Guest essay by Dr. Patrick J. Michaels
It’s hard to say how many punny posts we came up with using those words when Carol Browner was Bill Clinton’s EPA Administrator, but here we use it in the context of a recent Science paper by J-F. Busteri and 30 named coauthors assisted by 239 volunteers. It found, looking at global drylands (about 40% of land areas fall into this category), that we had undercounted global forest cover by a whopping “at least 9%”.
239 people were required to examine over 210,000 0.5 hectare (1.2 acre) sample plots in GoogleEarth, and classify the cover as open or forested. Think of being condemned to looking at that many satellite views of real estate. Anyway, here’s the resultant cool map:
This has been the subject of a jillion recent stories, blog posts, tweets and whatever concerning Bastin et al. So let’s add a bit more value here.
Last year, Zaichin Zhu and 31 coauthors published a remarkable analysis of global vegetation change since satellite sensors became operational in the late 1970s. The vast majority of the globe’s vegetated area is greening, with 25-50% of that area showing a statistically significant change, while only 4% of the vegetated area is significantly browning. Here’s the mind-boggling map:
Trends in Leaf Area Index, 1978-2009. Positive tones are greening, negative are browning, and the dots delineate where the changes are statistically significant. There is approximately 9 times more area significantly greening up than browning down.
Hope your sitting down for the money quote:
We show a persistent and widespread increase of growing season integrated LAI (greening) over 25% to 50% of the global vegetated area, whereas less than 4% of the globe shows decreasing LAI (browning). Factorial simulations with multiple global ecosystem models show that CO2 fertilization effects explain 70% of the observed greening trend…
And the other greening driver that stood out from the statistical noise was—you guessed it—climate change.
Now, just for fun, toggle back and forth between the two maps. As you can see, virtually every place where there’s newly detected forest is greening, and a large number of these are doing it in a statistically significant fashion. This leads to a remarkable hypothesis—that one of the reasons the forested regions were undercounted in previous surveys (among other reasons) is that there wasn’t enough vegetation present to meet Bastin’s criterion for “forest”, which is greater than 10% tree cover, and carbon dioxide and global warming changed that.
References:
Bastin, F-L., et al., 2017. The extent of forest in dryland biomes. Science 356, 635-638.
Zhu, Z., et al., 2016. Greening of the earth and its drivers. Nature Climate Change, DOI: 10.1038
A warmer world with more CO2 in the air is a greener, happier, healthier world.
I think it is poetic justice that CO2 gives a boost to the color green on Earth, when those associated with the “green” movement demonize CO2.
Could you ASK for a better slam dunk ?
The original title of the piece was simply “Greener, not Browner”
Trouble is, there hasn’t been any mainstream reporting that I have seen.
CO2 is a lagging outcome of an increased hydrologic cycle, meaning more and more heat is rising to the ocean surface, resulting in more favorable growing conditions each year that turns into more CO2 being released by the just completed growing season now in annual decay. It will continue till stored ocean heat is depleted.
Awesome news. Carbon Dioxide is exponentially increasing Bio-Mass that exponentially increases Carbon Dioxide in the environment. This has been happening since the Last Ice Age Ended. At some point I hope the rest of the scientific community catches up to that simple fact.
johci7 – ‘Bio-Mass that exponentially increases Carbon Dioxide”?
When considered as a whole, Carbon Based life forms (includes all Bio-Mass) consume CO2. So, how does Bio-Mass increase CO2?
Three sister planets:
Venus 95% CO2 atmosphere
Earth 0.04% CO2 atmosphere
Mars 95% CO2 atmosphere
Earth is the only one of the three that currently supports Bio-Mass. From this I conclude that Bio-Mass does not exponentially increase Carbon Dioxide.
Biomass (including the cliffs of Dover and all its similar trillions of tons white and black minerals worldwide (includes coal, peat, soil, and ALL of the silicon and calcium and sulfurous carbonates) consumed free carbon dioxide, and stored it for our potential use. This removed it from the atmosphere.
Today, as we release CO2 from its storage, the increase in free CO2 in the atmosphere allows an ever-greater capture of that free CO2 back into an ever-increasing biomass. But, even though the amount that it is removing is increasing, the modern biomass stowage is less than our release rate.
It seems that people forget that in biology Biomass includes every living organism in the habitat-environment living or dead.
http://study.com/academy/lesson/what-is-biomass-definition-lesson-quiz.html
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/biomass
https://askabiologist.asu.edu/content/atoms-life
Biomass has the second definition that is where it is used as energy/fuels.
Where Flora are direct Sinks of Carbon Dioxide. All Fauna organisms are second stage Sinks that ingest Flora and/or Fauna to make up Carbon Chains that form their bodies/structures. Where Flora by way of photosynthesis uses the Carbon from Carbon Dioxide to form the Carbon Chains to form its genesis/species that make up the majority of its mass. Fauna by ingestion of Flora and/or Fauna uses its digestive process to break those Carbon Chains down to make up the Carbon Chains of Proteins, Fats, bones, hair, teeth…etc. Therefore Fauna are Biomass and therefore Sinks. Where Flora sheds leaves, limbs, bark…etc that decomposes or is burned into Carbon Dioxide and Monoxide that goes back into the environment. Fauna urinate and defecate, loose hair and skin cells, and they exhale more Carbon Dioxide than they inhale, during cremation or decay most of that Carbon is returned back into the environment by natural processes.
