I didn’t realise that photosynthesis wasn’t fully understood. Full list of this year’s Science Prizes at link below.

>Humans have only just begun dabbling with solar power, but other organisms have been converting sunlight into energy for more than three billion years. In fact, we’re only just beginning to understand how they do it.

So it is for his groundbreaking work in helping us humans understand the process of photosynthesis that Graham Farquhar has today received this year’s Prime Minister’s Prize for Science.

Graham is Distinguished Professor of the Australian National University’s Research School of Biology and Chief Investigator of the Australian Research Council’s Centre of Excellence for Translational Photosynthesis.

When he started out studying photosynthesis, Graham found that researchers from disparate fields within biology and biochemistry all had their own narrow views on how photosynthesis worked. But few were able to link together all the pieces of this complex puzzle.

So Graham brought his experience as a biophysicist to the problem and worked to describe how the components of photosynthesis connect in a mathematical way. He was particularly interested in how the process operates under different environmental conditions, such as when water is scarce. This is useful, because if we can understand this, then we can breed plants that can better withstand drought.

Full report: http://theconversation.com/pms-prize-for-science-for-revealing-natures-solar-power-49446

Bubblecar said:

I didn’t realise that photosynthesis wasn’t fully understood.

Just about everything is not fully understood.

In fact I think we could make that everything.

The Rev Dodgson said:

Bubblecar said:

I didn’t realise that photosynthesis wasn’t fully understood.

Just about everything is not fully understood.

In fact I think we could make that everything.

Well it’s all a rich tapestry. Not understanding some important bits means you don’t understand the rest of it either.

> When he started out studying photosynthesis, Graham found that researchers from disparate fields within biology and biochemistry all had their own narrow views on how photosynthesis worked. But few were able to link together all the pieces of this complex puzzle.

Well, that certainly applies to me. I had to study the mechanics of photosynthesis when I was doing computer modelling of micro-algae growth for the algal biofuels project at CSIRO. But I certainly didn’t have to study the “whole” mechanics of photosynthesis. The first part I needed was to find out over what wavelength ranges the various photosynthetic pigments (not just chlorophyll but also the active and passive carotenoids and xanthophylls) absorbed light in different frequency ranges. I needed to vary that depending on which species of algae I was looking at. And I needed to translate all that into the rate of CO2 uptake.

The Rev Dodgson said:

Bubblecar said:

I didn’t realise that photosynthesis wasn’t fully understood.

Just about everything is not fully understood.

In fact I think we could make that everything.

I’ll agree with that.

“My reckoning is that if we could get rid of all the anthropogenic carbon dioxide emitted since
the industrial revolution, then agricultural productivity would drop by 15%,” Graham Farquhar says.

and looking ahead at the inevitable agricultural productivity will increase much more.

Grantham Institute Acknowledgement That “CO2 Benefits Are Indeed Good News”

Greenpeace founder delivers powerful annual lecture, praises carbon dioxide

The_observer said:

“My reckoning is that if we could get rid of all the anthropogenic carbon dioxide emitted since
the industrial revolution, then agricultural productivity would drop by 15%,”
Graham Farquhar; this year’s recipient of the Prime Minister’s Prize for Science.

Meeting called by Federal MP Craig Kelly, Monday 19th, at Parliament House

Jennifer Marohasy describes question time during the meeting:

The Chair /Craig Kelly wanted to know about the likely extent of future warming and whether it was realistic to try and keep temperature increases within 2 degree Celsius.

Mark Howden (Director of the ANU Climate Change Institute) proceeded to suggest that with climate change there was going to be a decline in crop production, and showed bar charts suggesting catastrophe.

Before he got very far one of the farmer/politicians in the room interrupted wanted to know the origin of the data. There were more interruptions from the members and senators, until Dennis Jensen insisted that Howden answer the original question which Dennis suggested came down to whether the data being presented was ‘real’ or is simply ‘model output’.

Howden acknowledged that everything he was presenting was output from computer models.

Several members then got up and left, before he had actually finished his presentation.

and your point is?

roughbarked said:

and your point is?

quite obvious; Graham Farquhar, one of many, has pointed out one of the major benifits of increasing atmospheric CO2.

And considering how little warming this increase in CO2 will produce, it’s a win win situation.

