Bar-Ilan University will host an international conference in Eilat on reducing global warming with the help of marine vegetation with the participation of 90 scientists from around the world * The various habitats in Eilat will receive a careful examination
We all already know that the use of fossil fuels causes global warming and the emission of greenhouse gases. In recent years, the scientific world has been in a race against time in an attempt to find a solution that will minimize the damage and save what can still be saved. Now many scientists are trying a new direction. A record number of 90 researchers and scientists from around the world will participate in a special Bar-Ilan University conference dedicated to efforts to reduce global warming through marine photosynthesis. Dozens of scientists will gather at the Inter-University Institute of Marine Sciences in Eilat for an intensive workshop for 10 days and will examine the ways to measure marine photosynthesis in the world, which is one of the most important means of correcting and treating the greenhouse gases released into the air and the acidity of the seawater.
The workshop is being held for the eighth year with the joint support of the Bethsheva de Rothschild Foundation and the Goodman Faculty of Life Sciences at Bar-Ilan University. The chairperson of the conference is Dr. Ilana Berman-Frank, who is assisted by Prof. Zvi Dubinsky, also from Bar-Ilan , and in the local and international organizing committee. Dr. Berman Frank estimates that the reason for the large number of participants and the great excitement surrounding this year's conference is the fact that the issue is becoming more urgent and is gaining a place of honor on the public and scientific agenda.
"Half of the world's photosynthesis is carried out in the oceans and it is this that moderates the damages caused to the creatures living in them and to the atmosphere, which are caused as a result of the emission of carbon dioxide by humans," explains Dr. Ilana Berman-Frank and Prof. Zvi Dubinsky from the Mina and Edward Goodman University Faculty of Life Sciences Bar-Ilan. "Any change in the state and rate of photosynthetic production in the oceans may create a chain reaction that will affect the levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere," notes Prof. Dubinsky. "Improving the scientific methods for an accurate assessment of the primary production in the oceans is an extremely essential tool for predicting and preventing harmful effects in any scenario of changes in the global climate," he adds.
The team of researchers from Bar Ilan will be joined at the conference by representatives from Austria, Australia, Italy, the USA, Belgium, Great Britain, Germany, Denmark, the Netherlands, Israel, Slovenia, Spain, Portugal, Chile, the Czech Republic, Canada and Turkey and more. Scientists will come to the conference on their devices and equipment, will be divided into work teams and will compare the various research and measurement methods, and will even conduct Experiments in the diverse habitats found in the Red Sea, such as the open waters of the Gulf of Eilat/Aqaba which are poor in fertilizers, seaweed lawns, seaweed surfaces, biotechnological facilities for growing seaweed, salt ponds and coral reefs.
Jordanian-Turkish-Israeli cooperation for the coral reefs in the Gulf of Eilat
Israel will be represented at the conference by Prof. Zvi Dubinsky and his colleague from Bar-Ilan University, Dr. David Iloz, who will present their research that includes Jordanian-Turkish-Israeli cooperation supported by the NATO organization. The project focuses on the effects of dust storms originating from distant deserts such as the Sahara on various life forms in the Gulf of Eilat and the Red Sea. The warming of the earth causes processes of desertification on an extensive scale, and this has consequences for the increase in the intensity and frequency of dust storms. "The cooperation between the marine researchers regarding the monitoring of the changes in sea water quality in the Gulf of Eilat is aimed at the preservation and restoration of the spectacular coral reefs in the area, and at the same time it contributes to the strengthening of peaceful relations with our neighbors," concludes Prof. Dubinsky.
Other Bar Ilan researchers and their many students are engaged in researching the latest aspects of life in the Gulf of Eilat. Dr. Maoz Payne investigates the causes of the spread of coral diseases and the future consequences of the increase in the acidity of the oceans, Dr. Oren Levy investigates the molecular basis for the operation of biological clocks in corals. Dr. Ilana Berman Frank monitors, among other things, the relationship between iron levels and the essential process of nitrogen fixation by algae.
The Inter-University Institute of Eilat is the only research institution in Israel operated jointly by all the universities and researchers from all academic institutions in the country are indeed active in it. The researchers deal with the full range of marine research subjects: physics, geology, chemistry, biology and ecology and maintain a unique set of courses open to all university students in Israel.
