But surely we have some which survived, or can manufacture using methods of the time to check.
Also, physics was in a pretty good state at the time, at least regarding temperature/length measurement. Surely the scientists of the time measured the bias.
Due to the way statistics work, you don't need to be able to measure hundredths of degree to detect a hundredth of degree average change.
Because the error will distribute around the true value, thus even with sampling errors you can still extract a signal, even a very weak one, if you have many samples.
True, but I'm willing to bet that N deficiency is pretty wild spread world-wide, including in natural soil. Probably the second dominant stunt factor on plants (after water), and way before CO2.
> Not because the plants grow faster, because you can grow 3x as many of them.
This is against current consensus. The consensus is that plants do grow faster when you put fertilizer in the soil and the yield increase is because of that, not because of the "grass years".
There are plenty of studies on this, one example:
> Crop yields were increased by 19–41% (rice) and 61–76% (rapeseed) during the two years of rice-rapeseed rotation under NPK fertilization compared to PK fertilization across the study sites. Yield responses to fertilization were ranked NPK > NP > NK > PK, illustrating that N deficiency was the most limiting condition in a rice-rapeseed rotation, followed by P and K deficiencies.
Remember when people believed that 90% of DNA is junk? Or that the human appendix is totally useless? Now we know better.
So when photosynthesis is "inefficient" after billions years of evolution, surely we would be more careful with the conclusions.
"Photosynthesis is only 1% efficient" sounds a bit like "we only use 10% of our brain" (according to some measurement).
> Photorespiration wastes little energy and instead enhances nitrate assimilation, the process that converts nitrate from the soil into protein, according to a new study.
> Most plants, contrary to popular belief, do not waste over 30% of their photosynthate in a futile cycle called photorespiration. Rather, the photorespiratory pathway generates additional malate in the chloroplast that empowers many energy-intensive chemical reactions, such as those involved in nitrate assimilation. Thus, the balance between carbon fixation and photorespiration determines the plant carbon–nitrogen balance and protein concentrations.
But surely we have some which survived, or can manufacture using methods of the time to check.
Also, physics was in a pretty good state at the time, at least regarding temperature/length measurement. Surely the scientists of the time measured the bias.