Fascinating evidence has been published that shows the recent increase in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has caused some cooling over large areas of the planet, and significant and widespread increases in vegetation. This plant boost, which has alleviated famine and hunger and helped send global food production soaring in recent decades, was found to have led to a global cooling trend of –0.018°C a decade. There are significant margins of error, up and down, but this is said to have offset ~4.6% of global warming. However, in the case of India and China it has offset ~39.4% and ~19% respectively.
In a paper published last month, 11 Chinese climate scientists note that the Earth has experienced “widespread vegetation greening” since the 1980s due to CO2 fertilisation effects. Such greening could mitigate global warming “by triggering negative biochemical feedback to the climate system”. The darker green vegetation absorbs more of the sun’s heat, claim the scientists, while processes involving water evaporation or heat convection between the surface and the atmosphere also depress local temperatures.
The Earth has undoubtedly greened over the last 40 years as atmospheric levels of CO2 have started a slow recovery from what some scientists claim is a period of dangerous collapse. The current level of CO2 in the atmosphere is around 419 parts per million and is near an all-time low in the paleo record. In the past, levels have been up to 20 times higher but below about 180 ppm, plant and human life would start to die. It is generally accepted that there has been a recent increase in global vegetation of around 14%. In 2016, a major international scientific study involving 32 scientists noted there had been a “persistent and widespread increase” in growing season greening over 25-50% of the global vegetated area. Some scientist are relaxed about rising levels of CO2 as a consequence. Dr. Roy Spencer, the former senior scientist at NASA, notes that, “though CO2 is necessary for life on Earth to exist, there is precious little of it in Earth’s atmosphere”.
The Chinese study estimated temperature response to higher levels of vegetation between 2001-2018 by examining satellite temperature recordings and records of leaf area data. Other matters considered included local climate conditions, plant types and annual and seasonal factors. An estimated signal was then compared with historical temperatures records “to evaluate the potential climate benefits of greening at global and regional scales”.
The above graph shows areas of the world where greening “can significantly mitigate climate change”. It is notable that these areas include Europe, China, India and southern Brazil. These areas are also forecast to dominate global greening after the 21st century. India and China are said to be the top two countries where substantial greening “induces strong cooling effects” of –0.14°C and –0.059°C a decade respectively. As I noted above, this leads to cooling of surface warming of ~39.4% and ~19% respectively. It is only an anecdotal observation, of course, but these two countries are rapidly expanding their local consumption of fossil fuel energy, and there will be many who will be tempted to make a cooling link.
On a wider level, this paper is an important contribution to the debate over climate change and the contention that human-caused CO2 is the main control knob for any recent warming in the atmosphere. Over 600 million years, CO2 has been gradually drawn out of the atmosphere and sequestered in the Earth’s crust. The problem with the hypothesis of anthropogenic warming – other than lack of any actual proof – is that it fails to provide much correlation between temperatures and CO2 levels in the current, historical or paleo past. Arguments that the gas becomes ‘saturated’ at certain levels and its warming properties reduce on a logarithmic scale can provide a more convincing explanation to fit past observations.
Away from the ‘settled’ science narrative – a political fiction designed to stifle debate and promote Net Zero – scientists research the many influences that cause the climate to change. It is highly improbable that increasing CO2 in the atmosphere will cause a climate ‘breakdown’ because it has never done so in the past. The atmosphere is a chaotic, non-linear place and numerous influences including heat exchange and ocean currents play a very important part. The climate also appears to have self-regulating checks and balances – atmospheric CO2 boosting plant growth, which in turn cools the local surface environment, being just one of many.
Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor.
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As CO2 increases in the atmosphere, nature causes plant growth to increase via photosynthesis which is an endothermic (cooling) reaction. Therefore, there is not a uni-directional ‘heating’ process from CO2. For every pound of biomass formed some 10,000 Btu are removed from the atmosphere. CO2 is absorbed, and oxygen is produced. Further, a doubling of CO2 will increase the photosynthesis rate by 30 to 100%, depending on temperature and available moisture. Improving the output of oxygen is hardly a ‘crisis’ or a reason to de-industrialise.
The climate cult has also violated the second law of thermodynamics by saying a cooler atmosphere can warm a warmer earth. We heard this for 2 decades with the ‘coming Ice Age’. You still hear it today when there is a cold winter. The cult will say, ‘of course the changing or warming causes it to be colder’, by referencing the endothermic aspects of CO2 interacting with the atmosphere. This seems rather inconsistent with the ‘climate hell’ of massive heating which the cult also proclaims. In general there is no ‘greenhouse’ ceiling as given by the propaganda. Heated particles can rise and escape the upper atmosphere. There are complex systems of positive and negative feedback loops giving lie to the simplistic idea that a linear relationship exists between Co2 and temperature.
