Can These Fungus-Studying Scientists Make the Planet More Resilient to Climate Change? (msn.com) 49
A team of scientists drove hundreds of miles through the steppes of Kazakhstan in search of what may be one of the largest and most diverse fungi ecosystems on Earth.
The Washington Post believes their efforts "could help make the planet more resilient to climate change." When these underground fungi come together, they form sophisticated systems known as "mycorrhizal networks...." Mycorrhizal fungi often form mutually beneficial relationships with plants. They trade essential nutrients such as phosphorus and nitrogen in exchange for carbon, and act as an extended root system, allowing plants to access water they can't reach. These networks may also prove to be invaluable for transporting carbon underground, a study published in June found. About 13 gigatons of carbon fixed by vegetation — equivalent to about one-third of all carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels in one year — flows through underground fungi, according to an analysis of nearly 200 data sets.
In the steppe, these plant-fungal benefits may be short-lived, however. While deserts are a natural part of Kazakhstan's ecosystem, more than half of the country's vegetation and drylands is at risk of becoming desert as well. The main drivers are large-scale intensive agriculture and increasingly warm and dry temperatures brought by climate change.... Knowing what species of fungi live here is key to understanding how to protect them, said Bethan Manley, project officer at the Society for the Protection of Underground Networks who was on the expedition. It will help determine "where we might be able to have the most effective measures of not poisoning them with fungicides or not having harmful farming practices," she said.
The Washington Post believes their efforts "could help make the planet more resilient to climate change." When these underground fungi come together, they form sophisticated systems known as "mycorrhizal networks...." Mycorrhizal fungi often form mutually beneficial relationships with plants. They trade essential nutrients such as phosphorus and nitrogen in exchange for carbon, and act as an extended root system, allowing plants to access water they can't reach. These networks may also prove to be invaluable for transporting carbon underground, a study published in June found. About 13 gigatons of carbon fixed by vegetation — equivalent to about one-third of all carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels in one year — flows through underground fungi, according to an analysis of nearly 200 data sets.
In the steppe, these plant-fungal benefits may be short-lived, however. While deserts are a natural part of Kazakhstan's ecosystem, more than half of the country's vegetation and drylands is at risk of becoming desert as well. The main drivers are large-scale intensive agriculture and increasingly warm and dry temperatures brought by climate change.... Knowing what species of fungi live here is key to understanding how to protect them, said Bethan Manley, project officer at the Society for the Protection of Underground Networks who was on the expedition. It will help determine "where we might be able to have the most effective measures of not poisoning them with fungicides or not having harmful farming practices," she said.
Sure... (Score:3, Funny)
Partake enough of that "fungus" and they're bound to have some novel insights.
Betteridge Law of Headlines; variation (Score:4, Interesting)
Industrial farming methods... (Score:4, Interesting)
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Yes, but this is not the question asked. Let me rephrase: is there a magic bullet that can make us think we can continue business as usual, and avoid making any real change? And if there is no such magic bullet, can we pretend there is ?
Re: Industrial farming methods... (Score:4, Interesting)
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As far as a solution, I believe that we need to break away from metropolis cities
As far as I can tell, all of the detailed analyses show the exact opposite: Humans have worse ecological impact when you spread them out over more land, compared to the same number of humans in a smaller area.
and have more self sustaining communal based food supplies.
As far as I can tell, all of the detailed analyses show the exact opposite: the lesser ecological impact comes when farming is done on the land that is most optimal for farming, not in whatever community the humans happen to live in. Subsistence farming on marginal land turns out to be bad for the envi
Re: Industrial farming methods... (Score:2)
Re:Industrial farming methods... (Score:5, Interesting)
They do not (source: I'm in hort sci).
First, ag is not the same as it was 70, 50, or even 30 years ago. And even at the most ignorant times there was no effort to "try to kill all fungi". We've known about mycorrhiza and the role that they play for a century. Fungicides are used when the net benefit to yield outweighs the net cost (like any other product). It's not a secret that overuse of fungicide can be harmful to plants. But you know what's also harmful to you harvesting anything? Say, having all your rice infected with blast fungus. Farmers choose the approach that maximizes yields and minimizes cost.