The Carbon Dioxide Cycle most people are taught ignores that Fauna are part of that process and only indoctrinates that they contribute to the Carbon Dioxide in the environment. It ignores that “you are what you eat.” When cases studies show that from the Last Ice Age it created a Mass Extinction of Flora and Fauna. Earth has Warmed and Previously Existing Flora and Fauna has contributed to the Carbon Dioxide today by decay and decomposing and what was trapped in the Glaciers has been releasing, as well as what was stored in the Cold parts of the Oceans. Where the Last Ice Age killed the majority of live, it has been Repopulating both Flora and Fauna because of the increase of Carbon Dioxide from Biomass exponentially increasing Biomass. By ignoring or excluding Fauna in the equation from the Carbon Cycle, it only accounts for Flora as a Sink.
First it’s trees. Then it’s triffids.
We’re doomed.
Perhaps the widespread use of fossil fuel for fuel, and metal for structural purposes has simply allowed forest cover to regenerate?
Sorry peeps, I see a crock in this thing…..
1. Take Willis’ sniff test, how many authors. Dozens. Not a good start.
2. These extra trees. They haven’t grown because of CO2. There were there all the time but not counted. They are reclassifying desert as now ‘not desert’ This is what’s called Data Adjustment. Are we in favour of that now?
3. It is a modelling exercise – Good Grief! They mention the output of 10 different models Wake up people!!
4. They put dots on that endlessly recycled and grubby map to say Statistically Significant’ wtf is that? Its either greener or not. Their model has just painted big blobs of green next to small places where there was some extra green. This is what they do to fill in Arctic temperature and how we jump on them for doing that.
5. How many times has this grotty little map been re-used/seen around here, always to raptures?
5.1 Why is it such poor resolution and how old is it?
5.2 Locate your place on the planet and then check out of your window and maybe use whatever is left of a sugar ravaged brain. Does it stack up? For my part of the World, England it totally does not. England has always been green and good growing place, that’s why it was constantly being invaded.
Where changes have occurred is with plantations of conifers replacing deciduous and not least, farmers planting autumn sown crops rather than spring sown. That gives at least 6 months of green on the ground where previously it was brown stubble. Nothing directly to do with CO2 fertilation.
See where most greening is, next to large populations. Nothing to do with farmers then?
6. I linked recently to an article saying city trees grew twice as fast as rural trees because of NOx fertilation but how much extra CO2 is there in a city. What’s their figure for the fertilation effect?
7. Rud in his cleverness tells us about how it makes sense as trees are (low water requirement) C3 and its to be expected that more C3 trees will grow in deserts. But that’s what’s there already. If there was a CO2 fertilation there would be more C4 plants surely. Muddled minds get Cause & Effect mangled yet again and – just that one point shoots down this entire thing.
8. Raving about CO2 fertilation is giving ammo to warmists. We’re saying that there actually is a CO2 problem, saying CO2 is bad but hey look, its got all these pros to outweigh the cons
9. They further destroy there argument by saying the Tibet Plateau has greened because of Climate Change
Its a complete and total crock
So unimportant I would not dismiss this greening:
1. Is greening also observed in subaride zones and this is good news. There are studies that show that CO2 plants help to cope with less rainfall, which means that they even better grow in dry areas.
2. This Greening is hidden by the alarmists. This is also a good sign. Because Otto Normal citizen will ask himself the following:
A) more heat, more water vapor in the air. Consequently, according to Adam Riese, more precipitation. And on the other hand less droughts.
(B) more CO2 also helps the plants in sub- and fully arid areas and thus expands the precipitation areas into the desert zones. Which, as a result of the precipitation on the plant cover, leads to further developments. A life spiral. In contrast to a death spiral.
(C) helps to increase the rate of plant growth in almost every part of the world following store carbon in natural form, so that it is integrated into the natural CO2 cycle.
What follows, in my view, there is no reason at all for play down the greening. At least, not at all if one thinks of the strongly growing world population.
This was my initial thought as well. Mostly due to my skeptical nature.
I have one question: Are deserts expanding or not — and is that due to climate change, and does it matter?
The map for last year’s Zhu article shows greening generally but severe browning right at the edge of some deserts — including the southern fringe of the Sahara (around Ouagadougou, for example) and east of a central Asian desert. That map as shown here does not have sufficiently high resolution to show this, but it is what the original map shows.
I appreciate that most of the Sahel is greening, but that’s not the whole story. Could an expanding Sahara become a problem?
Well, the map of NASA is raw data, but the scientists mentioned by you in this paper have made more precise thoughts.
http://www.co2science.org/articles/V19/apr/a27.php
I have a dream that one day I will see a BBC interviewer ask a Greenpeace spokesperson if they believe that the earth getting greener is a actually a good thing or a bad thing. It doesn’t seem like too much to ask.
I am old enough to remember when deforestation was the environmental ‘crise du jour’. That was after the coming ice age and before CO2. I guess it wasn’t such a big deal.
BTW, planting is delayed 3 weeks+ on Canadian prairies due to cold, late spring. Welcome to the other side of the AMO.
Reblogged this on Climatism and commented:
INCONVENIENT…
“[Since] the late 1970s. The vast majority of the globe’s vegetated area is greening, with 25-50% of that area showing a statistically significant change, while only 4% of the vegetated area is significantly browning…”
“Carbon Pollution” (aka Carbon Dioxide) not so “dirty” after all!
I had a look at the Zhu paper you mention at
https://cliscep.com/2016/10/22/the-greentrashing-of-ridley/
Zhu’s doctoral supervisor, co-author, and inventor of the method used for establishing the greening of the planet, Professor Myneni of Boston University was quick to announce that more green didn’t mean CO2 was a good thing. Many of his students are Chinese, some of them working on development of the Tibetan plateau, a desperately poor region where a bit more green would be welcome.
Professor Myneni’s students are younger than he is. Time is on our side, and on the side of China.