Topics: Climate Change, Ecology, Economy, Politics, Star Trek
It's rare I do a "twofer." However, in the absence of a Starfleet/"Space Farce" or warp drive, we have to start thinking about how we're going to feed, clothe and employ the yet-to-be-born since we've yet to establish interplanetary colonies, let alone interstellar ones. Our "leaders" won't discuss the coming conundrum, hence I can only assume they've got nothing but slogans, jingoism and empty rhetoric bandied to stoke our fears and keep them in their comfortable seats.
"The world is expected to add another billion people within the next 15 years, bringing the total global population from 7.3 billion in mid-2015 to 8.5 billion in 2030, 9.7 billion in 2050, and 11.2 billion by 2100, according to new estimates from the UN." Source: 5 ways the world will look dramatically different in 2100, Ana Swanson, Washington Post
Current assessments of climate change could overestimate the amount of carbon that plants remove from the atmosphere. That’s because models of photosynthesis often leave out a poorly-understood limit on the process. Now US researchers have calculated that if its representation is doubled, climate models predict an additional 9 Gigatonnes of carbon will still be in the atmosphere by 2100, instead of being locked away inside plants.
“Photosynthesis is the largest flux of carbon into terrestrial ecosystems, yet there is still uncertainty in our understanding of its physiological and environmental controls,” says Danica Lombardozzi from the US National Centre for Atmospheric Research. “Our findings suggest that TPU [triose phosphate utilisation] currently limits photosynthesis, and TPU limitation may become even more limiting to photosynthesis in the future. Yet TPU-limited photosynthesis is … poorly constrained by observations and is therefore not always included in photosynthesis models.”
Plants may absorb less carbon under climate change, Environmental Research Letters, reported on Physics World
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