If you want legitimate criticisms - and again, we're talking mainly about the past here - you need to look at short-term vision and not looking at long-term consequences; things that yield the best yield in the short-term are not always good for the long term. For example, soil carbon wasn't looked at as a nutrient (because technically it isn't), and so was largely ignored (I must stress that this is no longer the case) - the focus was just on replacing the NPK taken out with the harvest with fresh NPK. But soil carbon slowly erodes and oxidizes. Plants can grow just fine without soil carbon - indeed, they grow just fine in sterile environments, that's what hydroponics is, and they can flourish in it - but it reduces resilience, as soil carbon stores water, nutrients, nurtures an ecosystem that helps collect these things (though it's also a double-edged sword, as soil life can also nurture pathogens), and tends to support a good pore structure. But even there, we have to talk about balances. Because people don't, say, till for the fun of it.
Per unit production, "industrial farming" is far more environmentally friendly than more primitive techniques. Tell me, if you want to go back to techniques that produced a tenth as much or less per hectare, how much rainforest exactly do you want to destroy for the extra land? People really need to stop idealizing some fictional ideal past that never was. Preindustrial farming involved mass amounts of backbreaking labour from people with short lifespans to produce little on lots of land, with little to no controls to, say, prevent E. coli contamination.
Then stop eating meat. But don't complain about the farming base that actually, you know, feeds the world, and then some, in order to prop up animal rearing and stupid biofuels policies atop it.
People who say this sort of stuff generally have no clue what the actual trends in agriculture have been. For example, the overwhelming majority of the use of pesticides in greenhouses has disappeared in the past couple decades, replaced by biological controls*. Growth regulator usage has also plunged, with reliance on things like light and temperature control (esp. DIF/DROP) instead**. And much more emphasis on environmental controls of fungal pathogens. In outdoor ag, trends are toward IPM (US non-fertilizer chemical usage use peaked around 1980, despite yields today continuing to grow; insecticide usage in particular has plunged since 1980), reduced tillage, more efforts to protect pollinators and predators, etc. Fertilizer use growth slowed dramatically since 1980, runoff levels have been plateauing on a total basis, and on a per-yield basis are already well in decline.
There's still much more that can be done, but the trends are in the right direction. At the same time, one has to remember that global food needs continue to grow, and this must be met.
* It's really been remarkable
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The only corrective action that is guaranteed to work is fewer humans
I don't like where that idea takes us. If the goal is fewer humans then that's a toe in the door for genocide.
Birth control [Re:Industrial farming methods...] (Score:4, Interesting)
The only corrective action that is guaranteed to work is fewer humans
I don't like where that idea takes us. If the goal is fewer humans then that's a toe in the door for genocide.
No it is not.
A goal of fewer humans is accomplished by birth control.
According to demographers, there are three known factors that lead to families with fewer children:
(1) less poverty
(2) higher education levels
(3) access to birth control
Note the last one: access to birth control. Turns out repressive policies, like the Chinese one-child policy, did not turn out to be required. What is needed is only to give women the choice to not have families.
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millenials are killing X indudstry (Score:2)
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Fewer meat eating humans.
Re: Industrial farming methods... (Score:2)
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Who decides [Re:Industrial farming methods...] (Score:2)
OK, I'll bite. So how about a thought experiment. Who gets to decide who lives & who dies?
Since birth control doesn't involve killing people, I think your "thought experiment" is off-target.
The more useful thought experiment is, "Who gets to decide who is allowed to use birth control & who doesn't?"
(My answer: each individual should get to decide for themself.)
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A lot of countries have already got birth control. A lot of people can already decide.
"A lot" is not enough.
So what's your point then?
My point is that population rise is driven by the people that don't have good access to birth control, don't have good educational systems, and do have a lot of poverty.
