6 ms·

Did anybody else expect this? Plants love CO2, seems like excess will lead to crazy plant growth and a rebalance.

dreamcompiler 5y ago
So far it's the first confirmed case of negative feedback from global warming that I've seen, and that makes me hopeful.
- johnnyApplePRNG 5y ago
  Another one is smoke from forest fires; actively cooling the planet.
  - voisin 5y ago
    Have you come across any quantification of this?
    - Salgat 5y ago
      Great question. We know that a large enough volcano eruption can cause a year long winter so I'm curious how much large scale forest fires can compare. Also, assuming regrowth is allowed, the CO2 impact from the burned wood is neutral in the long run.
    - prewett 5y ago
      This is anecdotal quantification, but I lived in northern California for a few years and late June would usually be in the 100s or 110s. By August when California catches on fire, it cools down to 90s (when the smoke was blowing our way). By contrast, when I lived in Texas (no fires), June and July would be in the low 100s, and the first two weeks of August would be 107 - 112.
    - johnnyApplePRNG 5y ago
      No. Entirely anecdotal and of my own observance. I traveled from Ontario to British Columbia two years ago when the forest fires out west were really peaking. I noticed smoke in the air as far as Winnipeg, and it only got thicker as I approached Vancouver. Surely all of those white/reflective particles in the upper atmosphere are reflecting the sun's rays. Also, weather predictions that year where WAY off. Predictions were always much higher than the actual high of the day. I assume this is resultant from historical weather data being a poor source for an altered state weather season. The smoke covered almost all of north america at some points and it really got much cooler than seasonal averages.
    - plank_time 5y ago
      Back in the early 90s a volcano erupted in the Philippines. In Canada where I grew up, late that summer in August, it was below freezing in the mornings. I had never encountered that before and was a direct result of the volcano.
    - pvaldes 5y ago
      Is public knowledge than most smoke in wildfires is water. If we see white smoke, is water vapor (mostly). Unlike volcanoes, any temporary cold effect from clouds would be negated by the permanent destruction of the forest.
  - logicfiction 5y ago
    Is it really a negative feedback and not just transient though? Sure it may cool things during the fire, but it also just destroyed some carbon sinks and worsened the overall emissions effect. Then the fire ends and it no longer has any cooling effect so its not feeding back.
- stupendousyappi 5y ago
  There are several others. I'm not a climate scientist, but my understanding is that the most significant potential negative feedback loop by far is the potential for increased cloud cover from increased humidity. It's evidently the most difficult aspect of global warming to model, although climate scientists are making continuous progress. In addition, the marginal radiative forcing of CO2 decreases with its concentration, which means both that increases in emissions do less harm as things get worse, and that reductions in emissions do less good.
  - raducu 5y ago
    So, when is this negative feedback loop supposed to kick in and save us from global warming and climate change?
    - ncmncm 5y ago
      It is already "kicked in", and all figured in, is not saving us, and will not save us.
- flavius29663 5y ago
  Global warming means more water in the air. This is both a positive feedback (water is an excellent heat trap) and negative in the form of clouds. White clouds increase the albedo of the planet, rejecting heat. Another negative feedback is the increased intake of CO2 by oceans, through difussion. Also the plankton consumes more CO2. It makes sense, think about it: if the planet didn't have negative feedbacks, absolutely any event would potentially cause a runoff through positive feedback in warmings and throw the climate out of balance. Even something like a vulcanic eruption or forest fire in the middle ages: without the negative feedback, CO2 would cause warming, which causes more water, which causes warming...there must be some serious negative feedback loops, which is why we've almost doubled the warming effect of CO2 with (so far) very small influences on the climate.
  - raducu 5y ago
    Well, everything has negative feedback loops, otherwise the universe would exoerience a second Big Bang, right? But is that statement reasurring in any way? No, because in between the limits of those feedback loops there's enormous potential for devastation and human suffering.
    - flavius29663 5y ago
