Guest post by Indur M. Goklany
This illustration from a recent article in Science magazine shows that CO2 is plant food. It is based on both empirical data and model results (not “data”). I know that looking at empirical data might seem like a novel idea to some people, but for some perverse reason, I find it more compelling.
On the right: Empirical Data. Growth of 21-day-old rice and S. viridis seedlings at different ambient CO2 concentrations ranging from 30 to 800 parts per million. NOTE: The very last set of pots on the extreme right is out of sequence. They are for 390 ppm, while the next to last pots are for 800 ppm.
On the left, Modeled Data:
Modeled changes in CO2 assimilation rate in response to changes in leaf intercellular CO2 partial pressure for C3 and C4 photosynthesis and for a hypothetical C4 rice. Curves 1, 2, and 4 have Rubisco levels typically found in a C4 leaf (10 μmol m−2 catalytic Rubisco sites). Curve 3 shows a typical response for C3 leaves with three times the Rubisco level of C4 leaves. Curve 1 shows the response of a C4 leaf with C4 Rubisco kinetic properties. Curve 2 models how a C4 leaf with C3 Rubisco kinetic properties would respond (a hypothetical C4 rice with C3 Rubisco kinetics). The comparison of these two curves shows the increase in CO2 assimilation rate achieved with C4 compared with C3 Rubisco kinetic properties within a functional C4 mechanism. Arrows to curves 1 and 3 show intercellular CO2 partial pressures typical at current ambient CO2 partial pressures for C4 and C3 photosynthesis. To generate the curves, model equations were taken from (11) and comparative Rubisco kinetic constants from (12). (B) [Reference numbers per source.]
Source: Susanne von Caemmerer, W. Paul Quick, and Robert T. Furbank (2012). The Development of C4 Rice: Current Progress and Future Challenges. Science 336 (6089): 1671-1672.
Finally, note that the top photograph on the right is for rice. According to Wikipedia, not always a reliable source, but in this case probably trustworthy:
[Rice] is the most important staple food for a large part of the world’s human population, especially in Asia and the West Indies. It is the grain with the second-highest worldwide production, after maize (corn), according to data for 2010.
Since a large portion of maize crops are grown for purposes other than human consumption, rice is the most important grain with regard to human nutrition and caloric intake, providing more than one fifth of the calories consumed worldwide by the human species.
In other words, not only is CO2 plant food, CO2 makes human food. Guess some folks skipped that biology class.
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“Quite some time ago, Anthony made us aware of a (volcanic) site – “Mammoth Mountain” or “Mammoth Lake” ? – where the CO2 content was killing trees. So there is a limit!”
I suspect that was CO, aka Carbon Monoxide.
dp says:
June 30, 2012 at 3:54 pm
Frank Kotler says:
June 30, 2012 at 2:44 pm
“The high CO2 concentrations in the soil on Mammoth Mountain are killing trees by denying their roots O2 and by interfering with nutrient uptake.”
http://pubs.usgs.gov/fs/fs172-96/
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Yeah, that’s the one. Thanks! I wasn’t implying that we are at any risk of doing this by burning fossil fuels – only that too much of a Good Thing can be a Bad Thing.
We had that gal, “Alice Alarmist” (not her name) who wanted to put Anthony in a room full of CO2… or CO… or one of those, you know… gasses. I’m not sure she understood the difference!
I have inhaled CO2 off the top of a beer-brewing crock. Quite trippy! I don’t know if you’d consider this a positive or a negative…
Reply to Robert Brown
Every plant so far studied has improved growth with additional CO2. Go to CO2 Science – they have hundreds of examples.
Removing CO2 from the atmosphere will limit photosythesis. We need more CO2 not less!
Jim Petrie
rgbatduke says:
June 30, 2012 at 2:14 pm
Most plant species evolved during times of much higher CO2 concentration. At the historical level of 280 ppm, they were near starvation. ( At about 100 ppm some species die).
One of the many risks of ice age — the low concentration of CO_2 in the last glaciation period was around 180 ppm. That really is getting too close for comfort, because before they die they fail to thrive… it is probably why we evolved plants that are more tolerant of low CO_2.
rgb
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The plants DNA is ready to respond to almost anything that can be thrown at it, as a survival strategy. So far so good.
