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"rises by nearly one third" sounds a bit strange to me, more correct would be "Plant CO2 uptake is currently underestimated by one third according to new research"?
> The research, detailed in the journal Nature, is expected to improve Earth system simulations that scientists use to predict the future climate, and spotlights the importance of natural carbon sequestration for greenhouse gas mitigation.
Too bad that we are currently doing the exact opposite (cutting down more forest than is regrown)...
Not everywhere, between 2000 and 2020, 36 countries managed to get more tree cover than they lost, so we "just" need to expand this practice.
https://research.wri.org/gfr/forest-extent-indicators/forest...
> Even though the world gained 130.9 Mha of tree cover between 2000 and 2020, it still lost much more, with an overall net loss of 100.6 Mha. While the global numbers report a negative trajectory, there are distinct regional patterns or “hotspots” of net gain. At least 36 countries gained more tree cover than they lost over the 20-year time period. As a continent, Europe gained 6 million hectares of tree cover by 2020. Asia also had a large proportion of countries with net gain, particularly in Central and South Asia. The drivers of much of this gain (for example, what proportion is due to intentional restoration interventions versus land abandonment) are still difficult to determine using the available data, but are a key area for future research. Additionally, even though tree cover gain is occurring in many places, it doesn’t “cancel out” the impacts of loss. Primary forests in particular serve as critical carbon stores and support an intricate network of wildlife, none of which can easily be replaced once lost.
At least in the UK woodland cover is increasing. It was 3% back in 1900~ and today it stands at about [13%][0]. The aim in the UK is to be at 15% woodland and tree coverage by 2050 – quite achievable.
I currently teach woodland management and arboriculture (I also run a weird hybrid business doing software and arboriculture) in the UK and the idea that we cut down more than we plant is a common misconception that I spend a lot of time (and I mean a lot of time) correcting with the public and general layperson. Felling trees for forestry purposes requires a felling license[1], which always comes with a re-stocking clause.
As for urban green infrastructure (basically private and municipal trees and hedges), that comes with it's own issues, and there's a lot of wins to be had there but there are also lots of challenges. I know the Arboricultural Association in the UK are doing some great work here to advocate for finding ways to retain private and municipal trees whilst managing risk to the public (the main reason trees are normally removed second only to "aesthetic").
Biodiversity Net Gain (BNG) is also a thing in the UK which broadly translates to ensuring that any private building works or developments must now have a demonstrable positive effect on local biodiversity and where that's not possible, then developers can "offset" by commissioning biodiversity projects elsewhere. For example, I've just taken delivery of 1200 trees (oak, hazel) today, which will be planted into semi-ancient woodland that I manage.
So basically the idea that we're cutting down forest ahead of what can restock isn't accurate, in fact in the UK at least, it is quite the opposite.
A good news story for you.
[0]: https://www.forestresearch.gov.uk/tools-and-resources/statis....
[1]: unless it is a) less than five cubic metres in a twelve week period (basically "thinning" woodland so that other trees have room to grow / habitat improvement for priority habitats). b) a private tree without a preservation order/ fruit tree, c) diseased or dying or d) a suitably high risk to public safety.
> Too bad that we are currently doing the exact opposite (cutting down more forest than is regrown)...
Carbon is captured when trees grow. Lumber binds carbon into buildings and constructions.
> Too bad that we are currently doing the exact opposite (cutting down more forest than is regrown).
This is not true. Sustainable forestry practices have been increasing forest coverage for some time now.
Are there any good charities that buy up green land for the sake of not doing anything to it? From what I've read of carbon capture economics, it seems a frillion times more effective to simply not chop down more forest compared to investing in carbon capture (though I'm not saying we shouldn't do both)
Underestimated by one quarter! A factor of 4/3 or 3/4.
I think they mean the global CO2 uptake from plants is 30% higher overall not that a single plant is able to uptake 30% more than the estimated before.
Even though more CO2 pressure in the atmosphere increases also the potential uptake in a plant.
>Too bad that we are currently doing the exact opposite (cutting down more forest than is regrown)...
Hmm, anyone has data on this? I've seen many people claiming the opposite of that opposite.
> Too bad that we are currently doing the exact opposite (cutting down more forest than is regrown)...