      It's reassuring in the sense that I believe there is a very slim chance of runaway warming based on positive feedback loop. These levels of CO2 are pretty low on a geological scale, increases to 400-800ppm CO2 have not caused a runaway global warming a la Venus ever before. More of the Earh's life as a living planet was spent above 1000 ppm than under. https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Henning-Haeupler/publication/325078712/figure/fig17/AS:625014961344528@1526026587793/Global-temperature-and-atmospheric-CO2-over-geological-time-600-mya-Aus-from-HIEB.png https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Henning-Haeupler/public... In fact, there was a period in the past when the Earth warmed 10 degree Celsius (18 F) in 10 years, and there was no runaway global warming. There will be warming, there will be positive and negative feedbacks, we don't know for sure how big each will be. The true pity is that we're in the midst of a mass extinction event. Between pollution, loss of habitat and rapid warming - we're killing off species like we're a killer meteor...and there's no coming back for the Amazon rain-forest and countless species. Once they're gone they're gone.
pvaldes 5y ago
The problem is that humans love to destroy plants. Crazy plant growth does not matter if we have unprecedented megafires each year and in several continents at the same time.
- morpheos137 5y ago
  Have a look at google earth some time. What franction of temperate and tropical land mass outside of deserts is some shade of green? Probably in excess of 95%. There are a lot of plants on Earth.
  - goatlover 5y ago
    Google says there's 3+ trillion trees. Half as many as when humans came on the scene, but more than 100 years ago, so that's a positive trend on the environmental front.
    - pvaldes 5y ago
      Biomass is not number of individuals. I could have 10.000 trees at home if I would want it. I can assure you that Google earth still show trees that were chopped some years ago; and sadly both wildfires and megafires are very real currently.
      - goatlover 5y ago
        Google is getting their count from a Nature or Scientific American article which mentions that the number of trees is calculated from "421,529 measurements from 50 countries on six continents". Fires also clear away old growth so new trees can have a chance, and trees native to fire-prone areas have evolved fire resistance. In addition, some pine cone seeds are released by fire. As for the net loss or gain, you'd have to subtract how many trees died in the fires from how many new saplings there are annually. The world is a big place. It's perfectly possible for a billion trees lost in one region to be offset by a billion new trees elsewhere.
nealabq 5y ago
Plants also love humidity. It seems likely that global warming leads to more water vapor in the air.
- xyzwave 5y ago
  Yes, as oceans warm, more water vapor is being released into the atmosphere. Water vapor is far more effective than CO2 at trapping heat, and is therefore driving one of global warming’s most extreme positive feedback loops [1]. 1. https://www.acs.org/content/acs/en/climatescience/climatesciencenarratives/its-water-vapor-not-the-co2.html https://www.acs.org/content/acs/en/climatescience/climatesci...
toomim 5y ago
Yes, many scientists have predicted this, but unfortunately the act of articulating a positive effect of CO2 tends to get you labeled "climate denier" and censored from many parts of the media, and thus we aren't very aware of the bigger picture of climate change. Here's an articulation from one of the Greenpeace Cofounders: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WDWEjSDYfxc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WDWEjSDYfxc He also notes that increased CO2 can help boost agriculture productivity, making it easier to feed the world's population.
- jacobwilliamroy 5y ago
  I have no idea what happened to Patrick Moore. He's not actually an environmentalist anymore. He just uses his past affiliation with Greenpeace to make money being a spokesman for companies like Exxon and Monsanto. He doesn't actually care if you live or die. He just wants you to spend more money on fossil fuels.
  - reedjosh 5y ago
    I heard him on a podcast recently. He didn't seem to be pushing Monsanto. Can you please point me to where he does this? I would be rather put off. I hate mono cropping and pretty much everything Monsanto.
    - jacobwilliamroy 5y ago
      It was back in 2015, he made a comment on TV about how glyphosate is safe enough to drink, and then when the interviewer offered him a glass he refused to drink it and said "I'm not stupid." Monsanto denies ever retaining him to make these comments and it's probably true that Patrick Moore has never received money directly from Monsanto. Patrick Moore is proof that with enough money, you can buy whatever you want, including an "ecologist" who says that climate change is a good thing and not caused by humans.
      - reedjosh 5y ago
        Very interesting, thank you.
heavyset_go 5y ago
Depends on what happens with the vegetative growth. If it is cut down or otherwise dies, decomposition will release CO2. Systems like that can often be carbon neutral if they regrow again. Human development is destroying what could be longterm carbon sinks, though, and so is climate change.
Lammy 5y ago
If science-fiction counts then Jeffrey Jones expected it in 1972's "Wholly Holy": https://i.imgur.com/DmbQANH.jpg https://i.imgur.com/DmbQANH.jpg (mildly NSFW art) His 33-page "Ravens & Rainbows" collection has this and several other great short sci-fi stories in that old "Heavy Metal" comic style that's rarely seen these days, but same NSFW disclaimer applies: https://imgur.com/a/M0JUTSx https://imgur.com/a/M0JUTSx

