A warmer planet, less nutritious plants and fewer grasshoppers?

https://worldsensorium.com/a-warmer-planet-less-nutritious-plants-and-fewer-grasshoppers/

by dnetesn • 3 years ago

41 50 3 years ago

worldsensorium.com

tfourb• 3 years ago

Turns out messing with the composition of the atmosphere has some unexpected consequences …

adamisom• 3 years ago

Yep, for example: it'll be better for a lot of agriculture - unexpected indeed

it_citizen• 3 years ago

If they still have enough water that is. Spain might have some thoughts on that.

chrisco255• 3 years ago

No, plants are not less nutritious as a result of CO2 fertilization. As CO2 doubles overall plant yield increases and a single digit percentage shift in macro nutrient profile occurs. From [1],

Elevated CO2 increased Cu, Fe, and Zn, but lowered Mn concentration in grass leaves. Tree leaf responses were strongly related to N status: CO2 significantly decreased Cu, Fe, Mg, and S at high N, but only Fe at low N. Elevated CO2 decreased Mg and Zn in crop leaves grown with high N, and Mn at low N. Nutrient concentrations in crop roots were not affected by CO2 enrichment, but CO2decreasedCa,K,MgandPintree roots. Crop seeds had lower S under elevated CO2.We also tested the validity of a ‘‘dilution model.’’ CO2 reduced the concentration of plant nutrients 6.6% across nutrients and plant groups, but the reduction is less than expected (18.4%) from carbohydrate accumulation alone.

A lot of gnashing of teeth over an at most 7% shift in nutrient profile (and it takes a doubling to observe this) while a significant double digit percentage increase in crop yield is observed, making more food available for consumption.

https://ecoss.nau.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/Duval-et-al...

mrguyorama2• 3 years ago

Why does this matter when food scarcity has never been the problem? Americans throw away a huge portion of the food they buy.

alfor8• 3 years ago

More plant grow more CO2 captured. It’s a natural stabilisation cycle and a positive side effect. But we shouldn’t talk about it because we should be so so afraid all the time of the green apocalypse.

jxramos2• 3 years ago

since California made this compost rule I visually see how much food waste there is, a lot being unedible for sure. However there sure is a lot when you see it all in one place concentrated in a bucket.

It would be neat to convert it to other things like chickens and larger insects beyond the fruit and house flies and occasional soldier flies that pop up.

riku_iki• 3 years ago

when food scarcity has never been the problem?

food scarcity in America is not a problem. Then you have logistical challenge to transfer this food to other region and efficiently distribute it. Then you have financial problem who will pay for all of this.

saiya-jin• 3 years ago

Tell it to all those millions of malnourished children all over the world, being stripped of their future and adult lives as we discuss this. Even if we ignore those dying from hunger outright. Seriously?!?

AstralStorm• 3 years ago

The double digits yield increase only happens if water is available. Unfortunately climate change makes droughts, freezes, hurricanes and other freak weather events much more likely, actually resulting in huge reduction in productivity.

Especially droughts. Some parts of USA are already feeling the water squeeze, and it's just the beginning...

bequanna3• 3 years ago

What the parent states is backed by solid research.

Your argument is pure speculation trying to disqualify their remarks by moving the goalposts.

fsn4dN69ey• 3 years ago

just fyi this paper was retracted for glaring data errors

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11258-015-0541-1

__MatrixMan__• 3 years ago

Scientists have also posited that when carbon dioxide is high, plants are less efficient at taking up minerals and other elements because the root molecules that normally pull in these elements are acting at a lower capacity

Nutrient absorption is often mediated by fungi and bacteria in the soil, it would be interesting to see a breakdown about how sensitive they are to elevated CO2. If we find that the process is bottlenecked by a certain soil organism, we might be able to find ways to help.

ravenstine• 3 years ago

I suppose this means the Carboniferous Period must not have had many insects.

JadeNB• 3 years ago

It did—they were enormous.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Carboniferous_insects

syngrog66• 3 years ago

My brain parsed that first as "less nutritious grasshoppers." Ew!

Speaking of the accelerating impacts of the carbon climate crisis -- esp on ecosystems and the food supply -- I've been building an educational comedy adventure game [SB: see below] (set about 80 years in the future) which makes several assumptions about the food supply as a core premise. Assumptions not unlike those in the films Mad Max or Idiocracy.

