4 ms·

Sooo for the last few hundereds of millions of years, which included a much warmer periods than the current one, trees somehow always managed to regrow, and cho

Sooo for the last few hundereds of millions of years, which included a much warmer periods than the current one, trees somehow always managed to regrow, and chose this very moment to cease doing it?

marginalia_nu 5y ago
10,000 years ago, what is presently the Sahara desert was green and had forests.
- labster 5y ago
  Yeah, but GP said hundreds of millions of years ago. Were there trees in the Gondwanaland Sahara?
monkeybutton 5y ago
Are you suggesting that the researchers are lying? Or that they are so incompetent that they cannot accurately measure what they are claiming?
__MatrixMan__ 5y ago
Could be that it's something other than temperature. Soil chemistry stuff, fewer insects than before, etc. Could be that we were just wrong about how quickly growth restarts after a fire.
ceejayoz 5y ago
Would it be that shocking for the first ever species to spew enormous amounts of heavy metals and other pollutants into the atmosphere and waters to have stressed the world’s forests in a new way?
- AnimalMuppet 5y ago
  Kind of? It would be somewhat more shocking than trees not re-growing because of drier conditions, which is where the article goes.
- __MatrixMan__ 5y ago
  When photosynthesis first evolved, the extra oxygen in the atmosphere killed off nearly everything on the surface (by covering it with ice). It took a very long time indeed to subsequently evolve cellular respiration and bring things back into balance (see the "Great Oxygenation Event" for more). So what I'm saying is that we won't even have been the first species to have done so.
  - moron4hire 5y ago
    We're just getting revenge on the plants
syki 5y ago
The current trees are under pressure from drought and increased temperature caused by global warming. They don’t regrow after fires at the rate they did in the recent past. Not enough time has passed for adaptation to take hold. The sudden increase in green house gasses is such that plants and animals haven’t had enough time to adapt. Eventually an equilibrium will be reached and things will stabilize. We aren’t at that point yet. The plants around millions of years ago during warmer periods than now are not the same plants today for the most part. They were suited for the environment at that time.
- Lammy 5y ago
  > The sudden increase in green house gasses is such that plants [...] haven’t had enough time to adapt. It does sound contradictory when said like this imo. Isn't plant growth the whole point of a greenhouse?
  - ceejayoz 5y ago
    Greenhouses have a human to open the windows when they get too hot in the peak of summer.
- errcorrectcode 5y ago
  I barely escaped the 2018 Paradise Camp Fire. It hadn't rained for 200+ days, was very windy, dry, and cold. I think NorCal, and much of the world, is slowly desertifying if climate change continues.
frazbin 5y ago
Spoiled brats aren't good at empathy I guess. Civilization emerged in the last 10k years or so because of climactic conditions. Before that, shiz was regularly cray cray. Even .1MY ago shiz was messed up bad in terms of supporting nice stable large populations. Agriculture? haha no, enjoy glaciers. Go back farther than that and the magnitude of disaster is regularly Lovecraftian. The thing you're taking for granted is that you have any conception of what the deep past looks like whatsoever. Wiki it around a bit; use your imagination. absolutely terrifying. Trees not regrowing is a super normal thing to happen when climactic patterns shift. Ever wonder why they built the pyramids in the desert? It should be obvious: didn't used to be a desert. Common theme in archaeological sites: surrounded by barren waste. That's microclimates and water flow, but again, stimulate your imagination. The past isn't going to come up and beat you over the head, but the future friggin is.
- ceejayoz 5y ago
  > Ever wonder why they built the pyramids in the desert? It should be obvious: didn't used to be a desert. Uh, no. Egypt was desert when the Pyramids were built. Egyptian civilization existed (and still does) in a narrow ribbon along the Nile; the Pyramids of Giza are only about five miles from it. They're certainly not in the middle of nowhere, that's just the camera angles working. (See https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/94/Giza-pyramids.JPG https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/94/Giza-pyr... for an alternative view.) Pictures of the Pyramid of Djoser (https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2e/Saqqara_pyramid_ver_2.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2e/Saqqara_...) look like it's in the middle of nowhere, but it's four miles from the Nile, too, and only two thousand feet away from fertile farmland. Meidum? Again, four miles from the Nile and 800 feet from farms, despite photos looking like https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/81/02_meidum_pyramid.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/81/02_meidu....
likpok 5y ago
Forest management history is complex and varied, and depends a lot on specific details about the forests. Logging practices over the past two hundred years have had big impacts on how the forest ecology works: what trees grow, what animals and insects live there and how much floor litter there is. All of this has an impact on whether a fire comes through and sterilizes the soil or leaves it fertile. There was immense pressure for the forest service to support logging and grazing, both of which dramatically alter the landscape. Another complication is that the native Americans in the area had their own silviculture practice that optimized for their own needs (by and large not lumber), so pre-white historical guides aren’t necessarily “natural” either. So the forests always regrew, but then we changed them (and stopped allowing fires). In the meanwhile the environment changed as we pumped more carbon into the atmosphere. Now when we reintroduce fire the results are different.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
fian 5y ago
https://energyinnovation.org/2021/09/16/after-the-megafires-whats-left-and-whats-next/ https://energyinnovation.org/2021/09/16/after-the-megafires-... The fire intensities are much higher due to various factors. This kills more of the mature trees and alters the soil nutrient composition such that it become water repellent. The same effects have been noted in Australian mega-fires over the past decade.
jhgb 5y ago
Hundreds of millions of years is a long period for trees to regrow...a period which we don't have.
- Andrew_nenakhov 5y ago
  We might not have this time, but trees do.
culi 5y ago
It's been about 100 million years since the last time the CO2 ppm was this high. And it's never gotten this high this fast ever before. A hundred million years is a long time for plants to adapt. 50 years is not
- davidw 5y ago
  Exactly. Nature does adapt, but it takes time for a species that previously didn't thrive in a locale to spread there. Often a lot of time compared to a human lifetime.
- refurb 5y ago
  But CO2 causes faster plant growth.
  - culi 5y ago
    That's theoretically true, but I've seen research that shows that it doesn't actually play out this way in the real world
jdavis703 5y ago
Ignoring the subtle climate change denialism: North American forests have been mismanaged for decades. Coupled with environmental factors this leads to more intense fires beyond what happens in a natural forest (i.e. one were fire routinely thins out available fuels before it builds up excessively).
- Andrew_nenakhov 5y ago
  I'm not denying the climate change, I'm embracing it! As for fires, it is obvious that 'green' practices stopping small forest fires result only in building up fuel and inevitable BIG fires. It is time to accept that forest fires are natural part of forest life cycle and that it is even advisable to do a profilactic burns form time to time.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
labster 5y ago
The landscapes are undergoing desertification. Where 200 years ago it may have been a prime environment to grow a new forest, and an existing forest could endure, growing a new forest is not likely to succeed due to temperature/water availability. Under your given time span of “hundreds of millions of years” I assume essentially square inch of land underwent desertification at some point, if it wasn’t buried beneath the sea. I mean, there weren’t even trees before 385 million years ago.

