Plants, CO2 and temperature

[iceaura]

Update to your True Position noted.

Not possible. You can't get there by "updating" the fantasy described in post 82, and you can't extricate yourself from the sewer you have been defending as your worldview in a couple of days of careless screwing around on this forum.

You are beginning from a fictional worldview built from your own assumptions, a ridiculous fantasy you allowed others to shit into your brain for years, and which you have maintained (for example) over dozens of exposures to my actual posts over years of forum posting. You would get nowhere by "updating" post 82 here, even if you tried - the nonsense you described as "oft stated" by me was oft stated by you, your fellow Tribe, and no one else, for starters; it has never been stated - not even once, let alone "oft"- by me. You would have to discard that and every similar falsehood completely, not "update" them, and you have yet to attempt anything like that.

"Updating" is useless - you would have to start over, such as by realizing that I have never posted anything even remotely resembling your idiotic description in post 82. Never. There is nothing there to "update". You haven't realized even that yet, and it would be just the beginning.

It's like emerging from a cult religion - not easy, not quick, not something most people can do on their own.

Example: You posted a potential starting point for that basic and fundamental alteration of your world view, a way to approach the deconstruction of your adolescent fantasy and its replacement by reasoning from evidence, right here in this thread:

My awful confusion must have originated from your very frequent Reps = Right = Bad polemics, which suggested a political opposite existed.

and you didn't even notice. The fact that you posted it obliviously, not in recognition of its bizarrely and multiply counterfactual nature, not even acknowledging its repetition of what I had just denigrated and mocked and contradicted, without even a nod to the immediate prior observation that such parroting lacked the reasoning from evidence whose absence has been so destructive and debasing to you and your Tribe, essentially demonstrates the hopelessness of any self-rescue attempts by you or your Tribe. If you can't read your own posts with comprehension and recognition of implication, how can you hope to read anyone else's?

Which brings us around once again to the thread topic, a near-unique feature of my posting here and in many such places: the current point on the table is that CO2 growth boosting and tree planting is unlikely to work the way the OP attempts to hint it will. The OP presents findings from short term experiments and research under controlled conditions; other research into plant response to AGW (including the CO2 fertilization effect) seems to show that the benefits are more often small and temporary and dependent on careful, sophisticated, costly husbandry not found in natural environments or even standard First World agricultural circumstances, while the costs are large and long term and self-maintaining without human intervention. The Cedar Creek (Minnesota) research station results, for example, seem to show that the initial tree growth spurt from CO2 boosting in temperate zone woodlands turns into a variety of growth and productivity reductions soon after the end of the time period covered by the research graphed in the OP - when I read the OP here my initial suspicion was that the research behind it had been set up, scaled, and cut off as it was on purpose, a common type of deception employed by AGW propagandists over the years (for deceiving people about satellite temperature records, atmospheric temperature and precipitation trends, sea level rise, ice melt, desertification, several matters involving El Ninos, etc). But a second look stayed that conclusion - it could be innocent or self-deceived, given its academic context. The great American tradition of land grant universities focused on agriculture has been corrupted, but by naivety (including funding cuts and policies) as much as by scheme imho.

 

[Q-reeus]

Not possible. You can't get there by "updating" the fantasy described in post 82, and you can't extricate yourself from the sewer you have been defending as your worldview in a couple of days of careless screwing around on this forum.

You are beginning from a fictional worldview built from your own assumptions, a ridiculous fantasy you allowed others to shit into your brain for years, and which you have maintained (for example) over dozens of exposures to my actual posts over years of forum posting. You would get nowhere by "updating" post 82 here, even if you tried - the nonsense you described as "oft stated" by me was oft stated by you, your fellow Tribe, and no one else, for starters; it has never been stated - not even once, let alone "oft"- by me. You would have to discard that and every similar falsehood completely, not "update" them, and you have yet to attempt anything like that.

"Updating" is useless - you would have to start over, such as by realizing that I have never posted anything even remotely resembling your idiotic description in post 82. Never. There is nothing there to "update". You haven't realized even that yet, and it would be just the beginning.

It's like emerging from a cult religion - not easy, not quick, not something most people can do on their own.