So far it's the first confirmed case of negative feedback from global warming that I've seen, and that makes me hopeful.

johnnyApplePRNG 5y ago
Another one is smoke from forest fires; actively cooling the planet.
- voisin 5y ago
  Have you come across any quantification of this?
  - Salgat 5y ago
    Great question. We know that a large enough volcano eruption can cause a year long winter so I'm curious how much large scale forest fires can compare. Also, assuming regrowth is allowed, the CO2 impact from the burned wood is neutral in the long run.
  - prewett 5y ago
    This is anecdotal quantification, but I lived in northern California for a few years and late June would usually be in the 100s or 110s. By August when California catches on fire, it cools down to 90s (when the smoke was blowing our way). By contrast, when I lived in Texas (no fires), June and July would be in the low 100s, and the first two weeks of August would be 107 - 112.
  - johnnyApplePRNG 5y ago
    No. Entirely anecdotal and of my own observance. I traveled from Ontario to British Columbia two years ago when the forest fires out west were really peaking. I noticed smoke in the air as far as Winnipeg, and it only got thicker as I approached Vancouver. Surely all of those white/reflective particles in the upper atmosphere are reflecting the sun's rays. Also, weather predictions that year where WAY off. Predictions were always much higher than the actual high of the day. I assume this is resultant from historical weather data being a poor source for an altered state weather season. The smoke covered almost all of north america at some points and it really got much cooler than seasonal averages.
  - plank_time 5y ago
    Back in the early 90s a volcano erupted in the Philippines. In Canada where I grew up, late that summer in August, it was below freezing in the mornings. I had never encountered that before and was a direct result of the volcano.
  - pvaldes 5y ago
    Is public knowledge than most smoke in wildfires is water. If we see white smoke, is water vapor (mostly). Unlike volcanoes, any temporary cold effect from clouds would be negated by the permanent destruction of the forest.
- logicfiction 5y ago
  Is it really a negative feedback and not just transient though? Sure it may cool things during the fire, but it also just destroyed some carbon sinks and worsened the overall emissions effect. Then the fire ends and it no longer has any cooling effect so its not feeding back.
stupendousyappi 5y ago
There are several others. I'm not a climate scientist, but my understanding is that the most significant potential negative feedback loop by far is the potential for increased cloud cover from increased humidity. It's evidently the most difficult aspect of global warming to model, although climate scientists are making continuous progress. In addition, the marginal radiative forcing of CO2 decreases with its concentration, which means both that increases in emissions do less harm as things get worse, and that reductions in emissions do less good.
- raducu 5y ago
  So, when is this negative feedback loop supposed to kick in and save us from global warming and climate change?
  - ncmncm 5y ago
    It is already "kicked in", and all figured in, is not saving us, and will not save us.
flavius29663 5y ago
Global warming means more water in the air. This is both a positive feedback (water is an excellent heat trap) and negative in the form of clouds. White clouds increase the albedo of the planet, rejecting heat. Another negative feedback is the increased intake of CO2 by oceans, through difussion. Also the plankton consumes more CO2. It makes sense, think about it: if the planet didn't have negative feedbacks, absolutely any event would potentially cause a runoff through positive feedback in warmings and throw the climate out of balance. Even something like a vulcanic eruption or forest fire in the middle ages: without the negative feedback, CO2 would cause warming, which causes more water, which causes warming...there must be some serious negative feedback loops, which is why we've almost doubled the warming effect of CO2 with (so far) very small influences on the climate.
- raducu 5y ago
  Well, everything has negative feedback loops, otherwise the universe would exoerience a second Big Bang, right? But is that statement reasurring in any way? No, because in between the limits of those feedback loops there's enormous potential for devastation and human suffering.
  - flavius29663 5y ago
    It's reassuring in the sense that I believe there is a very slim chance of runaway warming based on positive feedback loop. These levels of CO2 are pretty low on a geological scale, increases to 400-800ppm CO2 have not caused a runaway global warming a la Venus ever before. More of the Earh's life as a living planet was spent above 1000 ppm than under. https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Henning-Haeupler/publication/325078712/figure/fig17/AS:625014961344528@1526026587793/Global-temperature-and-atmospheric-CO2-over-geological-time-600-mya-Aus-from-HIEB.png https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Henning-Haeupler/public... In fact, there was a period in the past when the Earth warmed 10 degree Celsius (18 F) in 10 years, and there was no runaway global warming. There will be warming, there will be positive and negative feedbacks, we don't know for sure how big each will be. The true pity is that we're in the midst of a mass extinction event. Between pollution, loss of habitat and rapid warming - we're killing off species like we're a killer meteor...and there's no coming back for the Amazon rain-forest and countless species. Once they're gone they're gone.

