From the the “Children won’t know what weeds are (h/t to Dr. David Viner) and the we must make more CO2 to save the plants” department, comes this out of left field.
From the University of Georgia: Continued destruction of Earth’s plant life places humans in jeopardy, says UGA research
Athens, Ga. – Unless humans slow the destruction of Earth’s declining supply of plant life, civilization like it is now may become completely unsustainable, according to a paper published recently by University of Georgia researchers in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
“You can think of the Earth like a battery that has been charged very slowly over billions of years,” said the study’s lead author, John Schramski, an associate professor in UGA’s College of Engineering. “The sun’s energy is stored in plants and fossil fuels, but humans are draining energy much faster than it can be replenished.”
Earth was once a barren landscape devoid of life, he explained, and it was only after billions of years that simple organisms evolved the ability to transform the sun’s light into energy. This eventually led to an explosion of plant and animal life that bathed the planet with lush forests and extraordinarily diverse ecosystems.
The study’s calculations are grounded in the fundamental principles of thermodynamics, a branch of physics concerned with the relationship between heat and mechanical energy. Chemical energy is stored in plants, or biomass, which is used for food and fuel, but which is also destroyed to make room for agriculture and expanding cities.
Scientists estimate that the Earth contained approximately 1,000 billion tons of carbon in living biomass 2,000 years ago. Since that time, humans have reduced that amount by almost half. It is estimated that just over 10 percent of that biomass was destroyed in just the last century.
“If we don’t reverse this trend, we’ll eventually reach a point where the biomass battery discharges to a level at which Earth can no longer sustain us,” Schramski said.
Working with James H. Brown from the University of New Mexico, Schramski and UGA’s David Gattie, an associate professor in the College of Engineering, show that the vast majority of losses come from deforestation, hastened by the advent of large-scale mechanized farming and the need to feed a rapidly growing population. As more biomass is destroyed, the planet has less stored energy, which it needs to maintain Earth’s complex food webs and biogeochemical balances.
“As the planet becomes less hospitable and more people depend on fewer available energy options, their standard of living and very survival will become increasingly vulnerable to fluctuations, such as droughts, disease epidemics and social unrest,” Schramski said.
If human beings do not go extinct, and biomass drops below sustainable thresholds, the population will decline drastically, and people will be forced to return to life as hunter-gatherers or simple horticulturalists, according to the paper.
“I’m not an ardent environmentalist; my training and my scientific work are rooted in thermodynamics,” Schramski said. “These laws are absolute and incontrovertible; we have a limited amount of biomass energy available on the planet, and once it’s exhausted, there is absolutely nothing to replace it.”
Schramski and his collaborators are hopeful that recognition of the importance of biomass, elimination of its destruction and increased reliance on renewable energy will slow the steady march toward an uncertain future, but the measures required to stop that progression may have to be drastic.
“I call myself a realistic optimist,” Schramski said. “I’ve gone through these numbers countless times looking for some kind of mitigating factor that suggests we’re wrong, but I haven’t found it.”
###
The study, on “Human Domination of the Biosphere: Rapid Discharge of the Earth-Space Battery Foretells the Future of Humankind,” will be available online at http://www.pnas.org/content/early/recent the week of July 13.
Meanwhile, apparently unnoticed by these researchers, Earth’s Biosphere is booming (thanks to all that added CO2 from the industrial revolution).
Science at work.
If only someone would invent plants that regrow.
Oh, my… Where to begin…
First of all, most carbon has been fixed as calcium carbonate in rocks… not by the existing bio-mass..
Worldwide, crop yields have increased roughly 80% since the 1980’s, with a large percentage of that increase attributable to increased CO2 levels since the 1950’s (perhaps 25%)… How is that a bad thing? We need LESS farmland to feed a growing population.