How do you suppose we reduce populations fast enough to reduce environmental degradation fast enough to avoid catastrophe?
Increase access to birth control, increase education, decrease poverty.
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Yeah, everybody demands instant results. That's half the problem with the world, and three quarters of the problem with politics.
The future isn't just next year. It goes on for centuries.
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Agriculture is some huge greenhouse gas emitter? Do you even know how much agriculture contributes? The US EPA says about 10%.
https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissio... [epa.gov]
People need to eat and if it means tripling greenhouse gas emissions to feed the world then I say we do it. Of all the things to pick a fight with on greenhouse gas emissions it is not with agriculture, it is by US EPA estimates the smallest contributor. You want to see people get sick and die? Then making food more expensive with greenhouse gas e
That hyphen does some heavy lifting (Score:2, Offtopic)
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Yeah, my brain really wanted to parse that sentence into fungi that were studying scientists ;)
First, stop digging. (Score:1)
If you find yourself in a hole you cannot climb out of then the first thing to do is stop digging. The IPCC has done studies on global warming, both to establish the impact of CO2 emissions and the best means to minimize that impact. The IPCC has stated that we will continue to miss our goals on CO2 emissions reductions unless there is more energy production from nuclear fission. If the IPCC has collected good data on where the CO2 is coming from and how that impacts the environment then it seems logical
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If you find yourself in a hole you cannot climb out of then the first thing to do is stop digging. The IPCC has done studies on global warming, both to establish the impact of CO2 emissions and the best means to minimize that impact. The IPCC has stated that we will continue to miss our goals on CO2 emissions reductions unless there is more energy production from nuclear fission.
I think your analysis is probably accurate. But I'm having problems finding that statement in any of the IPCC reports.
The most recent IPCC report on mitigation on climate change is here: https://www.ipcc.ch/report/six... [www.ipcc.ch]
The most recent Synthesis report, putting together the results of all three working groups, is here: https://www.ipcc.ch/report/six... [www.ipcc.ch]
If the statement is there, I'd very much like to be able to quote it, so if you have citation with page number, please post it.
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I did a search for "ipcc nuclear energy" in my favorite web search engine, restricted results to the last year, and this came out on top:
https://nei.org/news/2022/ipcc... [nei.org]
That's just the top result, there's plenty more to see.
Also helpful was just searching in the report PDF for the word "nuclear" and there were mentions of how nuclear fission energy is important to mitigating CO2 emissions. There's a lot said in the report on what is restricting faster adoption of nuclear power so finding the bits on how i
citation [Re:First, stop digging.] (Score:2)
I did a search for "ipcc nuclear energy" in my favorite web search engine, restricted results to the last year, and this came out on top: https://nei.org/news/2022/ipcc... [nei.org]
Thanks for trying, but that result is from the Nuclear Energy Institute (quote from their website: "NEI and its members promote the benefits of nuclear power"), not from the IPCC, nor does it include a link to anything from the IPCC.
Also helpful was just searching in the report PDF for the word "nuclear" and there were mentions of how nuclear fission energy is important to mitigating CO2 emissions.
On a quick search, all I could find were brief mentions of nuclear in lists of power sources. Couldn't find the statement you made; if it's there, could you cite it?
...The IPCC has made a statement of some sort on the importance of nuclear fission to reducing CO2 from energy production a few times per year for several years now
Could you give me a citation? I want to see what the IPCC said, not what other institutions claimed it said.
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... but we have to understand that if we like actually living on this planet without getting boiled and drowned, we'll have to geo engineer *on purpose* ...
Who is going to pay for this geo-engineering?
If this is paid for by taxes then there needs to be an agreement from the people being taxed to fund this, assuming that there's any truth to "no taxation without representation". But if people can agree on the need to geo-engineer the planet to mitigate against human caused CO2 emissions then there's nothing stopping them from doing so without government funds.