Please repeat this experiment with phytoplankton and dissolved CO2.
I wonder what the effects of various concentrations of CO2 on human health are – everything else held constant. Like the Laffer Curve, somewhere between 0 ppm and 10^6 ppm there should be an optimal range for the majority of humans. Determining that would be quite difficult – not to mention the ethics involved.
So, what the heck is Setaria viridis? Green Foxtail is its common name, see http://www.illinoiswildflowers.info/grasses/plants/gr_foxtail.htm for a description.
It’s choice in the photo was likely due to it being a preferred study object for C4 photosynthesis, see http://www.plantcell.org/content/22/8/2537.short for an abstract of a paper extolling its virtues.
Greg House says (June 30, 2012 at 3:11 pm): “And Wood did not need to show that in an enclosed space convective heat loss is prevented, I guess everyone new that.”
Well, no again. Wood wrote in his “Note on the Theory of the Greenhouse”:
“There appears to be a widespread belief that the comparatively high temperature produced within a closed space covered with glass, and exposed to solar radiation, results from a transformation of wave-length, that is, that the heat waves from the sun, which are able to penetrate the glass, fall upon the walls of the enclosure and raise its temperature: the heat energy is re-emitted by the walls in the form of much longer waves, which are unable to penetrate the glass, the greenhouse acting as a radiation trap.”
So Wood himself didn’t think that “everyone knew that”, which was why he did the experiment. BTW, when I pointed this out on another board some years ago, one poster still insisted greenhouses depend primarily on the so-called “greenhouse effect”. The claim was even made here on WUWT: “The way an actual greenhouse works is by trapping infrared radiation.”
http://wattsupwiththat.com/climate-fail-files/gore-and-bill-nye-fail-at-doing-a-simple-co2-experiment/
So not everyone knew then, or knows now.
“He demonstrated that AGW concept won’t work, because “trapped radiation” produced nothing or next to nothing. Conduction and convection work, of course, but not ‘trapped radiation.’
It’s a long way from a greenhouse simulator to the real atmosphere. As Wood wrote, “I do not pretend to have gone very deeply into the matter…” BTW, people have repeated the Wood experiment, with variations. Nahle essentially confirms Wood
http://www.biocab.org/Wood_Experiment_Repeated.html
while Pratt does not:
http://boole.stanford.edu/WoodExpt/
That’s why I recommend doing Roy Spencer’s “Yes, Virginia” experiment. It’s a well-controlled and much less complex system than a real greenhouse or even a greenhouse simulator.
Frank, do some research on the mediacl affects fo CO2..
It is quite likely that what you sniffed off the top the brew contain a lot of other stuff apart from CO2.
CO2 in the air ONLY becomes an issue to humans when it starts to interupt oxygen transfer in the lungs. This is somewhere in the region of 10,000 ppm (iirc) ie 25 time the current atmospheric level.. It is NOT the CO2 that causes issues, it is the lack of oxygen transfer. Many other substances can also affect this oxygen transfer. eg smoke !
Too much of anything will kill you !!
The really informative part of the picture of C3 plants is not what happened in the right of the photo but what happened to the plants in the left part of the picture. Dead plants and stunted growth.
>>
rgbatduke says:
June 30, 2012 at 2:14 pm
. . . it is probably why we evolved plants that are more tolerant of low CO_2.
<<
I wasn’t aware that “we” had anything to do with C4 evolution.
Jim
Gary Hladik says:
June 30, 2012 at 6:37 pm
Greg House says (June 30, 2012 at 3:11 pm): “And Wood did not need to show that in an enclosed space convective heat loss is prevented, I guess everyone new that.”
Well, no again. Wood wrote in his “Note on the Theory of the Greenhouse”:
“There appears to be a widespread belief that the comparatively high temperature produced within a closed space covered with glass, and exposed to solar radiation, results from a transformation of wave-length, that is, that the heat waves from the sun, which are able to penetrate the glass, fall upon the walls of the enclosure and raise its temperature: the heat energy is re-emitted by the walls in the form of much longer waves, which are unable to penetrate the glass, the greenhouse acting as a radiation trap.”
So Wood himself didn’t think that “everyone knew that”, which was why he did the experiment.
