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Forums - Politics Discussion - Earth is rapidly greening because of CO2 fertilization (NASA study)

great news for all those plant based humans.
It will be interesting to see how the US becomes when all the chlorophyll people out-pop all the blood based humans and we all have to learn sun signals.

This is a great win for when we have to move underground, and very ironic as well.



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Teeqoz said:

Sure, there are probably some doom-mongerers that spread horror stories about how we'll turn to Venus if we don't stop (we won't in the next several dozens of millions of years), but that has never been the threat from climate change. Besides, ideal for plant life doesn't mean ideal for human life, or life overall.

Think about the 9 billion mouths to feed man and the increase in arable lands too!

CaptainExplosion said:

But won't too much CO2 make air quality too poor for humans and animals? And what about rising sea levels?

There's no delirious effects for human respiration shown at CO2 concentration levels below concentrations of 5000 ppm ... 



Oh great, more grass to mow, which is one of the contributors to rising CO2 levels, a self reinforcing loop!



Qwark said:

It has been a long known fact that higher CO2 concentrations improve the growth of plants. Most greenhouses in NL get CO2 supplied from the harbor of Rotterdam. Anyway salt water infiltration will also kill a lot of plant life and floodings will cause the soils to cause more salt. And salt isn't exactly a thing most plant species endure very well.

Anywho as other said CO2 also causes oceans to accidify which causes corals to bleach and nearly a third off al fish species need coral to survive. Also the exo skeletons of shell fish and krill are desolving because of this acidification. So if anything climate change will rather cause the 6th mass extinction than a new bloom of life.

So the only sector really happy with this are farmers and companies that cultivate wood for furniture.

This is possibly false, since it has been implied the acids used to simulate the more acid water of warmer oceans doesn't lead to accurate results, and certain animals might calcify more, not less, in the presence of more CO2.

http://science.sciencemag.org/content/320/5874/336

Such data is consistent with the absence of mass extinction of corals back on the Cretaceous or the P-E, when temperatures were more than 10º C warmer than the present and sea temperatures might have casually risen above 35º C on tropical waters.

Of course, that doesn't mean it won't face another issues such as bleaching etc. but, really, plastic polution, overfishing and commercial navigation are much, much larger issues on all likehood to marine ecosystems, and issues which doesn't get the same level of attention on top of that.



 

 

 

 

 

Pretty sure I made a thread about this a year or two back. Obviously a warmer climate and increased CO2 levels will allow for more plant growth (look at the age of the dinosaurs as an example of that), though it will also have negative implications as well.



Made a bet with LipeJJ and HylianYoshi that the XB1 will reach 30 million before Wii U reaches 15 million. Loser has to get avatar picked by winner for 6 months (or if I lose, either 6 months avatar control for both Lipe and Hylian, or my patrick avatar comes back forever).

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ironmanDX said:
Would this be an inconvenient truth for Al Gore?

Only if man bear pig shows up



haxxiy said:
Qwark said:

It has been a long known fact that higher CO2 concentrations improve the growth of plants. Most greenhouses in NL get CO2 supplied from the harbor of Rotterdam. Anyway salt water infiltration will also kill a lot of plant life and floodings will cause the soils to cause more salt. And salt isn't exactly a thing most plant species endure very well.

Anywho as other said CO2 also causes oceans to accidify which causes corals to bleach and nearly a third off al fish species need coral to survive. Also the exo skeletons of shell fish and krill are desolving because of this acidification. So if anything climate change will rather cause the 6th mass extinction than a new bloom of life.

So the only sector really happy with this are farmers and companies that cultivate wood for furniture.

This is possibly false, since it has been implied the acids used to simulate the more acid water of warmer oceans doesn't lead to accurate results, and certain animals might calcify more, not less, in the presence of more CO2.

http://science.sciencemag.org/content/320/5874/336

Such data is consistent with the absence of mass extinction of corals back on the Cretaceous or the P-E, when temperatures were more than 10º C warmer than the present and sea temperatures might have casually risen above 35º C on tropical waters.

Of course, that doesn't mean it won't face another issues such as bleaching etc. but, really, plastic polution, overfishing and commercial navigation are much, much larger issues on all likehood to marine ecosystems, and issues which doesn't get the same level of attention on top of that.

Well organisms do adapt to climate change, this one is a little different. Mainly due to the speed of the change. There are species which already have evolved the last decade to addapt and have a thicker shell than a few decades ago. Although it also makes them slower so it's a trade-off.

Anyway its a combination off all things which will cause massive damage to the seas. Algae bloom caused by over fertilisation doesnt help either, since the algea neccesary to build coral compete with other weeds and algea.

Fishing also severely damages coral reefs and the effect of microplastics and pesticides/chemical dumps in the ocean probably isn't helping either. However acidification does stack since corals recover faster the higher the Ph value of the waters.

Although the rate the ocean is acidifying and the climate changing has pretty much never occurred, outside of other mass extinction events such as when the asteroid stirked which eliminated the dinosaur and the aftermath of that event. The corals might survive the acidification, although large reefs are already severly damaged, especially in the Caribbean area.

So in the end acidification alone might ir might not let corals go extinct. We simply don't know because of the current rate of climate change and accidfication is way faster than before and evolution, as effictive as it is fir organisms to addapt to extreme conditions needs a lot of time.

So while accidification even at the current rate alone might not be enough to nake coral reefs go extinct. Its pretty safe to assume it makes reefs more vulnerable and that might just be enough to lower the tipping point of no return low enough for all the other cap we do, for us to surpass that tipping point.

 

Although I would rather not take chances of losing any major reef because off acidification. Bleaching is still a major issue for a big part of the great barrier reef, along with an abbundance of plastic and nutrients. Over fishing is somewhat controlled in Australia.

Last edited by Qwark - on 25 February 2018

Please excuse my (probally) poor grammar

CaptainExplosion said:
Aura7541 said:
Ocean acidification would still be an issue...

How do we prevent that?

Carbon capture and iron fertilization are some proposed solutions, but they have their setbacks.



Aura7541 said:
CaptainExplosion said:

How do we prevent that?

Carbon capture and iron fertilization are some proposed solutions, but they have their setbacks.

Not to mention neither are long therm solutions and they combat the symptoms not the main issue. But as temporal solutions they can buy us some time to decrease our carbon footprint.



Please excuse my (probally) poor grammar

Unfortunately, the greening also makes plants like poison ivy larger and more potent. It also makes blue-green algae a bigger threat to ecosystems. Though growing larger crops is a plus, the loss of farmland due to climate change offsets this gain.