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Roy,
I thought about it but I'm not sure that the discussion that took place won't make it difficult for him to say what exactly he meant in the first place.
The very fact that he refrained from doing so on his own initiative suggests that this is the case.
Michael and Ami,
The discussion between you is fascinating, and I really enjoyed as a biologist nostalgically reading Ami's explanations about photosynthesis in plants.
It seems to me that the point of contention between you is as follows. You actually disagree whether the 'Tam' meant in his question the conservation of the atoms, the conservation of the molecules or even the complete conservation of matter. Obviously, each of these issues has a separate answer, and it seems to me that you both also agree on the different answers to each question.
If I were you, I would ask Mr. Tam to repeat his question in detail, in order to focus the discussion.
Greetings friends,
Roy.
Ami,
I don't understand why you think the questioner intended to ask the question you describe because, beyond the fact that this question is not much different from the question of whether the law of conservation of matter exists in nature (with that it is a little different, I agree), it had nothing to do with the topic of the article.
The article discusses the fight against global warming with the help of marine vegetation.
The questioner intended to imply with his question (and also mock a little, in his honesty he was done) that there is no sense in fighting with these tools because everything that goes into the plant comes out of it. This is an incorrect claim. The more the balance between animals and plants is in favor of the plants, the more enriched the air is with oxygen and the less carbon dioxide it contains.
In other words, the method described in the article to combat global warming is a good and useful method.
Dear Michael,
As far as I understand, the question of the theme was a little more fundamental than you understood it. You understood something like "Does every gas that enters comes out exactly as it entered, in the same chemical form" and this is of course a very narrow understanding of a deep and broad question that received an enlightening article in the Nature newspaper several years ago. The question is fundamental and although the questioner is "Tam" (I refuse to believe that it is really Tamm) it is about something a little broader than the linguistic form in which the question is presented.
To your question, which is essentially different from Hatem's, my answer is - vegetation / phytoplankton / evergreen forests are definitely very important. Their meaning is oxygen production on the one hand and as the base of the food chain on the other. They have no significance in reducing carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas.
Of course, if we take all the growing biomass today and burn it, our atmosphere will be filled with billions of tons of carbon and this is undesirable - but here it is only a mental intervention and this is not relevant to serious ecological questions. In the existing state a plant is fixative and when it dies it returns what it took back to the atmosphere.
My friend Michael, there is no broad ecological significance to the fact that when water and carbon dioxide enter and oxygen and glucose come out, in my opinion, when the discussion revolves around greenhouse gases or global warming and not about plant physiology. The discussion and the first and wise question asked in it are related to the body of the article that deals with the discussion at the same conference in Eilat (for details see article above).
Water + carbon dioxide -> photosynthesis -> oxygen + glucose -> respiration -> water + carbon dioxide
* Not stoichiometric
Greetings friends,
Ami Bachar
Ami:
You are still confused, I think.
The question was not about the law of conservation of matter.
The fact that the material that goes in also comes out is clear, but it comes out in other forms.
For example, carbon dioxide and water enter and oxygen, among other things, leaves.
The fact that oxygen leaves and does not enter (as a gas) does not happen for free.
It enters - partly in water and partly in carbon dioxide, but comes out as oxygen.
Equally, only in a symmetrical statement - the carbon dioxide that enters partly leaves as oxygen and therefore cannot leave as opposed to coming in.
In fact, from the moment a molecule of clean oxygen gas came out, which the plant does not perceive as such, it is not possible for other substances that entered it to come out in the same way.
I repeat and repeat and repeat the context, but you avoid referring to it even though it is actually the essence of the question, so I will ask you directly the question of the context - do you think it is possible to give up the vegetation (because according to your description it consumes exactly what it produces) or is it necessary (because as that I claim - unlike you - she produces other substances than the ones she consumes)?
Dear Michael,
God forbid I do not belittle your biological background even for a moment, but for the benefit of our readers who do not know I will say that: the connection between the production of oxygen and the emission of carbon dioxide is only an indirect connection. The source of oxygen is from a water molecule and the source of carbon dioxide, for the most part, is from the complete combustion of organic matter. All the molecular oxygen (dioxygen) on our planet originates from photosynthesis. Oxygen-producing photosynthesis is one way in which inorganic carbon is simultaneously fixed to organic carbon while generating oxygen from water, as mentioned. Along with the creation of oxygen, there are some other techniques in the living world through which carbon is fixed. Precisely for this reason the connection is indirect, but not only.
