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    Default CO2: It’s Got What Plants Crave

    So we’re approaching a point in my province - I won’t say which one - where an up-and-coming political leader is a big fan of this old notion: plants need electrolytes carbon dioxide and therefore manmade carbon dioxide is good for plants.

    I’m not a climate scientist, biologist or any kind of expert, but common sense tells me that humans are generating more CO2 than the world’s plant life can sustain. Some cursory research turned up an article on a Stanford research project that basically determined the same thing while also noting that increasing temperatures are harmful to plant life.

    https://www.theguardian.com/environm...ood-for-plants

    Since, as I noted, this is going to be a thing in local politics, I just want to ask a question: is there any newer, better research I should be aware of that refutes the ‘CO2 is plant food’ argument?
    Last edited by Giggling Ghast; 2018-04-04 at 03:10 PM.

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    Default Re: CO2: It’s Got What Plants Crave

    Quote Originally Posted by Giggling Ghast View Post
    So we’re approaching a point in my province - I won’t say which one - where an up-and-coming political leader is a big fan of this old notion: plants need electrolytes carbon dioxide and therefore manmade carbon dioxide is good for plants.

    I’m not a climate scientist, biologist or any kind of scientist, but common sense tells me that humans are generating more CO2 than the world’s plant life can sustain. Some cursory research turned up an article on a Stanford research project that basically determined the same thing while also noting that increasing temperatures are harmful to plant life.

    https://www.theguardian.com/environm...ood-for-plants

    Since, as I noted, this is going to be a thing in local politics, I just want to ask a question: is there any newer, better research I should be aware of that refutes the ‘CO2 is plant food’ argument?
    Basic Logic? Plants do need CO2, yes, but they also need other things, like sunlight and water. Increasing the availability of one resource is not necessarily going to do anything for the plants, in the same way that giving a dehydrated person a hamburger wont help them much.
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    Default Re: CO2: It’s Got What Plants Crave

    Quote Originally Posted by Keltest View Post
    Basic Logic? Plants do need CO2, yes, but they also need other things, like sunlight and water. Increasing the availability of one resource is not necessarily going to do anything for the plants, in the same way that giving a dehydrated person a hamburger wont help them much.
    Or, to put it another way, too much of a good thing is bad. We need water to live, but can die of water poisoning if we drink too much.
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    Default Re: CO2: It’s Got What Plants Crave

    Ask him if he orders The Challange at the local steakhouse every meal to save money. No doggybags, eat it or pay. Then get him to admit there's such thing as too much of a good thing.

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    Default Re: CO2: It’s Got What Plants Crave

    Quote Originally Posted by Peelee View Post
    Or, to put it another way, too much of a good thing is bad. We need water to live, but can die of water poisoning if we drink too much.
    I know that logically, but I wanted to make sure there wasn’t anything up-to-date and scientific I should be citing.

    I just came across someone who insisted “forests breath CO2; ever hear of photosynthesis!!!!” So this is a common belief among a certain crowd, apparently.
    Last edited by Giggling Ghast; 2018-04-02 at 10:50 PM.

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    Default Re: CO2: It’s Got What Plants Crave

    Quote Originally Posted by Giggling Ghast View Post
    I know that logically, but I wanted to make sure there wasn’t anything up-to-date and scientific I should be citing.

    I just came across someone who insisted “forests breath CO2; ever hear of photosynthesis!!!!” So this is a common belief among a certain crowd, apparently.
    Well, it is scientific (and it sounds more sciency if you call it water toxemia or hyperhydration), but I see what you mean. It's just hard to hear, "forests breath CO2!" and not immediately respond with, "and we breathe oxygen, but oxygen poisoning is a thing!"
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    Default Re: CO2: It’s Got What Plants Crave

    Quote Originally Posted by Giggling Ghast View Post
    I just came across someone who insisted “forests breath CO2; ever hear of photosynthesis!!!!” So this is a common belief among a certain crowd, apparently.
    Oh dear, and the statement just shows how little they know.
    Technically forests (and 99% of plants - it depends on your definition of plant) breathe Oxygen, the same thing the other 99% of life on this planet breathes. The twist is they "eat" carbon dioxide, though only when exposed to sunlight.

