We really need to consider whether increasing the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, leading to a warmer planet, is as detrimental for the human race, and all other life on the planet, as many environmentalists like to claim. In fact, what if a slightly warmer planet can be utilized in such a way so as to actually be good for the Earth, humanity, and all other life on Earth?
Increasing Growth Rates and Plant Mass
For example, it is my understanding that the extra carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere actually does a few things: it increases the growth rate of plants, allowing them to gain more mass quicker; it warms up the earth allowing for growing season to become longer, which becomes increasingly important the farther north you go; it increases the amount of land area where plants can grow, so that former tundra can now be warm enough to grow plants where previously they wouldn’t grow.
All of this means that we can increase the amount of plant life on the planet by increasing the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Right now, if you added up the weight of all plant life here on Earth, it would add up to about 450 gigatons worth of carbon – the main building block of life. That number, as large as it is, represents only half of the amount of plant mass that used to be on the planet before the first human civilizations began several thousand years ago.
Increasing the amount of CO2 on earth could cause the amount of plant mass to increase, because there’s more carbon dioxide that can be utilized by plants, allowing them to grow faster. And, as I previously mentioned, areas farther north, such as in the boreal forests of Canada or Russia’s Siberia, would see increasing density of its foliage. Go even farther north than that, to the tundra, where plants don’t grow higher than a few inches because of how cold it is today, and how short its growing season is – it would see more growth in terms of height, and in terms of having a longer growing season.
All of this adds up. Even an increase of 11 percent could bring the weight of plant mass up to around 500 gigatons of carbon.
Compare that gargantuan amount of plant mass to the entire total mass of humans: if you added up the entire mass of us humans on Earth, it would add up to around 0.06 gigatons, or a little more than one-ten-thousandth of one percent of the mass of plants on Earth. That should show you how miniscule our occupation of Earth is compared to plants.
But, there’s one other thing you need to consider. Long ago, before we humans started to cut down forests to make way for our agriculture and civilizations, the mass of plants on this planet has been estimated to have been twice what it is today – worth around 900 gigatons of carbon.
From this standpoint, increasing the amount of carbon dioxide on Earth can help to increase the amount of mass that comes from plants, which means that we can use this increasing CO2 to compensate for the loss of plant mass due to human civilization. In other words, we can, in this way, allow increasing amounts of CO2 to be to Earth’s benefit.
Human Agriculture
There’s another way that increasing amounts of carbon dioxide can be good for us. It can help us agriculturally – it can allow us to increase our crop yields, thus increasing the food supply for humanity. This would allow us to grow even more food, which would allow us to feed more people, and allow us to support a growing population – even one that could be twice or thrice what it is today. Imagine that!
What do I mean? As I mentioned previously, in northern Canada and Russia’s Siberia are large land areas that today are home to massive boreal forests. These lands aren’t very populated, nor are they used very much for agricultural reasons, but only occasionally for mineral extraction. Why? It’s very cold in these places for much of the year, and the warm season there is very short, meaning these lands have a very short growing season.
A slightly warmer planet would mean a slightly longer growing season, which would have the potential to open up massive amounts of land, along a band at the southern edges of these boreal forests, for agricultural purposes. It would mean that these lands have the potential to support a population where previously they didn’t.
There’s also the possibility that agribusinesses could use genetic modification techniques (yeah, I know, not a very popular subject…) to create new breeds of our crops that grow to shorter heights and are ready for harvesting in maybe a third or half the time it takes to grow conventional crops, opening up even more of this land for production of our food.
Not only that, but areas farther south could have their growing seasons lengthened, allowing them to support two growing seasons, and two yields per year, rather than just one. All of this could support a higher human population.
Conclusion
With all of this being said, we really need to consider this option – that increasing CO2 can be used for our benefit – before going to the extreme with carbon reduction policies that might hurt the world’s economies, and our standard of living and level of well-being.
Heck, these extreme carbon-reduction strategies have a hug potential to backfire, which could lead us into the next ice age, or cause widespread destitution, which itself could be detrimental to environmental well-being. And if that happens, it could be catastrophic. Do we really want to go that route?
