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I don't know much about climate science, but won't plants multiply and grow faster until we eventually hit a new equilibrium CO2 level? I guess the only danger

I don't know much about climate science, but won't plants multiply and grow faster until we eventually hit a new equilibrium CO2 level? I guess the only danger is reaching thermal runaway before that happens? Then again, earth CO2 levels have been far higher in the past without signs that it killed off much life on Earth. Is rising CO2 that dangerous? Don't humans already have effective ways to reduce surface heating by injecting dust or chemicals into the upper atmosphere? We've seen that throwing a bunch of dust up there reflects more heat and it sounds like something certainly within our ability to do. I'm not a climate change denier, I'm just skeptical that the rising CO2 level is as dangerous as it's made out to be.

mikeash 9y ago
Increasing CO2 does not necessarily result in more plants. The feedback cycles are complex and there are other limiting factors. Imagine, for example, if the oxygen concentration was increasing instead. Would you expect humans to multiply faster and reach a new equilibrium because of it? Concentrations have indeed been much higher in the deep past. The concern isn't destroying all life, it's damaging or destroying civilization. There are theoretical techniques for blocking solar heat. It remains to be seen how effective or practical they would be in the real world. There is a lot of potential for unintended consequences.
- shouldbworking 9y ago
  I read that the era of nuclear testing noticably decreased surface temperatures for some time. If we can't figure anything else out we could probably settle for blowing up a bunch of cleanish lead wrapped nukes out in the ocean every couple months? It sounds terrible but if done right it would have little impact to life on earth
  - mikeash 9y ago
    That seems unlikely. Nukes are pretty small on the scale of the earth. Things like plutonium concentration went up significantly because the natural level is so low, but I doubt they did much for aerosols. A clean nuke detonated over the ocean would do nothing. The whole point would be to produce vast amounts of dust i.e. be dirty.
  - monk_e_boy 9y ago
    "The view that some scientists have that we need to manipulate the planet in order to fix it is another one that bothers me. We need to be wary of false solutions like geoengineering. I’ve just read a paper that outlines plans to pump cold water into the Arctic to try and refreeze the ice-cap. It’s totally mad! This old style of thinking believes the Earth operates like a machine, but that’s not how natural systems operate." 10 Things You’ve Always Wanted to Ask an Environmental Scientist -- https://medium.com/greenpeace/10-things-youve-always-wanted-to-ask-an-environmental-scientist-71a4090de062 https://medium.com/greenpeace/10-things-youve-always-wanted-...
    - hyperbovine 9y ago
      Not researching geoengineering is at least as dangerous as attempting it. Geoengineering is definitely going to be attempted--nay, ordered--long before Manhattan, Mumbai, Shanghai, etc. are under a foot of water. Whatever we've managed to figure out, no matter how stupid a solution it might be, is what's going to get tossed at this problem by the same ignorant politicians that got us into this mess. So we might as well make it a good one.
  - codecamper 9y ago
    Geez I read this comment & thought... "how can there be so many dumb programmers out there". Then I realized it is just one loud idiot. You talk a lot of garbage.
  - orange_fritter 9y ago
    The era of nuclear testing did significantly increase the amount of background radiation in the world. There is not a form of above-ground nuclear explosion that will not have worldwide environmental impacts.
  - nonbel 9y ago
    These geoengineering ideas sound more dangerous every time I read them... At some point, if it hasn't happened already, this is going to become a dangerous cult that threatens our species. You really believe this? We should blow up nuclear bombs in the ocean every few months to avoid a possible temperature rise an order of magnitude smaller than experienced during the yearly cycle.
- theparanoid 9y ago