Example: You posted a potential starting point for that basic and fundamental alteration of your world view, a way to approach the deconstruction of your adolescent fantasy and its replacement by reasoning from evidence, right here in this thread:

and you didn't even notice. The fact that you posted it obliviously, not in recognition of its bizarrely and multiply counterfactual nature, not even acknowledging its repetition of what I had just denigrated and mocked and contradicted, without even a nod to the immediate prior observation that such parroting lacked the reasoning from evidence whose absence has been so destructive and debasing to you and your Tribe, essentially demonstrates the hopelessness of any self-rescue attempts by you or your Tribe. If you can't read your own posts with comprehension and recognition of implication, how can you hope to read anyone else's?

Which brings us around once again to the thread topic, a near-unique feature of my posting here and in many such places: the current point on the table is that CO2 growth boosting and tree planting is unlikely to work the way the OP attempts to hint it will. The OP presents findings from short term experiments and research under controlled conditions; other research into plant response to AGW (including the CO2 fertilization effect) seems to show that the benefits are more often small and temporary and dependent on careful, sophisticated, costly husbandry not found in natural environments or even standard First World agricultural circumstances, while the costs are large and long term and self-maintaining without human intervention. The Cedar Creek (Minnesota) research station results, for example, seem to show that the initial tree growth spurt from CO2 boosting in temperate zone woodlands turns into a variety of growth and productivity reductions soon after the end of the time period covered by the research graphed in the OP - when I read the OP here my initial suspicion was that the research behind it had been set up, scaled, and cut off as it was on purpose, a common type of deception employed by AGW propagandists over the years (for deceiving people about satellite temperature records, atmospheric temperature and precipitation trends, sea level rise, ice melt, desertification, several matters involving El Ninos, etc). But a second look stayed that conclusion - it could be innocent or self-deceived, given its academic context. The great American tradition of land grant universities focused on agriculture has been corrupted, but by naivety (including funding cuts and policies) as much as by scheme imho.

What a nasty arrogant condescending doesn't-know-when-to-let-go piece of crap you really are. BYE!

 

[sideshowbob]

A 1000 year old tree will scrub 10 x the amount of a 100 yr old tree. See post #88

I don't see anything in post #88 that supports that claim.

 

[Write4U]

I don't see anything in post #88 that supports that claim.

It is not difficult. It depends on leaf surface area. Obviously the surface area of a healthy thousand year old tree is much greater than a healthy 20 year old tree . look at the picture.

The branches of that tree are the size of trees in themselves.

 

[sideshowbob]

It depends on leaf surface area. Obviously the surface area of a healthy thousand year old tree is much greater than a healthy 20 year old tree . look at the picture.

So, extrapolation.

 

[billvon]

It is not difficult. It depends on leaf surface area.

Do you have any data to indicate that leaf surface area is linearly proportional to CO2 uptake? Sounds very unlikely. The leaves on the bottom of a tree are going to do less than the leaves on the top of a tree, since they are in shadow.

Do you have any data to indicate that a 1000 year old tree has 10x the leaf surface area of a 100 year old tree? Again, sounds very unlikely, since mature trees often grow up, not out.

These sound like guesses you made, honestly.

 

[iceaura]

Do you have any data to indicate that leaf surface area is linearly proportional to CO2 uptake? - - - -

Do you have any data to indicate that a 1000 year old tree has 10x the leaf surface area of a 100 year old tree?
- - - - .

http://www.cof.orst.edu/cof/fs/turner/pdfs/turner_fem_2000.pdf. It's complicated.

In general: The primary limiting factor on leaf area in trees is water supply (that's why shaded rain forest trees tend to have larger leaves, exposed desert "trees" tend to have leaves reduced to spines, etc. It's also why the link there focuses on sapwood - sapwood is the water transport structure).

