Red Baron Farms
Philosopher
And? Temperate rainforests used to exist on almost every continent in the world, but today only 50 percent — 75 million acres — of these forests remain worldwide. Originally, 6 million square miles of tropical rainforest existed worldwide. But as a result of deforestation, only 2.4 million square miles remain. Between 2000 and 2012, 0.9 million square miles of forests around the world were cut down. That's roughly the size of all of the states in the U.S. east of the Mississippi River. Only 0.3 million square miles were replanted. There are only only four remaining intact temperate grasslands in the world and they are greatly reduced in size. For example the North American tallgrass prairie for all practical purposes is completely gone. About 5,000 years ago the great northern grasslands died out when humans exterminated the majority of the megafauna in the northern hemisphere, replaced now with boreal forest with shallow roots due to the thin soils. (luckily they can form peat at least) Most the grasslands of Australia that started desertifying 50,000 years ago due to the human eradication of Australia's megafauna were surveyed in the 1840's with many still containing deep A-horizons of 6%-20% SOM are now almost completely finished desertifying and contain usually around <1% SOM. The farmers of Australia now farm on sub-soil (B-horizon) as excepting a small band of tropical rainforest remaining, nearly all the top soil is now gone. China's Loess plateau ecosystems were completely destroyed. (although now part of the largest ecosystem restoration project in the world) Green revolution agriculture is a carbon emissions source.
With all this and more ecosystem destruction world wide, the very few remnant functioning ecosystems left are still capable of making the entire terrestrial biosphere taken as a whole a net sink, at least over recent decades. Exactly like you said, increased CO2 in the atmosphere does ramp up certain types of plant growth in certain circumstances. But of course the ecological sink is far too small to actually counter Fossil Fuel emissions in its current degraded state. That's the key you have repeatedly ignored over and over on this thread.
You can't just wave away FF emissions with enhanced ecosystem services if in addition to Fossil Fuel emissions you also have significant ecosystem degradation also caused by mankind. Any argument along those lines MUST include ecological restoration by necessity, as currently the effect is too small.
There is a vigorous debate currently in scientific circles as to whether it potentially could be large enough with better management of Earth's ecosystems. Is 2015 The Year Soil Becomes Climate Change’s Hottest Topic? But ALL legit scientific analysis agrees, in their current degraded state the ecosystems (including artificial agricultural ecosystems) are not sufficient to the task.
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