  Most plants use the C3 fixation cycle and are relatively CO2 limited. Maize uses the more efficient C4 fixation cycle.
  - jes5199 9y ago
    this is interesting- where can I read more?
    - danjoc 9y ago
      http://devconsultancygroup.blogspot.com/2012/12/higher-co2-concentrations-will-feed.html http://devconsultancygroup.blogspot.com/2012/12/higher-co2-c...
  - whyenot 9y ago
    Most plants are nitrogen limited not CO2 limited.
RandomInteger4 9y ago
Not all plants are on land. Algae blooms are becoming a huge problem for a few reasons and increasing CO_2 is one of them.
JshWright 9y ago
> I don't know much about climate science ... I'm just skeptical that the rising CO2 level is as dangerous as it's made out to be. Respectfully, is this a mindset you apply to other aspects of your life? Let's say you leased an apartment in a large building, and after an inspection, numerous structural engineers said the building was in danger of collapse. Would you say "I don't know much about engineering, but I'm skeptical it's that bad", or would you demand the building management take steps to correct the issues?
- ythn 9y ago
  Not quite the same. Climate scientists are notoriously bad at predicting consequences of climate change - kind of like how meteorologists are often bad at predicting the weather. Why is it okay to be skeptical of what meteorologists are predicting, but not okay to be skeptical of what climate scientists are predicting? It's one thing to be skeptical of sciences that have stood the test of time like civil engineering and quite another to be skeptical of climate science, whose models are being updated annually in response to the discovery of new variables. Note: I am not saying we should be climate change deniers, only that we should not blindly accept apocalyptic predictions as the gospel truth of what is going to happen to the planet if we fail to mitigate CO2.
  - Sharlin 9y ago
    > Climate scientists are notoriously bad at predicting consequences of climate change [citation needed] Equating "weather" and "climate" is such an old and tired fallacious argument that you ought to be downvoted to oblivion just because of that.
    - ythn 9y ago
      I didn't equate them. The analogy is that weather is extremely complicated, so much so that meteorologists struggle to predict what will happen in the next 12 hours. If climate is an order of magnitude more complicated than weather, why should the predictions suddenly be much more accurate? My local meteorologists get the prediction right maybe 70% of the time. You're telling me the apocalyptic climate predictions approach 100% accuracy and that I have no room for skepticism?
clumsysmurf 9y ago
CO2 impacts more than plants. For example "Rising CO2 levels reduce protein in crucial pollen source for bees" https://www.purdue.edu/newsroom/releases/2016/Q2/rising-co2-levels-reduce-protein-in-crucial-pollen-source-for-bees.html https://www.purdue.edu/newsroom/releases/2016/Q2/rising-co2-...
- ZenoArrow 9y ago
  There's also ocean acidification. http://ocean.si.edu/ocean-acidification http://ocean.si.edu/ocean-acidification
denim_chicken 9y ago
The current level of atmospheric CO2 is not unprecedented, but the current rate of change of atmospheric CO2 is. Couple that with massive ecological decimation and biodiversity due to human habitation and it is clear that our current predicament is geologically unprecedented.
- akvadrako 9y ago
  I don't think we have the resolution from the ages of 4000ppm to determine if the rate of CO2 change was comparable to now. If you have any links to sources that show otherwise, that would be appreciated.
DiThi 9y ago
Life on Earth will be fine. The problem is the survival of our own species. It heavily relied in ~15,000 years of stable climate to flourish, and we're cutting that stability short.
- shouldbworking 9y ago
  One thing I thought about a while back related to this. Predictions show that increased energy in the atmosphere results in stronger storms. Storms are not preserved in the historical record, so how bad will they be? The relationships between temperature and energy tend to be supralinear... Has anyone looked at common species from warm earth periods to predict storm severity? I remember reading that palm-like trees used to be the dominant type. These trees still are in island areas mostly because they are extremely resistant to storms. They have few leaves and thick trunks. Are we setting ourselves up for a future where average wind speeds are 5x higher and hurricane-like storms devastate the landscape every year or so?
