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Remote sensing reveals Antarctic green snow algae as important carbon sink
- watertom 5y agoIt was the rise of phytoplankton that created the atmosphere necessary for human life. It will be the collapse of the phytoplankton that will eliminate the the atmosphere necessary for human life. Humans won’t be around to see the planet warm.
- ahevia 5y agoThis is unnecessary doomerism. Yes our situation is not exactly the brightest but is doomposting on HN really the best action you can take? Humans will still be around to see the planet warm. The question is will individuals & society band together to limit that warming & adapt?
- rc_mob 5y agoFirst step to solving a problem is acknowledging that the problem exists. It feels like you have yet to take that first step.
- TeMPOraL 5y agoNo, they did take that step. But the very next step is correctly scoping the problem. It's the one at which so many people fail.
- wsjtho55 5y agoIs trying to “correct” doomposting on HN with poetic trifles the best action you can take? Useless rhetoric online sure requires a lot of computers. Band with society to use them less disposably.
- adflux 5y agoThe main problem with doomtalk is the defeatist attitude that usually accompanies it. Utterly useless way of thinking
- twofornone 5y agoWhen we discover novel failure points in the complex, chaotic global climate system about once a year, why are you so sure that there aren't undiscovered biologic or geologic climate regulating mechanisms that will buffer the geologically recent greenhouse spike and maintain a livable temperature range? That's the danger of a rigid, politically enforced orthodoxy. Your research becomes extremely one sided. And in a non-empirical field your speculation can go pretty far off into the deep end before you're proven wrong; especially when all of your predictions require hundreds of years to measure with any certainty. Life has persisted through dozens (if not hundreds) of climate disturbances, and even though temperature swings look like blips when plotted, they most likely occur over hundreds-thousands of years. There are proposed mechanisms by which a sudden global temperature increase may in fact trigger an ice age through various geologic or globally biologic phenomena. You wont see much published on that side of the climate conjecture, but a lack of literature in the modern research climate does not imply invalidity.
- ripper1138 5y agoRidiculous. Humans burning fossil fuel for 200 years is nothing compared to the mass extinctions that have occurred in the past, and yet the atmosphere is still here.
- gattilorenz 5y agoThe paper claims the opposite, instead of a collapse of phytoplakton there will (likely) be an increase: > Our study indicates that positive summer temperatures and a sufficient nutrient supply are key factors determining the present-day distribution of green snow algae on the Antarctic Peninsula. With the IPCC’s projected 1.5 °C global temperature increase, it is predicted that the 0 °C isotherm will increase in elevation and that positive degree days will become more commonplace and occur further to the south. This will likely open up new snow for colonisation by green snow algae, should an appropriate dispersal mechanism allow transfer to new areas. [...] > A warming Peninsula, therefore, may see a shift towards fewer, larger snow algae blooms, resulting in a significant increase in biomass on larger outlying islands and the mainland. The coupled loss of blooms from smaller islands would be insignificant with respect to biomass and may be mitigated by southward range expansion or an earlier growth season. However, with multiple and often unknown species recorded within patches of green snow algae, and little known about the dispersal mechanisms, life cycles and plasticity of snow algal species, losses from these islands could represent a reduction of terrestrial diversity for the Antarctic Peninsula.
- atoav 5y agoWe are doomed. But on the other hand we created a lot of value for the shareholders for a few decades.
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- civilized 5y agoTo anyone who is gearing up to doompost: the abstract says this is likely a negative feedback counteracting warming and carbon rise.
- parksy 5y agoIn which case I would have to take a step back and think about the world for a bit. Is there a possibility when it gets warmer / more carbon rich, the carbon-hungry microbes go to town, reducing temperatures (*eventually, maybe not over time periods important to humans?) If the world's microbiome is geared to maintaining (rather than merely existing in / responding to) temperatures and atmospheric gas ratios within a fine margin that would be noteworthy. I've probably drunk too much and it's too late at night for this conversation to be honest. I probably shouldn't have even pressed "reply".
- ahevia 5y agoThis is a good question! And it’s clear youre not asking this in bad faith (the line of thinking that CO2 is good for humanity & the planet is a common climate misinformation tactic) I’m not an expert on this stuff but from what I’ve read over the course of millennium. The Earth will achieve balance again (assuming no further human intervention) For all practical reasons that won’t work for us. Using microbes as a carbon removal solution is a real potential solution! Specifically using microbes in place of fertilizers as a technique to improve soil health (which would increase soil organic carbon). Although it’s not 100% clear how well that carbon will be stored for the long term. I’m oversimplifying the science no doubt but we can harness microbes to our benefit.
