60 percent of Likely Voters Agree “Climate Change Has Become a Religion.” “Climate change has become a religion that ‘actually has nothing to do with the climate’ and is really about power and control.”

submitted by Chipit from thenewamerican.com

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[–][deleted] 4 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 0 fun5 insightful - 1 fun -  (11 children)

What do you have against plants? More C02, more food.

[–]ActuallyNot 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (10 children)

Plants get nutrients from the soil, in the vast majority of cases. CO2 doesn't give them more food. That would be fertilizer.

[–][deleted] 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (9 children)

Bigger plants means more food for us, nigger

[–]ActuallyNot 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (8 children)

I would think that too if I didn't know anything about it.

The reality is nutritional value of many food crops drops under high CO2 environment, and while warming opens up arable land in Russia and Canada, most of the world suffers in food production from droughts, flooding, erosion, and salination.

Furthermore changing climate changes the crops that are viable, so farmers in the underdeveloped world also need education about changing crops and even practises to avoid increasing famine, even without the floods and droughts.

All that aside, CO2 is not plant food. Plants still get their nutrients from soil.

[–][deleted] 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (7 children)

You seem to be jumping the gun with your less nutritious conclusion. Furthermore, you must consider that increased yields most likely will negate this potential negative impact.

"But what if you get a bigger plant that has a lower protein content? It'll actually be less nutritious." It's too early to say for certain whether plants face a low-protein future, Walker said. But the new research brings up surprising questions about how plants will make and metabolize amino acids -- which are protein building blocks -- with more carbon dioxide around.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2022/12/221222162410.htm

[–]ActuallyNot 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (6 children)

You seem to be jumping the gun with your less nutritious conclusion.

No that's been measured. It's just not understood:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1360138522002473

Furthermore, you must consider that increased yields most likely will negate this potential negative impact.

"Just eat more"?

A lot of people only eat when they're hungry. A lot of animals eat at their capacity. Reduced nutrition would be bad for both.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2022/12/221222162410.htm

Interesting paper. But it doesn't imply that plants will be more nutritious, nor that the answer to that is eat more.

And in either case natural disasters and loss of arable land will dominate before we see 3°C of warming. And is dominating now in parts of the world nearer the equator.

[–][deleted] 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (5 children)

Okay, I concede this point. Increased C02 may be bad for critical food plants in some aspects such as nitrogen uptake.

[–]ActuallyNot 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (4 children)

Thanks, being-poisoned. Your openness to taking on board information does you credit as does the ego-less way you do it. It's also kind of surprising here.

There are other direct effects of increased CO2 too. Woody plants tend to accelerate growth less than non-woody plants. So you get an imbalance in ecosystems favouring vines, which include parasitic plants. Vines use climate change to catch a ride on the trees

Some plants respond to increased CO2 by reducing the size and/or number of stomata. This increases drought-resistance but also decreases transpiration: Why Does Amazon Precipitation Decrease When Tropical Forests Respond to Increasing CO2?

But most of the ecological destruction comes via the greenhouse effect.

[–][deleted] 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (3 children)

You still have to balance all of these negatives with increased yields for some or most plants. Tons of greenhouse growers intentionally boost the C02 levels up to 1000 or 1200ppm. I'm personally not worried about this, plants can be selectively bred over time as they naturally adapt to higher C02 levels. Or we will adopt new crops or new species of crops that handle higher C02 better.

It just seems like hubris to me to say 350ppm is the be all end all answer forever, and that we must control the atmosphere at all costs to maintain this C02 level. We will never have a magic climate control switch that has zero unintended consequences.

[–]ActuallyNot 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

Tons of greenhouse growers intentionally boost the C02 levels up to 1000 or 1200ppm.

Growth will be limited by water, soil nutrients, sunlight or CO2. When there's enough of the other 3, increasing CO2 will increase growth (and deplete soil nutrients more rapidly). If you've got a greenhouse in a sunny area, and you're going through a lot of fertilizer, you will have more production. The economics would be more against if you were paid for nutritional value and not weight.

It won't help most farmers as much, as soil fertility is the most common limiting factor in an agricultural situation.

It just seems like hubris to me to say 350ppm is the be all end all answer forever, and that we must control the atmosphere at all costs to maintain this C02 level.

If we lose 80% or 90% of the planet's biodiversity we lose a huge resource too.

But technology certainly will help agriculture. It's the low tech farmers of Africa and South East Asia who will starve on mass first.

They've been doing it in waves since climate change started to bite in the 80s.