  - DiThi 9y ago
    Possibly. The problem is, we don't really know and it's a very dangerous experiment to figure out (by doing nothing and waiting). We at least know that if the ice keeps melting, the pace will only accelerate because it releases trapped CO2 and the change will be much faster.
- Sharlin 9y ago
  "Fine" in the sense that life survived the previous extinction events too. In the sense that Europe was "fine" after the world wars.
- akvadrako 9y ago
  It's not a foregone conclusion that a stable climate is more conductive to a flourishing society than a challenging one. Northern Europe, Japan and North America are roughly the most developed areas on Earth. They also have some of the most natural disasters and harshest weather.
  - 9y ago
0xcde4c3db 9y ago
> won't plants multiply and grow faster until we eventually hit a new equilibrium CO2 level? As I understand it, we increase production much faster than plants can increase consumption, since plants need other things to grow that we aren't pumping into the biosphere in ever-increasing amounts.
mirimir 9y ago
Sure, CO2 levels and temperature were a lot higher, 50 million years ago. But the problem for people is that global climate change will mess with stuff that we depend on. Such as the existence of major port cities. And growing food. And more generally, other species can't adapt as fast as our culture could. So we're looking at a major mass extinction. Which we'll also need to deal with, to the extent that we depend on disappearing species. And sure, we could inject sulfur oxides into the stratosphere. That would create haze that would reflect sunlight. And it wouldn't wash out very quickly. There would still be some acid precipitation impacts, but probably not as bad as we saw in the 60s. However, that would be a huge endeavor, and would take considerable energy.
- shouldbworking 9y ago
  So far the biggest effect of higher CO2 levels seems to be increased foilage and crop yields http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/grl.50563/abstract http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/grl.50563/abstrac... I don't see how this would be expected to reverse when concentrations continue to rise
  - mirimir 9y ago
    That's an effect of increased CO2, sure. But it's not going to be very helpful if your farmland becomes a desert.
anigbrowl 9y ago
On a species level we'll probably survive it, but that doesn't mean it won't be disastrous at the individual level. Suppose, for example, that a natural disaster reduces the human population by 50$ over a few decades. Humanity survives, but the deaths of 3-4 billion people would be pretty awful.
- riffic 9y ago
  >On a species level we'll probably survive it This is an arrogant assumption. Another assumption, one I find more realistic, is that we're driving full-speed towards the cliff.
  - iand 9y ago
    If this is true then I presume you are devoting all your waking hours to preventing it?
    - akvadrako 9y ago
      I'm sure somebody else will take care of it.
  - anigbrowl 9y ago
    If a cautiously qualified probabilistic statement is your idea of arrogance then you might want to adjust your disapproval thresholds. I've been making pro-environment arguments since the 1980s and I don't care to be lectured to about some imaginary complacency that I don't actually feel, thank you. I'm really quite annoyed by your comment because I've already been through years of climate deniers telling me how 'arrogant' I am ot think humans could change the climate/derail God's plan/whatever, so I don't need pro-environment people calling me arrogant for a cautious assertion lifted out of its context, where I went on to talk about the likelihood of disastrous outcomes in the same sentence.
- mark-r 9y ago
  Reducing the human population by 50% will undoubtedly reduce our CO2 output by 50% as well. It does speak to one possibility of how equilibrium could be restored. A rather drastic solution to the problem, and one which most would hope to avoid.
ivanhoe 9y ago
