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It's not meaningless if there's consistently more plant biomass (which there is, see https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2016/carbon-dioxide-fertilization-gree
by slibhb 3y ago
It's not meaningless if there's consistently more plant biomass (which there is, see https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2016/carbon-dioxide-fertilization-greening-earth https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2016/carbon-dioxide-fer...).
Leaving aside its magnitude, it seems clear that CO2 -> more plants is a negative feedback loop.
- stouset 3y agoThe amount of living plant biomass is trivial compared to the amount of excess carbon we’re putting into the atmosphere. Consider that we’re unearthing millions of years worth of sequestered carbon. The planet could be covered pole to pole in lush forest and it wouldn’t account for what we burn today. The only realistic answer here is permanent sequestration by e.g., repeatedly growing and burying entire forests’ worth of dead trees.
- slibhb 3y agoGoogle says that about 25% of global CO2 emissions are captured by plants. That's not trivial.
- stouset 3y agoWhat, exactly, do you think plants did before we started burning massive amount of oil and natural gas? The Earth was in rough equilibrium before this. The only way this factoid is even remotely plausible as a permanent store is if Earth’s total plant biomass is growing at rate proportional to our CO2 emissions. Do you genuinely believe that to be the case?
- slibhb 3y agoAll I did was point out that the greening earth as a result of more CO2 is a negative feedback loop, i.e. as the carbon content of the atmosphere increases, plants grow more and will sequester more CO2. Per the article I linked, over the past ~40 years, an area the size of the contintental US has greened and about 70% of that is attributable to CO2. I didn't say the greening earth will totally offset climate change. You should ask yourself why you felt the need to spew nonsense in this thread. I find it baffling.