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You quote you are referring to contradicts your “Well, no again”. Wood’s intention was to demonstrate, that the “a widespread belief” about “trapped radiation” is wrong. And, of course, everyone knows what happens if one opens the window in winter. If you difficulties to understand that, then ask yourself: did he compared a closed box to an open box? (No, he did not.)
_Jim says:
June 30, 2012 at 2:06 pm
Can anybody here hand-deliver a copy of this report to the head of the EPA (Lisa Jackson)?
.———————–
Not Lisa Jackson……..Mitt Romney!
Gary Hladik says:
June 30, 2012 at 6:37 pm
It’s a long way from a greenhouse simulator to the real atmosphere. As Wood wrote, “I do not pretend to have gone very deeply into the matter…” BTW, people have repeated the Wood experiment, with variations. Nahle essentially confirms Wood http://www.biocab.org/Wood_Experiment_Repeated.html while Pratt does not: http://boole.stanford.edu/WoodExpt/
That’s why I recommend doing Roy Spencer’s “Yes, Virginia” experiment. It’s a well-controlled and much less complex system than a real greenhouse or even a greenhouse simulator.
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First, selective quoting is not nice. Wood did not write just “I do not pretend to have gone very deeply into the matter…”, but he stated in a polite way: “…and publish this note merely to draw attention to the fact that trapped radiation appears to play but a very small part in the actual cases with which we are familiar.” And after that the AGW concept was dead and people were not taught the “greenhouse effect” at schools.
Second, the Wood’s opponents including Nobel laureate Arrhenius did not come up with another experiment to debunk the results of the Wood’s one. How Pratt got different results remains a mystery.
To the “Roy Spencer’s “Yes, Virginia” experiment”, is it possible that you forgot that it was not an experiment, it was a so called “thought experiment”?
And last but not least, Al Gore would have not presented his fake experiment (http://wattsupwiththat.com/climate-fail-files/gore-and-bill-nye-fail-at-doing-a-simple-co2-experiment/) if he had had a chance to debunk Wood by a genuine one.
_Jim says:
June 30, 2012 at 2:06 pm
“Can anybody here hand-deliver a copy of this report to the head of the EPA (Lisa Jackson)?”
You mean this Lisa Jackson that says “…..greenhouse gases are pollution”?
Greg House says (June 30, 2012 at 7:50 pm): “Wood’s intention was to demonstrate, that the ‘a widespread belief’ about “trapped radiation” is wrong.”
You left out the part about “within a closed space covered with glass, and exposed to solar radiation”, you know, like in a greenhouse. I think I’m beginning to understand the origin of the “greghouse effect”. 🙂
“If you difficulties to understand that, then ask yourself: did he compared a closed box to an open box? (No, he did not.)”
Well, no yet again. To demonstrate the small effect of “trapped radiation” relative to “trapped air”, it’s essential to trap the air, you know, like in a controlled experiment. The ambient air temp (the “open box”) is the control for convection, and the salt window is the control for radiation. In the experiment, trapped radiation had a minor effect compared to the major effect of trapped air in both boxes. QED for greenhouses, not for the atmosphere. 🙂
Incidentally, the Nahle experiment I referenced above uses an actual box with holes as his “open box” control.
Written in 2009 – some good answers above to some of my questions, thanks.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/01/30/co2-temperatures-and-ice-ages/#comment-79426
(Plant) Food for Thought (apologies – written too late at night)
Background:
http://www.planetnatural.com/site/xdpy/kb/implementing-co2.html
1. “As CO2 is a critical component of growth, plants in environments with inadequate CO2 levels – below 200 ppm – will cease to grow or produce.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_dioxide_in_the_Earth's_atmosphere
2. “The longest ice core record comes from East Antarctica, where ice has been sampled to an age of 800 kyr BP (Before Present). During this time, the atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration has varied by volume between 180 – 210 ppm during ice ages, increasing to 280 – 300 ppm during warmer interglacials…
… On longer timescales, various proxy measurements have been used to attempt to determine atmospheric carbon dioxide levels millions of years in the past. These include boron and carbon isotope ratios in certain types of marine sediments, and the number of stomata observed on fossil plant leaves. While these measurements give much less precise estimates of carbon dioxide concentration than ice cores, there is evidence for very high CO2 volume concentrations between 200 and 150 myr BP of over 3,000 ppm and between 600 and 400 myr BP of over 6,000 ppm.”