Not an expert on climate either, but I own an aquarium so have a decent experience with artificially high CO2 levels. It's a common trick to inject pressurised CO2 to aquarium to speed up growth in planted freshwater aquariums. It works great for plants, but only if you provide them sufficient levels of other two necessary components: light and nutrients. If either of those is lacking plants will actually suffer, become unhealthy or algae will take over. Nature is all about balance, so you better increase all variables or not touch anything. Increasing just one almost always generates instability which can easily cascade into a disaster for farmers and the whole ecosystem. And it's such a dynamic system with so many variables in play that it's impossible to account for all possible side-effects this can create.
m_mueller 9y ago
Please have a look at the following (copied from a recent comment of mine): Most recent study of methane flux/storage in the ESAS: http://rsta.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/373/2052/20140451 http://rsta.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/373/2052/2014... Arctic temperatures are estimated to rise 1.9x compared to global average: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2005GL025244/full http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2005GL025244/full During HCO the arctic is estimated to have been 4-6C warmer than baseline (yearly average): https://epic.awi.de/38441/1/Beierlein_2015_Holocene_page1.pdf https://epic.awi.de/38441/1/Beierlein_2015_Holocene_page1.pd... That's not all that much. We're now already at 400ppm CO2, and recent unmitigated projections to 2100 (538ppm) simulate an arctic yearly average of ~ plus 8C: http://climatenewsnetwork.net/arctic-is-set-to-reach-13c-by-2100 http://climatenewsnetwork.net/arctic-is-set-to-reach-13c-by-... So, are you willing to play the russian roulette game with the arctic methane? The PETM boundary showed a global average warming of 5C, mostly from arctic methane at a time where there wasn't even a large ice shelf, so with significantly lower capacity: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleocene–Eocene_Thermal_Maximum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleocene–Eocene_Thermal_Maxim... That would be in addition to the CO2 induced warming, mind you. That should make it quite easy to see how we're likely triggering a rapid warming to +8C (global average) or above. Rapid means it could come within a single decade since methane is that potent. At that point, vast amounts of land on earth becomes uninhabitable from the heat aspect alone, never mind food production - you'll have mass migrations that top anything human history has ever seen. I suggest reading up on history as well, especially the late bronze age collapse which seems very interesting in its modern relevance.
joeyo 9y ago
Even if the effect is negligible on CO2 levels (as I suspect it would be), I too am curious how much extra plant, algae, etc proliferation we should expect for each 10 ppm increase in CO2.
Dahoramano 9y ago
erratic and extreme weather patterns is going to be catastrophic for all plant life. we're fucked if we don't do something about this.
danjoc 9y ago
>I'm just skeptical that the rising CO2 level is as dangerous as it's made out to be. You are not alone, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0gDErDwXqhc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0gDErDwXqhc
ocschwar 9y ago
Liebig's Law of the Minimum describes why you can't count on plant growth to save us. Any given plant's growth is constrained by something. Might be sunlight, water, phosphorous, nitrogen, or potassium. The last 3 are of course the main ingredients in fertilizers. If a plant needs phosphorous to speed its growth, adding nitrogen won't help. And vise versa. What ever the Liebig Minimum, that's what you have to add to increase the growth, and you have to add enough of it for another factor to become the Liebig minimum. Very few plants out there are CO2-constrained.
Coincoin 9y ago
Plants won't help us, just as cows are not making the problem worse. It doesn't matter how much plants and algea grow, when they die, they send the carbon back into the atmosphere and ocean. We have to sequestrate the carbon and totally remove it from the ecosystem. Sequestration is what took millions of years, when major events buried large swabs of living matter in the ground "forever".