Moreover, the remaining balance of increased crop yields can be attributed to increased use of cheap fossil-fuel based fertilizers and rapid advancements in fossil-fuel run farm equipment…
A HUGE amount of deforestation occurs where humans are still using trees for fuel OR land reclamation by burning forests to grow bio-fuel crops…
The Earth is suffering from a LACK of atmospheric CO2. At the end of last glaciation period, CO2 levels fell to 170ppm, which is just 20ppm away from photosynthesis shutting down and all life on Earth going extinct. We should be ecstatic that man’s fossil fuel consumption has helped increased CO2 levels and led to the fastest: economic, medical, scientific and technological growth in human history… but, alas…
The only countries that have rapidly growing populations are those that have not embraced capitalism and individual freedom. Show me a country with exploding population and/or abject poverty and I’ll show you a country with very low economic freedom and individual rights:
Here is a list of lowest annual per capita incomes vs. economic freedom ranking (out of 178 countries ranked)
Somalia: $133/yr— #177
Malawi: $242/yr— #126
Burundi: $336/yr— #132
Central Africa Republic: $378/yr— #166
Gambia: $422/yr — #113
Niger: $440/yr—#128
Congo: $475/yr– #168
The faster economically depressed countries embrace free-market capitalism and less government control, the faster foreign investment will flow into these countries and allow economic development and the importation and/or development of cheap fossil fuels, leading to rapid economic expansion. These poor countries will NOT be saved by foreign countries shipping them free food. Lack of food is merely the result of other fundamental socio-economic causes.
Additionally, in advanced countries, the more free-capitalism is replaced by government controlled economies, the deeper in debt the world will become and the slower the growth of: technological, economic and standards of living will be…
We need not fear fossil fuels or CO2, we need to fear government excess and control.
Fossil fuels will gradually be replaced by new energy technologies that are better, cheaper, cleaner and virtually unlimited when it makes economic sense to do so. Governments are absolutely AWFUL at picking winners and losers.
CO2 gas,
One of nature’s best tools,
We need more of the stuff,
But insanity rules!
http://rhymeafterrhyme.net/the-integrity-of-real-science/
The “battery” metaphor is a throwback to the old “end oil” idea that got started in the 1970s. it is an anachronism. Today we live in a world flush with fossil fuels and in an era of falling oil prices.
While it is true that deforestation has probably decreased the total biomass on Earth, this depletion is much less than what happens naturally during ice ages when forests are reduced to a remnant of what is present during interglacials. And of course they regrow as soon as conditions improve.
This is yet another innocent who does not understand that the Second law of thermodynamics only applies to isolated systems. And the Earths biosphere isn’t isolated as long as we have that big yellow thing in the sky.
I was wondering when someone would mention how the growth of continental ice sheets wipes every last ounce of biomass off of the surface, and the drier air decreases biomass a bunch more in other places.
And then it all grows back very quickly when the ice melts.
This clown knows less Earth history than my cat.
The question is, what is the annual biomass gain of; a) an acre of trees, and b) an acre of crops.
The OCO2 satellite also gives an indication of vegetation coverage via solar induced chlorophyll fluorescence .
The latest installment of data is expected soon I believe , so the results may confirm or refute the warnings about biomass loss.
Incidentally , what happened to IBUKI , the previous CO2 measuring satellite launched by Japan . I have not seen any mention of results from that here (but have not checked WUWT archives yet) and only became aware of it from NASA’s OCO2 website.
This is pure unmitigated tosh
It is quite true that estimates of total living biomass have been reduced down from 1000 billion tonnes to 700 billon tonnes however that is because the original estimates were wrong NOT because the quantity has declined.
See http://phys.org/news/2012-08-biomass-life-planet-earth.html
Not content with displaying reading skills that would shame a 10 year old the author clearly does not even understand the basic terminology. Biomass consists of LIVING organisms NOT the dead fossil forms such as coal, oil or dead carbonate deposits like the white cliffs of Dover.
Biomass is NOT always destroyed when land is used for agriculture. The use of intensive cultivation methods actually increases the quantities of biomass available. The main loss of biomass in recent years has in fact due to the barmy green policy of felling forests to act as fuel rather than burning coal.
“You can think of the Earth like a battery that has been charged very slowly over billions of years,” said the study’s lead author, John Schramski, an associate professor in UGA’s College of Engineering. “The sun’s energy is stored in plants and fossil fuels, but humans are draining energy much faster than it can be replenished.”
Membership of the Association of Consensus Climate Scientist requires the following initiation ritual to all applicants. A small hole is drilled in the top of the applicant’s skull, into which a large knitting needle is inserted most of its length. The needle is then rotated and stirred vigorously for about one minute.
Umm – professor – exactly what good does it do the human race, or biosphere, for fossil fuel to be LEFT IN THE GROUND?? Especially when CO2 starvation is the likely mode of extinction of life on earth?
https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-00297542/document
If more plant life is needed – up on the surface that is where it makes a difference – then why not fertilize the growth of said plants by remobilizing the otherwise wasted fossil carbon?
Schramski is channeling Paul Ehrlich.
Is Paul Ehrlich dead yet?