    *I was going to say some more, but then I realised I was crossing the line into politics. Folks please be very careful when you say in this thread and stick to the science.*

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    Default Re: CO2: It’s Got What Plants Crave

    Also take in account that pollution often produces a lot of nasty stuff besides CO2. CO for starters is a lot harder for plants to "eat", and stuff like the different NOx compounds and acid rains are bad news for plants and people all around.

    Although depending on your point of view, oxygen is plain out poisonous for most primitive forms of life and was indeed pretty rare in molecular form in the first days of Earth.

    It's the ancient algae and blue bacteria that first developed photosynthesis that saturated the seas and atmosphere with O2, and basically every form of life that couldn't hide in the deepest darkness (where you can'd do photosynthesis because no light) had to find a way to use O2 or die.
    Last edited by deuterio12; 2018-04-03 at 01:42 AM.

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    Default Re: CO2: It’s Got What Plants Crave

    To some degree they're actually correct--more CO2 does encourage plant growth. However, as already pointed out, there's a limit to how much of the stuff plants can absorb, and with the actual amount of CO2-absorbing plants being reduced for reasons that would be political to go into, we can't rely on this to compensate for the amount of the stuff we're putting into the atmosphere.

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    Default Re: CO2: It’s Got What Plants Crave

    Argument #44 from Skeptical Science: "CO2 is plant food!"

    Here are their replies: https://skepticalscience.com/co2-plant-food.htm

    The Basic response is "Too much of a good thing is a bad thing."

    The Advanced Response is "The effects of enhanced CO2 on terrestrial plants are variable and complex and dependent on numerous factors."

    Both responses have an article following them giving additional details.

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    Default Re: CO2: It’s Got What Plants Crave

    Quote Originally Posted by Lord Torath View Post
    Argument #44 from Skeptical Science: "CO2 is plant food!"

    Here are their replies: https://skepticalscience.com/co2-plant-food.htm
    Oh, nice! It's like Talk Origin's List of Creationist Arguments, but for Climate Science! Thank you for bringing this to my attention.

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    Default Re: CO2: It’s Got What Plants Crave

    Huh. Saving that link for later.
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    Default Re: CO2: It’s Got What Plants Crave

    Quote Originally Posted by factotum View Post
    To some degree they're actually correct--more CO2 does encourage plant growth. However, as already pointed out, there's a limit to how much of the stuff plants can absorb, and with the actual amount of CO2-absorbing plants being reduced for reasons that would be political to go into, we can't rely on this to compensate for the amount of the stuff we're putting into the atmosphere.
    Yes. Plant growth has actually increased in many areas.


    I think the OP might be better off telling their political leader/s that fossil fuels are getting more expensive and solar/wind are getting cheaper. Investing in a failing industry is rarely a smart economic move.

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    Default Re: CO2: It’s Got What Plants Crave

    Whether or not more CO2 is good for plants (and it's a mixed bag there, with total biomass going up but there being some weird things happening to anatomy and biochemistry of certain plants) it's clear that despite plants eating it atmospheric concentrations are still going up, and the problems associated with that are still happening.

    It might be good for plants overall, but it's not good for us.

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    Default Re: CO2: It’s Got What Plants Crave

    There's some real potential here to breed crops that take advantage of higher CO2 levels to grow faster and to require less water. The outcome is likely to be more environmentally friendly food production.
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    Default Re: CO2: It’s Got What Plants Crave

    CO2 is great for plants, this is a well known fact and many green houses actually pump CO2 into the house to make plants grow faster.

    There are no direct refutations for that. However they need the temperature to be below the boiling point of water. Because when the sea becomes so acidic that it no longer absorbs but emits CO2 then that is precisely what will happen.
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    Default Re: CO2: It’s Got What Plants Crave

    Quote Originally Posted by Mastikator View Post
    However they need the temperature to be below the boiling point of water. Because when the sea becomes so acidic that it no longer absorbs but emits CO2 then that is precisely what will happen.
    I'm at a loss to parse these two sentences. Care to elaborate?
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    Default Re: CO2: It’s Got What Plants Crave

    Quote Originally Posted by Rockphed View Post
    I'm at a loss to parse these two sentences. Care to elaborate?
    I assume he means that global warming will eventually reach a runaway point where it can't be stopped, and once it does that plant life is all doomed.