mikeash 9y ago

Increasing CO2 does not necessarily result in more plants. The feedback cycles are complex and there are other limiting factors. Imagine, for example, if the oxygen concentration was increasing instead. Would you expect humans to multiply faster and reach a new equilibrium because of it? Concentrations have indeed been much higher in the deep past. The concern isn't destroying all life, it's damaging or destroying civilization. There are theoretical techniques for blocking solar heat. It remains to be seen how effective or practical they would be in the real world. There is a lot of potential for unintended consequences.

shouldbworking 9y ago
I read that the era of nuclear testing noticably decreased surface temperatures for some time. If we can't figure anything else out we could probably settle for blowing up a bunch of cleanish lead wrapped nukes out in the ocean every couple months? It sounds terrible but if done right it would have little impact to life on earth
- mikeash 9y ago
  That seems unlikely. Nukes are pretty small on the scale of the earth. Things like plutonium concentration went up significantly because the natural level is so low, but I doubt they did much for aerosols. A clean nuke detonated over the ocean would do nothing. The whole point would be to produce vast amounts of dust i.e. be dirty.
- monk_e_boy 9y ago
  "The view that some scientists have that we need to manipulate the planet in order to fix it is another one that bothers me. We need to be wary of false solutions like geoengineering. I’ve just read a paper that outlines plans to pump cold water into the Arctic to try and refreeze the ice-cap. It’s totally mad! This old style of thinking believes the Earth operates like a machine, but that’s not how natural systems operate." 10 Things You’ve Always Wanted to Ask an Environmental Scientist -- https://medium.com/greenpeace/10-things-youve-always-wanted-to-ask-an-environmental-scientist-71a4090de062 https://medium.com/greenpeace/10-things-youve-always-wanted-...
  - hyperbovine 9y ago
    Not researching geoengineering is at least as dangerous as attempting it. Geoengineering is definitely going to be attempted--nay, ordered--long before Manhattan, Mumbai, Shanghai, etc. are under a foot of water. Whatever we've managed to figure out, no matter how stupid a solution it might be, is what's going to get tossed at this problem by the same ignorant politicians that got us into this mess. So we might as well make it a good one.
- codecamper 9y ago
  Geez I read this comment & thought... "how can there be so many dumb programmers out there". Then I realized it is just one loud idiot. You talk a lot of garbage.
- orange_fritter 9y ago
  The era of nuclear testing did significantly increase the amount of background radiation in the world. There is not a form of above-ground nuclear explosion that will not have worldwide environmental impacts.
- nonbel 9y ago
  These geoengineering ideas sound more dangerous every time I read them... At some point, if it hasn't happened already, this is going to become a dangerous cult that threatens our species. You really believe this? We should blow up nuclear bombs in the ocean every few months to avoid a possible temperature rise an order of magnitude smaller than experienced during the yearly cycle.
theparanoid 9y ago
Most plants use the C3 fixation cycle and are relatively CO2 limited. Maize uses the more efficient C4 fixation cycle.
- jes5199 9y ago
  this is interesting- where can I read more?
  - danjoc 9y ago
    http://devconsultancygroup.blogspot.com/2012/12/higher-co2-concentrations-will-feed.html http://devconsultancygroup.blogspot.com/2012/12/higher-co2-c...
- whyenot 9y ago
  Most plants are nitrogen limited not CO2 limited.

RandomInteger4 9y ago

Not all plants are on land. Algae blooms are becoming a huge problem for a few reasons and increasing CO_2 is one of them.

JshWright 9y ago

> I don't know much about climate science ... I'm just skeptical that the rising CO2 level is as dangerous as it's made out to be. Respectfully, is this a mindset you apply to other aspects of your life? Let's say you leased an apartment in a large building, and after an inspection, numerous structural engineers said the building was in danger of collapse. Would you say "I don't know much about engineering, but I'm skeptical it's that bad", or would you demand the building management take steps to correct the issues?

ythn 9y ago
Not quite the same. Climate scientists are notoriously bad at predicting consequences of climate change - kind of like how meteorologists are often bad at predicting the weather. Why is it okay to be skeptical of what meteorologists are predicting, but not okay to be skeptical of what climate scientists are predicting? It's one thing to be skeptical of sciences that have stood the test of time like civil engineering and quite another to be skeptical of climate science, whose models are being updated annually in response to the discovery of new variables. Note: I am not saying we should be climate change deniers, only that we should not blindly accept apocalyptic predictions as the gospel truth of what is going to happen to the planet if we fail to mitigate CO2.
- Sharlin 9y ago
  > Climate scientists are notoriously bad at predicting consequences of climate change [citation needed] Equating "weather" and "climate" is such an old and tired fallacious argument that you ought to be downvoted to oblivion just because of that.
  - ythn 9y ago
    I didn't equate them. The analogy is that weather is extremely complicated, so much so that meteorologists struggle to predict what will happen in the next 12 hours. If climate is an order of magnitude more complicated than weather, why should the predictions suddenly be much more accurate? My local meteorologists get the prediction right maybe 70% of the time. You're telling me the apocalyptic climate predictions approach 100% accuracy and that I have no room for skepticism?

clumsysmurf 9y ago

CO2 impacts more than plants. For example "Rising CO2 levels reduce protein in crucial pollen source for bees" https://www.purdue.edu/newsroom/releases/2016/Q2/rising-co2-levels-reduce-protein-in-crucial-pollen-source-for-bees.html https://www.purdue.edu/newsroom/releases/2016/Q2/rising-co2-...

