THIS POST IS A CRITICAL EVALUATION OF AN ONLINE ARTICLE ON HOW NATURE FIGHTS CLIMATE CHANGE

LINK TO SOURCE: https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-solutions/2021/04/22/earth-day-biodiversity/

PART-1: WHAT THE SOURCE ARTICLE SAYS: Nature doesn’t only need us to save it

Spring has returned to the California coast, bringing with it abundant sunshine and calmer seas. Storm-tossed sands settle. Nourishing cold water floods in from offshore. It is time for a climate superhero to emerge. Giant kelp is among the best organisms on the planet for taking planet-warming gases out of the atmosphere. Buoyed by small, gas-filled bulbs called “bladders,” these huge algae grow toward the ocean surface at a pace of up to two feet per day. Their flexible stems and leafy blades form a dense underwater canopy that can store 20 times as much carbon as an equivalent expanse of terrestrial trees. And when the fierce waves of winter come and kelp is ripped from its rocky anchors and washed out to the deep sea, that carbon gets buried on the ocean floor. It may stay there for centuries, even millennia, locking away more greenhouse gases than 20 million American homes use in a year. Yet this powerful force for planetary protection is under siege.

Warming waters and worsening storms caused by climate change have weakened the kelp forests. Sewage and sediment spill onto them from cities on the shore. Most significantly, the demise of important predators such as otters and sea stars has led to an explosion in the population of sea urchins, which eat kelp. Huge swaths of underwater forest are being replaced by urchin “barrens” — denuded landscapes, desolate but for the spiky, spherical animals. Eventually, even the urchins start to starve. Humans have put our planet on a path to disaster. If people keep polluting at the current rate, scientists say, climate change will cause prolonged droughts, devastating storms, collapsing ecosystems and vanishing species. Coastal cities will be deluged by sea level rise; widespread food and water shortages will lead to the deaths of millions. To avoid this fate, civilization must rapidly transform — cutting carbon emissions 40 percent by 2030 and reaching “net zero” by the middle of the century. Earth itself is our greatest ally in this effort. Ecosystems like California’s kelp forests absorb about half of the greenhouse gases humans emit, studies show. Without them, warming would be even worse. Nature shields us from the worst consequences of our own actions, forgiving the sins we refuse to repent. But it cannot endure endless abuse. Life on Earth is threatened by overexploitation, pollution and habitat degradation, in addition to rising temperatures. The fraction of the planet that is undisturbed by human activities shrinks every year. If we hope to solve climate change, humanity must also address this biodiversity crisis — restoring ecosystems and the creatures that inhabit them. Otherwise, our species risks becoming like the sea urchins: agents of our own suffering. We humans are the looters of the only home we have.

THE ANSWER IS THAT WE HAVE TO REVITALIZE OUR ECOSYSTEMS. We must revitalize ecosystems: protect the ground they grow from back to he soft, spongy soil of an old-growth woodland where towering oak trees draw up water and nutrients via threadlike fungi attached to its roots. In exchange, the fungi take sugar from the oak, funneling carbon from the air into the ground. Now imagine a leaf from that oak drifting slowly to the forest floor. Perhaps it becomes food for an earthworm. Then microbes attack the earthworm’s droppings, breaking down the residue further still. Eventually, the carbon that was once a leaf can become trapped in clods of earth. Other atoms may form strong chemical bonds with minerals like iron, which prevents them from reacting with oxygen and returning to the air. Under the right conditions, carbon might stay locked away in dense, dark earth for centuries. Soils contain more carbon than the entire atmosphere and all the world’s plants combined. This makes soil both a ticking time bomb and an overlooked climate solution. As the world warms, the carbon contained in frozen Arctic peatlands is at risk of release. As people till the ground for agriculture and excavate land for development, any trapped carbon is unleashed into the air. At least a third of all soils on Earth have been degraded by human activities. And because soil is such an important reservoir. A small change in the release of that carbon can lead to a big change in the concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. But soil can be rehabilitated, making it a carbon stockpile once more. Farmers can reduce or eliminate the practice of tilling which involves turning over the top layer of soil, displacing essential microbes and increasing erosion. By allowing fields to lie fallow, or planting cover crops, they can return nutrients to the soil. Adding carbon-rich materials such as compost or biochar (a form of charcoal produced by burning organic matter in an oxygen-free environment) can boost carbon storage and enhance soil health. A 2020 analysis in the journal Nature Sustainability found that better soil stewardship could reduce emissions by at least 5.5 gigatons of carbon dioxide each year — about 15 percent of current annual emissions. Once that happens it’s not just the carbon status of the soil that’s improved. The soil literally becomes softer. It holds more water and nutrients. It’s easier for plants to grow in and serve as a home for the most abundant and diverse group of organisms that we know of. Enhancing carbon in soils is just the beginning. In 2017, an international team of scientists set out to determine how much carbon the planet could pull out of the atmosphere, if humans would only give it a chance. In a study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), they concluded natural climate systems are capable of storing almost 24 gigatons of carbon dioxide per year — roughly two thirds of what people emit. About half of that sequestration would be cost-effective, meaning enacting the necessary protections would cost less than the consequences of keeping that carbon in the air.