Trees lose water and gather light energy (and heat stress, wind stress, herbivore and disease vulnerability, etc) through the two dimensional surface area of their leaves, which scales by the square of any one dimensional "size" parameter (such as DBH, in the link) (the scaling factor varies by factors such as species, environmental circumstances, and choice of parameter, which is almost never "age"). Meanwhile the structures necessary to transport and resupply the water are three dimensional - the cost of them scales with the cube of the "size" parameter (again: according to species and circumstances). The expected net result would be something similar to what we see in land animals whose leg bones have to support their weight, solid animals who have to keep their internal temperatures lower or higher than some limit, etc - bone strength varies as the square of the "size", bone mass varies as the cube, and sooner or later for any given architecture (varies by species and circumstance) the animal has to quit growing (or at least slow way down); metabolic heat loss varies as the surface area (square), metabolic heat production varies as the cube, sooner or later for any given biochemistry the animal has to grow differently or more slowly or something.

The organism approaches a limit, apparently asymptotically in the case of trees. In the case of those big California trees I would not be surprised to see some actual shrinkage of the total leaf area with height past a certain limit in some circumstances - the tree might sometimes gain more by getting a little bit taller than by producing more leaf area at such "high" cost but having it shaded or wind/heat stressed. Just a speculation.

Nobody I know of has even attempted to use age to predict leaf area in individual trees. The relationship is far too complicated - trees don't base much of anything directly on their cumulative age - and routinely produces order of magnitude variations in the total size of any given part of most trees at any given age.

 

[Write4U]

Do you have any data to indicate that leaf surface area is linearly proportional to CO2 uptake? Sounds very unlikely. The leaves on the bottom of a tree are going to do less than the leaves on the top of a tree since they are in shadow.

Not really, that's why branches grow in the Fibonacci configuration. It affords maximum surface for exposure to light.

Do you have any data to indicate that a 1000 year old tree has 10x the leaf surface area of a 100 year old tree? Again, sounds very unlikely, since mature trees often grow up, not out.

All one needs to do is look. The branches growing from that 2000 year old tree (in the picture) are the size of full-grown trees themselves. Count them!

These sound like guesses you made, honestly.

Seems to me that the evidence is in plain sight.

I admit that 10 x was a guess, but obviously the pictured tree has a considerable larger leaf surface area than a 100 year old "mature" tree with a 24" diameter base.

Look at the specs; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mariposa_Grove

Generally speaking, as long as a tree is growing it needs larger leaf transpiration to draw water from the ground.

How do large trees, such as redwoods, get water from their roots to the leaves?

"The physiology of water uptake and transport is not so complex either. The main driving force of water uptake and transport into a plant is transpiration of water from leaves. Transpiration is the process of water evaporation through specialized openings in the leaves, called stomates. The evaporation creates a negative water vapor pressure develops in the surrounding cells of the leaf. Once this happens, water is pulled into the leaf from the vascular tissue, the xylem, to replace the water that has transpired from the leaf. This pulling of water, or tension, that occurs in the xylem of the leaf, will extend all the way down through the rest of the xylem column of the tree and into the xylem of the roots due to the cohesive forces holding together the water molecules along the sides of the xylem tubing. (Remember, the xylem is a continuous water column that extends from the leaf to the roots.) Finally, the negative water pressure that occurs in the roots will result in an increase of water uptake from the soil.

.....

How can water withstand the tensions needed to be pulled up a tree? The trick is, as we mentioned earlier, the ability of water molecules to stick to each other and to other surfaces so strongly. Given that strength, the loss of water at the top of tree through transpiration provides the driving force to pull water and mineral nutrients up the trunks of trees as mighty as the redwoods.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-do-large-trees-such-a/

 

[sculptor]

Not really, that's why branches grow in the Fibonacci configuration. It affords maximum surface for exposure to light.
All one needs to do is look. The branches growing from that 2000 year old tree (in the picture) are the size of full grown trees. Count them!
Seems to me that the evidence is in plain sight.

I admit that 10 x was a guess, but obviously the pictured tree has a considerable larger leaf surface area than a 100 year old "mature" tree with a 24" diameter base.

Look at the specs; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mariposa_Grove

anecdote:
Building my studio:
I bought wood from a lumber company that had permission to harvest downed redwoods.
One of which had its roots wrapped around a dead-long buried redwood
So their permit included a 500+ year old tree and one that lived @1500-600 years ago
and still--absent a few inches of the surface -good lumber
some of which is in my building
Imagine that some of the lumber in my home may be over 1500 years old
wow

 

[billvon]

Not really, that's why branches grow in the Fibonacci configuration. It affords maximum surface for exposure to light.

