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The Planet Has Stopped Breathing: Scientists Are Baffled – Plants No Longer Absorb Carbon Dioxide
We have known since childhood that plants absorb carbon dioxide and release oxygen. Forests are the lungs of the Earth. Not anymore. In 2023, for an unknown reason, plants almost stopped "breathing". An international research team led by Dr. Piu Ke in Beijing came to this surprising conclusion.
Of course, it's not as simple as you learned in science class. Plants breathe just like us. We inhale oxygen and exhale carbon dioxide. However, in addition to breathing, plants also undergo a process called photosynthesis, which makes plants grow. But here it's the other way around. Oxygen is released and carbon dioxide is absorbed. During photosynthesis, plants produce more oxygen than they consume through respiration. And they absorb more carbon dioxide than they release. That's why we treasure them.
But the balance is fragile. That's why photosynthesis doesn't happen at night (when there's no light). Plants breathe oxygen stored in their "bodies" during the day. That's why there are endless discussions (read gardening forums) about which houseplants are suitable for the bedroom. Then suddenly all the oxygen will be taken away.
Since you and I (at least many of us) live far from the ocean, we heard in school that the ocean cleans the air of carbon dioxide almost more than forests and fields. At night, tiny creatures called plankton rise to the surface and eat algae. After the short lifespan of the plankton, it sinks to the bottom and stays there forever. With carbon dioxide "eaten" from the algae.
The process of combining carbon dioxide (and other gases) is probably the key mechanism for climate change, and there are hundreds, if not thousands, of such mechanisms. Overall, land and aquatic plants absorb half of the carbon dioxide produced by humans.
But something happened in 2023.
Studies show that atmospheric carbon dioxide levels have increased at record rates. At the same time, it has been shown that the increase in anthropogenic emissions is very modest and is not capable of providing the actual observed concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. This means that plants have simply stopped absorbing energy, the authors concluded. Where and why did this happen?
The Earth's climate is constantly changing. If it gets even a little colder outside, I mutter, "The weather is weird," and I can't even imagine how much it will change. Our distant ancestors lived through great glaciations. Somewhere in the Moscow region, a glacier as tall as a mountain hung over the tundra, and everything north of it was hidden under a kilometer of ice.
The glaciers melted so quickly that the soils of northwestern Russia are still rising, restoring the pressure exerted during the Ice Age. There have been many such Ice Ages and warm spells. The balance and stability are obvious. Our lives are too short to notice how everything flows and changes.
With the advent of the industrial era, man began to actively emit carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, which had accumulated over millions of years of the evolution of the biosphere (hidden).
The plants were happy. As we have seen, they grow by absorbing carbon dioxide, and they have more "food".
Of course, it doesn't work that way.
The study found that Congo's rainforests continue to absorb more carbon dioxide than they emit. But they are left almost alone.
Thus, the Amazon basin has already been “destroyed”, and with it many other forest areas of planetary scale. The reason:
- Forest fire. When a fire occurs, the forest ceases to exist and the carbon dioxide accumulated in the trees returns to the atmosphere.
- Drought - plants grow more slowly because they lack water and require less carbon dioxide.
- Predatory cutting of crops - everything is clear with this.
None of these causes exist in isolation. Thus, deforestation makes rivers shallower. Rivers feed increasingly degraded forests. Alternatively, bacteria in dry soil feed more actively on organic remains, releasing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. And so on ad infinitum.
The sea has a reason for its failure. Changes in ocean currents, especially warming waters, are harmful to plankton. At the same time, processes on land and at sea are interconnected. An abundance of carbon dioxide promotes the growth of algae. But warming oceans become less comfortable for plankton. Nobody eats algae (of course, in reality the mechanism is much more complex).
We have mentioned many times that the system is very complex and it is almost impossible to describe it in simple words.
Current climate models can't account for all of these impacts, the study says. Scientists have been closely monitoring the carbon balance for decades and seeing how precariously the Earth's "lungs" are breathing (it didn't start in 2023, of course), but they implicitly assume that someone will be responsible for consuming the excess carbon dioxide.
Current models suggest that global warming will occur more or less evenly over the next 100 years. If the study is reliable (it has not yet been peer-reviewed), it could happen much faster.
How much? No one is talking about it (since the effects have not yet been calculated and there are no new models), but the stupidest thing is to ring the catastrophe bell and proclaim the "death of civilization".
First, we are still dealing with a natural process. Let them blame people as much as they want. Nature hides carbon dioxide and brings it to the surface itself without our participation, much more efficiently than we do. This means that nature has started a cycle that can be controlled.
Secondly, if we look closely at the causes of forest depletion, fires are the first to occur. Perhaps fire suppression will become a solvable problem if we concentrate our efforts and involve both scientists and the public in solving this problem.
In recent years, the climate movement has been easily dismissed as a caricature. Offices have been counting their employees’ carbon emissions, and stores have been ditching handbags. The mantra of “clean” energy has hidden the fact that many solutions have been dirtier (batteries and solar panels, for example, are very dirty).
It's time to do all this without caricatures and activism (first we put out the fire, then the illiterate plowman). This way there will be fewer violations in the work of nature.