4 ms·
Plants may be absorbing 20% more CO2 than we thought, new models find
- dd_xplore 3y agoDon't let the humans know or they'll start reducing their efforts in afforestation.
- Log_out_ 3y ago? That is like stating trees and grass suddenly producing 20%leaves, wood or grassand that for once simply doesn't match any experienced reality.
- vlovich123 3y agoOr that previous models were more inaccurate than the newest one. Or the newest one is overly optimistic.
- kolinko 3y agoor roots or exchanging it with ground somehow
- PeterStuer 3y ago'may' being the key word here. This is just one model out of hundreds that so far have not gotten concensus support. Remember: 'All models are wrong, some are usefull'. The former is a certainty, the latter only time will tell. Forgive my scepticism. I live in a region where cutting down forests that are hundreds of years old and incinerating them is concidered 'carbon neutral' because lobbyists managed to influence an Excel formula, and eliminating forests for swampland is cheered on by 'ecologists' because the forests were planted in the middle ages to drain the swamps and provide hunting grounds and are thus 'fake' according to some arbitrary choice of historical reference.
- Log_out_ 3y ago[flagged]
- Obscurity4340 3y agoOriginalism abounds
- macilacilove 3y agoFeels like we need to have less than 1% uncertainity in that parameter.
- credit_guy 3y agoPlants don't hide the CO2 in some secret place. All the CO2 they absorb becomes cellulose, i.e. the plant itself. You can measure how much CO2 a tree has absorbed by putting it on a scale. I guess they simply want to say there's 20% more plant mass than previously thought. Which might be true, but it's also very likely within the error bars.
- AeiumNE 3y agoI like the first principles thinking, but what if they do have a secret place? What if it goes to the roots and then into fungi and bacteria in the soil or something?
- paholg 3y agoYou could do an experiment where you have a plant in a pot on a scale, weigh how much water you give it, and calculate expected evaporation. Then, at some point, remove and weigh the plant to see if it contains all of the accumulated mass. If I recall correctly, other than the last step, that was how someone first noticed that plants must be gaining mass from the air.
- calamari4065 3y agoI'm no plant surgeon, but this is correct. Many plants host symbiotic microorganism ecologies in their root system. Usually they help with pre-processing key nutrients (mainly nitrogen) to make it easier for the plant to absorb, and they take a little food out of the roots in return. By the same token, plants convert carbon into fruit, which animals eat and then metabolize back into CO2. At the end of the day, all of a plant's captured carbon will return to the ecosystem one way or another. Most of the time, anyway.
- nervousvarun 3y agoAt the risk of sounding incredibly ignorant here (which I am) and also apologize in advance for the joking tone for what is a very serious topic... Couldn't it also be that they can absorb more CO2 when there is more CO2 and that the global rate of absorption is scaling w/ increased CO2? Maybe plants are gluttonous? Maybe plants will soon be dealing with their own obesity health crisis (that as a side-effect benefits the planet)?