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    Default Re: CO2: It’s Got What Plants Crave

    Photosynthesis is a temperature constrained reaction. Other factors being equal, photosynthesis is optimized between 10 and 20 C (50-68 F) and efficiency drops thereafter because the enzymes loss efficacy (Rubisco, for instance, binds more frequently with oxygen instead of CO2 at higher temperatures). At 40 C (104 F) the enzymes themselves start to break down and photosynthesis rapidly drops to zero. Essentially, any persistent temperature above 40 C prevents photosynthesis and therefore plant growth. This isn't universal, many desert plants utilize CAM photosynthesis and conduct carbon fixation at night when temperatures are cooler. C4 plants (which includes many grasses and notably corn) have an alternative photosynthesis pathway and anatomical structure that is temperature resistant but will still fail at extreme temperatures.

    So essentially, as global temperatures increase more and more regions are going to have long periods where they regularly break the 40 C barrier and consistent photosynthesis becomes impossible. This has the potential to dramatically reduce arable land globally and cause massive biome change towards deserts. Plant life will survive this sort of thing - the Cretaceous Thermal Maximum remains significantly warmer than all but the most extreme global warming projections - but the global agriculture system probably would not.
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    Default Re: CO2: It’s Got What Plants Crave

    Quote Originally Posted by Mechalich View Post
    Plant life will survive this sort of thing - the Cretaceous Thermal Maximum remains significantly warmer than all but the most extreme global warming projections - but the global agriculture system probably would not.
    I think this is where a lot of laymen throw up their hands in disgust. On the one side, we have people who categorically claim that "higher temperatures will doom the earth!" While on the other, we can point to warmer periods in Earth's history (some even in human history depending on exactly how we calculate things like the Roman and Medieval warm periods), when life not only survived, it thrived. The problem with the first is that it is generally people in the media who don't actually understand what they are talking about. The second makes no guarantees about what sort of life survives and thrives. In 10 million years all life might be descended from cockroaches and moss. Okay, as far as it goes that is unlikely, but we cannot say what will survive. Ultimately, saying "global warming will heat up plants to the point that they cannot do photo-synthesis during the hottest parts of the day" is a much more reasonable thing to worry about than "global warming will make the oceans boil."
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    Default Re: CO2: It’s Got What Plants Crave

    CO2 is indeed consumed by plants, which would be fine if we weren't getting rid of plants at a relatively extreme rate.

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    Default Re: CO2: It’s Got What Plants Crave

    I actually do think that we worry too much about carbon dioxide emissions, but only because doing a good job according to one or two indicators -- even when they aren't cherry-picked for political reasons -- is not the same thing as doing a good job. When you fixate on CO2 emissions, you end up ignoring or undervaluing all of the other ways we can make a mess of our environment.

    With global warming specifically, I always thought the problem was a combination of releasing trapped carbon dioxide into the atmosphere while also destroying trees and other plant life that would help to remove it.
    Last edited by lesser_minion; 2018-04-07 at 04:43 AM.

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    Default Re: CO2: It’s Got What Plants Crave

    Quote Originally Posted by lesser_minion View Post
    When you fixate on CO2 emissions, you end up ignoring or undervaluing all of the other ways we can make a mess of our environment.

    With global warming specifically, I always thought the problem was a combination of releasing trapped carbon dioxide into the atmosphere while also destroying trees and other plant life that would help to remove it.
    Well, fundamentally that still makes the basic issue CO2, doesn't it? Whether you attack that by reducing emissions, or by planting trees to try and extract more from the atmosphere.

    Having said that, your first point is definitely correct. We've spent the last 15-20 years encouraging people to buy diesel-engined cars because of their lower CO2 emissions, without considering all the other stuff that a diesel car kicks out that a petrol one doesn't--especially NOx emissions, which are far more harmful for the local environment than CO2 is even if it's not as big a problem globally.