I am sure it does.

Now - do you have any evidence that leaf surface is proportional to CO2 uptake? Because I have been in a lot of forests, and I am pretty sure that the leaves down low get a lot less light. Which is why trees often grow REALLY tall - to out-compete other trees for light.

All one needs to do is look. The branches growing from that 2000 year old tree (in the picture) are the size of full-grown trees themselves. Count them!

So it's just your "feeling" and you have no data.

People "felt" for centuries that the Earth was flat, and the Sun rotated around the Earth. I mean, just look at it! The evidence is in plain sight.

 

[Write4U]

Now - do you have any evidence that leaf surface is proportional to CO2 uptake? Because I have been in a lot of forests, and I am pretty sure that the leaves down low get a lot less light. Which is why trees often grow REALLY tall - to out-compete other trees for light.

Exactly, that kinda proves my point. A 1000 year old tree is usually a lot taller than a 100 year old tree. And that also means greater leaf surface exposure in order to accommodate greater water volume from suction.

People "felt" for centuries that the Earth was flat, and the Sun rotated around the Earth. I mean, just look at it! The evidence is in plain sight.

Well, I can barely put my arms around one of those 24" branches, but I doubt you get very far trying to put your arms around earth.

Why do you come up with false equivalences to prove me wrong? If you are right, you can do better than that, and then I can actually learn something.

 

[Write4U]

Photosynthesis is really cool
Photo; Greek for « Light »
Synthesis; Greek for « Putting together »

Step 1; Plants absorb water and minerals through their roots to make sap.

Step 2; The sap travels through the tree to the leaves. The leaves absorb CO2 and light.

Step 3; The leaves use chlorophyll and the sun’s energy to convert CO2 & water into glucose.

Step 4; Oxygen is released and the glucose nourishes the tree, transported by the sap.

Purifying the air as it grows
Amazingly, to grow by one cubic metre, a tree will purify nearly one million cubic metres of air of its CO2 (assuming 0.03 to 0.04% of air is CO2).1

Trees are the best.

https://ecotree.green/en/how-much-co2-does-a-tree-absorb

A Tall tree requires more water (including minerals) than a short tree. Therefore it needs to transpirate more water, to create sufficient suction.

Apparently, Industrial Hemp is even more efficient in this process, because it grows much faster than trees and converts more CO2 into glucose, while staying close to the ground.

Evapotranspiration and the Water Cycle
Transpiration: The release of water from plant leaves

Just as you release water vapor when you breathe, plants do, too – although the term "transpire" is more appropriate than "breathe." This picture shows water vapor transpired from plant leaves after a plastic bag has been tied around the stem for about an hour. If the bag had been wrapped around the soil below it, too, then even more water vapor would have been released, as water also evaporates from the soil.

The typical plant, including any found in a landscape, absorbs water from the soil through its roots. That water is then used for metabolic and physiologic functions. The water eventually is released to the atmosphere as vapor via the plant's stomata — tiny, closeable, pore-like structures on the surfaces of leaves. Overall, this uptake of water at the roots, transport of water through plant tissues, and release of vapor by leaves is known as transpiration.

Water also evaporates directly into the atmosphere from soil in the vicinity of the plant. Any dew or droplets of water present on stems and leaves of the plant eventually evaporates as well. Scientists refer to the combination of evaporation and transpiration as evapotranspiration, abbreviated ET.

Credit: Salinity Management Organization

https://www.usgs.gov/special-topic/...ce_center_objects=0#qt-science_center_objects

 

[iceaura]

And that also means greater leaf surface exposure in order to accommodate greater water volume from suction

The leaf area has little to do with the force of the draw, and it's the greater leaf area that would require the larger water volume - not the other way around.

To a first approximation a tree with ten leaves will require replenishment of ten leaves worth of water loss via transpiration through the stomata, regardless of how far they are from the ground. The first problem with height is the cost of the transport structure. The higher the tree grows the more expensive the water transport structure becomes - per leaf unit area. Leaves that are high off the ground are more expensive to feed and water. Adding more leaves higher up costs more than adding them lower down. Eventually they don't pay for themselves.

