This Fear of Carbon Stuff is Getting Insane

The effort of scientists nowadays seems to be to tie everything to climate change.  After all, it's the surest way to get funded and get your paper published.  At least it seems that way.  Consequently, we get a constant flow of stories about Things To Be Afraid Of or Worried About.  I think they just hit the absurdity limit; the most absurd stuff ever to be talked about, although I'm aware that "most absurd" is a pretty high bar to get over.  

The CBC, yes the Canadian Broadcasting Company, published an article that earthworms in the Canadian boreal forest are releasing too much carbon and they blame that on the fact that the worms are invasive species.   

Here's the gotcha.  They're invasive in the sense that the species they replaced went extinct in the last ice age, when the Canadian boreal forest was under a thousand feet of ice.  Take that metaphorically - I really don't know how deep the ice was.  Somehow, Canada survived with earthworms until the Europeans arrived around 300 years ago (or much longer, depending on whom you talk to).  When those Evil Europeans arrived, they carried eggs of the common earthworm, Lumbricus terrestris.  The worms quickly took advantage of an ecological niche with no competition and became (I almost hate to say it) the common earthworm. 

The common earthworm, photo credit Cristina Sevilleja Gonzalez on CBC.

Today there are more than 30 species of non-native earthworms in Canada, according to Michael McTavish, a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Toronto specializing in the ecology of non-native earthworms. 

If you're familiar with earthworms, I'm no earthworm specialist but I'm sort of familiar, you'll know that they burrow into fallen leaves and other organic matter on the forest floor (or in your yard).  In doing that, they feed on the leaves or whatever, digesting it as it passes through them, and poop fertilizer behind them.  They aerate the soil, change the chemistry of the soil, adding organic matter that other plants can better use for growth.  They just kind of affect everything. 

So what's the problem? 

They don't like letting nature take its course.  

"When earthworms move in, you have a fundamentally different soil environment," said McTavish. 

"So you can get changes in pH, in the texture and density, and nutrient enrichment.  The problem is that the species that we have present in our forests are not used to those kinds of conditions."

According to McTavish, the soil environment becomes inhospitable to native plants, allowing non-native plants to thrive.

...

Now, to the great concern of climate scientists, invasive earthworms are expanding their range northwards, in boreal forests that have lacked native earthworms since the last ice age.

The extent of the Canadian Boreal Forest they're talking about.  Coast to coast, from the Atlantic to the Arctic ocean and the Pacific.  It's not just a small patch.  Credit Natural Resources Defense Council.

The dead and decaying stuff on the forest floor contains a vast amount of carbon.  What they're afraid of is that carbon might not stay on the forest floor.  It might get turned into (gasp!) carbon dioxide and end up in the atmosphere.  They don't mention how that might happen whether by digestion in other organisms, if they expect it to burn, or just how.  Carbon doesn't just transmogrify into CO2 on its own.

I've got to say, I've never seen earthworms mentioned as being bad in any context so this was a new one on me.  I find it hard to imagine a campaign to kill all the earthworms, but if the worms are truly a problem, isn't that an obvious solution?  Since the last native earthworm species went extinct 10,000 years ago and the "invasive" earthworms came over 300 years ago, it's hard to argue the forest falls apart and dies without any worms.  

Frankly, it comes across as almost a desperate cry by the researchers of, "pay attention to us, too!  We're important!"  Then they go on to pretty much say the forest isn't the way that they think it ought to be so we're all gonna die!  I find it hard to take.