- parksy 5y agoNo for sure I'm strongly of the mind that greenhouse gases do their job in creating a greenhouse, which increases temperature over time (which means more energy in the global system, which means everything from stronger storms to longer droughts...) As a layperson I've read about the Vostok cores and understand how closely correlated CO2 concentrations and dust are as proxies for global temperature. Also I've read up on how phytoplankton essentially are the reason we have oxygen to breathe, so there are risks like ocean acidification that could kill us all regardless of temperature. If some of those little buggers can give us an out or at least give us a longer grace period to sort our stuff out, I want in.
- hiidrew 5y agoThought this was referring to remote viewing (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remote_viewing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remote_viewing) for a second haha
- billiam 5y agoWhile this paper is interesting for identifying an interesting relatively unstudied carbon sink, I am confident no one on this website, including me, is in a good position to understand all the implications of it. I found the conclusions to be pretty complex and speculative. All in all, all it shows is that we have no idea what's going to happen and when.
- billiam 5y agoWhile this paper is interesting for identifying an interesting relatively unstudied carbon sink, I am confident no one on this website, including me, is in a good position to understand all the implications of it. I found the conclusions to be pretty complex and speculative. All in all, all it shows is that we have no idea what's going to happen and when.
- _3u10 5y agoThe report says the total biomass is 1300 tonnes. (1.3x10^3). I think the algae might be less important than the authors are letting on.
- Robotbeat 5y agoSeems to me that darkening the snow would be a much bigger impact than the very small amount of carbon in the algae.
- schiffern 5y ago>terran Could we please not alter headlines to replace real words with made-up scifi words? The original headline uses "terrestrial," which is correct. Also even in the context of scifi, "terrestrial" has a completely different meaning ("of the land surface", vs "of the planet Earth"). Inb4 'all words are made up' etc etc boring thread Mods, can we get a fix? EDIT: Thanks!
- grzm 5y agoThe article title is "Remote sensing reveals Antarctic green snow algae as important terrestrial carbon sink", which is over the 80-character limit for titles. The submitter likely made the edit to make the title fit. If you have better alternative, feel free to suggest one. Edit to add: the best way to get a title fixed is to (quietly) email the mods using the contact link in the footer.
- burnished 5y agoDrop the word 'green', its an interesting descriptor but accuracy wouldn't be lost in the same way (I believe).
- dang 5y agoThat's a good idea. I dropped 'terrestrial' instead, because I'm not sure where else the carbon sink would be. (Submitted title was "Remote sensing shows Antarctic green snow algae is important terran carbon sink".)
- burnished 5y agoOh, honestly that's way better for the reason you specified. Nice.
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- amelius 5y agoI wonder if, instead of scrubbing CO2, it would make sense to increase the other constituents of air, e.g. oxygen, thereby reducing the effective concentration of CO2. What if we ran a giant hydrolysis operation, generating O2 (and letting H2 escape into space or finding some other use for it other than burning it)?
- dexwiz 5y agoAssuming you could make a sizable contribution, extra gas would eventually dissipate into space. That said, oxygen is high in potential chemical energy (usually contributes energy to a reaction, hence everything oxidizes), while CO2 is low (doesn’t react with much without external energy like sunlight). This the process of making oxygen or using (storing) CO2 are roughly equivalent energy wise. Of course processes and catalyst may change the exact numbers, but you aren’t getting around the basic thermo problem.
- snewman 5y agoThis doesn't work. First of all, you'd still have the same mass of CO2, so the insulating effect wouldn't change. Those molecules would still be there to interfere with infrared radiation trying to escape into space. Second of all, you're talking about gargantuan quantities of oxygen (or nitrogen, or whatever). CO2 is roughly 1/2500 of the atmosphere, so to achieve a given amount of dilution, you can remove one CO2 molecule or add 2500 other molecules. Finally, I don't know what the side effects of increasing global air pressure would be, but I'm sure there would be significant effects!
- mrpopo 5y agoJust adding an incredibly larger amount of gases (the atmosphere is 5.5 * 10^18 kg) in the air doesn't increase global air pressure, it will just make more gases leak into the outer atmosphere over time. I am not sure how long that would take though. Anyway, as you said, any project that doesn't involve significantly scaling down anthropic GHG emissions and human settlement footprint will have significant effects. Planting trillions of trees will result in dead trees and environments destroyed. CCS at scale will involve ungodly amounts of energy + materials. Algae farming will alter the ocean's biodiversity already affected by warming + acidity + overfishing. It's time to acknowledge that the Earth doesn't owe us a couple of large cars per household, exotic foods, meat BBQs and regular plane trips.