Questions and meanderings:
According to para.1 above:
During Ice ages, does almost all plant life die out as a result of some combination of lower temperatures and CO2 levels that fell below 200ppm (para. 2 above)? If not, why not?
Does this (possible) loss of plant life have anything to do with rebounding of atmospheric CO2 levels as the world exits the Ice Age (in combination with other factors such as ocean exsolution)? Could this contribute to the observed asymmetry?
When all life on Earth comes to an end, will it be because CO2 permanently falls below 200ppm as it is permanently sequestered in carbonate rocks, hydrocarbons, coals, etc.?
Since life on Earth is likely to end due to a lack of CO2, should we be paying energy companies to burn fossil fuels to increase atmospheric CO2, instead of fining them due to the false belief that they cause global warming?
Could T.S. Eliot have been thinking about CO2 starvation when he wrote:
“This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.”
Regards, Allan 🙂
P.S.
A possible explanation is that ice core CO2 is directionally correct but low in absolute terms due to CO2 diffusion.
Leaf stomata data shows much higher CO2 values – up to 60ppm higher for peaks and 30-40 ppm on average.
See Fig. 2 at http://www.pnas.org/content/99/19/12011.full.pdf
John Silver says:
But red “friends” demand just the opposite–people like Lisa Jackson, for example (apparently being “red” causes severe learning disabilities.)
Gary Hladik says:
June 30, 2012 at 8:52 pm
… The ambient air temp (the “open box”) is the control for convection, and the salt window is the control for radiation.
======================================================
Again, there was no open box to control convection or whatever in the Wood’s experiment.
Never mind, anyway, the essential point about trapped radiation will not go away.
Gary Hladik says:
June 30, 2012 at 8:52 pm
Greg House says (June 30, 2012 at 7:50 pm): “Wood’s intention was to demonstrate, that the ‘a widespread belief’ about “trapped radiation” is wrong.”
You left out the part about “within a closed space covered with glass, and exposed to solar radiation”, you know, like in a greenhouse. I think I’m beginning to understand the origin of the “greghouse effect”. 🙂
=======================================================
I guess too, that Arrhenius and others in the 19th century honestly believed in “trapped radiation” concept (it was not political back then) and simply extrapolated their (wrong) understanding of what is going on in the greenhouse to the atmosphere. They did not bother to check it, it was all “clear” to them. “Thought experiments”, probably. Things do not work this way, however.
By the way, another warmist Tyndall believed for a while in “cold radiation” decreasing (!) temperature.
Chas, thanks for the response. I love these discussions on this blog. So informative!
I really like the similarity between CO2 for plants and O2 for humans. From what’s been said, humans aren’t affected by CO2, but rather O2 concentrations. In submarines, they can have 30,000 ppm of CO2 and not be affected because they pump oxygen into their air. So even if you have high CO2 levels, it won’t harm you if the oxygen concentration is also bumped up to adequate levels. With plants, it’s the same thing if I understand correctly. They only care about the CO2 concentration, not the oxygen level or whatever else. This is great information to have and something you never hear on AGW sites.
Also, safe levels of CO2 is apparently 5000ppm assuming other factors remain the same. At 50,000ppm of CO2 for 30 min causes intoxication, and 5 minutes at 100,000ppm CO2 leads to unconsciousness.
AndyG55 says:
June 30, 2012 at 6:48 pm
Frank, do some research on the mediacl affects fo CO2..
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That’s what I was doing.
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It is quite likely that what you sniffed off the top the brew contain a lot of other stuff apart from CO2.
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No doubt…
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CO2 in the air ONLY becomes an issue to humans when it starts to interupt oxygen transfer in the lungs. This is somewhere in the region of 10,000 ppm (iirc) ie 25 time the current atmospheric level..
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I thought it was more than that – 4% or so…
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It is NOT the CO2 that causes issues, it is the lack of oxygen transfer. Many other substances can also affect this oxygen transfer. eg smoke !
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Don’t give me that “oxygen deprivation” guff. We get quite enough dangerous misinformation from the PDA (Partnership for a Drug-free America) on that.