The force involved is not "suction" - suction will lift water less than 35 feet even at sea level.

A 1000 year old tree is usually a lot taller than a 100 year old tree.

Depends on the species, and the circumstances. Some tree species live longer in circumstances that slow their growth, especially their growth in height - in those species the average two hundred year old tree might well be shorter than the average one hundred year old tree. (In northern forests near the tree line one can find whole forests of trees about four inches in diameter and maybe twenty feet tall, that are more than 150 years old - the tree ring counters use microscopes. These are species that normally would not live 150 years if planted in your yard, although they would grow more than a foot thick and more than fifty feet tall. In those species a fifty foot tree might commonly be half the age of a twenty footer. )

 

[Write4U]

The force involved is not "suction" - suction will lift water less than 35 feet even at sea level.

Explained in post #108

That example is not quite applicable to trees. This is not a column of water being sucked up. First, there is a small push from either the gradient of the ground and the push from swollen capillaries in the roots which when filled exert a pressure upward. But the primary mechanism is suction, the draw from the evaporation of water from the leaves.

How do large trees, such as redwoods, get water from their roots to the leaves?

Capillary action and root pressure can support a column of water some two to three meters high, but taller trees--all trees, in fact, at maturity--obviously require more force. In some older specimens--including some species such as Sequoia, Pseudotsuga menziesii and many species in tropical rain forests--the canopy is 100 meters or more above the ground! In this case, the additional force that pulls the water column up the vessels or tracheids is evapotranspiration, the loss of water from the leaves through openings called stomata and subsequent evaporation of that water.

As water is lost out of the leaf cells through transpiration, a gradient is established whereby the movement of water out of the cell raises its osmotic concentration and, therefore, its suction pressure. This pressure allows these cells to suck water from adjoining cells which, in turn, take water from their adjoining cells, and so on--from leaves to twigs to branches to stems and down to the roots--maintaining a continuous pull.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-do-large-trees-such-a/#

 

[sculptor]

Life at the top is hard
whether for emergent or canopy leaves
the sun tries to bake you
the wind tries to shred you
and the rain beats down on you mercilessly
so
most canopy leaves are small and waxy
with their stomata on the underside.

and
All else being equal(and it never is);
stomatal density is inversely proportional to atmospheric CO2
and determined when the leaf is in it's infancy

................................
stoma are amazing
they open and/or close to take in more food(CO2) and/or control water loss
very much like a muscle
................
and
I prefer trees to hemp because I like the shade and birdsong
and the way they control the micro-climate under them

 

[billvon]

Exactly, that kinda proves my point. A 1000 year old tree is usually a lot taller than a 100 year old tree. And that also means greater leaf surface exposure in order to accommodate greater water volume from suction.

"usually"
"greater exposure"

Sounds like you've got some good theories. Now test them and see if there is any validity to them!

Doing my own research, I've discovered that many trees put most of their energy into leaf production early on (when, after a fire or other clearing/propagation event, there's a lot of sun) and later put most of their energy into building trunk (to get their leaves above their competitors.) Which would indicate that a 1000 year old tree would not have anywhere near 10x the leaves of a 100 year old tree.

Something else to check out.

Why do you come up with false equivalences to prove me wrong? If you are right, you can do better than that, and then I can actually learn something.

I am not "proving you wrong." I am giving you examples of other people who assumed things because they seemed right. Now start doing your own research.

 

[Write4U]

Which would indicate that a 1000 year old tree would not have anywhere near 10x the leaves of a 100 year old tree.

An Old Tree Doesn't Get Taller, But Bulks Up Like A Bodybuilder

The world's biggest trees, such as this large Scots pine in Spain's Sierra de Baza range, are also the world's fastest-growing trees, according to an analysis of 403 tree species spanning six continents.

They examined nearly 700,000 trees that have been the subject of long-term studies. Their conclusion, published in this week's issue of the journal Nature: While trees did stop getting taller, they continued to get wider — packing on more and more mass the older they got. And we're not talking about the tree-equivalent of an aging crowd with beer guts — old trees are more like active, healthy bodybuilders.