Unless you believe in models that are merely tools of the climate crisis industry

The_observer said:

roughbarked said:

and your point is?

quite obvious; Graham Farquhar, one of many, has pointed out one of the major benifits of increasing atmospheric CO2.

And considering how little warming this increase in CO2 will produce, it’s a win win situation.

Unless you believe in models that are merely tools of the climate crisis industry

benifits?

Education thread… —>

The_observer said:

roughbarked said:

and your point is?

quite obvious; Graham Farquhar, one of many, has pointed out one of the major benifits of increasing atmospheric CO2.

And considering how little warming this increase in CO2 will produce, it’s a win win situation.

Unless you believe in models that are merely tools of the climate crisis industry

It is not a matter of what people believe. It is more a matter of what makes sense.

Now if I was a wealthy farmer wanting to become more wealthy, I’d have one point of view about what made sense to me. On the other hand and there are other hands..

Wealthy farmers are a small group of those who make up those attempting to survive.

roughbarked said:

The_observer said:

roughbarked said:

and your point is?

quite obvious; Graham Farquhar, one of many, has pointed out one of the major benifits of increasing atmospheric CO2.

And considering how little warming this increase in CO2 will produce, it’s a win win situation.

Unless you believe in models that are merely tools of the climate crisis industry

It is not a matter of what people believe. It is more a matter of what makes sense.

Now if I was a wealthy farmer wanting to become more wealthy, I’d have one point of view about what made sense to me. On the other hand and there are other hands..

Wealthy farmers are a small group of those who make up those attempting to survive.

I’m not aware of the reasons for your fixation on “wealthy farmers”, but they do feed the world

The_observer said:

roughbarked said:

The_observer said:

quite obvious; Graham Farquhar, one of many, has pointed out one of the major benifits of increasing atmospheric CO2.

And considering how little warming this increase in CO2 will produce, it’s a win win situation.

Unless you believe in models that are merely tools of the climate crisis industry

It is not a matter of what people believe. It is more a matter of what makes sense.

Now if I was a wealthy farmer wanting to become more wealthy, I’d have one point of view about what made sense to me. On the other hand and there are other hands..

Wealthy farmers are a small group of those who make up those attempting to survive.

I’m not aware of the reasons for your fixation on “wealthy farmers”, but they do feed the world

As stumpy said, ——-> education thread.

roughbarked said:

As stumpy said, ——-> education thread.

could you be more specific

The_observer said:

roughbarked said:

As stumpy said, ——-> education thread.

could you be more specific

Well for a start, ask yourself how much of this food production gets tossed on the tip uneaten?

roughbarked said:

The_observer said:

roughbarked said:

As stumpy said, ——-> education thread.

could you be more specific

Well for a start, ask yourself how much of this food production gets tossed on the tip uneaten?

the only assumption I can make from reading your comment is that your opinion is – who cares about how much more food we are now growing, or how much greener the globe is, directly due to increased atmospheric CO2, when compared to all the negative effect of said CO2.

well there a no negative effects of said CO2, so relax & enjoy the interglacial.

The_observer said:

roughbarked said:

The_observer said:

could you be more specific

Well for a start, ask yourself how much of this food production gets tossed on the tip uneaten?

the only assumption I can make from reading your comment is that your opinion is – who cares about how much more food we are now growing, or how much greener the globe is, directly due to increased atmospheric CO2, when compared to all the negative effect of said CO2.

well there a no negative effects of said CO2, so relax & enjoy the interglacial.

It has nothing to do with my opinions though you have no chance of coming close to comprehending those.
My comment was very simple and if you are any kind of observer at all, you’d be able to comprehend it way better than you are demonstrating.

roughbarked said:

The_observer said:

roughbarked said:

Well for a start, ask yourself how much of this food production gets tossed on the tip uneaten?

the only assumption I can make from reading your comment is that your opinion is – who cares about how much more food we are now growing, or how much greener the globe is, directly due to increased atmospheric CO2, when compared to all the negative effect of said CO2.

well there a no negative effects of said CO2, so relax & enjoy the interglacial.

It has nothing to do with my opinions though you have no chance of coming close to comprehending those.
My comment was very simple and if you are any kind of observer at all, you’d be able to comprehend it way better than you are demonstrating.

well, then, your comments are way off topic from my posts, which you responded too, so, my assumptions were quite reasonable, tsm!