pvaldes 5y ago

The problem is that humans love to destroy plants. Crazy plant growth does not matter if we have unprecedented megafires each year and in several continents at the same time.

morpheos137 5y ago
Have a look at google earth some time. What franction of temperate and tropical land mass outside of deserts is some shade of green? Probably in excess of 95%. There are a lot of plants on Earth.
- goatlover 5y ago
  Google says there's 3+ trillion trees. Half as many as when humans came on the scene, but more than 100 years ago, so that's a positive trend on the environmental front.
  - pvaldes 5y ago
    Biomass is not number of individuals. I could have 10.000 trees at home if I would want it. I can assure you that Google earth still show trees that were chopped some years ago; and sadly both wildfires and megafires are very real currently.
    - goatlover 5y ago
      Google is getting their count from a Nature or Scientific American article which mentions that the number of trees is calculated from "421,529 measurements from 50 countries on six continents". Fires also clear away old growth so new trees can have a chance, and trees native to fire-prone areas have evolved fire resistance. In addition, some pine cone seeds are released by fire. As for the net loss or gain, you'd have to subtract how many trees died in the fires from how many new saplings there are annually. The world is a big place. It's perfectly possible for a billion trees lost in one region to be offset by a billion new trees elsewhere.

nealabq 5y ago

Plants also love humidity. It seems likely that global warming leads to more water vapor in the air.

xyzwave 5y ago
Yes, as oceans warm, more water vapor is being released into the atmosphere. Water vapor is far more effective than CO2 at trapping heat, and is therefore driving one of global warming’s most extreme positive feedback loops [1]. 1. https://www.acs.org/content/acs/en/climatescience/climatesciencenarratives/its-water-vapor-not-the-co2.html https://www.acs.org/content/acs/en/climatescience/climatesci...

toomim 5y ago

Yes, many scientists have predicted this, but unfortunately the act of articulating a positive effect of CO2 tends to get you labeled "climate denier" and censored from many parts of the media, and thus we aren't very aware of the bigger picture of climate change. Here's an articulation from one of the Greenpeace Cofounders: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WDWEjSDYfxc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WDWEjSDYfxc He also notes that increased CO2 can help boost agriculture productivity, making it easier to feed the world's population.

jacobwilliamroy 5y ago
I have no idea what happened to Patrick Moore. He's not actually an environmentalist anymore. He just uses his past affiliation with Greenpeace to make money being a spokesman for companies like Exxon and Monsanto. He doesn't actually care if you live or die. He just wants you to spend more money on fossil fuels.
- reedjosh 5y ago
  I heard him on a podcast recently. He didn't seem to be pushing Monsanto. Can you please point me to where he does this? I would be rather put off. I hate mono cropping and pretty much everything Monsanto.
  - jacobwilliamroy 5y ago
    It was back in 2015, he made a comment on TV about how glyphosate is safe enough to drink, and then when the interviewer offered him a glass he refused to drink it and said "I'm not stupid." Monsanto denies ever retaining him to make these comments and it's probably true that Patrick Moore has never received money directly from Monsanto. Patrick Moore is proof that with enough money, you can buy whatever you want, including an "ecologist" who says that climate change is a good thing and not caused by humans.
    - reedjosh 5y ago
      Very interesting, thank you.

heavyset_go 5y ago

Depends on what happens with the vegetative growth. If it is cut down or otherwise dies, decomposition will release CO2. Systems like that can often be carbon neutral if they regrow again. Human development is destroying what could be longterm carbon sinks, though, and so is climate change.

Lammy 5y ago

If science-fiction counts then Jeffrey Jones expected it in 1972's "Wholly Holy": https://i.imgur.com/DmbQANH.jpg https://i.imgur.com/DmbQANH.jpg (mildly NSFW art) His 33-page "Ravens & Rainbows" collection has this and several other great short sci-fi stories in that old "Heavy Metal" comic style that's rarely seen these days, but same NSFW disclaimer applies: https://imgur.com/a/M0JUTSx https://imgur.com/a/M0JUTSx