According to his own predictions he should have died 4 or 5 times already.
phlogiston:
His books proclaim that Paul Ehrlich believes in extrapolation as an indicator of the future. All his predictions have proven to be wrong, but he continues to adhere to his belief that extrapolation is an indicator of the future.
Extrapolating his predictive success indicates that Ehrlich would not die if were to predict his demise. You say
Clearly, his predictions of his demise are a strategy he has devised for him to live for ever.
Richard
Paul Ehrlich is evidently still alive and full of apocalyptic blarney:
http://news.stanford.edu/news/2015/june/mass-extinction-ehrlich-061915.html
/Mr Lynn
… in Europe wood farming is becoming more profitable than grain farming.
Atmospheric carbon dioxide is the elixir of life. It is the primary raw material out of which plants construct their tissues, which in turn are the materials out of which animals construct theirs. This knowledge is so well established, in fact, that we humans – and all the rest of the biosphere – are described in the most basic of terms as carbon-based life forms.
(Extract from “The Many Benefits of Atmospheric CO2 Enrichment” – The Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change)
Eh? I thought that mankind had planted more plant-life than any other species since the dawn of animal life. Why blame the agrarians? Surely the culprit is not enough CO2 – a problem which we are slowly rectifying.
Just one problem. Corn is a C4 plant. If we are cornfused, it is with good reason. We have surpassed the Anasazi as the corn people.The isotopes can be measured in our bodies. C4 plants need far less CO2 and fractionate 12C far less than the less ice age adapted tropical forest.
“You can think of the Earth like a battery that has been charged very slowly over billions of years,” said the study’s lead author, John Schramski, an associate professor in UGA’s College of Engineering. “The sun’s energy is stored in plants and fossil fuels, but humans are draining energy much faster than it can be replenished.”
This simile reminds me of another: “Analogies are like ropes. They tie things together very well, but you can’t make much progress if you push them.”
Thermodynamically, this argument has more flaws than a freshman engineering project.
PNAS is publishing this paper. HAHAHAHAAAAAA
Sunshine +H2O +CO2 + Minerals = O2 +Sugars(food)
http://phe.rockefeller.edu/docs/Nature_Rebounds.pdf
http://tinyurl.com/op293dl
Sorry but deforestation is a distraction for the UN in the CO2 political campaign and vote rigging. It would amount to a two-front war and fracturing of the wealth redistribution push. Get real.
Ah, so we’re the culprit because – as stated so eloquently by Captain Yellowbeard: “Killin’ plants!”
With garbage can science like this, he’d better get accustomed to the “associate” professor title.
That’s must be tough, Schramski, but perhaps this will cheer you up.
Here’s what humans have done with deserts (other than putting solar panels and mirrors to cover the land)
https://www.google.com/search?q=desert+farming+circles&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0CAcQ_AUoAWoVChMI84aBu6vexgIVUy6ICh3tegKM&biw=1366&bih=633
–Scientists estimate that the Earth contained approximately 1,000 billion tons of carbon in living biomass 2,000 years ago. Since that time, humans have reduced that amount by almost half. It is estimated that just over 10 percent of that biomass was destroyed in just the last century.–
I assume the “biomass” is things like coal and oil, otherwise it’s simply wrong.
Of course if it’s meant to include oil and coal, part of biomass include hydrogen- as in hydrocarbons.
Now if you want to just focus of carbon in terms of “biomass”, then limestone would also be biomass- and if include limestone and sedimentary rock there a lot more than 1000 billion tons of that:
“Together all sedimentary rocks on Earth store 100,000,000 PgC.”
http://globecarboncycle.unh.edu/CarbonPoolsFluxes.shtml
So that is 100,000 times more than 1000 billion tons
And also if counting coal/oil as biomass, why count methane Hydrates in the Ocean- there is CO2
connected to such deposits but people generally interested in the Methane involved, so just count the C in the CH4 of methane, wiki say estimate is about 500 to 1000 billion tons of carbon.
Please come and destroy some of my plant life. I work too many hours and can no longer keep up with it. The inevitable reforestation is nearly to a certain pain point, guaranteeing hump busting heck when I finally do get around to it.
During the last ice age and mini ice age, even in Australia the amount of tree coverage was lessened. It was worse in the Northern Hemisphere. Quite honestly Anthony and fellow skeptics, I think it is matter with academics, ‘publish’ or go. Doesn’t matter what they publish, so long as it gets published. They are becoming a big yawn.
If we had no plants, grasses being the biggest group, we’d have no oxygen. Unless it came in a tank, like in hospital wards.