A new study published by the journal, Global Ecology and Conservation, claims that a phenomenon known as CO2 fertilization is contributing to a net greening of the globe.
The authors of the study, entitled “The global greening continues despite increased drought stress since 2000”, used the measurement of Leaf Area Index (LAI) to shows that more than half of the globe is greening at an accelerated rate since 2000.
They note that “numerous studies have confirmed the greening phenomenon, investigated the drivers and corresponding influences”, but that “the conclusion of greening has recently been challenged, with some studies finding that global greening stagnated or even turned browning after 2000”.
Using leaf area index datasets that had been “significantly updated”, the scientists analyzed the global vegetation change trends from 2001 to 2020 based on the latest version of LAI datasets.
“Importantly, we also introduced the concept of LAI growth rate to analyze the rate of greening (browning). Finally, we further analyzed the drivers of LAI trend and LAI growth rate trend,” they said.
They conclude that “global greening is an indisputable fact” and “the rate of global greening increased slightly” between 2001 and 2020.
Further, they looked at “global browning” – decreases in vegetation which are often attributed to climate change – and found that the drought trend “only slowed down global greening, but was far from triggering browning”.
The authors also looked at studies that found global greening “could reduce climate warming by increasing terrestrial carbon sequestration and cooling the surface”.
“Greening acceleration occurred in 55.15% of the globe (positive trend and positive growth rate trend), while browning acceleration occurred in only 7.28% (negative trend and positive growth rate trend),” the study found.
The findings suggest that increased CO2 has been a net gain for the environment, which would stand contrary to the claim that CO2 endangers public health; a claim that was made by Environmental Protection Agency president Lisa Jackson in 2009. More recently, legislation in the U.S. has described CO2 as a pollutant.
It begs an interesting question: is CO2 a pollutant, or can its higher concentration actually a positive thing?
Strange as it seems, that is a question that is never asked in the main stream discourse – unless one of the many self-described ‘fact-checkers’ are finding against a claim that CO2 might not be the bogeyman we are expected to believe it is.
There is an assumption by a large section of the general public who rely on the corporate media for their views on the world (and their assessment of truth), that CO2 is a pollutant, and that it should by all measures be reduced. This is assumed a-priori, but it shouldn’t be.
Similarly a lot is made of a ‘prima facie’ notion that there is too much CO2 in the atmosphere, but it would be very difficult to get these same people to answer the following questions concerning atmospheric CO2. What is too much; what is optimal, and what is too little?
It is quite certain that many of the children who are driven to anxiety over a hypothesized climate catastrophe, if asked, might say that you cannot have too little. That assertion would be wrong. At 150 ppm (parts per million) all plant life starves for lack of CO2.
CO2 is the substance of life. Without it, the carbon cycle, which is the foundation of life on earth, cannot exist. And yet; the climate alarmists pay very little attention to this fact and its consequences.
If 150 ppm is starvation level, what is the optimum level for plant growth? Plants thrive in CO2 enriched environments, in fact commercial greenhouse growers pump CO2 into their greenhouses to enrich the atmosphere to 1000 ppm. Studies suggest that the optimum level is between 1100 and 1300 ppm.
The plants would do better with even higher levels of CO2 but the growers come up against the economics of diminishing returns as the cost of the gas has to be factored against the accelerated growth.
The new study suggest earth’s atmosphere has benefitted from this CO2 enrichment in the last 40 years in particular, and the evidence suggests that the benefits outweigh the costs. Despite concerns about droughts and desertification, the earth is generally becoming lusher as the atmospheric concentration of CO2 increases. And it’s not just slightly greener, the gains are massive.
The net greening of the planet since 1980 has covered an area nearly twice the size of the territory of the United States, according to a study quoted by NASA 2016.
The study states that CO2 was by far the biggest factor in this greening, much more so than soil moisture or temperature. “We found that CO2 dominated the LAI trend of 75.63% of the globe, and temperature and soil moisture only could reach 11.34% and 7.30% respectively, which were mainly concentrated in the high latitude areas of the northern Hemisphere and western Australia,” the authors state.
In short, the effects of weather and climate were far outweighed by the effects of CO2 fertilization and this trend was in spite of droughts.
This makes sense because one of the consequences of CO2 enrichment is that the respiration of plants requires far less water.
Respiration in plants happens through a process named photosynthesis where the plant absorbs CO2 from the air through tiny openings in its leaves called stomata. These stomata allow CO2 to enter the leaf, but also allow water vapour out through the open pores. The higher the concentration of CO2 the less water vapour passes out through the stomata, and the less water is needed by the plant to survive. So CO2 fertilization actually counters the effect of drought and does two things concurrently; it increases plant growth and increases the efficiency of water use.
There should be plenty of food for thought from this new study and the undeniable evidence that the most of the world is greening, not browning, and doing so at an accelerated rate. Most of all, this inconvenient truth should lead to an honest re-evaluation of the accepted wisdom that CO2 is a pollutant.