The Planet is Getting Greener

[LowDown]

Satellite measurements prove that despite eco-catastrophist's fretting about deforestation the amount of green growth on the earth as a whole is steadily increasing.

How Fossil Fuels Have Greened the Planet | Mind & Matter - WSJ.com

Did you know that the Earth is getting greener, quite literally? Satellites are now confirming that the amount of green vegetation on the planet has been increasing for three decades. This will be news to those accustomed to alarming tales about deforestation, overdevelopment and ecosystem destruction.

 

[sawyerloggingon]

Satellite measurements prove that despite eco-catastrophist's fretting about deforestation the amount of green growth on the earth as a whole is steadily increasing.

How Fossil Fuels Have Greened the Planet | Mind & Matter - WSJ.com

Your link didn't work for me but it sounded interesting so I found it here.


http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/31/opinion/lets-give-up-on-the-constitution.html

Interesting article really and is yet another nail in the coffin for the alarmist cult who see the end of the world around every corner.

 

[ecofarm]

Conspiracy!




The first link doesn't work and the second is OT, as far as I was willing to glance. What's going on here. Do we have to pay because it's science the likes of which not seen by JSTOR, or is it a BS opinion article?

"Mind and Matter"?

Are we gonna pray the desertification away?

 

[Peter Grimm]

Democrats don't give a tinkers damn about the environment. They only pretend to care in order to win over the bleeding heart voters and kumbaya single mothers.

Just like its a joke that they care about minorities, hell pres Obama is black himself and what has he done for black ppl?

The only concern democrats have is the unions. Unions pay for the ticket, and unions get all the benefits in return.

 

[Fisher]

I've heard for years that the US has far more trees today than when you Eurotrash got here because they hunted with guns and my ancestors hunted with massive forest fires that had to burn themselves out (okay I am more eurotrash than Injun, but I don't often get to climb on my ethnic high horse so suck it)

 

[Deuce]

I don't have WSJ paywall access and sawyer's link was titled "let's give up the constitution." (i think that's a bit drastic, but that's just my opinion)

So... uhhh, help?

 

[Dezaad]

Well nothing complex is ALL bad. It is completely unsurprising (if actually true) that anthropogenic increases in CO2 would lead to a possible re-greening of the planet.

I am glad to see that LowDown agrees that CO2 has caused warming:

The inescapable if unfashionable conclusion is that the human use of fossil fuels has been causing the greening of the planet in three separate ways: first, by displacing firewood as a fuel; second, by warming the climate; and third, by raising carbon dioxide levels, which raise plant growth rates.


http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323374504578217621593679506.html#articleTabs=article

 

[flogger]

Satellite measurements prove that despite eco-catastrophist's fretting about deforestation the amount of green growth on the earth as a whole is steadily increasing.

How Fossil Fuels Have Greened the Planet | Mind & Matter - WSJ.com

Indeed . Might the real truth be that increased CO2 levels might actually be a real benefit to mankind ? You might find this interesting .

Did the world have just the right concentration of carbon dioxide at the pre-industrial level of 270 parts per million? Reading breathless media reports about CO2 "pollution" and about minimising our "carbon footprints", one might think that the earth cannot have too little CO2. Humans and most other animals would do fine in a world with no atmospheric CO2 - but most plants stop growing if CO2 levels drop much below 150 ppm, so we would starve to death without at least this minimal amount. We are probably better off with our current 390 ppm than with the preindustrial 270 ppm, and we would be better off with still more CO2. For example, there is evidence that California orange groves are about 30 percent more productive today than they were 150 years ago because of the increase of atmospheric CO2.

What atmospheric levels of CO2 would be a direct threat to health? Both the United States Navy and NASA have performed extensive studies of human tolerance to CO2. As a result of these studies, the navy recommends an upper limit of about 8,000 ppm for cruises of 90 days and NASA recommends an upper limit of 5,000 ppm for missions of 1,000 days. We conclude that atmospheric CO2 levels should be above about 150 ppm to avoid harming green plants and below about 5,000 ppm to avoid harming people.

That is a big range, and our atmosphere is much closer to the lower end than the upper end. We were not that far from CO2 anorexia when massive burning of fossil fuels began. At the current rate of burning fossil fuels, we are adding about 2 ppm of CO2 per year to the atmosphere, so getting from our current level of about 390 ppm to 1,000 ppm would take about 300 years—and 1,000 ppm is still less than most plants would prefer, and much less than either the NASA or the navy limit.

Yet there are strident calls to immediately stop further increases in CO2 levels and reduce levels back to the 270 ppm pre-industrial value that was supposedly "the best of all possible worlds". The first reason for limiting CO2 was to fight global warming. Since the predicted warming has failed to be nearly as large as computer models forecasts, the reason was amended to stopping climate change. Sancta simplicitas. Climate change itself has been embarrassingly uneventful, so another rationale for reducing CO2 is now promoted: to stop the supposed increase of extreme climate events like droughts, hurricanes or tornados.

