: earthworms "unlock" stored
nutrients in soils, making them easier for plants to access. This might spur
growth, thereby storing atmospheric carbon in the process.

[0]:
[https://www.nature.com/articles/nclimate1692](https://www.nature.com/articles/nclimate1692)
[1]: [https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/overview-greenhouse-
gases](https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/overview-greenhouse-gases)

~~~
whatshisface
According to this paper, about 10,000 times as much CO2 is emitted by the
forest floor than N2O. So, even though N2O is more potent, the CO2 is a bigger
deal (and changes in it are therefore a bigger deal as well).

[https://academic.oup.com/forestry/article/90/4/541/3064404](https://academic.oup.com/forestry/article/90/4/541/3064404)

See table 4. Note that NO2 efflux is measured in mg and CO2 is measured in g.

~~~
tony_cannistra
Hey, thanks for that reference. You're right, but the 300x potency of N2O vs
CO2 and the sheer unknowns lurking in our understanding of the "earthworm
problem" still make this worth investigation, in my opinion.

Additionally, at the risk of being pedantic and because I'm a stuck-up
academic, I want to point out that your reference is studying a temperate
forest. This is relevant not only because species composition and climatic
regimes present in temperate forests (decidious trees, high species diversity,
high nutrient availabilty, moderate climates) differ markedly from those of
boreal forests (coniferous trees, low species diversity, low nutrient
availability, extreme climatic seasonality). There's good reason to believe
that this difference has a corresponding shift in the GHG emission regimes of
the respective forestlands, which you can see here [0]. Additionally, boreal
forests are the earth's largest terrestrial ecosystem [1], which makes this
potential difference quite relevant.

Your point is well taken, though -- it's important to triage effort in facing
a complicated global challenge.

[0]:
[https://www.nrcresearchpress.com/doi/10.1139/X08-209#.XOLSAF...](https://www.nrcresearchpress.com/doi/10.1139/X08-209#.XOLSAFNKjOY)
[1]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taiga](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taiga)

------
misterzip
Not sure I have too much to add to the discussion but I do have a question –
what do the people who know the most about climate change think we (consumers)
should do? There seem to be few coherent lobbying efforts; the people best
known for accurate science (IPCC) have no information that I can find about
what an average human should be doing to help fight the good fight; it all
just feels so impossible.

Does anyone here have any links or suggestions? I've done a small amount of
work on "raising awareness"
([https://twitter.com/ipccbot](https://twitter.com/ipccbot)) but it seems like
everyone either knows and cares or knows and doesn't care. A lot of the
climate news feels like climate news porn – so the earthworms are freaking
scientists out, what does that mean for me? Can I help the scientists? Are
there places I can donate? Or specific calls to action I can follow to help
advocate for saner climate policy? What is that policy?

~~~
morley
The most common refrain I've heard is to reduce meat consumption, and to shift
from high-carbon-output meats to lower-output ones. I think the rough order,
from highest to lowest, is:

    
    
      - Beef 
      - Pork
      - Seafood
      - Chicken
      - Non-meat diet

~~~
PorterDuff
What happens when you have 15 billion people eating a non-meat diet?

~~~
NeedMoreTea
That's 35 or more years out. First fix the emissions then work on population
growth to increase the doubling time. Unless we want to discover the point at
which Malthus was right?

------
someonenice
And in other parts of the world, earth worms are dying in large..
[https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/after-the-
deluge-k...](https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/after-the-deluge-
keralas-next-crisis-dying-earthworms/articleshow/65826053.cms)

Earthworms more important than panda if you want to save the earth...
[https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/earthworms-are-
mo...](https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/earthworms-are-more-
important-than-pandas-if-you-want-to-save-the-planet-a7655326.html)

~~~
JoshTko
Earth will be fine, people will not. Climate change sounds innocuous as
daylight savings and needs to be rebranded in order to resonate with more
people.

~~~
te_chris
The Guardian has decided to do just that
[https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/may/17/why-
the-...](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/may/17/why-the-guardian-
is-changing-the-language-it-uses-about-the-environment). Now it's 'Global
Heating' and 'Climate Crisis'