Sooo for the last few hundereds of millions of years, which included a much warmer periods than the current one, trees somehow always managed to regrow, and chose this very moment to cease doing it?

marginalia_nu 5y ago

10,000 years ago, what is presently the Sahara desert was green and had forests.

labster 5y ago
Yeah, but GP said hundreds of millions of years ago. Were there trees in the Gondwanaland Sahara?

monkeybutton 5y ago

Are you suggesting that the researchers are lying? Or that they are so incompetent that they cannot accurately measure what they are claiming?

__MatrixMan__ 5y ago

Could be that it's something other than temperature. Soil chemistry stuff, fewer insects than before, etc. Could be that we were just wrong about how quickly growth restarts after a fire.

ceejayoz 5y ago

Would it be that shocking for the first ever species to spew enormous amounts of heavy metals and other pollutants into the atmosphere and waters to have stressed the world’s forests in a new way?

AnimalMuppet 5y ago
Kind of? It would be somewhat more shocking than trees not re-growing because of drier conditions, which is where the article goes.
__MatrixMan__ 5y ago
When photosynthesis first evolved, the extra oxygen in the atmosphere killed off nearly everything on the surface (by covering it with ice). It took a very long time indeed to subsequently evolve cellular respiration and bring things back into balance (see the "Great Oxygenation Event" for more). So what I'm saying is that we won't even have been the first species to have done so.
- moron4hire 5y ago
  We're just getting revenge on the plants

syki 5y ago

The current trees are under pressure from drought and increased temperature caused by global warming. They don’t regrow after fires at the rate they did in the recent past. Not enough time has passed for adaptation to take hold. The sudden increase in green house gasses is such that plants and animals haven’t had enough time to adapt. Eventually an equilibrium will be reached and things will stabilize. We aren’t at that point yet. The plants around millions of years ago during warmer periods than now are not the same plants today for the most part. They were suited for the environment at that time.