The need for government intervention was not stated explicitly in your call to action but I can see p
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The idea is to add some sulfur / sodium to aviation kerosene to have the particles spread out in the stratosphere. Whatever we are 'doing' today to supposedly reduce global warming is completely pointless and yet it costs money already. The aviation undustry can be subsidised by that money already and the cost is some reduced flight efficiency while the technology is trivial. We have already done this before by burning fuels that were not as clean with more sulfur content, this was in the 50s/60s/70s, wh
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The idea is to add some sulfur / sodium to aviation kerosene to have the particles spread out in the stratosphere.
I get what you are proposing, you still aren't describing how this can be funded in any sustainable manner.
Whatever we are 'doing' today to supposedly reduce global warming is completely pointless and yet it costs money already.
Onshore windmills are profitable without subsidies, and they are claimed to be effective in reducing global warming. Find a profitable solution and it doesn't cost us money. There's places on Earth where nuclear power is profitable, and places where it is banned, change the government policies restricting growth in the nuclear power industry and we won't need to subsidize nuclear power either.
The aviation undustry can be subsidised by that money already and the cost is some reduced flight efficiency while the technology is trivial.
That po
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Actually there needs to be NO reengineering of large aircraft to make use of different fuel compositions at different times. Aircraft have, at a minimum, 2 fuel tanks (built into each wing). Some have more than two. Fuel can be pulled from any tank at any time. If a fuel tank is punctured in flight, they can pull from the other ones and isolate the bad tank (or pull from the bad one exclusively until it's empty, to make use of some of the fuel).
So the only thing that needs doing is getting the additives
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Unless this fungus can actually absorb 50 gigatons of CO2 per year,
All the emission-related CO2? Why do we need one big solution to fix everything?
Wrong question (Score:2)
Whether they can or not is irrelevant.
The question to ask is "Will they make the planet more resilient to climate change?"
The answer to that question is, unfortunately, "The Powers That Be will not allow it because they don't see a way to make money from it."
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The answer to that question is, unfortunately, "The Powers That Be will not allow it because they don't see a way to make money from it."
"The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money."
-- Margaret Thatcher
Re:Wrong question (Score:4, Insightful)
Funny how you quote Maggie Hood ("She steals from the poor, and gives it to the rich").
Investing society's money into society is called Socialism
Allowing the rich to rob the poor is called capitalism. It is usually right-wing politicians and companies that spend other people's money.
And even then Maggie Hood was wrong. It all depends on how money is created and who gets it first without having to work for it.
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Allowing the rich to rob the poor is called taxes.
FTFY.
In a capitalist system, I get to decide who robs me (where to spend my wealth). In a Socialist system, the bureaucrats (the ruling class, i.e. the wealthy) make that decision for me.
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Investing society's money into society is called Socialism
In what dictionary?
Allowing the rich to rob the poor is called capitalism.
Capitalism is a derogatory term thought up by socialists to describe a free market. When I hand over $50 for a tank of gasoline was I robbed? No, I willingly handed over that money because I know that if I did not then I'd be accused of robbery, or at least that the next time I come around looking for fuel there will be none. I profited by that transaction, as did the filling station. By handing over money for fuel I'm funding the people and processes that brought that fuel to me, and
terms [Re:Wrong question] (Score:2)
Investing society's money into society is called Socialism
In what dictionary?
Indeed, a significant problem with the discourse is that the word "socialism" has been used with so many different meanings that it's nearly meaningless.
The actual socialists of the late 19th and 20th century, however, did strongly advocate for investing society's money into applications beneficial to society, so indeed one definition of socialism is exactly that. However, this is NOT the definition of socialism which is posed as an alternative to capitalism.
Allowing the rich to rob the poor is called capitalism.
Capitalism is a derogatory term thought up by socialists to describe a free market.
No, it's a term thought up by economists to descr
Re:Wrong question (Score:4, Interesting)
Save the fungi (Score:2)
Less foodstuffs produced by mechanized farming. More that can be raised on unimproved land like prairies.
Cattle, for example.
universal answer (Score:2)
No.