Quote of the Day
Traditional estimates pegged global GPP at around 120 petagrams of carbon (PgC) per year since the 1980s. This figure, derived from remote sensing and other indirect methods, has been widely used to model Earth’s carbon cycle. However, recent research challenges this estimate, suggesting that plants globally absorb as much as 157 PgC annually—a 31% increase over previous calculations.
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The revised GPP estimate has far-reaching implications for climate science. As a primary determinant of terrestrial carbon sinks, GPP shapes how ecosystems respond to rising CO2 levels and climate change.
Joshua Shavit
January 12, 2025
Major study reveals plants now absorbing 30% more CO2 worldwide – The Brighter Side of News
I wonder… Will they update their models and tell us that the destruction of the planet has been postponed by 31% from the previous estimates?*
Or will they double down on their warnings and requests for government grants to prevent the death of the planet?
To help you predict the answer to the question, note that the date of the article I quoted above was six weeks ago. The paper in Nature was published four months ago on October 16, 2024.
By searching with Bing and Google, I was unable to find any major media outlet linking to the paper in Nature. I asked Copilot and they reported:
I couldn’t find any major media outlets referencing that specific paper in Nature.
So… I wonder why that is. You would think this would be a really big deal. Could it be that it does not fit the narrative and thus it can’t be true?
I continued the conversation by asked how much this would change the predicted increase in temperature over the next decade. I had to ask four times to get an answer. It kept telling me:
While increased CO2 absorption by plants is beneficial, it is not a substitute for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Comprehensive climate action is still necessary to address the broader impacts of climate change.
After insisting I wanted a number and suggesting numbers (which it told me were wrong), I finally got this answer:
If plants are absorbing 30% more CO2, it could potentially reduce the projected temperature rise by about 0.02°C to 0.05°C over the next decade.
For comparison:
Currently, the global average temperature is projected to increase by about 0.2°C per decade.
It isn’t 30%, but it could be as much as 25%. And even if it were 10%, that would be significant.
Another thing I learned from poking around on this topic is that while more CO2 results in more plant growth. It also results in less water usage. The plants are more drought resistant when they have more CO2.
The CO2 benefits have diminishing returns. Even at the current levels the plants are being limited by access to nitrogen in a form they can use. The full potential of increased crop yields from the extra CO2 requires more nitrogen fertilization. That is something we know how to do.
- Yes, I know. The question does not even make sense. And the actual result could be, “Nevermind, everything is good. We were just kidding about the end of the ice caps and flooded coastlines. No hard feelings, right?”
Al Gore said “I predict all ice caps will melt by 2014”.
With this new data Al has put the new date for the melting of the ice caps as 2022.
Or maybe not.
They don’t only not talk about reduced water usage. They also ignore that the warming response is not linear compared to CO2 levels; it’s logarithmic, and we are now in the flat part of the curve. A doubling of the CO2 levels gives far less than a doubling of the warming effect.
I do not consider Glow Bull Warming or rising CO2 levels to be a problem. If anything, cooling a degree or two would be far worse for us than a rise by the same.
Since plants breathe CO2, it is intuitively obvious that increasing CO2 levels in the atmosphere would make plants happy, make them grow more, and thus take in more CO2.
Only a shaman in the cult of warmism would think otherwise.
“Another thing I learned from poking around on this topic is that while more CO2 results in more plant growth. It also results in less water usage. The plants are more drought resistant when they have more CO2.”
Could that be something the climate scaryists didn’t want to mention?
That just like a bottle of “soda water”, CO2 is absorbed by water.
At standard temperature (68 degrees), and pressure (14.7 PSI), if I remember correctly. One liter of water will absorb 22.4 liters of CO2.
As temps cool, and pressure increases. It absorbs even more.
Plants get a lot of their CO2 through water vapor in the air. AKA, foliage feeding.
And one of the reasons also CO2 levels stay pretty much level on this planet. No matter how much we produce. The oceans that cover most of earth are close to 10,000 ft. deep, and as waves crash and rain falls, it absorbs CO2 and holds it. The deeper in the ocean, the more it will hold.
All that is on top of the fact that humans are only responsible for less than 3% of total 400PPM CO2 in the atmosphere.
We could burn coal and oil forever and never have a climate effect.
And we better start thinking in those terms soon.
As AI/data centers are in direct competition with humans for electricity.
It is currently not possible and it may NEVER be possible to accurately measure everything involved in the WEATHER the Earth experiences. This makes Climatology a PseudoScience…at best. And in reality it’s nothing but a religion for leftists who use it as an excuse to fleece the gullible.
Climatology once was a science, and some bits of it still may be. But you’re right in the sense that climatology has been captured by the Cult of Warmism shamans. Until the scientists that remain have a revolution and throw the frauds out, they won’t be getting their science back.
Other sciences are at risk too, though perhaps not quite so much yet. I read something not to long ago about some quack at some university (in CO?) who was contrapting a feminist, or anti-racist, or some such pseudo version of astronomy.
BTW, on the “some bits”: you can still find, on the NOAA website, paleoclimate data that’s quite interesting and perfectly suited to prove how much of a fraud warmism is. I’ve mentioned the GISP2 data (50k years worth of temperature records, taken from Greenland ice data). NOAA has a lot more like it, some going back much further, from other parts of the world. I haven’t studied them yet.
Hm, I think some of these also record CO2 levels over the ages. That would be really interesting, to see just how much it varies naturally.
They also don’t mention that the uncertainty bars on total natural CO2 emissions and how much it changes is approximately the same size as the known human CO2 emissions. Meaning we DO NOT KNOW if the rise in CO2 is part of the natural cycle or man-made. Considering different models use anywhere from 5 to 70 years residence-time for CO2, basing policy on models with variables that uncertain is stupid and/or evil, depending on the person pushing it.
Gee it almost looks like the carbon cycle is self-regulating, i.e. when carbon production increases carbon absorption by plants also increases. No wonder their magic Ouija boards, err, computer models are wrong more often than not.
Most physical processes have negative feedback. And in particular, it should be obvious that climate processes all have negative feedback, how else could climate exist in the first place? (“Climate is what we expect, weather is what we get” — Robert A. Heinlein.)
“The full potential of increased crop yields from the extra CO2 requires more nitrogen fertilization. That is something we know how to do.”
The Haber-Bosch process is used to manufacture ammonia – N3 – which is used heavily for nitrogen enhancement of soil for improving crop yields, and ammonia is extremely effective at doing that. Unfortunately, Haber-Bosch is also energy intensive. The tradeoff is “spend more energy – fossil fuels – to make highly effective fertilizer to obtain higher crop yields to feed more people” which will be immediately followed by the Leftists crowing “spending more energy is bad, especially if it’s energy from anything other than windmills or solar panels.” I’d give it about one week between “MSM publicizing increased plant absorption of CO2” to “we’re all going to die if we spend more fossil fuel energy making fertilizer.”
(There was a two-parter on PBS about crops, etc. in which one researcher said “eliminating the ammonia that comes from Haber-Bosch would mean two billion deaths from starvation because of the drop in crop yields.” Whether that’s accurate, or not, there’s not much question that civilization – for various values of “civilization” – is dependent upon fertilizer of some sort, from “night soil” and guano to N3 to maintain adequate supplies of foodstuffs. And, yeah, it was PBS, but only the volume numbers are suspect, not the effect.)
Now, if there was some way to convert the huge mass of Media Leftist Bullshit into fertilizer, we’d be set forever. MLB fertilizer exports to third world countries would be the best revenue stream the world has ever seen and eliminate any need to tax American citizens.