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Increase in co2 equals increase in plant growth. A sealed greenhouse pumped with higher concentration of co2 than normal saw plants grow faster. Point of view

Increase in co2 equals increase in plant growth. A sealed greenhouse pumped with higher concentration of co2 than normal saw plants grow faster. Point of view is that co2 may not be absorbed quickly enough or that there may be a limit to the amount that plants can take in: https://www.carbonbrief.org/rising-co2-has-greened-worlds-plants-and-trees https://www.carbonbrief.org/rising-co2-has-greened-worlds-pl...

ItsMe000001 8y ago
I agree with your statement and would like to add to your comment: I don't understand when people point to bio mass that could absorb the carbon. This is based on my understanding of carbon history on this planet, which is far from detailed or complete. We already had the earth covered in biomass before human populations increased explosively. Back then, a looooooong time ago, what as far as I know brought the carbon levels (CO2) down was when dying bio mass was getting buried instead of being recycled. That means most carbon is underneath the earth. We just spend the last few centuries busily getting it back out from there though. So as I understand it (someone correct me please if it is wrong), how can we possibly hope that a biomass cycle could keep enough carbon trapped? The past shows that it has to be buried deep inside the earth! That would mean biomass cannot be the solution, even at full capacity it could not bind enough. I'm happy to be corrected if my understanding is wrong.
- saalweachter 8y ago
  You can get a certain amount out of growing additional live biomass where there isn't any now. There was a supposition that one of the causes of the Little Ice Age was reforestation of the Americas after plagues wiped out 90% of the inhabitants. I don't know what the current state of that conjecture is, but I recall the amount of carbon taken up in the process was significant. If you found a way to eg forest the Sahara, it would be significant on a global scale. Not a one-and-done fix, but significant. Then you would either have to find new land to plant or cut down the trees and not burn them/mulch them to sequester more carbon, but a living forest holds a good bit on its own.
  - bonesss 8y ago
    There is a fascinating project to turn around desertification of the Sahara: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Green_Wall https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Green_Wall
- pjc50 8y ago
  For the "short" term (next century or so) it's sufficient to take it out of the atmosphere and bury it either as solid carbon in the soil or as gaseous compressed CO2 in fairly shallow rock formations. There are other geologic-time processes which can stabilise things over a longer time period, but it's the short time scale that makes it hard to adapt.
onion2k 8y ago
This is true if the CO2 increase is the only change. Unfortunately increased atmospheric CO2 leads to higher temperatures, which stops plants growing. In the short term we'll have more plant growth, but if the temperature increase isn't halted it'll stop being so beneficial. There's also an upper limit to which plants are able to photosynthesise in rich CO2 environments - too much CO2 and a plant can't get enough energy to grow, so that stops it too. And lastly, if a plant has a very rich CO2 environment it stops taking on as much nitrogen, which means they're not so useful as food crops. They grow, but we can't eat them. So yeah, plants can grow more when there's more CO2 around, but that's not the whole story.

ItsMe000001 8y ago

I agree with your statement and would like to add to your comment: I don't understand when people point to bio mass that could absorb the carbon. This is based on my understanding of carbon history on this planet, which is far from detailed or complete. We already had the earth covered in biomass before human populations increased explosively. Back then, a looooooong time ago, what as far as I know brought the carbon levels (CO2) down was when dying bio mass was getting buried instead of being recycled. That means most carbon is underneath the earth. We just spend the last few centuries busily getting it back out from there though. So as I understand it (someone correct me please if it is wrong), how can we possibly hope that a biomass cycle could keep enough carbon trapped? The past shows that it has to be buried deep inside the earth! That would mean biomass cannot be the solution, even at full capacity it could not bind enough. I'm happy to be corrected if my understanding is wrong.

saalweachter 8y ago
You can get a certain amount out of growing additional live biomass where there isn't any now. There was a supposition that one of the causes of the Little Ice Age was reforestation of the Americas after plagues wiped out 90% of the inhabitants. I don't know what the current state of that conjecture is, but I recall the amount of carbon taken up in the process was significant. If you found a way to eg forest the Sahara, it would be significant on a global scale. Not a one-and-done fix, but significant. Then you would either have to find new land to plant or cut down the trees and not burn them/mulch them to sequester more carbon, but a living forest holds a good bit on its own.
- bonesss 8y ago
  There is a fascinating project to turn around desertification of the Sahara: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Green_Wall https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Green_Wall
pjc50 8y ago
For the "short" term (next century or so) it's sufficient to take it out of the atmosphere and bury it either as solid carbon in the soil or as gaseous compressed CO2 in fairly shallow rock formations. There are other geologic-time processes which can stabilise things over a longer time period, but it's the short time scale that makes it hard to adapt.

onion2k 8y ago

This is true if the CO2 increase is the only change. Unfortunately increased atmospheric CO2 leads to higher temperatures, which stops plants growing. In the short term we'll have more plant growth, but if the temperature increase isn't halted it'll stop being so beneficial. There's also an upper limit to which plants are able to photosynthesise in rich CO2 environments - too much CO2 and a plant can't get enough energy to grow, so that stops it too. And lastly, if a plant has a very rich CO2 environment it stops taking on as much nitrogen, which means they're not so useful as food crops. They grow, but we can't eat them. So yeah, plants can grow more when there's more CO2 around, but that's not the whole story.