Robert
Remembering that article you wrote four or five years ago about soil it might be time for a new one using the latest information. It’s a key component that doesn’t get enough attention
Tonyb
Comment on The most amazing greening on Earth by climatereason
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Comment on The most amazing greening on Earth by aaron
It’s a real thing, just not important in the context of providing proper nutrition to the developing world.
Demand, crop choices, farming practices, logistics, infrastructure, soil quality, food processing, politics, war are all bigger factors.
People who think a possible 3.8% reduction in a nutrient in a particular crop, in a century, that isn’t a good source of that nutrient to begin with, is a good reason to prolong poverty and stifle development are reprehensible.
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Comment on The most amazing greening on Earth by aaron
Jack, remote “deadzones” big? And, something new, or something newly observed?
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Comment on The most amazing greening on Earth by Scott Koontz
Great article. Not a completely rosy picture.
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Comment on The most amazing greening on Earth by Scott Koontz
Nutrient decline, not a myth:
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/ask-the-experts-does-rising-co2-benefit-plants1/
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Comment on The most amazing greening on Earth by sifttheashes
jacksmith4tx, an herbivorous diet isn’t the most efficient for land use, and is unlikely to become so with a shift to our digestive system. Our energy needs are too high, and an omnivorous diet allows for use of marginal croplands to produce food.
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Comment on The most amazing greening on Earth by Rob Starkey (@Robbuffy)
nothing is ever completely rosy
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Comment on The most amazing greening on Earth by Ragnaar
“But Norby notes the results scientists produce in labs are generally not what happens in the vastly more complex world outside…”
““The problem with [the skeptics’] argument is that it’s as if you can cherry-pick the CO2 fertilization effect from the overall effect of adding carbon dioxide to the atmosphere,” Myers says. But that is not how the world—or its climate—works.”
We could say the same things about CO2 and the GMST.
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Comment on The most amazing greening on Earth by aaron
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Comment on The most amazing greening on Earth by cadger (@cadger2)
“As people increasingly move to cities, the land they left behind reverts to something in between its original composition and the state of development it had achieved by the time it was abandoned. That usually involves greening.”
If people moving to cities causes greening then other people will replace them to take advantage of said greening.
Or not?
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Comment on The most amazing greening on Earth by Scott Koontz
But the earth is so GREEN! It’s perfect, and CO2 is LIFE! It’s PLANT FOOD. Drink it up in your champagne.
Science usually does a great job of showing the plusses and minuses. This article is here to convince the “skeptics” that adding the tremendous amount of CO2 is really a good thing. Makes them happy for awhile.
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Comment on The most amazing greening on Earth by willb01
Patrick J. Michaels, thanks for this post. I wonder if you might be able to answer a question for me:
1. The Zhu et al paper concludes that Earth’s leaf area index has increased in the last 35 years, by perhaps 14%. This additional leaf area must be causing a 14% increase in carbon fixation through photosynthesis compared to 35 years ago.
2. The Scripps Institution of Oceanography has estimated that total carbon fixation due to photosynthesis is between 150 and 175 petagrams per year (link). Simple arithmetic: 14% of 150 = 21 petagrams. This is the (estimated) increase in the photosynthesis carbon sink compared to 35 years ago.
3. The yearly anthropogenic carbon dump into the atmosphere is estimated at 10 petagrams.
4. At the moment, the amount of carbon in the atmosphere is increasing at an approximate rate of 5 petagrams per year.
5. 10 – 21 + X = 5; X = 16
Question: Does this imply that one of the other carbon sources (besides anthropogenic) has increased by 16 petagrams over the last 35 years? Perhaps an increase in CO2 flux out of the ocean?
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Comment on The most amazing greening on Earth by Robert I. Ellison
Hi Tony
Rattan Lal says at about minute 5 that 500 GtC has been lost from terrestrial stores since the advent of agriculture. Some of that can be restored – on grazing and cropping land – for food security. Along with reclaiming desert, restoring forests, grasslands and waterways.
I can’t do better than Rattan Lal:
Or John Liu:
I have stuff on my Australian Iriai Facebook page – and the WordPress site linked to my name. Both need updating.
Hope this works.
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Comment on The most amazing greening on Earth by Geoff Sherrington
It is facile to state that it is socially desirable to increase the quantity of ‘carbon’ in soils of the earth. In popular jargon, this plausibly reduces the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, currently seen as a social good by a pool of enthusiasts.
In simple form, this is mostly a static system view of the mechanisms. Take from air, relocate in soil, good outcome. Kinda like coal mining in reverse.
