“Another thing we saw was that while the trees in the high CO2 plots tended to have more leaves and tended to be growing faster, because of their greater leaf area, they dried out the soil faster, so between rainstorms, they went into drought condition earlier and stayed there longer.”
The paper in Ecology Letters emphasized, furthermore, that experiments in other environments had found an even more transitory effect, or none at all. Unfortunately, scientists can’t really say how much of the world’s biomass will fall into each category as the world warms, said Schlesinger, who is now president of the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies, an independent nonprofit research center in Millbrook, New York. As far as the fossil carbon being absorbed by forests is concerned, however, “the general feeling now is that while some of that is being driven by a fertilization effect, the bigger effect is actually regrowth of forests on abandoned agricultural land” and other areas where trees have been cleared.
“There aren’t many global greeners running around the way the Idso brothers [Craig and Sherwood] are,” Schlesinger said. “One of them was quoted in that New York Times article. They’ve been saying for years that the CO2 is the best thing for planet Earth—plants will grow abundantly, crops will be overflowing and, you know, it’ll be the Garden of Eden.”
Lamentably, we won’t be getting any more data from Duke’s forest. Its project closed down in 2010; along with a couple other sites, it was part of the Department of Energy-sponsored Free Air Carbon Dioxide Enrichment (FACE) program. Other FACE experiments continue worldwide, however, including one at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee, which drew coverage from the NBC affiliate in Knoxville this summer (unfortunately, rather than explain the work’s import, WBIR-TV pursued an anodyne angle about career development for college students).
Scientists consider the open-air design of FACE projects an improvement upon older, controlled-environment, chamber-based experiments. More research in wider variety of environments to understand what a warmer world will affect forests, however. It would be useful to study carbon enrichment in the tropics, for example, Schlesinger said, but the project are logistically complicated and expensive to run.
Ecologists David Lobell and Christopher Field recently published a paper in Global Change Biology expanding upon the challenges associated with developing good experimental designs for studying the fertilization effect. And for background reading on forests and carbon, it’s worth checking out the publications of Dr. Yiqi Luo at the University of Oklahoma.
These sources contain more details than are likely to find their way into most news stories, but reporters should be bear them in mind for the next time a source tries to tell them that CO2 is just plant food.
Agreed that it was a great piece by Gillis.
However, I would have loved to see him dig into the question of whether the vast monocultures of lodgepole pine were already a symptom of man. I've read that heavy clearing from mining in the late 1800s, followed by massive fires, created the ideal environment for pine to take over the mountains. I'm uncertain what evidence supports that; it could be overstated. If true, though, it would complicate his narrative -- are the more diverse forests expected to replace the pine a change for the better?
#1 Posted by Paul V., CJR on Thu 6 Oct 2011 at 01:09 PM
Jeezo Flip...
More speculative pseudoscientific garbage trotted out to prop up the commie "global warming" nonsense...
I recently caught a National Geographic special parroting this crapola... A bunch of ecologists were climbing the sequoias in California searching for proof that global warming will do in the sequoias by drying them out...
The question that wasn't asked?
Mr. Ecologist Guy, since these trees not only survived, but flourished, during hundreds of years of the elevated temperatures of the Medieval Warm Period... Why do you think they won't be able to handle the slighter temperature increase predicted by the AGW models?
HUH?
Crickets chirping.....
Now these commies are actually propounding the ridiculous notion that warmer temperatures and increased CO2 concentrations will kill plants...
Yeah... That's why commercial greenhouses use elevated temperatures and elevated CO2 concentration... To kill plants....
SUCH stupidity!...
#2 Posted by padikiller, CJR on Thu 6 Oct 2011 at 03:29 PM
The sequoias .... that a great point Pad. Speaking of which, and perhaps Mr Brainard can answer this, with respect to ocean acidification, how do scientist know what ocean pH levels were 300 years ago to three significant digits? I can’t even buy a pH probe that will measure past 2 significant digits.
#3 Posted by Mike H, CJR on Thu 6 Oct 2011 at 04:24 PM
The "CO2 as plant food" concept and its part in the belief that global warming might be good for forests are statements I've seen mentioned more than once but never taken apart (as here). Thanks for bringing in other scientists to expand on the NYT coverage. The CO2 fertilization effect could use much more such discussion and explanation in feature and news stories (in my opinion).
#4 Posted by Sue B., CJR on Thu 6 Oct 2011 at 05:49 PM
Good heavens, this is a tough line from CJR. I can hardly think of any article I have ever written that could not be criticised by someone saying "Great piece, but you did not mention X." I doubt many of us could. In any case, the NYT's principal problem is massive ponderousness and self-importance, the weakness which NewsCorp has spotted and is trying to exploit by making the WSJ livelier. Making out that a 4500-word piece should have contained even more than it does anyway is not helping!
#5 Posted by Martin Ince, CJR on Fri 7 Oct 2011 at 03:39 AM