ZenoArrow 9y ago
There's also ocean acidification. http://ocean.si.edu/ocean-acidification http://ocean.si.edu/ocean-acidification

denim_chicken 9y ago

The current level of atmospheric CO2 is not unprecedented, but the current rate of change of atmospheric CO2 is. Couple that with massive ecological decimation and biodiversity due to human habitation and it is clear that our current predicament is geologically unprecedented.

akvadrako 9y ago
I don't think we have the resolution from the ages of 4000ppm to determine if the rate of CO2 change was comparable to now. If you have any links to sources that show otherwise, that would be appreciated.

DiThi 9y ago

Life on Earth will be fine. The problem is the survival of our own species. It heavily relied in ~15,000 years of stable climate to flourish, and we're cutting that stability short.

shouldbworking 9y ago
One thing I thought about a while back related to this. Predictions show that increased energy in the atmosphere results in stronger storms. Storms are not preserved in the historical record, so how bad will they be? The relationships between temperature and energy tend to be supralinear... Has anyone looked at common species from warm earth periods to predict storm severity? I remember reading that palm-like trees used to be the dominant type. These trees still are in island areas mostly because they are extremely resistant to storms. They have few leaves and thick trunks. Are we setting ourselves up for a future where average wind speeds are 5x higher and hurricane-like storms devastate the landscape every year or so?
- DiThi 9y ago
  Possibly. The problem is, we don't really know and it's a very dangerous experiment to figure out (by doing nothing and waiting). We at least know that if the ice keeps melting, the pace will only accelerate because it releases trapped CO2 and the change will be much faster.
Sharlin 9y ago
"Fine" in the sense that life survived the previous extinction events too. In the sense that Europe was "fine" after the world wars.
akvadrako 9y ago
It's not a foregone conclusion that a stable climate is more conductive to a flourishing society than a challenging one. Northern Europe, Japan and North America are roughly the most developed areas on Earth. They also have some of the most natural disasters and harshest weather.
- 9y ago

0xcde4c3db 9y ago

> won't plants multiply and grow faster until we eventually hit a new equilibrium CO2 level? As I understand it, we increase production much faster than plants can increase consumption, since plants need other things to grow that we aren't pumping into the biosphere in ever-increasing amounts.

mirimir 9y ago

Sure, CO2 levels and temperature were a lot higher, 50 million years ago. But the problem for people is that global climate change will mess with stuff that we depend on. Such as the existence of major port cities. And growing food. And more generally, other species can't adapt as fast as our culture could. So we're looking at a major mass extinction. Which we'll also need to deal with, to the extent that we depend on disappearing species. And sure, we could inject sulfur oxides into the stratosphere. That would create haze that would reflect sunlight. And it wouldn't wash out very quickly. There would still be some acid precipitation impacts, but probably not as bad as we saw in the 60s. However, that would be a huge endeavor, and would take considerable energy.

shouldbworking 9y ago
So far the biggest effect of higher CO2 levels seems to be increased foilage and crop yields http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/grl.50563/abstract http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/grl.50563/abstrac... I don't see how this would be expected to reverse when concentrations continue to rise
- mirimir 9y ago
  That's an effect of increased CO2, sure. But it's not going to be very helpful if your farmland becomes a desert.

anigbrowl 9y ago

On a species level we'll probably survive it, but that doesn't mean it won't be disastrous at the individual level. Suppose, for example, that a natural disaster reduces the human population by 50$ over a few decades. Humanity survives, but the deaths of 3-4 billion people would be pretty awful.

riffic 9y ago
>On a species level we'll probably survive it This is an arrogant assumption. Another assumption, one I find more realistic, is that we're driving full-speed towards the cliff.
- iand 9y ago
  If this is true then I presume you are devoting all your waking hours to preventing it?
  - akvadrako 9y ago
    I'm sure somebody else will take care of it.
- anigbrowl 9y ago
  If a cautiously qualified probabilistic statement is your idea of arrogance then you might want to adjust your disapproval thresholds. I've been making pro-environment arguments since the 1980s and I don't care to be lectured to about some imaginary complacency that I don't actually feel, thank you. I'm really quite annoyed by your comment because I've already been through years of climate deniers telling me how 'arrogant' I am ot think humans could change the climate/derail God's plan/whatever, so I don't need pro-environment people calling me arrogant for a cautious assertion lifted out of its context, where I went on to talk about the likelihood of disastrous outcomes in the same sentence.
mark-r 9y ago
Reducing the human population by 50% will undoubtedly reduce our CO2 output by 50% as well. It does speak to one possibility of how equilibrium could be restored. A rather drastic solution to the problem, and one which most would hope to avoid.