However, think more widely and more dynamically. That increased soil carbon is not likely to increase in a monotonic step. It is part of a cycle. Mechanisms are steadily reducing the stored amount. One large mechanism is increased plant growth. Increased atmospheric CO2 is enhancing the way that more plant tissue is produced through photosynthetic mechanisms. But, there is another possible plant growth mechanism or two. One is to consider carbon compounds in the soil as solid fertilizers, enhancing growth much as urea and phosphate and potash are solid fertilizers that initiate plant growth processes. (There are other processes, such as better feeding of symbionts that we need not discuss).
Now these N,P,K fertilizers are also dynamic in the sense that the more you add, the greater the harvest and the more you subtract when you ship your yield to market. It is a cycle; and so it is for carbon in agriculture and growth.
If the agricultural aim was to increase static in soil, the simplest way would be to mine coal and bury it in farmland soils. This has some negatives.
If one proposes to allow more greening, more plant material to sequester carbon from the air, there has to be an advantage over re-burying coal. There is an evident energy factor, growing plants takes less energy than burying coal.
But what happens to this extra potential carbon storage from the greening of the globe? Most of it ends up as CO2 going back into the air, as plant material decays or is eaten or burned.
It is clearly not enough to simply promote the benefits of increasing the global store of soil carbon. It needs to be kept in the soil and since we are into dynamics, that means active programs that continually add more carbon to the soil to replace that lost, much ending up as CO2.
In summary, we can be pleased by the concept of benefits from a globe greening from more CO2 in the air, but until we understand the many processes involved, until we learn to manage the critical variables, we cannot make economic models of the overall outcome. In one pessimistic view, adding more carbon to the soil store might be bad because it dilutes other required nutrients. Like claims that plants grown under enhanced CO2 are less nutritious. Geoff.
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Comment on The most amazing greening on Earth by Jim D
As I mentioned just Googling CO2 and plant growth brings up several articles worth reading on this subject. None of them say go for it in the context of climate change.
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Comment on The most amazing greening on Earth by Jim D
Physics is a lot simpler than biology. Trapping heat leads to warming. Its an insulation, energy budget problem. Plants react to CO2 and warming in opposite ways.
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Comment on The most amazing greening on Earth by James Cross
Is the 4% land cover or land use? It says land cover in the abstract. There’s a difference.
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Comment on The most amazing greening on Earth by jacksmith4tx
aaron,
The trend is these ‘remote’ dead zones are growing in size according to many recent studies. I just spotted a new one today:
https://www.inquisitr.com/5076975/new-study-suggests-canadian-gulf-losing-oxygen-levels-may-be-unable-to-support-life/
According to a recent study led by the University of Washington (UW), deoxygenation in Canada’s Gulf of St. Lawrence may lead to loss of marine animal life.
The study, published in Nature Climate Change, tracked temperature and oxygen level due to large-scale ocean circulation in Canada’s eastern coast.
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“Observations in the very inner Gulf of St. Lawrence show a dramatic oxygen decline, which is reaching hypoxic conditions, meaning it can’t fully support marine life,” said Moriana Claret, lead researcher for the study at UW’s Institute for the Study of the Atmosphere and the Ocean. Oxygen declines have already begun to threaten species such as Atlantic wolffish, Atlantic cod, snow crabs, and Greenland halibut.
The Gulf of St. Lawrence is considered one of the most rapidly deoxygenating areas, with the lower depths having lost 55 percent of oxygen since 1930, reported CBC News. Warm waters due to climate change take the majority of the blame, but agricultural and industrial waste residue contaminating waterways also plays a big part.
Excess runoff nutrients in the oceans can create algae blooms, leading to a high growth of plants and algae. When they die due to a high concentration and lack of nutrition, the decaying process begins. This takes up a large amount of oxygen in the water and forms hypoxic conditions.”
If you setup a a few search terms in your Google News or Bing News personal profile you will see it’s a global phenomenon. The Google trends tool confirms this too. Scientist are attracted to anomalies so it’s logical to assume they collect a lot of data and make a lot of theories, some better than others.
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Comment on The most amazing greening on Earth by aaron
Interesting, thanks.
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Comment on The most amazing greening on Earth by jeffnsails850
“As people increasingly move to cities, the land they left behind reverts to something in between its original composition and the state of development it had achieved by the time it was abandoned.”
Doesn’t the “population bomb” theory that underpins the “anthropocene” and sustainability/enviromentalist argument basically reject the idea that land could be “abandoned”? Those billions of people that the earth can’t sustain have to be fed somehow.
What happened between the ’60s and today that allows us to even ponder whether land abandonment (as opposed to mass starvation) is contributing to greening? Any lessons from that we could apply to our response to AGW (I mean, we all agree here that “mitigation” of food consumption was the answer rather than a technological approach that produced more food- right? Good thing we had those international treaties to limit calorie consumption and a cap and trade on child birth).
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