Nature, yet again, has seemingly outsmarted the Climate Change™ propagandists.
When I spent time in the Amazon last year with a bona fide shaman and a few other Westerners, we killed time in between the plant medicine — as they call it down there — to shoot the breeze about what the future might hold in terms of man’s eternal struggle against nature.
Another American I met down there firmly believed that, no matter how hard mankind might try to destroy or degrade the Amazon — which, if you’ve never seen it up close, is massive and intimidating — it would always find a way to continue existing there.
I wasn’t so sure, given the exponential and potentially destructive growth in technology. In that sense, I came down more on the Unabomber’s side of things (minus the bomb-mailing) than the eternal optimism that he imbibed.
But he had a point nonetheless; nature is exceedingly resilient, often in ways we don’t yet understand or appreciate.
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Case in point: apparently in response to higher CO2 levels, trees have demonstrated the capacity to increase their absorption of CO2, acting as more efficient carbon sinks.
This same phenomenon was recently discovered in trees in Bangladesh, Thailand, and Australia, suggesting it’s global.
Via Earth.com (emphasis added):
The amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere has been increasing rapidly, leading to severe climate consequences.
However, researchers at Wageningen University have identified an unexpected benefit of rising CO2 levels: tropical trees have become more efficient at photosynthesis over the past century…
The study revealed that the increase in CO2 concentrations has enabled tropical trees to enhance their carbon-absorbing capabilities…
Since higher CO2 levels reduce the occurrence of photorespiration, trees can use more energy for growth and maintenance. This is not only beneficial for trees but also for humans, as increased photosynthesis means that trees absorb more CO2 from the atmosphere.
Eat your heart out, Al Gore.
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From the actual study, published via New Phytologist (emphasis added):
Rising atmospheric CO2 (Ca) is rapidly changing the climate of our planet. Ca rise is expected to increase the carbon sink of terrestrial ecosystems, thereby reducing the rate of climate change.
This study used D6SR isotopomers to reconstruct historical changes in the ratio of photorespiration to photosynthesis of tropical forest canopy trees in response to rising Ca, tree size, and climate. D6SR isotopomers are a relatively new method (Ehlers et al., 2015; Serk et al., 2021a,b), and this is the first study using D6SR to assess photosynthetic responses to Ca for trees. This study adds an independent line of empirical evidence demonstrating changes in tree physiology in response to increasing Ca. We found that Ca increases photosynthetic efficiency, reflected by a negative association of D6SR with Ca, while tree diameter, as a proxy for canopy exposure, decreased photosynthetic efficiency.
You might recall that one Bill Gates once infamously claimed that planting more trees was utterly useless for combatting Climate Change™ — conveniently favoring carbon credit systems and other social engineering projects that he can use to enrich himself.