The_observer said:

roughbarked said:

The_observer said:

the only assumption I can make from reading your comment is that your opinion is – who cares about how much more food we are now growing, or how much greener the globe is, directly due to increased atmospheric CO2, when compared to all the negative effect of said CO2.

well there a no negative effects of said CO2, so relax & enjoy the interglacial.

It has nothing to do with my opinions though you have no chance of coming close to comprehending those.
My comment was very simple and if you are any kind of observer at all, you’d be able to comprehend it way better than you are demonstrating.

well, then, your comments are way off topic from my posts, which you responded too, so, my assumptions were quite reasonable, tsm!

In that assume will make an ass out of you before you get to me?

There is no such thing as off topic in regard to climate change. CO2 isn’t the only player.

roughbarked said:

The_observer said:

roughbarked said:

It has nothing to do with my opinions though you have no chance of coming close to comprehending those.
My comment was very simple and if you are any kind of observer at all, you’d be able to comprehend it way better than you are demonstrating.

well, then, your comments are way off topic from my posts, which you responded too, so, my assumptions were quite reasonable, tsm!

In that assume will make an ass out of you before you get to me?

There is no such thing as off topic in regard to climate change. CO2 isn’t the only player.

your responses must be the result of what happens when a person bongs on in the morning, I guess.

The_observer said:

roughbarked said:

The_observer said:

well, then, your comments are way off topic from my posts, which you responded too, so, my assumptions were quite reasonable, tsm!

In that assume will make an ass out of you before you get to me?

There is no such thing as off topic in regard to climate change. CO2 isn’t the only player.

your responses must be the result of what happens when a person bongs on in the morning, I guess.

Ha ha ha. :) well the farmers who want to produce high quality weed would ceertainly benefit from increased CO2 levels, if that is what you want to imply.

I’m in no way attempting to dis Graham Farquhar or his work on photosynthesis nor the benefits that may be gleaned from all or any of it.

I asked you what your point was. That was when you started assuming more off topic.

The_observer said:

The_observer said:

“My reckoning is that if we could get rid of all the anthropogenic carbon dioxide emitted since
the industrial revolution, then agricultural productivity would drop by 15%,”
Graham Farquhar; this year’s recipient of the Prime Minister’s Prize for Science.

Meeting called by Federal MP Craig Kelly, Monday 19th, at Parliament House

Jennifer Marohasy describes question time during the meeting:

The Chair /Craig Kelly wanted to know about the likely extent of future warming and whether it was realistic to try and keep temperature increases within 2 degree Celsius.

Mark Howden (Director of the ANU Climate Change Institute) proceeded to suggest that with climate change there was going to be a decline in crop production, and showed bar charts suggesting catastrophe.

Before he got very far one of the farmer/politicians in the room interrupted wanted to know the origin of the data. There were more interruptions from the members and senators, until Dennis Jensen insisted that Howden answer the original question which Dennis suggested came down to whether the data being presented was ‘real’ or is simply ‘model output’.

Howden acknowledged that everything he was presenting was output from computer models.

Several members then got up and left, before he had actually finished his presentation.

>>Global temperatures are running far above last year’s record-setting level, all but guaranteeing that 2015 will be the hottest year in the historical record — and undermining political claims that global warming had somehow stopped.<<

>>She pointed to measurements in several of the world’s ocean basins, where surface temperatures are as much as three degrees Fahrenheit above the 20th century average, a substantial increase when calculated over such large areas.

“We’re seeing it all across the Indian Ocean, in huge parts of the Atlantic Ocean, in parts of the Arctic oceans,” Dr. Blunden said in an interview. “It’s just incredible to me. I’ve never seen anything like this before.”<<

>>For much of the past decade, people who question established climate science have been claiming that global warming had stopped. Their argument depended on picking a particular base year — almost always 1998, the final year of the last strong El Niño — as their starting point.

But mainstream climate scientists said that was a statistically invalid cherry-picking of the data, and their analysis of the entire record showed that global warming never stopped — at most, the rise of surface temperatures slowed somewhat, even as the oceans continued to warm at a brisk pace.

