Would the Earth be More or Less "Green" If The Temperature Were Raised a Few Degrees and CO2 Increased?

Question

"Green" being the percent plant cover. Try thinking back to what you know about plants in the dino age.

Answer 1

How much is a few degrees?  Four or more degrees have caused mass extinctions in the past (it has gotten that warm six times since life evolved).  The earth hasn't been warmer than it is now since humans evolved.

Answer 2

first, there would be a bit less land.

but your question really addresses what would happen to the land that there is.

specifically, the forests.

so here's a map of the western US and Canada.

http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=h...

all that gray area is going to be dead pine trees, due to bark beetles.

it's already very advanced in Canada.

<<The Ministry of Forests in British Columbia estimated that 7 million hectares of timberland pine forests have been affected and predict that 80% of British Columbia's pine forests will be killed in this beetle epidemic by 2013>>

maybe raising the temperature isn't such a good idea after all.

Answer 3

I've seen studies that clearly demonstrated that if all other things remain the same and CO2 was increased, plants do substantially better. The plants that had more CO2 available  grew so much bigger. These are things the warmers don't want the public to know.

They can't prove that CO2 is causing global warming, and more importantly cannot prove that warmer temperatures would be catastrophic to life. Just the opposite is more likely the case.

The pillars of man made global warming are beginning to crumble.

Answer 4

I don't understand why everyone thinks things are getting warmer. In Utah, we just had our harshest winter in 15 years!

Answer 5

less because most plants would be unable to adapt to the temputers.

Answer 6

you only have to look at prehistory

http://anthropology.si.edu/humanorigins/...

http://anthropology.si.edu/humanorigins/...

http://anthropology.si.edu/humanorigins/...

http://anthropology.si.edu/humanorigins/...

the higher the temperature the higher the evaporation from the oceans.

this means more rain and plant growth.

Answer 7

For a few years it would be more green in some areas, until the speed of the H2O cycle increased, causing desertification to increase killing most of the vegetation.

More CO2 and a warmer temp, isn't the only things plants need for survival. Also, the bacterial populations which all ecosystems depend on will exhibit a phase shift probably causing many ecosystems to collapse.

Plant pathogen vectors will increase causing huge infections of large areas of vegetation.

Your logic also doesn't consider the increased growth of invasive species destroying economically important plants.

Also, fungi that release bound nutrients for plants, and even supply plants with nutrients are extremely delicate to chanes in CO2 concentrations. A very small increase in CO2 causes them to slow reproduction, and even higher causes growth to slow.

Ummmmm plants do need oxygen.

Answer 8

It sounds like you already have an opinion but the answer is that the last two times the Earth got warmer than it is now, at least during human history, were both extremely prosperous periods for humanity. The Roman Warm period and the Medieval Warm period were both prosperous times that led to people expanding and thriving nearly everywhere.

The more CO2 in the atmosphere the better for plant life, they thrive, growing faster and stronger and with less water needed. The CO2 level prior to the industrial age was not far above the level at which plant's suffocate from lack of CO2, which explains at least part of the growth of agricultural output in that same time. If levels were to drop to the sub-150 part per million range that the IPCC claims they have in the recent geological history, all plant life on the surface would have died, meaning all life would be gone. That makes it harder to believe the rest of the IPCC data when that is so obviously flawed.

Most of the CO2 increases come after the temp increases, not before, because most of the CO2 on Earth is locked up in the oceans. As they warm they release that CO2. It wasn't that long ago they were worried about the decline of carbon life forms since the carbon cycle was so precarious. Now that's no longer true so the panic has shifted. If more CO2 were stored and a lot less was available for plants, life as we know it on Earth would end.

Each additional CO2 molecule input leads to less warming from the greenhouse effect, as can be shown in a lab setting. In the real world the carbon cycle is much more complex but CO2 that remains in the atmosphere will "trap" less infrared radiation than previous molecules did, which is why we don't haven't had either a runaway greenhouse effect or unending ice age in the past few million years and it's why we have no reason to worry about the world ending due to our releasing CO2 that nature itself produced.

Answer 9

The availability of CO2 for plant respiration is not the only factor for the survability of plants. Try thinking back to what everyone else knows about plants in all ages.

Answer 10

We would have less cold days on earth, which would keep 50,000 people a year from dying in the cold.

Answer 11

Tough to say.  Water and soil also enter into the equation.

But the problem is that precipitation is going to move toward the poles and away from the equator.  And that plants will grow in different areas.

That will cause massive problems for our present intensive agriculture system.  In rich countries it will take enormous amounts of money to adapt.  Many poor countries (the poster child is Bangladesh) won't be able to adapt for many reasons.  Starving people may flee across national borders, causing wars.

It's far cheaper to reduce our contribution to climate than it would be to do nothing but simply try to cope with the effects of that change.  We'll have to cope with some, we don't have to face them full force.

Answer 12

most of the white bits will go blue, and some will go green.

some of the green bits will go blue, and quite a lot will go yellow.

'dino age' plants had 'branchlets' or tiny leaflets. modern large leaved plants close their stomata to prevent transpiration over a certain temperature, and so stop photosynthesising. they are noticing this effect in central america already, at temp.s over about 35 degrees c.

Answer 13

The plants would like it.