~~~
faissaloo
How about 'The Extinction'

~~~
giggles_giggles
Speaking as a converted climate skeptic, the person who finally convinced me
that this is real and serious overdid it and convinced me that we'll be seeing
massive famines, extinctions, and widespread death as biomes shift around
worldwide in the next 30 years or so, within our lifetimes.

Since the only way to stop this would be to actually reverse damage already
done, requiring worldwide effort never seen in history to perform actions that
may be scientifically impossible, I think it's safe to say that we're royally
fucked.

So why should I even care about this topic, or the planet, if we're all gonna
starve to death within our lifetimes or our childrens'?

I'm going to just live my life for pleasure. Can't stop it now anyway. It's
THE EXTINCTION. Time to party I guess.

~~~
NeedMoreTea
Well now, you say that.

Do you _really_ think the most skeptical business owners and politicians in
the US are going to keep ignoring it and emitting when it's _their_ business,
family, state or home that's impacted?

I don't know what it is, I don't know when it will be, but there _will_ be a
Pearl Harbor equivalent moment. After which inaction will be as impossible as
action today. The moment the crash is apparent and inevitable.

By then it'll cost a fuck load more, and have _far_ harder impacts on
everyone's economy and lifestyle, but unless it turns out to be a bad dream,
it seems pretty damn certain. Pretty damn certainly in our lifetimes.

You don't prefer the easier option?

~~~
giggles_giggles
My understanding of the situation is that there is enough damage already done
that a significant portion of the population, if not all of it, will be dead
in the next half century, regardless of what's done. Didn't you see the new
data from Mauna Loa last week? Plus there's the methane runaway theory, and
the oceans are desalinating at an exponential rate due to the ever-
accelerating glacial melt that is causing a feedback loop.

We go extinct no matter what. Where's the easier option? Good luck to the
plankton or whatever that succeeds us.

~~~
planteen
Can't tell if you are trolling?

I'd love to hear a credible source that says something on the lines of, "My
understanding of the situation is that there is enough damage already done
that a significant portion of the population, if not all of it, will be dead
in the next half century, regardless of what's done."

There are crackpots on each side of the argument (skeptics versus doom). I
think the truth is somewhere in the middle.

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rckclmbr
This is where it gets hard to fight climate change. As awareness increases, so
does funding for "climate change". Now everyone environmental scientist with
an issue will link that issue with climate change, with the hopes of drawing
press, awareness, and funding. It may or may not actually be an issue, but I
think we need to focus on the top causes of climate change first.

~~~
seren
I am not sure more science can be an issue, it is still a ridiculous small
amount of money compared to defence, debt servicing, etc.

Who knows, someone might find a negative feedback loop for climate change that
we could leverage, even in something as improbable as mycology ?

(Likely increasing defence budget is also another way to mitigate climate
change if we don't do it in a more civilized way...)

~~~
achenatx
the best negative feedback loop is a depression. Kill the global economy for
20 years and CO2 production will crash.

Ironically trumps tariffs are likely to do more to slow climate change than
any other policies.

~~~
weberc2
I wonder if this is true or if we will just use cheaper, dirtier technology to
get by?

~~~
webmaven
That depends to an extent on how deep the depression is.

As transportation gets more expensive, after a certain point, solar panels and
wind turbines are cheaper to ship around than huge amounts of coal and oil.

However, at a certain point after _that_ , efficient solar panels and wind
turbines (not to mention batteries and motors) may become too hard to
manufacture due to unavailability of critical materials and components.

If anyone is looking for a big meaty research problem that may influence just
how far our technological society might fall, either work on non-rare
replacements for rare-earth elements (semiconductor dopants, magnets, etc.) or
on ways to shorten the supply lines (eg. economically/sustainably extract them
from ordinary dirt or seawater, perhaps with synbio).