The record-setting warmth of 2014 and 2015 has undermined the idea that the problem of greenhouse emissions had somehow solved itself, though some Washington politicians continue to repeat the claims. Climate scientists have not wavered in their view that the long-term temperature increase poses profound risks and that emissions must be brought under control.<<

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/22/science/2015-likely-to-be-hottest-year-ever-recorded.html?&moduleDetail=section-news-0&action=click&contentCollection=Science®ion=Footer&module=MoreInSection&version=WhatsNext&contentID=WhatsNext&pgtype=article

132 year thermometer Chart above. Each red line is the estimated average temperature for one year, from 1881 (left) to 2013 (right)

in degrees Fahrenheit.

Data from Goddard Institute for Space Studies (NASA).

>>>For much of the past decade, people who question established climate science have been claiming that global warming had stopped.
Their argument depended on picking a particular base year — almost always 1998, the final year of the last strong El Niño — as their starting point.

But mainstream climate scientists said that was a statistically invalid cherry-picking of the data,

<<<

well then;

here’s the situation; excluding 1998, using the most accurate data for the last 15 years,

a period in which a quarter of all the so called human emissions of co2 shave been emitted to the atmosphere

no warming

and there is no evidence to show the missing heat is hiding in the oceans or anywhere else

:)

The_observer said:

>>>For much of the past decade, people who question established climate science have been claiming that global warming had stopped.
Their argument depended on picking a particular base year — almost always 1998, the final year of the last strong El Niño — as their starting point.

But mainstream climate scientists said that was a statistically invalid cherry-picking of the data,

<<<

well then;

here’s the situation; excluding 1998, using the most accurate data for the last 15 years,

a period in which a quarter of all the so called human emissions of co2 shave been emitted to the atmosphere

no warming

and there is no evidence to show the missing heat is hiding in the oceans or anywhere else

:)

The_observer said:

132 year thermometer Chart above. Each red line is the estimated average temperature for one year, from 1881 (left) to 2013 (right)

in degrees Fahrenheit.

Data from Goddard Institute for Space Studies (NASA).

The Prime Minister’s Prize for Science recipient Graham Farquar, besides stating the obvious, that CO2 is good for humanity because it’s plant food, stupid;

quote – : “If we could get rid of all the anthropogenic carbon dioxide emitted since the industrial revolution, then agricultural productivity would drop by 15 per cent.”

has also found that climate models have got it wrong in regards to the strongest (hypothesied) positive feedback , water vapour feedback.

Farquhar found that the models that scientists use to predict much higher temperatures predict that as the world warmed, the winds would get stronger and air drier, causing more evaporation. But Farquhar found evaporation rates over the past 50 years have actually tended to decrease, because wind speeds had fallen.

“None of the climate models show such a decrease in wind speed,” he says. “It’s a paradox, which shows we haven’t thought about climate change and its impact enough yet.”

On the assessment of aridity with changes in atmospheric CO2

Authors Michael L. Roderick, Peter Greve, Graham D. Farquhar

Abstract – A recent interpretation of climate model projections concluded that “warmer is more arid.” In contrast, dust records and other evidence have led the geoscience community to conclude that “warmer is less arid” leading to an aridity paradox.

The “warmer is more arid” interpretation is based on a projected increase in the vapour pressure deficit (∼ 7–9% K−1) that results in a projected increase in potential evaporation that greatly exceeds the projected increase in precipitation. However, the increase in potential evaporation does not result in an increase in (actual) evaporation which remains more or less constant in the model output. Projected changes in the long-term aridity can be assessed by directly interrogating the climate model output. To that end, we equate lack of precipitation with meteorological aridity and lack of runoff with hydrologic aridity. A third perspective, agro-ecological aridity, is not directly related to the water lost but rather to the carbon gain and is equated with the reduction in photosynthetic uptake of CO2.

We reexamine the same climate model output and conclude that “warmer is less arid” from all perspectives and in agreement with the geological records.

===================

So, according to the IPCC, the strongest feedback, negative or positive, by far is (the hypothesised) positive water vapour feedback.
Because of this, overall (net) feedback is hypothesised to be positive, resulting in more than 1C of warming for a 2 x CO2 scenario.

But, if the strongest positive feedback by far (water vapor feedback) is actually negative, the net feedback is negative, and that means that for a 2 x CO2 scenario we’ll get less than 1 C of warming!

Enjoy the interglacial.