So more CO2 comes out at the end of the season than was taken in? I thought the CO2 taken in by plants was used to make sugars and oxygen with a smaller amount of CO2 exhaled mostly at night.
I don’t know about CO2 but rice paddies are a major source of methane gas, and methane is worse for global warming than CO2.
Much of China’s “decrease in emissions” was from switching from constant watering to periodic watering of the rice crop. Of course, this means you use chemicals to kill weeds instead of water, but it does cut down greenhouse gas emissions....and the western press didn’t read between the lines and assumed they cut their industrial use of dirty coal. Duh.