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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."
(Score: 0, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 13 2016, @01:35AM
We already KNEW that plants absorb CO2. We can conclude that healthy plant life will absorb a lot of CO2, and unhealthy plant life will not. More, it's easy to conclude from already known and pretty obvious facts that REFORESTATION would go a long, long, LONG way toward wiping CO2 out of the atmosphere.
Two things, however, remain unknown. One, who is this "we" that Runaway keeps referring to? Two, how far is a long, LONG way and would it make even the slightest dent in the amount of CO2 that humans pump into the atmosphere? Since
How about this: I don't know what's going on, and most of my conclusions are just uneducated guesses. Everytime a guess proves to be inaccurate, I are left grasping at straws to explain WHY to all those people who no longer pay any attention to me.
That whole Nuke/desalination thing will just have to wait a bit longer. Perhaps you could plant a tree? Oh, but then there is this:
Let's plant people, trees!. Let's plant Clintons and Bushes, and reap the Trump!.
Sorry for the misquotes. I think it was an excess of Greenhouse Gases and the totally expected quality of the comment. But at least now you have some straw in the form of a nice strawman!
(Score: 1) by butthurt on Sunday November 13 2016, @04:59PM
Runaway1956> We already KNEW that plants absorb CO2.
Anonymous Coward> One, who is this "we" that Runaway keeps referring to?
In the Wichita Falls (Texas) Independent School District, the topic is taught to fifth-grade students.
http://www.wfisd.net/cms/lib/TX01000557/Centricity/Domain/2582/5_Sc_Unit09_L4_Carbon_Dioxide_Oxygen_Cycle.pdf [wfisd.net]