Guest essay by Eric Worrall
h/t Howard “Cork” Hayden – According to New York Times all the commercial greenhouse growers who artificially elevate CO2 in greenhouses to more than double natural atmospheric levels are making a terrible mistake, because increased CO2 does not produce better crop yields.
‘Global Greening’ Sounds Good. In the Long Run, It’s Terrible.
Rising carbon dioxide levels are making the world greener. But that’s nothing to celebrate.
By Carl Zimmer
July 30, 2018
“Global greening” sounds lovely, doesn’t it?Plants need carbon dioxide to grow, and we are now emitting 40 billion tons of it into the atmosphere each year. A number of small studies have suggested that humans actually are contributing to an increase in photosynthesis across the globe.
Elliott Campbell, an environmental scientist at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and his colleagues last year published a study that put a number to it. Their conclusion: plants are now converting 31 percent more carbon dioxide into organic matter than they were before the Industrial Revolution.
…
While photosynthesis does pull carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere, much of that gas goes right back into the air. The reason: At night, the chemical reactions in plants essentially run backward. In a process known as respiration, plants pump out carbon dioxide instead of pulling it in.
“Part of the story is that photosynthesis is going up, and part of the story is that so is respiration,” said Dr. Campbell.
While the increase in photosynthesis is greater than that of respiration, the ultimate benefit to crops has been small — and it doesn’t explain our modern agricultural revolution.
“The driving factor has to be the fertilizers, the seed varieties, the irrigation,” Dr. Campbell said.
…
Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/30/science/climate-change-plants-global-greening.html
That “small” benefit is lucrative enough that commercial greenhouses burn tons of natural gas every year, discard the heat, and feed their crops with the CO2 produced by burning the gas, using devices like the Johnson CO2 generator.
Even the Canadian Government advises CO2 be elevated to 800-1000ppm in greenhouses, to increase photosynthesis by up to 50%.
To be fair to Dr. Campbell current atmospheric levels of around 400ppm are far lower than what the Canadian government advises for improved crop yields. So perhaps the natural effect is currently too small, we need to push a lot more CO2 into the atmosphere to realise the full benefits.
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The net effect of photosynthesis has to be to reduce CO2 in the atmosphere – as shown by the down trend at Mona Loa during the northern hemisphere growing season?
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The reason: At night, the chemical reactions in plants essentially run backward. In a process known as respiration, plants pump out carbon dioxide instead of pulling it in.
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Let’s see, the percentage of oxygen in the atmosphere is about 21%. The percentage of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is about 0.04%. The action of photosynthesis is far out performing both animal and plant respiration. That also includes the CO2 output of volcanoes, fires, and decomposition. This is much ado about nothing.
Jim
NASA LAI Satellite shows the planet is ~25% greener since the ’80s. That is no small effect, that is huge. Since 1900 then it is arguable that man made CO2 has added 30% to crop yields, with the rest being fertilisers, seed varieties etc.
Dana Nuccitelli also tried this anti science bollocks.
“While photosynthesis does pull carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere, much of that gas goes right back into the air. The reason: At night, the chemical reactions in plants essentially run backward. In a process known as respiration, plants pump out carbon dioxide instead of pulling it in.”
Yes, all the CO2 needed to grow the plant is retained, and respiration is balanced out more or less, the plant does not release the CO2 it consumed to grow. Everyone and his dog knows plants reverse respiration in day\night cycles. Why is this news?
More NYT fake news, this is fake, because the journalist only had to get a second opinion from an actual scientist, not the idiot they quoted, who must surely be a halfwit for claiming something that is patently false, to get the factual scientifically proven information.
NYT produces so much untruth it beggars belief
That’s pretty insane. He should talk to some Dutch people. LMAO.
And as an aisde AFAIK plants do not respirate CO2 at night at anywhere close to same levels as they take in during the day.
It appears that the editor of the NYT doesn’t know his photosynthesis from his respiration. An arts graduate, I guess.
I don’t want to call this ‘Fake News’. This MAY be a paid story. With this negative level of critical thinking, it looks like a rant.
Right. The author had a negative POV and gathered facts and opinions to support it. It’s a polemical piece, not a balanced report of the effects of CO2 on plant growth.
“At night, the chemical reactions in plants essentially run backward. In a process known as respiration, plants pump out carbon dioxide instead of pulling it in.”
Remember when the Amazon Rain Forest was the “Lungs of the Planet”?
