Posted: Feb 27, 2012 12:15 am
by Horwood Beer-Master
Spearthrower wrote:As usual, the BBC is a hotbed for deniers: lots of threats being made in comments about the article, and how the BBC is defaming the Heartland institute. I've never seen a more condensed group of reality-deniers than in the comments section of any article written by Richard Black.

I wonder how many of them are the same person posting under several accounts?

FACT-MAN-2 wrote:...and these plants start emitting C02 instead of oxygen...

Plants are always emitting both C02 and oxygen, since they respire as well as photosynthesise. The point is that in a healthy plant under ideal conditions the rate at which carbon is captured in photosynthesis exceeds the rate at which previously stored carbon is released as C02 by respiration. However if a plant finds itself under stress (say by a change in climate), it may have to eat into it's carbohydrate store more-and-more just to survive, to the point where it goes from being a net emitter of oxygen to a net emitter of C02. Also if an entire habitat is stressed, not only will many individual stressed plants become net C02 emitters, but many others will simply die and rot, and their stored carbon will be released back into the atmosphere as C02 (and methane) released by the bacteria and fungi as they break down the plant's tissues.