Of the climate solutions they studied, few delivered more carbon bang per buck than mangroves — lush systems of salt-tolerant shrubs and trees that thrive where freshwater rivers spill into the sea. Though these forests occupy just 0.5 percent of Earth’s shorelines, they account for 10 percent of the coast’s carbon storage capacity. And they do more than just draw down carbon. With their luxuriant canopies and pillar-like roots extending deep into brackish water, mangroves provide shelter for small fish and help clean coasts. When storms strike a shoreline, they lessen the force of the waves. But the unique ecosystems are too often dismissed as unproductive swamps, good for no one but the mosquitoes. In the past half-century, more than a quarter of the world’s mangroves have been destroyed — drained for development, converted for shrimp farms, poisoned by fertilizer and drowned by dammed-up streams. Activists who seek to protect the mangroves have found themselves the target of harassment, lawsuits and physical violence. Human nature needs nature but we don’t see it, we don’t see how integrated we are. If we manage mangroves for making profits for the few at the cost of the many and the cost of our future,we’re killing ourselves.

CRITICAL COMMENTARY :

This article like many others like it is the evidence that the climate change movement has attracted activists of many colors including the eco wacko activists that provide us with views on climate change like the one quoted here.

The connection between climate science and eco wacko climate activism

The connection here is the carbon cycle with specific reference to photosynthesis and the sequestration of carbon dioxide in soils. In this context, the eco wackos claim that climate change is an environmentalism issue where human activity has interfered with nature’s ability to remove and sequester CO2. The environmentalism sin in this case is deforestation. It follows then that therefore the solution to climate change lies in the envornmentalism of humans backing off from their destruction of forests and adopting a more eco friendly lifestyle that will allow the forests to recover that will in turn increase CO2 sequestration in the soil.

This eco wacko science of climate change therefore presents the climate action needed as a more eco wacko relationship between humans and forests in which humans can take climate action simply by curtailing deforestation and by planting trees. This view, that planting trees is the climate action needed derives from the eco wacko view of the global warming issue described in the article quoted above. Here we present the available data for trees and photosynthesis and they show that this view of climate change and climate action is inconsistent with the data.

THE DATA ARE AS FOLLOWS

1. THERE ARE 8.7E9 HECTARES OF LAND ON EARTH WHERE TREES CAN BE GROWN.
2. OF THAT, 5.5E9 HECTARES ALREADY HAVE TREES.
3. THIS MEANS THAT THE MAXIMUM PHOTOSYNTHESIS IMPACT OF HUMANS PLANTING TREES IS (8.7-5.5)/8.7 OR LESS THAN 37%. OF TOTAL LAND PHOTOSYNTHESIS.
4. HOWEVER, 50% TO 80% OF THE WORLD’S PHOTOSYNTHESIS IS IN THE OCEAN. TAKING THE MIDPOINT OF THIS RANGE WE CAN SAY THAT ON AVERAGE THE OCEAN PROVIDES 65% OF PHOTOSYNTHESIS AND LAND ONLY 35%.
5. THEREFORE, THE MAXIMUM HUMAN IMPACT OF PLANTING TREES IS TO INCREASE PHOTOSYNTHESIS BY 37% OF 35% OR ABOUT 13% AT MOST.
6. THIS MAXIMUM POSSIBLE IMPACT OF HUMANS PLANTING TREES IS WELL WITHIN THE UNCERTAINTY RANGE OF GLOBAL PHOTOSYNTHESIS ESTIMATIONS.
7. THEREFORE NO MEASURABLE OR STATISTICALLY SIGNIFICANT PHOTOSYNTHESIS EFFECT IS POSSIBLE BY HUMANS PLANTING TREES.