Global Warming, Green House Effect
Posted by Thomas Woelfel on April 24, 2007
Q: Although global warming sounds ominus, would it be possible to use the Green House Effect to reverse some of the negative effects we will experience. Don't plants tend to grow better and thrive in greenhouse environment. Plants absorb significant quantities of carbon from the atmosphere as they grow. What if scientists could forecast otpimal areas and conditions where plants could be selectively over-planted to take advantage of this greenhouse effect. In theory couldn't this rapid plant growth absorb even more carbon from the atmosphere,in effect counteracting future CO2 build up?
State: New York
A: I'm no climate expert but from what I've been able to understand from the literature, this is how I can best answer your question.
Your thinking makes a lot of sense on the surface but this issue is quite complex so what may seem logical (more atmospheric CO2 seems like it would stimulate plant growth and therefore reduce concentrations of CO2 in the atmosphere) doesn't necessarily work. In fact, it may actually decrease carbon retention in plants according to a study at Stanford: "an unprecedented three-year experiment conducted at Stanford University is raising questions about that long-held assumption. Writing in the journal Science, researchers concluded that elevated atmospheric carbon dioxide actually reduces plant growth when combined with other likely consequences of climate change — namely, higher temperatures, increased precipitation or increased nitrogen deposits in the soil."
As I understand it, the fact that global patterns of temperature and rainfall are changing around the world, is confusing the whole issue of what can and will grow in a given area. Keep in mind too that the bulk of the world's plant life is found in the oceans and not on land. Furthermore, most of the world's arable land is already under cultivation with people and technology invested in a given area that probably can't move readily. Granted, seems like we could at least be planting more trees but it appears that our CO2 emissions are continuing to spiral upward at an alarming rate that no "planting strategy" can deal with in the short term. I'm a big fan of conservation as a good start but this isn't what many want to hear so it seems many other avenues will be tried first. Granted, no single strategy is going to work but conservation in many forms should be a good start, in my opinion.
I'm sharing two web sites you may want to check out but you should be able to find many other sites that address global warming and plant growth.
Thanks for your question and I hope this provides a wee bit of an answer to this peril we all face.
John Wiessinger ( April 25, 2007)