We can argue all day about greenhouse gasses, positive feedbacks, Climate sensitivity, urban heat islands, the tropical hotspot, and any other so called science of climate change, but the problem is that this is and never was about “science”. While we all discuss and argue about the “science”, the globalist world government people are busy getting on with the “official science” and taking all our freedoms and prosperity away
Indeed, political spin.
But countering the made up claims one at a time is what people of integrity will do, its all we have.
As Biden said, there’s no point freedom loving pro-2A people saying they need their arms to protect themselves from a rogue government, they’ll need F-15s not AR-15, as if it was a line straight out of Goodfellas.
Quite correct.
And never forget: –
(1) “Settled Science” is an Oxymoron. Anyone stating “The Science is Settled” is a malicious charlatan.
(2) No computer model ever produced reliable, unbiased, genuine data.
(3) Follow the Money. And the political Control.
Great analysis, simply, reasonably and rationally put. But this is not about reason, rationale and science but about the dogma that Mankind is not a feature or part of Nature but a foreign body which needs to be ejected and eliminated.
As for the last line: it is not just simplistic, but quite absurd for just one variable among multiple, inter-reacting variables in a chaotic, unpredictable, non-linier system be promoted as being the exclusive agent for any change, over-riding all else – and not all of it either, only that C02 produced by Human activity.
The Climate Change politics is based on the idea that humans should have ZERO impact on the planet. It is this fanciful idea that we can go back to some mythical pristine environment that in reality never existed. The world is a brutal place where without cheap abundant energy life expectancy would return to half of what it currently is. People would die young of preventable disease, after a short life of back breaking labour. We always hear about the risks of using fossil fuels but never about the risk of NOT using them. The benefits of fossil fuels far outweigh their negative impacts.
File that paper in the misinformation category and never let it near mainstream media.
Oh. So what they taught me in primary school must be correct, that plants take water, sunlight and carbon dioxide to make… OXYGEN!
But in secondary school they told me carbon dioxide was going to end life on earth.
I am SO CONFUSED.
I think they got confused with Carbon Monoxide.
What I can guarantee you is that while the climate lobby think that tinkering with the CO2 levels is going to bring about a perfect climate, none of them have considered if they are tweaking the wrong knob, the wrong way, that they are doing immense harm to the climate and Gaia. Getting angry about everything and fiddling about with one input parameter on a chaotic system doesn’t seem terribly measured as a response. Like kicking the cat if your broadband goes down.
“I think they got confused with Carbon Monoxide”
I think they were very confused about lots of things. I think I am pleased to have learned to read and write and count. But the rest… Well, put it this way, I am glad I no longer entrust the education of my own two kids to the City Council and their comrades in the Local Education Authority.
‘I think they got confused with Carbon Monoxide.’
Inhaling it more like, causing irreparable brain damage.
I think all they want is some oxide, preferably one that’s really difficult to avoid, in order to get states to create regulations to help them sell stuff nobody would want or need otherwise. In the 1980s, nitrogen dioxide was suppose to lead to a general souring of the environment and cause acid rain. Hence, catalytic converters were mandated for cars which caused them to emit carbon dioxide instead. Nowdays, the sell-styled environmental lobby claims that they already knew in the 1960 that it was really carbon dioxide which is souring the environment leading to …. the exact same pictures of dead trees used on the 1980s to sell catalytic converters (among a host of other, purported irreversible environmental damages).
Excellent article thank you. It is amazing how many people now seem completely convinced that the World is heading for climate Armageddon, all based on what they have been told by the climate experts. Climate-change/net-zero is a huge band wagon and will not be stopped easily and so every article like this is one more step to injecting some reality into this issue.
It’s one of the new religions.
Back in the day people believed the devil was a constant and persistent danger against which we needed defending with, among other things, the burning at the stake of the non believers.
We haven’t really progressed too much. I suppose we don’t burn people any more.
Just their careers and professional reputations…?
The real cimate experts tell a differnt story, but few are listening. Track down the Canadian Patrick Moore and William Happen to find out what is really happening.
“Climate Experts”?????? —-You mean “Designated Experts”? ——-All non conforming experts are ignored.
If you look a graphs showing co2 levels over millions of years you’ll see mention of extinction events, tens of them! each seems to coincidence with a rise in co2!
But extinction means an end of, total iradication! Just like when you extinguish a fire it is out! That’s the meaning of the word.
So why is the earth so abundant with life even to this day if life when extinct? You don’t get semi extinct! So quite frankly they were not extinction events at all, just naturally re balancing of the earth’s systems.
If manking pushes that balance then expect us to be rebalanced one way or another!
And such events took place over tens of thousands of years. But extinction of one or more species means opportunity for new species to emerge.
It’s called Evolution, and the result is 99% of all species which ever evolved, became extinct and made way for all the species present today, most of which over time will become extinct and be replace.