“While photosynthesis does pull carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere, much of that gas goes right back into the air. The reason: At night, the chemical reactions in plants essentially run backward. In a process known as respiration, plants pump out carbon dioxide instead of pulling it in.”
He had better tell that to the people planting trees as Carbon Offsets.
Respiration is cellular metabolism. Plant or animal.
Cellular metabolism operates as long as the cell is alive, 24 hours a day.
It’s just the cell living it’s life.
Plants don’t die at night, respiration does not reverse at any time.
Carbon dioxide is the result of cellular respiration, that reaction never stops.
The chloroplast is a discrete cellular organ that contains the photosynthesis apparatus.
Chlorophyll is the crucial component that can operate only in sunlight, during the day.
During the time when the chloroplast is creating sugar, it is removing CO2 from its surrounding cell, yet the surrounding plant cell is also respiring CO2. The two cellular reactions are fully capable of operating simultaneously.
Take a look at those photos again. Those trees were grown in controlled conditions, with only CO2 the variable. The more CO2 the more growth. CO2 is always (amost) one of the limiting parameters in plant growth, from algae to sequoias. Sometimes water is a limiting material. Sometimes a mineral, such as nitrogen or iron or boron is a limiting material in plant growth. Sometimes the ambient temperature is a limiting parameter. It’s just how things grow.
When “Dr. Campbell” writes that adding CO2 to the air is not a significant contributor to better plant growth, he is making a claim unsupported by overwhelming observed knowledge from a century of plant science. Agricultural crops are increasing yield due to added CO2, along with the other improvements in farming practice, and genetics.
http://sealevel.info/ScientificAmerican_1920-11-27_CO2_fertilization.html
Here’s a quick quiz:
Can anybody spot the subtle NYTimes leftwing bias slight-of-typing from the two excerpt below?
.
.
“A number of small studies have suggested that humans actually are contributing to an increase in photosynthesis across the globe.”
“A number of studies indicate that plants that grow in extra carbon dioxide often end up containing lower concentrations of nutrients such as nitrogen, copper and potassium.”
.
(here’s a hint: It’s been known for probably 5 years now about the CO2 effect on global vegetation. I’ve just heard about the lower nutrients from CO2 in the last couple of months)
.
.
On a side note, if anybody thinks that these left-wing activist scientists got together at some point in the past and brainstormed ways to find bad reasons for the greening of the earth from CO2, go to the head of the class.
(And I bet dollars to doughnuts that these ‘scientists’ have gotten together many times in the past and looked for ‘science’ reasons to dismiss skeptic talking points.)
Here’s a few excerpts from a Science Nordic article regarding a study published in the scientific journal Nature Ecology and Evolution. It says that the CO2 induced greening of Africa is having a positive effect on the climate:
“Thirty six per cent of the continent has become greener, while 11 per cent is becoming less green.
The results show that not all is lost for Africa’s nature, say the scientists behind the new research.
“Our results are both positive and negative. Of course it’s not good that humans have had a negative influence on the distribution of trees and bushes in 11 per cent of Africa in the last 20 years, but it doesn’t come as a complete surprise,” says co-author Martin Brandt from the Department of Geosciences and Natural Resource Management at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark.
“On the other hand it’s not all negative as an area—three times larger than the area where trees and bushes are disappearing—is becoming greener, which is positive, at least from a climate point of view,” he says.”
It’s actually quite simple: the tree, including leaves and roots, is the sum total of all the CO2 collected by the leaves, transformed into carbon compounds after the oxygen molecules are separated from the carbon, the entire process mediated by a large ” infusion ” of sunlight energy.
When the wood is burned, that energy is released, the carbon molecules are rejoined to oxygen ones, the newly formed CO2 released into the air, ready to be caught by a green leaf to restart the entire process.
So some Co2 caught in daylight is released at night. Nothing is perfect.
At last, a discussion about the important thing: Life. Yes, more life means more respiration.
Nobody ever notices that Michael Mann’s “science” hockey stick was a COMPLAINT that tree rings were growing. Trees are growing! We’re all gonna die!
The NY Times again publishes an attack on science, leaving out every major article on the subject, including The Green of the Earth paper in Nature Climate Change in April 2016: ”, Nature Climate Change (online 25 April 2016): DOI: 10.1038/NCLIMATE3004. http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/v6/n8/full/nclimate3004.html and https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-36130346
Small error, in the next to last paragraph, the report is published by the government of Ontario, Canada.