Lammy 5y ago
> The sudden increase in green house gasses is such that plants [...] haven’t had enough time to adapt. It does sound contradictory when said like this imo. Isn't plant growth the whole point of a greenhouse?
- ceejayoz 5y ago
  Greenhouses have a human to open the windows when they get too hot in the peak of summer.
errcorrectcode 5y ago
I barely escaped the 2018 Paradise Camp Fire. It hadn't rained for 200+ days, was very windy, dry, and cold. I think NorCal, and much of the world, is slowly desertifying if climate change continues.

frazbin 5y ago

Spoiled brats aren't good at empathy I guess. Civilization emerged in the last 10k years or so because of climactic conditions. Before that, shiz was regularly cray cray. Even .1MY ago shiz was messed up bad in terms of supporting nice stable large populations. Agriculture? haha no, enjoy glaciers. Go back farther than that and the magnitude of disaster is regularly Lovecraftian. The thing you're taking for granted is that you have any conception of what the deep past looks like whatsoever. Wiki it around a bit; use your imagination. absolutely terrifying. Trees not regrowing is a super normal thing to happen when climactic patterns shift. Ever wonder why they built the pyramids in the desert? It should be obvious: didn't used to be a desert. Common theme in archaeological sites: surrounded by barren waste. That's microclimates and water flow, but again, stimulate your imagination. The past isn't going to come up and beat you over the head, but the future friggin is.

ceejayoz 5y ago
> Ever wonder why they built the pyramids in the desert? It should be obvious: didn't used to be a desert. Uh, no. Egypt was desert when the Pyramids were built. Egyptian civilization existed (and still does) in a narrow ribbon along the Nile; the Pyramids of Giza are only about five miles from it. They're certainly not in the middle of nowhere, that's just the camera angles working. (See https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/94/Giza-pyramids.JPG https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/94/Giza-pyr... for an alternative view.) Pictures of the Pyramid of Djoser (https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2e/Saqqara_pyramid_ver_2.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2e/Saqqara_...) look like it's in the middle of nowhere, but it's four miles from the Nile, too, and only two thousand feet away from fertile farmland. Meidum? Again, four miles from the Nile and 800 feet from farms, despite photos looking like https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/81/02_meidum_pyramid.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/81/02_meidu....

likpok 5y ago

Forest management history is complex and varied, and depends a lot on specific details about the forests. Logging practices over the past two hundred years have had big impacts on how the forest ecology works: what trees grow, what animals and insects live there and how much floor litter there is. All of this has an impact on whether a fire comes through and sterilizes the soil or leaves it fertile. There was immense pressure for the forest service to support logging and grazing, both of which dramatically alter the landscape. Another complication is that the native Americans in the area had their own silviculture practice that optimized for their own needs (by and large not lumber), so pre-white historical guides aren’t necessarily “natural” either. So the forests always regrew, but then we changed them (and stopped allowing fires). In the meanwhile the environment changed as we pumped more carbon into the atmosphere. Now when we reintroduce fire the results are different.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

fian 5y ago

https://energyinnovation.org/2021/09/16/after-the-megafires-whats-left-and-whats-next/ https://energyinnovation.org/2021/09/16/after-the-megafires-... The fire intensities are much higher due to various factors. This kills more of the mature trees and alters the soil nutrient composition such that it become water repellent. The same effects have been noted in Australian mega-fires over the past decade.

jhgb 5y ago

Hundreds of millions of years is a long period for trees to regrow...a period which we don't have.

Andrew_nenakhov 5y ago
We might not have this time, but trees do.

culi 5y ago

It's been about 100 million years since the last time the CO2 ppm was this high. And it's never gotten this high this fast ever before. A hundred million years is a long time for plants to adapt. 50 years is not

davidw 5y ago
Exactly. Nature does adapt, but it takes time for a species that previously didn't thrive in a locale to spread there. Often a lot of time compared to a human lifetime.
refurb 5y ago
But CO2 causes faster plant growth.
- culi 5y ago
  That's theoretically true, but I've seen research that shows that it doesn't actually play out this way in the real world

jdavis703 5y ago

Ignoring the subtle climate change denialism: North American forests have been mismanaged for decades. Coupled with environmental factors this leads to more intense fires beyond what happens in a natural forest (i.e. one were fire routinely thins out available fuels before it builds up excessively).

Andrew_nenakhov 5y ago
I'm not denying the climate change, I'm embracing it! As for fires, it is obvious that 'green' practices stopping small forest fires result only in building up fuel and inevitable BIG fires. It is time to accept that forest fires are natural part of forest life cycle and that it is even advisable to do a profilactic burns form time to time.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

labster 5y ago

The landscapes are undergoing desertification. Where 200 years ago it may have been a prime environment to grow a new forest, and an existing forest could endure, growing a new forest is not likely to succeed due to temperature/water availability. Under your given time span of “hundreds of millions of years” I assume essentially square inch of land underwent desertification at some point, if it wasn’t buried beneath the sea. I mean, there weren’t even trees before 385 million years ago.