Free Republic

Plants and CO2:

It is true that plants sequester CO2 (including aquatic life, with simple sea plankton and algae being a major carbon sink). Because of the increased levels of CO2 we are actuall seeing a slight increase in growth rates in individual trees and plants. Problem is though, we're cutting down most of the trees. So there's fewer of them to fix the carbon out of the air (bare dirt and farmland provide almost no carbon sequestration).

Making the problem worse is we are losing a lot of forest to slash and burn in the tropics, releasing all the carbon they've stored up.

You are right. Plants do absorb CO2, and they will continue to do so, and the rates of sequestration for an individual plant will increase and adjust to higher CO2 levels. And, if pressed I believe any scientist will even tell you that we will reach a balance at some point to where CO2 output will be equal to CO2 sequestration (so that levels will steady and no longer increase). But such a balance will still leave us with higher atmospheric levels of CO2 than we have currently. This will still result in a warmer planet.

We're not talking about the end of the world here. But we are talking about the *changing* of the world. Specifically we are talking about the warming of the planet, a warming that we can measure even today, a warming that is already causing species that can to migrate to higher latittudes, a warming that we already know is mostly human caused.

This is a warming that may result in some benefits, such as longer growing periods in some areas. But also a warming that will mean desertificatoin of some places and mass flooding of others as sea levels rise.

No, the world wont end. But massive climate change on a global scale is no small matter either.

Understanding that plants absorb CO2 is a small (but important) piece of a much larger and mildly more complex picture.

A reply to the talk that Water Vapor renders CO2 irrelevant, 4 things:

1. Water vapor may be a greenhouse gas, but it is not seeing an anthropogenic (human caused) rise like CO2 is. We are seeing human caused global warming. It is being caused by CO2, regardless of CO2's makeup of the total greenhouse gasses.

2. Water Vapor being a major constituent of greenhouse gasses actually compounds CO2's effect. A small rise in temperature from CO2 will raise evaporation rates and the air's ability to hold water vapor. This increased amount of water vapor will in turn raise temperatures a bit more, resulting in.. more water vapor. Thus the effect of CO2 is much greater than the heating effect of CO2 alone.

3. It is most likely that the 5% is by weight, and well, water is heavy.

4. The amount of something speaks nothing to the effect of something. By mass, seawater is only something like 3% salt. But damn, it tastes salty. If you say CO2 doesn’t matter because it only makes up 5% of the total greenhouse gasses, then I encourage you to drink all the seawater you want, its only 3% salt after all.

Hope this made sense, it was somewhat off the cuff.