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    Default Re: CO2: It’s Got What Plants Crave

    On the effects on agriculture, there's more to it than what it does to plants. Farm workers have been dying of kidney failure from working in hotter temperatures than the human body can adapt to. Even if the affected areas's plant life is still thriving, they're becoming harder to use as farmland.

    It's been happening in all warm countries, but was first studied in Central and South America:
    https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4974898/
    Note that proper hydratation would help prevent the kidney failure effects, but for politically-charged reasons South American farm workers can't take breaks whenever they need, so "just drink more" isn't an immediate working solution.

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    Default Re: CO2: It’s Got What Plants Crave

    Quote Originally Posted by factotum View Post
    Well, fundamentally that still makes the basic issue CO2, doesn't it? Whether you attack that by reducing emissions, or by planting trees to try and extract more from the atmosphere.
    In the case of global warming specifically, yes, although if your indicator is the amount of carbon you've emitted then cutting down a tree only "costs" the energy you used in so doing -- ignoring the CO2 it might have absorbed if left alone.

    Even if you did account for all of that in your global warming indicators, you'd still be ignoring all of the other ways that removing trees can affect sustainability. Trees provide food and habitats to a lot of potentially-useful insects and animals, and IIRC they can also help to protect against soil erosion, which is itself an enormous threat to agriculture.
    Last edited by lesser_minion; 2018-04-07 at 10:36 AM.

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    Default Re: CO2: It’s Got What Plants Crave

    Quote Originally Posted by lesser_minion View Post
    In the case of global warming specifically, yes, although if your indicator is the amount of carbon you've emitted then cutting down a tree only "costs" the energy you used in so doing -- ignoring the CO2 it might have absorbed if left alone.

    Even if you did account for all of that in your global warming indicators, you'd still be ignoring all of the other ways that removing trees can affect sustainability. Trees provide food and habitats to a lot of potentially-useful insects and animals, and IIRC they can also help to protect against soil erosion, which is itself an enormous threat to agriculture.
    From what I understand, the tree itself actually stores a considerable amount of carbon, which gets released when you chop it down and process it.
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    Default Re: CO2: It’s Got What Plants Crave

    Quote Originally Posted by Keltest View Post
    From what I understand, the tree itself actually stores a considerable amount of carbon, which gets released when you chop it down and process it.
    Depends on what you do to process it or dispose of it. Burning it releases pretty much all of the CO2 it absorbed in life. Turning it into pencils or solid wood furniture, less so, since they're still mostly long strains or carbon.

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    Default Re: CO2: It’s Got What Plants Crave

    Quote Originally Posted by Grey_Wolf_c View Post
    Depends on what you do to process it or dispose of it. Burning it releases pretty much all of the CO2 it absorbed in life. Turning it into pencils or solid wood furniture, less so, since they're still mostly long strains or carbon.
    In the case of furniture then you can probably assume the carbon is going to remain sequestered for a good long while, since people don't usually burn furniture unless it's broken beyond repair, but I wonder what the life cycle of a pencil is? All those pencil shavings going into the bin are presumably bound for landfill, where they'll rot down and get turned back into CO2 quite quickly.

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    Default Re: CO2: It’s Got What Plants Crave

    Quote Originally Posted by Keltest View Post
    From what I understand, the tree itself actually stores a considerable amount of carbon, which gets released when you chop it down and process it.
    I'm really just commenting on how simple-looking statistics can be misused when dealing with complicated systems. I'm not a sustainability expert, so the specific examples I gave for this scenario could easily be off, and it's entirely possible that the carbon credit stuff is closer to the mark than I'd expect it to be.

    That said, as Grey_Wolf_c said, it depends on what you do with the tree after cutting it down. If you crush it into pellets and burn it as fuel then you'd release most of the carbon back into the atmosphere -- although I imagine that that carbon would be attributed to whatever you needed the energy for. If you turn it into a chair then the 'cost' in carbon terms would presumably just be the energy you used to do that.

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    Default Re: CO2: It’s Got What Plants Crave

    Quote Originally Posted by Giggling Ghast View Post
    ...I just came across someone who insisted “forests breath CO2; ever hear of photosynthesis!!!!” So this is a common belief among a certain crowd, apparently.

    In a world with billions of people it's not surprising that someone somewhere believes most anything.
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