"Plants" is not a synonym for "trees". There are grasslands that are significant carbon sinks - even farmland managed in the right way can be a carbon sink . The oceans (which have a notable lack of trees) are a major carbon sink (although this paper is not talking about this, if I understand the abstract correctly).
There are plants in the ocean that man will have trouble to cut down.
Earth isn’t the same kind of living organism as man, but it’s an organism just like AI isn’t the same intelligence as that of man’s, but it is intelligence.
Ok, we've made the estimates rise in the title above. Thanks!
As I understand the article; it’s not that we found out that they’ve _started_ absorbing more CO2; it’s that the previous estimations were flawed and we have new, improved ones.
Isn’t this common knowledge among plant growers anyway? Plants can easily enjoy a co2 ppm of 1000+ in a greenhouse for faster growth. Photosynthesis involves an exchange of co2 to oxygen
https://extension.okstate.edu/fact-sheets/greenhouse-carbon-....
Not clear from the linked article. Did you see something else?
NPP is probably increasing as it's been observed for years now that the earth is net greening in response to rising CO2
Interesting that a couple of months ago there was an article which stated the exact opposite:
> In 2023, the hottest year ever recorded, preliminary findings https://arxiv.org/pdf/2407.12447 by an international team of researchers show the amount of carbon absorbed by land has temporarily collapsed. The final result was that forest, plants and soil – as a net category – absorbed almost no carbon.
> “We’re seeing cracks in the resilience of the Earth’s systems. We’re seeing massive cracks on land – terrestrial ecosystems are losing their carbon store and carbon uptake capacity, but the oceans are also showing signs of instability,” Johan Rockström, director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, told an event at New York Climate Week in September.
> “Nature has so far balanced our abuse. This is coming to an end,” he said.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/oct/14/nature-c...
Not exactly. The headline is a bit misleading imho: the article doesn't say that CO2 uptake by plants is up by 31%, rather that new estimates of the CO2 uptake by plants is 31% higher than previous estimates. That doesn't preclude a temporary collapse of carbon absorption (related mostly to forest fires as far as I can tell).
That's not the opposite. It's different context.
This is interesting to know, but easy to overstate IMO.
Back of the envelope number is 10 kg of CO2 absorbed per maturing tree and year (for ~20 years).
This means you would need to plant almost 1000 trees for each person (assuming roughly US/EU emission level) to compensate for current emissions only, every 20 years. That just seems infeasible to me, and a factor of 30% is not gonna change this significantly.
Renewables + electrification seems much more realistic, when countries like France are already under 5 tons CO2/year/person by relying on carbon-free electricity (US is at 15!).
But it's still nice to know because at least planting/conserving trees apparently helps even more than expected...
> This means you would need to plant almost 1000 trees for each person (assuming roughly US/EU emission level) to compensate for current emissions only, every 20 years. That just seems infeasible to me
That’s 50 trees each year for each person, or, in the USA, about 17 billion trees, for a total new forest of 340 billion trees.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/20... says the USA has about 280 billion trees, so we’d ‘only’ have to grow that by 120%. That would grow forest in the USA from about 33% to about 75% of land area.
Infeasible, but not completely impossible, I would think, from a ‘could we do it?’ viewpoint. ‘Is there a decent chance we’ll do that?’ probably has the answer “no”, though. For the USA, I guess cutting combining forestation with decreasing energy usage would be the easier option.
there are also organisms in water:
> On a global scale, oceans and other water bodies absorb approximately 25-30% of the CO₂ emitted by human activities each year. This absorption occurs primarily through two mechanisms:
> - Physical Dissolution: CO₂ dissolves in water and reacts to form carbonic acid, bicarbonate, and carbonate ions.
> - Biological Processes: Aquatic organisms, especially photosynthetic ones, play a significant role in capturing and sequestering CO₂.
>used new models and measurements to assess GPP from the land at 157 petagrams of carbon per year, up from an estimate of 120 petagrams established 40 years ago and currently used in most estimates of Earth’s carbon cycle
>One petagram equals 1 billion metric tons, which is roughly the amount of CO2 emitted each year from 238 million gas-powered passenger vehicles.
this sounds pretty significant. Any particular reason why it hasn't been updated for the last 40y?