In general, with the notable exception (carnivorous plants), all organic carbon in plants originates from photosynthetic fixation with a parallel release of oxygen. Six molecules of carbon dioxide are fixed into one glucose (sugar, organic) which undergoes biosynthesis and from which the rest of the plant's body is composed. The plant fixes carbon, part of which it assimilates into its body and part of which it burns in the process of respiration to create energy. All the carbon dioxide taken from the environment will be breathed in and returned or assimilated into the plant body. Everything that was assimilated will rot after death in microbial processes and will also be burned and returned to the atmosphere. In some cases, while the plant is alive, it is eaten and enters the food chain. Between each trophic stage there is a loss of 90% of the material for burning purposes and the remaining part is assimilated in the carnivore's body further up to the super carnivore. The super carnivore is not eaten, for the most part, so when it dies, it rots as well (like the plant that died) and all the carbon in it {which of course originates somewhere in the photosynthetic fixation of the plant, according to most} is also returned to the atmosphere.
To Tam's question, do all the gases that went in also come out again - the answer remains: yes.
The phenomenon of burial of organic matter is relatively rare and regardless, today it is also known that the reservoirs are emptied as a result of human burning. When there is burial after all, which is the exception and therefore should not be extrapolated from it to the rule, then there is an accumulation over a long period of time of organic matter determined from the beginning by inorganic carbon-fixing animals - including plants.
These reserves are not forever. Neither in the period of the new human industry nor in the distant past, in times when the causes of the elimination of carbon reserves such as oil reserves were bacterial discharge and/or tectonic movements that caused local fires. Either way, everything is recycled. There are more stable states of carbon and there are less stable states. The point is that there is no complete preservation of organic matter over geological time.
The original question is: "Isn't it true that when the plant dies all those gases it absorbed during its life are re-emitted into the atmosphere" and the answer is that it is very true. Dead organic matter decomposes. This is true for a plant and for anything else. Some of the dead matter goes into one or other processes that assimilate it again into living matter, but even the living matter will eventually die and be recycled.
Greetings friends,
Ami Bachar, ecologist
Ami,
I didn't turn anything around and the answer to the question is clearly no.
It seems to me that you did not understand the question and therefore you also do not understand my answer.
As I already mentioned - if this were true, all creatures that consume oxygen and produce carbon dioxide without acting in the opposite direction would become extinct because the oxygen would run out. The reason why it never ends is that the vegetation works the other way around and when I talk about the vegetation I am talking about it in a comprehensive account of its entire life cycle.
This is simple accounting and I don't see how you can even argue about it.
Dear Michael,
No matter how you twist something here or there, in the end all the inorganic matter that determines organic matter will be returned and recycled. There is no other choice. Even oil deposits are not forever and depend on geological movements or local microbial discharge, over time.
The bottom line, to Hatem's question "is it not true that when the plant dies all those gases it has absorbed during its life are re-emitted into the atmosphere" is: in fact yes. The matter of the production of oxygen (discharge of water) is an external matter that does not relate to this question, and even if they insist, then anyway oxygen is a substance that is excreted, so the answer still does not change - even though oxygen is not relevant to this question.
Everything that determines the plant will fall apart after it dies!
Ami Bachar
Yigal:
Why be precise just a little?
After all, everything I said is true and contrary to your words (which are also true) it also refers to the discussion.
After all, the question arose in the context of the logic in the struggle to preserve the composition of the atmosphere through vegetation and my words were related to this context.
Already in Ami's response it was evident that this connection eludes some of the respondents when he spoke about microbial decomposition.
After all, there is no problem in doing nothing, and even then some sort of equilibrium will really be achieved, only that this equilibrium will not include humans.
Our entire engagement with the issue stems from our desire to ensure that the balance does include us.
Michael,
Let's be a little more precise: it is not possible today to disconnect the two subsystems - they are one system.