The reason I stuck my snout in the crock in the first place was that I’d heard that CO2 was “interesting”. See:
http://www.erowid.org/chemicals/carbogen/carbogen_info1.shtml
Or better:
http://www.cognitiveliberty.org/shulgin/adsarchive/salvinorinA.htm
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Too much of anything will kill you !!
———————————–
I believe that was my original point! 🙂 (re: Mammoth Mountain)
Arbuscular mycorrhizae fungi respond to higher CO2 by increasing more in the soil layer deeper than 15 cm. The mycorrhizae mass bulks up with Carbon it gets from a plant & that Carbon on the move fosters availability of soil Nitrogen.
If the grown plant is an annual their relatively smaller root notably benefits from CO2 expanded mycorrhizae network increasing plants access to Phosphorus (P), since P isn’t too mobile in soil & might be out of reach of that plant’s own roots.
Field plants are often hosts to Endophyte fungi in plant tissue above ground & if these are around more Carbon is available for mycorrhizae to bulk up on. However, we can’t make a generalization the two always work out great in higher CO2 because some types of plants hosting both at the same time show the two interact poorly.
Still, some seed bearing grass-like plants hosting both endophytes & mycorrhizae will also produce more protein in seeds.
Pre-Cambrian super high CO2 legacy according to Canadian oncologist Mark D. Vincent (U. Western Ontario):
“Cancer cells are ancient alternative organisms, living protozoan-like fossils, foreign to their hosts because of deep origins elsewhere ….” (cancer cell resembles opisthokont, our uni-ciliated eukaryotic ancestors closely related to choanozoa )
“… encrypted cancer cells in modern genome is a competitive struggle between a battle-scarred ‘protozoan’ from the Pre-Cambrian era and its ‘normal’ metazoan phenotype.”
” In the body but no longer of the body”
“If an enterprising early cell ‘judged’ its metazoan was doing poorly, oncogenic reversion and host sacrifice could provide an escape from imminent death…. ”
” The universal traits exhibited by cancer cells represent the re-emergence of an ancient survival program.”
“… the environments within which cancer cells flourish … intolerably low oxygen and pH, resemble the Pre-Cambrian – dooming to failure therapies that closely resemble the same challenges cancer cells evolved to defeat ( i.e. radiation, antimetabolites) ….”
M. Vincent’s “Cancer: a de-repression of a default survival program common to all cells?: a life-history perspective on the nature of cancer” 2012 Abstract Quote =
Cancer … evolutionarily conserved life-form, rather than just a random series of disease-causing mutations ….
… traits, in all aggressive cancers = taxonomy (“phylogenation”), atavism (“re-primitivization”) and robustness (“adaptive resilience”)….
… not convergent evolution, but the release of an highly conserved survival program, honed by the exigencies of the Pre-Cambrian, to which the cancer cell seems better adapted; and which is recreated within, and at great cost to, its host.
Central to this program is the Warburg Effect, whose malign influence permeates well beyond aerobic glycolysis to include biomass interconversion and genomic heuristics.”
“””””…..Gary Hladik says:
June 30, 2012 at 6:37 pm
Greg House says (June 30, 2012 at 3:11 pm): “And Wood did not need to show that in an enclosed space convective heat loss is prevented, I guess everyone new that.”
Well, no again. Wood wrote in his “Note on the Theory of the Greenhouse”:……”””””
Also Gary, the wavelength shift ia not even successful in trapping the radiation. The glass itself heats due to both its absorption of solar energy Likely including some UV (high energy photons) and IR in the 1-4 micron range, and also from conduction and convection from the hot air inside. The hot glass in turn then radiates in the LWIR OUTSIDE the “greenhouse”, so it is not such an effective radiation trap.
Of course Woods’ experiment simply demonstrated that greenhouses do not heat by means of the “greenhouse effect” but by inhibition of atmospheric convection.
His work (in that case) is unrelated to the atmospheric “greenhouse effect”, which also doesn’t quite work as claimed; but the physics of H2O , O3, and CO2 warming of the atmosphere by (temporary) radiant energy capture, is well established.
What is in my view unproven is the extent of surface “heating” from atmospheric LWIR radiation.