Impressive, yes. Important? Absolutely. Significant? Not really.
It's a useful datapoint in understanding the Earth's carbon cycle, but that's all - and it in no way changes the fact that the sum total of current human activity is dragging that cycle out of equilibrium by about 2.5-3ppm per year, or 8-10%ish per decade.
If it has been underestimated then that means climate models have been using the bad, underestimated data, so they need to be updated and run to see where we are at, corrrect?
No. Climate scientists did not base all of their current models on a 1980 study about how much CO2 trees can technically absorb.
No because we aren't reliant on a model of atmospheric CO2 concentration. We directly measure it.
We know that soils seem to absorb less carbon as plant absorb more [0].
It's fascinating to see all those studies improving our limited understanding of the biosphere.
> Plants the world over are absorbing about 31% more carbon dioxide than previously thought, according to a new assessment developed by scientists.
So that means our supposed CO2 problem is 31% smaller than we previously thought?
Unfortunately this doesn't mean much for the practical problem, because most of that uptake is is dumped into the atmosphere again when the plant dies and rots.
It's like we've got a bathtub where the water level is rising, because we won't turn off the tap and the drain is only so big. We can lower the apparent water-level by throwing in a bunch of plant-sponges, but we can't just keep adding more indefinitely.
This kind of change is deeply worrying, because on the face of it, it implies means estimates of climate change are potentially rather unsound - such large changes in mechanisms central to change - and so climate change could be much worse than we expect.
If climate change isn't so bad, then phew, but if it's actually worse, then we are in even more deadly trouble than we already are.
We could plant, cut down and burn trees for the energy, in a circle, and keep carbon levels in our atmosphere the same, instead of digging up new carbon from the ground and burning it. We will have to bury carbon back under the ground at some point.
If trees are doing more work then we estimated in simulations, then good/bad, as we cut down forest we are doing more damage.
But also, since trees do more work than we thought, then planting more will have bigger impact than past estimates.
> Pan-tropical rainforests accounted for the biggest difference between previous estimates and the new figures, a finding that was corroborated by ground measurements, Gu said. The discovery suggests that rainforests are a more important natural carbon sink than previously estimated using satellite data.
And yet, we stand by on the sidelines while narco, wood and cattle organized crime cartels contaminate, log and burn down the rainforests.
IMHO, at least the endangered rainforest belts should be placed under international supervision with a joint military cooperative on a shoot-to-kill order against these kinds of criminals. Think of an UN Blue Helmets mission, but not as a toothless "peacekeper corps" like the usual useless bullshit. The very ability of Earth to provide for human life hinges to a significant part on the continued existence and health of the rainforest ecosystem, and it is obvious now that many of the countries in which these forests lie are fundamentally incapable of maintaining this shared resource.
Ok guys, this climate change stuff is temporarily off the menu until we win the great power AI war with China. Same goes for nuclear power. Send the memo out that we love nuclear power now after 40 years of hating it.[1]
[1] https://www.ft.com/content/96aa8d1a-bbf1-4b35-8680-d1fef36ef...
It feels like we can never catch a break. If we do something like underestimate the amount of CO2 plants absorb it still does nothing to change our fate.
Is there anything in our climate models that if we got wrong would drastically reduce the estimated severity of long term impacts from climate?
Maybe we should pay for working greening efforts - aka artifical algea blooms ontop of the Marianna trench.
Iron, phosphates, Air pumps and light transmitted into the depths where the growthcube rises.
Have a rainforest fall into the depths forever every hour.
I thought I'd read in the past that an uptake in C02 for plants/trees (and therefore faster growing) results in a weaker structure which doesn't stand up to the environment as well as slower growing trees.
What does that mean for all the existing simulations that use the "wrong" values?
BTW: are there any open source climate models/simulations?
CO2 is food for plants
Ah the greening earth FUD spread by big oil circa 2000s
HN is playing all the greatest hits of denialism this week!
So perhaps the alarmist climate models were incorrect and most be corrected before they are used to shape public policy?
Too bad we are currently too busy scaling up wars all over the place to bother with the planet state.
Perfect. More fodder for the anti-science idiots to prove how clean air isn't a big deal.