Furthermore, before the appearance of the animals, the existing system, the plants, was balanced in a different balance than after its appearance. If the animals had not appeared, a different equilibrium would have been created than the one that in the end was created.
Ami,
A small extension to the above can be found in the fact that an ecosystem subsystem that is entirely based on the consumption of oxygen and the creation of carbon dioxide - the animal system - was not possible in a world where the second subsystem - the plant system is balanced.
Ami,
I did not claim that there is something immune from disintegration, but that there are things that, despite their lack of immunity, do not disintegrate.
After all, today those mineral fuels also return to the atmosphere simply because we put them back there by burning them, but before the industrial age, carbon literally accumulated in the bowels of the earth.
By the way, even the fact that you say that your answer is unorthodox shows that many people think that there is no equilibrium and this, by the way, is also proven by the fact that the composition of the atmosphere changed completely and creatures that need oxygen joined the ecology only after others before them created the conditions that made this possible.
Hello Michael,
From the final part of your response to me, I understand that you fully understood the meaning of the correction I gave to your words. This is not a confirmation at all, but rather a complete and uncompromising reversal of your answer. Any carbon that enters a living plant (however) will be returned to the atmosphere at one time or another before or after the death of the plant. Photosynthetic fixation of sugars that are breathed in by the plant or stored in the fruit and eaten or converted into biochemical building blocks to build any structure in the plant's body, eventually undergoing one or another microbial breakdown.
What about fuels? Indeed, there is an exception here when it comes to a special case of burial of organic material. It is not always a plant company, but it is true that fuel reservoirs are apparently a complete burial of carbon that is determined in the first place by a plant (or a bacterium or anything else). Burial of carbon as a fossil mineral is a rare matter and certainly not relevant in a tropical forest and/or as for a normal plant society that does not undergo a sudden catastrophe resulting in a fire. If you understand this, then you understand how the biological process of fixing carbon and releasing it back out of the plant works (whether directly in respiration or microbial decomposition of dead organic matter or through the food chain while accumulating in the biomass of predators).
At the end of the day, and it doesn't matter how we twist it in one way or another semantics while arguing pointlessly about the confirmation or denial of an idea: the law of conservation of mass also exists in biology and nothing that enters a plant is immune from being broken down a second time and returning to the countless original compounds in which it previously resided.
Best regards,
Ami Bachar
Ami:
You say all the gases return and in the next sentence you say no.
This is not a correction but a confirmation of my words.
By the way, even part of the carbon stored in the plant does not always return to the atmosphere and we eventually find part of it in the oil and coal reservoirs.
To 2:
Get a fix - definitely yes.
Ok, not _all_ the gases the plant absorbed. But yes all the gases he ever assimilated in his body. This is exactly the paradox in rainforests: for every leaf that grows and absorbs carbon dioxide from the environment, there is another leaf that falls and returns exactly the same carbon dioxide that it previously absorbed to the atmosphere. This is what happens in equilibrium and a tropical forest, in its standard definition is supposed to be in equilibrium. In general, a mature ecosystem is mostly in equilibrium - if that is possible. And so, Tam's question asks a very, very, very difficult and very important question, the answer to which is very unorthodox. Definitely! Any carbon attached and assimilated in the plant's body will be returned to the atmosphere again after it dies. Down to the last carbon and without subtracting even one atom.
Greetings friends,
Ami Bachar
post Scriptum.
I have just returned from the conference in Eilat (from its first two days) and I must note that its quality is exceptional. First-rate scientists in Israel and the world stand and get quality stage time and lecture on the hottest topics in the world of water today. In particular, the lecture by Professor Zvi Dubinsky (my teacher and rabbi and the man who taught me more or less everything about science) should be praised. Also, I was very happy to read here about new names such as Maoz Payne and my good friend Oren Levy - may they both have a lot of success in their many years of careers that are now starting at the university as heads of laboratories. It is also worth noting that behind the scenes Dr. Noga Stembler and it's-only-a-matter-of-time Dr. Orli Levitan and the group of students from Bar Ilan are working very hard for the success of the conference. Kudos to Ilana Berman Frank and all those involved in the difficult job of organizing and running the conference. Great honor to Bar Ilan University.
To 1:
No
Isn't it true that when the plant dies all those gases it absorbed during its life are re-emitted into the atmosphere?