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164 points bikenaga | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0.2s | source
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woliveirajr ◴[] No.45398184[source]
"Tree trunks in the Amazon are getting 3.3% thicker every decade as the plants absorb extra carbon dioxide, suggesting they are more resilient to global warming than previously thought."

https://www.livescience.com/planet-earth/climate-change/amaz...

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Nevermark ◴[] No.45398363[source]
It should be no surprise that at the margin virtually every plant gets a small boost from higher CO2.

Plants don’t get the optimal amount of any component, because they balance the components they take from the environment against the energy costs of acquiring them and other constraints.

If any component gets a little easier to aquire, the plant will do a little better. If it’s a long term change, the plant will evolve a new balance that will improve it slightly more.

But rising CO2 (in addition to making animal life dumber*) is contributing to a slow but radical rearrangement of local conditions through the globe.

Temperature changes, precipitation levels, wind and storm prevalence, sea encroachment and season lengths being the biggest. And both have tremendous impact on plants.

The faster the change. The worse the damage. When changes compound, they can happen very fast.

* CO2 levels have gone from 240ppm to 420ppm. At 1,000 ppm there are clear measurable impacts on human cognition. Given cognition is such a critical capability, it begs the question: what is the actual curve of CO2ppm to cognitive effects. Same goes for metabolic efficiency related to our need to expel CO2.

Because even small consistent subtle effects over time are likely to have practical effects. And also because raising the floor of CO2 outside, also raises the bar inside where CO2 notoriously collects, and decreases the rate that enclosed spaces can renormalize levels when given a chance. Both of which raise the indoor CO2 expected and ceiling values.

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woliveirajr ◴[] No.45398854[source]
Perfect. It should be no surprise but sometimes it is: some people get really surprised when they discover that higher temperatures, extra light and more CO2 make plants bigger. Or when they find out that pre-historical times had less oxygen and more CO2.

CO2 is so demonized that people forget that it's essential to life (at least, to some forms of life).

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1. TSiege ◴[] No.45399706[source]
It’s not that more CO2 is bad it’s that the rate of change is faster than any time in the geologic history of earth. And every mass extinction including the dinosaurs involved abrupt changes to CO2 levels. Every living thing is made out of carbon that came from CO2. Every scientist studying climate change knows this. But every organism on this planet evolved for ice age like conditions and in the span of 200 years we turned the earth’s thermostat from Ice Age to Hot House