Namely that several new types of artificially grown/manufactured food are created and promoted. Among them, a fictional slimy, fruity white "slurm" drink and a mystery meat-like goo named "glerm." Both or which smell and taste awful, of course, yet are loaded with healthy nutrients and vitamins. Most importantly, easy to mass produce and distribute, esp in a world with poisoned soils and degraded logistical infrastructure.

----

[SB] - https://synystrongames.itch.io/slartboz

Breadmaker• 3 years ago

Leaf Brix maybe be a concern,if grasshoppers specific preferences. https://joegardener.com/podcast/understanding-brix-how-it-af...

alfor8• 3 years ago

Also: more food, more plants, less deserts, more carbon captured.

croes5• 3 years ago

How? Higher temperatures, less glaciers, more extreme weather, dry lakes and rivers, more deserts.

It's a complex system and we don't know how it ends.

We could become food too for fungi and insects that spread because of higher temperatures.

beerpls2• 3 years ago

The Earth has many systems which help maintain a balance. It’s happened many times in the past

Perhaps whatever is happening now is too extreme for it to do that, but it seems unlikely. The ecosystems of the planet share many deep symbioses

I know i’ll be downvoted, and i’m expecting no one will actually address what i’ve said while doing it. There’s no real conservation in this topic anymore.

alfor8• 3 years ago

How? CO2 is hard to get for plants there is only a tiny amount in the air (0.04% or 4/10000) and carbon is the building block for life.

Through history plant have consumed all the carbon they could in the air and much of it ended up stuck in the earth crust (mostly coal but also gas and oil)

As we raise the level of CO2 plants thrive, especially in dry condition where the plants loose water as they open their pore to get CO2. So more CO2 = plant that grow in more dry condition aka desert. Everything is getting greener and as a result CO2 get captured.

Now that doesn’t mean we should be stupid about it, at some point it’s a crazy experiment, but it’s not the end of the world as the media like to report.

With Solar, wind, EV all on exponential path of growth there is nothing to fear about climate change anymore, maybe if we could find a way to slow down China expansion of coal plants that would make a dent, but I understand that they need it.

Look into Tony Seba (for renewable growth) and Bjorn Lomborg for intelligent priorities for the world.

If we are really concern about the earth and the poor there is far, far better way to spend our money and time, but maybe it’s not as catchy as "climate change".

photochemsyn• 3 years ago

This seems questionable on several grounds.

(1) Greenhouse growers often raise CO2 levels to ~1000 ppm to optimize growth (note this only works because all other nutrients are supplied at ideal levels to sustain growth, however). These crops are not known to be nutritionally deficient and I'm pretty sure we'd have heard about it if they were.

(2) Plants have a relatively stable ratio of nutrient requirements, with CHOPKNS CaFe Mg (mighty good) being an easy-to-remember acronym. We might be moving to a scenario in which CO2 is rarely if ever the limiting nutrient, however. Note also certain plants (C4 metabolism) have built-in CO2 concentration mechanisms, so rising CO2 might help C3 plants compete effectively. See:

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/14757584/

"Terrestrial plants require nutrients in similar proportions" (2004)

It's more probable that there's a bit of a CO2 fertilization effect, so you get a slight increase in carbon fixation while nutrient uptake remains stable, which isn t really a 'decline' as we'd normally think of it. Basically you'd get a bit more cellulose and carbohydrate formation, but each cell still needs its normal amount of N, P, K etc. to sustain protein and DNA metabolism etc.

Incidentally, the decline in insect populations mentioned in the article is largely attributable to extensive use of broad-spectrum insecticides, in particular the neonicotinoids, which are organic compounds based on the nicotine molecule with various additions (chlorine, etc.) to make them more persistent and toxic, and which were introduced in the 1980s.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neonicotinoid

Eric_WVGG• 3 years ago

a while back (too long to recall the sources), I was reading about extinctions and thinking, "well, something or other is going to thrive under these changing conditions."

Turns out that the biggest winners of climate change are likely to be spiders and jellyfish. Great time to be an octopod.

A warmer planet, less nutritious plants and fewer grasshoppers?

Related Stories