ivanhoe 9y ago

Not an expert on climate either, but I own an aquarium so have a decent experience with artificially high CO2 levels. It's a common trick to inject pressurised CO2 to aquarium to speed up growth in planted freshwater aquariums. It works great for plants, but only if you provide them sufficient levels of other two necessary components: light and nutrients. If either of those is lacking plants will actually suffer, become unhealthy or algae will take over. Nature is all about balance, so you better increase all variables or not touch anything. Increasing just one almost always generates instability which can easily cascade into a disaster for farmers and the whole ecosystem. And it's such a dynamic system with so many variables in play that it's impossible to account for all possible side-effects this can create.

m_mueller 9y ago

Please have a look at the following (copied from a recent comment of mine): Most recent study of methane flux/storage in the ESAS: http://rsta.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/373/2052/20140451 http://rsta.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/373/2052/2014... Arctic temperatures are estimated to rise 1.9x compared to global average: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2005GL025244/full http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2005GL025244/full During HCO the arctic is estimated to have been 4-6C warmer than baseline (yearly average): https://epic.awi.de/38441/1/Beierlein_2015_Holocene_page1.pdf https://epic.awi.de/38441/1/Beierlein_2015_Holocene_page1.pd... That's not all that much. We're now already at 400ppm CO2, and recent unmitigated projections to 2100 (538ppm) simulate an arctic yearly average of ~ plus 8C: http://climatenewsnetwork.net/arctic-is-set-to-reach-13c-by-2100 http://climatenewsnetwork.net/arctic-is-set-to-reach-13c-by-... So, are you willing to play the russian roulette game with the arctic methane? The PETM boundary showed a global average warming of 5C, mostly from arctic methane at a time where there wasn't even a large ice shelf, so with significantly lower capacity: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleocene–Eocene_Thermal_Maximum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleocene–Eocene_Thermal_Maxim... That would be in addition to the CO2 induced warming, mind you. That should make it quite easy to see how we're likely triggering a rapid warming to +8C (global average) or above. Rapid means it could come within a single decade since methane is that potent. At that point, vast amounts of land on earth becomes uninhabitable from the heat aspect alone, never mind food production - you'll have mass migrations that top anything human history has ever seen. I suggest reading up on history as well, especially the late bronze age collapse which seems very interesting in its modern relevance.

joeyo 9y ago

Even if the effect is negligible on CO2 levels (as I suspect it would be), I too am curious how much extra plant, algae, etc proliferation we should expect for each 10 ppm increase in CO2.

Dahoramano 9y ago

erratic and extreme weather patterns is going to be catastrophic for all plant life. we're fucked if we don't do something about this.

danjoc 9y ago

>I'm just skeptical that the rising CO2 level is as dangerous as it's made out to be. You are not alone, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0gDErDwXqhc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0gDErDwXqhc

ocschwar 9y ago

Liebig's Law of the Minimum describes why you can't count on plant growth to save us. Any given plant's growth is constrained by something. Might be sunlight, water, phosphorous, nitrogen, or potassium. The last 3 are of course the main ingredients in fertilizers. If a plant needs phosphorous to speed its growth, adding nitrogen won't help. And vise versa. What ever the Liebig Minimum, that's what you have to add to increase the growth, and you have to add enough of it for another factor to become the Liebig minimum. Very few plants out there are CO2-constrained.

Coincoin 9y ago

Plants won't help us, just as cows are not making the problem worse. It doesn't matter how much plants and algea grow, when they die, they send the carbon back into the atmosphere and ocean. We have to sequestrate the carbon and totally remove it from the ecosystem. Sequestration is what took millions of years, when major events buried large swabs of living matter in the ground "forever".