"It's as if, on your favorite sports team, you find out the star players are a bunch of 90-year-olds," Stephenson says. "They're the most active. They're the ones scoring the most points. That's an important thing to know."

Because, in the world of trees, that means the oldest members of the forest are doing the most to pull carbon dioxide out of the air and to store it as carbon in their wood. Stephenson says that's another argument for preserving old-growth forests.

"Not only do they hold a lot of carbon, but they're adding carbon at a tremendous rate," Stephenson says. "And that's going to be really important to understand when we're trying to predict how the forests are going to change in the future — in the face of a changing climate or other environmental changes."

Some ecologists have argued that young forests are more important than old forests for combating climate change, because the thousands of small trees that replace the few big ones do, collectively, pull more carbon dioxide out of the air than the mature forest does. But Stephenson says that doesn't give full credit to the importance of old trees.

https://www.npr.org/2014/01/16/262479807/old-trees-grow-faster-with-every-year

And as Hemp grows to maturity in 3-4 months, it is one of the fastest growing plants and effective CO2 scrubber, due to their sheer numbers, they are tiny little trees, with lots of leaves.

This is a nice animation of the process.

http://www.ontrack-media.net/gateway/biology/g_bm4l4as2.html

 

[billvon]

An Old Tree Doesn't Get Taller, But Bulks Up Like A Bodybuilder

Good comparison! And no one would claim that a 100 year old bodybuilder has 10 times the surface area (or even 10 times the weight) of a 10 year old bodybuilder. Also note that due to the square/cubed law, doubling the weight does NOT double the surface area.

 

[Write4U]

Good comparison! And no one would claim that a 100 year old bodybuilder has 10 times the surface area (or even 10 times the weight) of a 10 year old bodybuilder. Also note that due to the square/cubed law, doubling the weight does NOT double the surface area.

But it does require a larger transpiration surface area to feed the tree from below. The small appearing canopies are relatively small, but compared to much younger trees they are still considerably larger.

Appreciating the old growth trees
26 May 2018 Angham Daiyoub

1_Definitions :

Ancient, veteran and other definitions ( Ancient trees forum) ….

Ancient trees : are those which have reached a great age in comparison with others of the same species. How old is an ancient tree? The exact age at which you’d call a tree ancient depends on the species of tree and other factors including the type of site where it’s growing. A birch tree could be considered as ancient at 150 years old, for example, but an oak tree would not be thought of as ancient until it’s at least 400 years old. Yew trees can live for thousands of years, so are not defined as ancient until they are 800 years old. It is often difficult to estimate how old an ancient tree is, but one method that is used, alongside considering the ancient characteristics, is to measure the girth of the trunk .

Veteran trees : Unlike an ancient tree, a veteran tree can be any age, but it is a tree which shows ancient characteristics such as (A low, fat and squat shape – because the crown has retrenched (reduced in size) through age A wide trunk compared with others of the same species. Hollowing of the trunk ). These may not just be due to age, but could result from natural damage, management, or the tree’s environment. Ancient trees are all veterans, but not all veterans are ancient

Heritage tree : A heritage tree is one that is part of our history and culture, and can be connected with specific historic events or people, Other heritage trees may simply have particular appeal because of their appearance, landscape character or architectural setting, and have therefore become well-known landmarks in their local communities .

An ancient oak tree ( Quercus calliprinos aging 600 years old according to Kubaili et al ) located in Banias _Syria..Photo credit Angham Daiyoub

https://www.forest-monitor.com/en/appreciating-the-old-growth-trees/

Compare with 10yr old birch:

https://www.chewvalleytrees.co.uk/products/detail/betula-pendula

Right Tree in the Right Place

Basic Spacing Guide
TREE SIZE............................................ SPACING PLANT....... SPACING FROM WALL........ SPACING FROM CORNER OF 1-STORY BUILDING
Small trees (30' or less).......6-15'................8-10'........................6-8'
Medium trees (30-70')........30-40'...............15'..........................12'
Large trees (70' or more)....40-50'...............20'..........................15'

The basic spacing guide from various distances and various tree heights

https://www.arborday.org/trees/righttreeandplace/size.cfm

 

[sideshowbob]

Blah blah blah....

You could have just said, "Oops, I was wrong."