------
VBprogrammer
I wonder how this interplays with anaerobic decomposition which would produce
CH4 (which is many times more potent as a greenhouse gas). I'd expect that the
worm activity encourages oxygen consuming bacteria which produce CO2.

------
RenRav
Do the benefits earthworms provide for the soil/plants outweight the
negatives?

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war1025
The world is a dynamic system. You can't wind back the clock on anything.
People need to let go of their static worldview and accept that change
happens. We are continually poking Pandora's Box. What has been let out cannot
be put back in.

~~~
graenxa
I think you're right, the question now is do we learn from how it's changed
and how we're changing it?

Do we continue to make the planet an ever more unlivable hell-hole because
"the world is a dynamic system."

Or do we look at what's happening, learn from it, and try to prevent things
from getting worse.

~~~
war1025
Absolutely we should be trying to do better. But we do that by steering
towards a future that is acceptable, not by trying to turn back time to
somewhere we used to be.

~~~
graenxa
I apologize for my hostile tone before, I think you and I are on the same
page. There does seem to be a lot of hand wringing about the ways thing are
changing and little direction on what to do about it.

------
macspoofing
Can we please start investing in nuclear power again. Pretty please? We've
already lost 50 years due to anti-nuclear policies that effectively killed
nuclear power in every developed nation not named 'France'.

Wind/Solar necessarily implies doubling-down on natural gas as this is the
standard (and only) way to get around the intermittency issue of those
renewables. It's no surprise that natural gas companies now lobby for Wind and
Solar deployments, and Germany signs multi-decade deals to import Russian gas
as they increase their Solar and Wind footprint.

So nuclear, apart from being capable of cutting our CO2 emissions to 0 for
power generation, also requires two orders of magnitude less land-use than
Solar and Wind deployments. This does nothing for CO2 emissions, but I'm sure
wild-life will appreciate less encroachment.

What will it take for environmentalists, and progressives (who push the anti-
nuclear Green New Deal) to support nuclear power?

~~~
Diederich
I've been worried about climate change, CO2 emissions and related material for
quite a number of years now, and I've believed that we should have been
pushing hard into nuclear power for a long time.

However:

> Wind/Solar necessarily implies doubling-down on natural gas as this is the
> standard (and only) way to get around the intermittency issue of those
> renewables.

Can we so lightly dismiss battery storage? It has a ways to go, but its price
continues to improve exponentially.

~~~
macspoofing
>Can we so lightly dismiss battery storage?

We can because there is no battery storage technology today, nor is one
upcoming, that would work on city scale (i.e. store enough energy to power a
city and industry outside of ideal wind/solar times). For example, the Tesla-
style deployments are only there to even out supply on the order of
milliseconds and maybe seconds. That's still something, and does replace
natural gas in those specific use-cases, but that's not what we need.

Worse, we don't even know of a battery technology that would be able to store
power across seasons or years, as Wind and Solar are very seasonally dependent
and may vary in output by an order of magnitude between, say, Summer and
Winter. Furthermore, for wind deployments, you usually need to sample multiple
years to figure out if the site is good enough because wind output can vary
across multiple-years.

That's why wind/solar/natural gas is a package deal today and for the
foreseeable future.

------
781
> _No mechanism exists to eradicate earthworms from the boreal forest_

Surely there must be an worm-eater somewhere.

~~~
strainer
The UK has been alarmed by the "New Zealand flatworm" threatening its
earthworm population - some places have lost all of their worms, though it
seems to be under control. On the other hand at a push, it may be possible to
deliberately seed forests with them.

I think this article is quite hyperbolic though. It talks about a researchers
"horror" at theoretical possibilities, but the latest literature review cited
is 6 years old and it did not resolve any definite effect.

>Our results _suggest_ that although earthworms are largely beneficial to soil
fertility, they increase net soil greenhouse-gas emissions.

[https://www.nature.com/articles/nclimate1692](https://www.nature.com/articles/nclimate1692)