But dispassionate data show that the frequency of extreme events has hardly changed and in some cases has decreased in the 150 years that CO2 levels have increased from 270 ppm to 390 ppm. Other things being equal, doubling the current CO2 level in the atmosphere will increase the surface temperature by about 1 C. This modest warming, together with documented benefits to plant life, would be an overall benefit. The supposed ill effects of more CO2 are from computer models in which water vapour and clouds multiply the modest direct warming by factors of three, four even 10. Observations show no evidence for these large ``positive feedbacks."

In the preface to the first edition of his Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, Charles Mackay wrote: "The object of the author in the following pages has been to collect the most remarkable instances of those moral epidemics which have been excited, sometimes by one cause and sometimes by another, and to show how easily the masses have been led astray, and how imitative and gregarious men are, even in their infatuations and crimes." The contemporary crusade to demonize CO2 has much in common with the medieval crusades Mackay describes - with true believers, opportunists, cynics, money-hungry governments, manipulators of various types and even children's' crusades. The world has more important, real problems to tend to.

Will increased carbon dioxide levels actually benefit planet? - Public Service Europe

 

[Wiseone]

Satellite measurements prove that despite eco-catastrophist's fretting about deforestation the amount of green growth on the earth as a whole is steadily increasing.

How Fossil Fuels Have Greened the Planet | Mind & Matter - WSJ.com

I can't read the article so I can't really say what it has to say. But I can conceive of a situation where deforestation and greening are not mutually exclusive, since not all "greening" is forest its possible that forests may be decreasing while other green plants are taking their place, so while we have a net increase of green we're still deforesting. Of course that could be completely not what's happening, but without the article i don't know.

 

[iguanaman]

Satellite measurements prove that despite eco-catastrophist's fretting about deforestation the amount of green growth on the earth as a whole is steadily increasing.

How Fossil Fuels Have Greened the Planet | Mind & Matter - WSJ.com

If only we could all turn into plants. They are better at dealing with AGW than we are I'm afraid. Animals are screwed.

 

[flogger]

If only we could all turn into plants. They are better at dealing with AGW than we are I'm afraid. Animals are screwed.

Why is that always a given ?

What is it about pre industrial levels of CO 2 and temperature that made it more 'ideal' than conditions that prevail today or those that might exist tomorrow for that matter ?

 

[LowDown]

I can't read the article so I can't really say what it has to say. But I can conceive of a situation where deforestation and greening are not mutually exclusive, since not all "greening" is forest its possible that forests may be decreasing while other green plants are taking their place, so while we have a net increase of green we're still deforesting. Of course that could be completely not what's happening, but without the article i don't know.

Here is the same article, or close to it, in the author's blog:

The greening of the planet - Matt Ridley

 

[LowDown]

If only we could all turn into plants. They are better at dealing with AGW than we are I'm afraid. Animals are screwed.

It's a shame that people think they have to go around worrying about that.

It's all nonsense, of course. We will likely be able to adapt to whatever warming there is.

 

[Cardinal]

Here is the same article, or close to it, in the author's blog:

The greening of the planet*-*Matt Ridley

If there is increased greening, and therefore greater ability to process the added co2, wouldn't that mean that co2 ppm would either hold steady or even drop?

 

[LowDown]

If there is increased greening, and therefore greater ability to process the added co2, wouldn't that mean that co2 ppm would either hold steady or even drop?

Yes, increases in green growth absorb a lot of CO2, but it's still only a fraction of the CO2 being released into the environment.

 

[Cardinal]

Yes, increases in green growth absorb a lot of CO2, but it's still only a fraction of the CO2 being released into the environment.

Then I don't see your point.

 

[LowDown]

Then I don't see your point.

There has been a lot of hand wringing over deforestation among the eco-catastrophists. This concern seems to be misplaced.

 

[Cardinal]

There has been a lot of hand wringing over deforestation among the eco-catastrophists. This concern seems to be misplaced.

I don't see how certain geographical locations becoming greener as a result of increased co2 changes anything.

 

[longknife]

The Disintegration of "Climate Change" Proofs

This should put the Greenies in a snit.

by Dad29 blog

I'd say this is telling.

...the IPCC’s sensitivity estimate cannot readily be reconciled with forcing estimates and observational data. All the recent literature that approaches the question from this angle comes up with similar answers, including the papers I mentioned above. By failing to meet this problem head-on, the IPCC authors now find themselves in a bit of a pickle. I expect them to brazen it out, on the grounds that they are the experts and are quite capable of squaring the circle before breakfast if need be. But in doing so, they risk being seen as not so much summarising scientific progress, but obstructing it. --WUWT quoting Annan's blog

"Scientific progress" has nothing--zero--zip--nada--to do with it.

Follow the MONEY, stupid.