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posted by cmn32480 on Saturday November 12 2016, @09:48PM   Printer-friendly
from the rethinking-deforestation dept.

Plants temporarily halted the acceleration of rising carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere, new research suggests.

From 2002 through 2014, CO2 levels measured over the oceans climbed from around 372 parts per million to 397 parts per million. But the average rate of that rise remained steady despite increasing carbon emissions from human activities, researchers report online November 8 in Nature Communications. After pouring over climate measurements and simulations, the researchers attribute this steadying to changes in the relative amount of CO2 absorbed and released by plants.

The work is the first to clearly demonstrate that plants can affect the growth rate of atmospheric CO2 over long time periods, says study coauthor Trevor Keenan, an earth systems scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California. Still, human emissions remain the dominant driver of CO2 levels, he says. "If we keep emitting as much as we are, and what we emit keeps going up, then it won't matter very much what the plants do."


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  • (Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday November 13 2016, @02:33PM

    by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Sunday November 13 2016, @02:33PM (#426248) Journal

    Because, our dear and fluffy khallow, you did not provide any citations of any scientific studies that would suggest any such thing.

    The obvious rebuttal is that I don't have to. The current story plus my reasoning is sufficient.

    Argumentum ad Ignorantiam.

    The obvious rebuttal is that we were speaking of your high level of confidence in a particular assertion. An observation of ignorance of where CO2 is going indicates your confidence is misplaced. It is appropriate for the situation. Many such fallacies are appropriate arguments misapplied to situations where they are not appropriate.

  • (Score: 2) by aristarchus on Monday November 14 2016, @01:34AM

    by aristarchus (2645) on Monday November 14 2016, @01:34AM (#426405) Journal

    An observation of ignorance of where CO2 is going indicates your confidence is misplaced.

    You observed a lack of knowing? Interesting. I don't know how you could have done that.

    It is appropriate for the situation.

    Unproven. Are we actually in the same situation?

    Many such fallacies are appropriate arguments misapplied to situations where they are not appropriate.

    Technically, you are correct. But here you have fallen pray to the Fallacy fallacy! Just because something is an inappropriate accusation of a fallacy does not mean it is still not a fallacy, just as not knowing where CO2 is going does not constitute a refutation of anthropogenic global warming. This is why you need to do more than the "maybe you're wrong" thing here. Because maybe you're wrong! So we need hard proof, evidence, data, peer-reviewed papers, you know, science!

    • (Score: 1) by khallow on Monday November 14 2016, @08:13AM

      by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Monday November 14 2016, @08:13AM (#426457) Journal

      Technically, you are correct. But here you have fallen pray to the Fallacy fallacy! Just because something is an inappropriate accusation of a fallacy does not mean it is still not a fallacy, just as not knowing where CO2 is going does not constitute a refutation of anthropogenic global warming. This is why you need to do more than the "maybe you're wrong" thing here. Because maybe you're wrong! So we need hard proof, evidence, data, peer-reviewed papers, you know, science!

      And you are correct here. But I am patient and willing to wait for those arguments which aren't fallacies with evidence that is actually evidence.

      What I think is going on is that climate change happens on a longer time scale than human debate does. Advocates for global warming mitigation have exhausted their arguments, and pushed the boundaries of the viability of their data and predictions. Now we wait for sufficient confirming evidence to support their assertions.

      Normally, that would be good enough, like for advocates of Drake's equation arguing about the existence of intelligent life elsewhere in space that might want to communicate with us. No matter how much we speculate on existence of extraterrestrial life, we won't understand it until we find it. So we wait and listen.

      But certain parties want action now. And when you want action now, but won't have valid arguments to support that action for at least decades to come, that's when the fallacies appear. And I think it's exacerbated by a considerable industry which is currently spending a very large amount of public funding and which needs to justify that spending on an ongoing basis. Big Oil isn't the only part of the world with gobs of money. Nor does Big Oil fund most climate researchers.

      My view is that anthropogenic global warming is likely on long enough time frames and large enough emissions of CO2 that we will have serious global warming and ocean acidification problems, and eventually will require some sort of mitigation and adaption strategies. But the problem is rather that climate change is far from our only problem and thus, its resolution is far from the only thing we need to do.

      Advocates tend to ignore that current efforts to mitigate have been to a great extent, failures. They have failed both to directly reduce green house gases emissions and have failed in that they make worse problems worse, such as global poverty (which among other things is a considerable driver for both overpopulation and green house gases emissions).

      They also ignore that costs are greatly overstated and often caused by other problems. For example, global warming could make species extinctions worse, but a world with adequate wild habitat (and channels between habitat to allow species migration, perhaps assisted by humanity too) and moderately uncontrolled global warming (what we appear to be heading for, let us note) would do better than a world without that habitat and no climate change.

      Similarly, global warming could make current arable land less arable. But again, global warming plus a responsible agricultural and water use approach is going to do better than no global warming plus poor use and management of agricultural resources.

      In the majority of cases where global warming is alleged to be a great danger to us, it is actually some other problem that is the real danger. Solving that other problem even in the presence of global warming is invariably better than solving global warming, but not addressing the greater problem.