Spot on! Life itself, in whatever form,never goes extinct
But wait a minute. Don’t UN and WEF bureaucrats ably assisted by their lackeys in all western governments (except the Trump one) control the global temperature of the earth with their big CO2 knob? Many many people busy with work and family life who really have no time to investigate all manner of issues and rely on what they assume to be Investigative Journalists on their main TV news programs to do that for them are being seriously let down. On the issue of climate change there is basically no Investigating done. The bought and paid for globalist media regurgitate pronouncements from the World Government in waiting at the UN and WEF as if it were all some kind of ultimate truth. But in reality it is a manufactured crisis for which no empirical evidence exists. The politics of Sustainable Development and what its goals really are is not really something the vast majority of people understand, and unless they do so in large numbers and very quickly they are going to be controlled totally by an unaccountable technocratic elite that started out wanting to fob us off with expensive unreliable energy to “save the planet” but which now seeks control over every aspect of our lives, because all human activities involve the release of some CO2 and so all human activities must therefore be controlled.—–Wake up people you are being played.
Great news Chris thanks.
Twice in a month I’ve been presented with the authority that is the Carbon Almanac, a slick propaganda piece akin to todays Protocols of Elders of Zion.
Its very dull refuting its claims. Anyone know of a critical blog/book of it?
Any body that appears to be fronted by a middle aged bald man in orange framed glasses, and uses quotes featuring the considerable wit and wisdom of Bette Midler should be laughed at.
Wheres the guy that posted pandemic logic, which he should make into a pdf or book or something.
I picture an American movie trailer voiceover:
From the people who brought you having no symptoms is the main symptom, in 2023 get ready for… global cooling can be global warming
Followed by hard-hitting emotional imagery, and a subliminal slide of Yuri Bezmenov for kicks.
So… ‘decarbonisation’ is Planticide.
What s surprise. The real risk just now is the development of policies built on myths, and perhaps the exploitation of relatively poor education for a large number of people. Many just believe what they’re told (and where did we see that recently?) rather than studying it a bit more to make a reasonable decision.
Incidentally, I think that it has long been the practice of artificially increasing the CO2 level inside greenhouses for certain crops (by making use of gas heating exhaust, e.g.) so as to increase the yield and the relevant cash flow. Not sure if that still happens, given the price of gas.
Apart from the topic of carbon dioxide concentration, there must be many other factors related to local effects – say in certain urban areas – due to other air quality matters. E.g at present, in central southern England, we’ve got a stonking high pressure on top, with a lot of low cloud and limited solar input, on account of how the jet stream is behaving. This is a complex subject (and a source of revenue for some), but it’s being grabbed hold of in a simplistic process by some.
Hence the adoption of ‘climate change’ to replace ‘global warming’. ‘Climate change’ means every bit of bad weather can be blamed on human beings, from a rainy July day on Dartmoor to an excessively hot one on the runway of Heathrow Airport!
Imagine we do have a war with Russia and China; the runways at various military airports will be so hot that they’ll be able to claim the climate apocalypse is here!
So we could have saved billions on supercomputers, dedicated power stations for those supercomputers and staff costs by just running a copy of James Lovelock’s Daisy World on a Raspberry Pi. Scientific welfarism at its worst.
The “cure” for nonexistent Covid (the jab) is now killing far more people than even the faked deaths of Covid ever did. The “cures” for non existent climate change (wind turbines, solar panels) are killing the environment far more that the faked stats on CO2 ever will.
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“Stop Press: Scottish Power has admitted that 71 of its wind turbines are powered by diesel generators.”
Well blow me down with a feather (pun intended).
The well educated folks on here seem to think that the establishment is competent. Just look at the Covid hoax and response and the Keystone Cops currently protecting the so called law. People see right through it thanks to the information network we live in. Ever since the Middle Ages, conquering hordes have tried to subdue us and they have all failed. Nothing to see here.
This is what the Canadian Patrick Moore has been saying for years, but few people seemed to take notice, including a whole crowd of ignorant world leaders and many scientists who rely on funding from supporters of the crazy Climate disaster models.
A solution, if there is one, is for the ‘Green’ advocates to create their ‘Net Zero’ utopia first among themselves, and if it’s actually that great the rest of us will voluntarily switch from fossil fuels.
Let the ‘Green’ advocates create their own ‘Net Zero’ society first without using fossil fuels, and not disturbing the environment.
The rest of us can watch.
True real science is based upon free open debate without one side being censored or demonized.
True science is based upon free speech, and any and all ideas and theories being subject to scrutiny and criticism.
If anyone says the ‘the science is settled’ you know they are talking about ideology and not true science.
If clmate models are based upon true science and work reliably, and they know enough of the earth’s climate with all its numerous inter-related variables, then they should be able to predict the earth’s future climate.
They should make a detailed accurate prediction (not generalities) for each small section of the earth for a near-future date (2025?).
At that point then we can determine the accuracy.
Otherwise it’s only speculation without proof.
In other words, make a hypothesis and then prove it.
That’s real science.