Guest Essay by Kip Hansen
Something odd happened between April 2017 and July 2018. I haven’t discovered exactly what prompted it but the rather good science writer and journalist, Carl Zimmer, seems to have flipped his wig. Well, at least he flipped his viewpoint on Global Greening.
In April 2017, Zimmer wrote a nice article for the New York Times titled “Antarctic Ice Reveals Earth’s Accelerating Plant Growth”. The article is a straightforward report on research performed by Dr. J. E. Campbell of the Sierra Nevada Research Institute, University of California in Merced, California (and others…) called “Large historical growth in global terrestrial gross primary production” published 5 April 2017 in the journal Nature.
Eric Worral did a WUWT news brief on the 30 July ’18 Carl Zimmer NY Times article. I thought the issue needed a little more attention — in fact, I thought it needed a series of four essays, of which this is the first.
Zimmer reported in the New York Times (in April 2017):
“Analyzing the ice, Dr. Campbell and his colleagues have discovered that in the last century, plants have been growing at a rate far faster than at any other time in the last 54,000 years. Writing in the journal Nature, they report that plants are converting 31 percent more carbon dioxide into organic matter than they were before the Industrial Revolution.
The increase is because of the carbon dioxide that humans are putting into the atmosphere, which fertilizes the plants, Dr. Campbell said. The carbon in the extra plant growth amounts to a staggering 28 billion tons each year. For a sense of scale, that is three times the carbon stored in all the crops harvested across the planet every year.“ ….
“The pace of change in photosynthesis is unprecedented in the 54,000-year record,” Dr. Campbell said. While photosynthesis increased at the end of the ice age, he said, the current rate is 136 times as fast.
With all that extra carbon dioxide going into plants, there has been less in the air to contribute to global warming. The planet has warmed nearly 2 degrees Fahrenheit since 1880, but it might be even hotter if not for the greening of the Earth.” ….
More carbon dioxide might spur even more growth. But many climate models project that plants will suffer as temperatures rise and rainfall patterns shift. Despite the extra carbon dioxide, worldwide plant growth may fall, and plants will no longer help to buffer the impact of global warming.
“I’ve been referring to this as a carbon bubble,” Dr. Campbell said. “You see ecosystems storing more carbon for the next 50 years, but at some point you hit a breaking point.”
— Carl Zimmer, writing in “Antarctic Ice Reveals Earth’s Accelerating Plant Growth”
That’s what Zimmer reported in the April 2017 NY Times article. That is a nicely written, well-balanced piece of writing. The topic discussed is what is often called “Global Greening”, as shown by NASA in this image.
A bing search for “global greening” returns an interesting set of results. I am treated to a definition of global greening from The Guardian, then a link to a NASA page “Carbon Dioxide Fertilization Greening Earth, Study Finds”, and then a News About Global Greening section which leads off with “‘Global Greening’ Sounds Good. In the Long Run, It’s Terrible.” which was written in 30 July 2018 by the very same Carl Zimmer who authored of the piece featured at the beginning of this essay.
By July 2018, Zimmer has flip-flopped and his new piece is trying to convince us that more plant life, more photosynthesis, aka Global Greening, is a bad thing. How can that be?
Here’s excerpts from Zimmer’s latest:
“‘Global Greening’ Sounds Good. In the Long Run, It’s Terrible.”
Rising carbon dioxide levels are making the world greener. But that’s nothing to celebrate.
“Global greening” sounds lovely, doesn’t it? … Plants need carbon dioxide to grow, and we are now emitting 40 billion tons of it into the atmosphere each year. A number of small studies have suggested that humans actually are contributing to an increase in photosynthesis across the globe.. ….
Elliott Campbell, an environmental scientist at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and his colleagues last year published a study that put a number to it. Their conclusion: plants are now converting 31 percent more carbon dioxide into organic matter than they were before the Industrial Revolution. ….
“Recently I talked Dr. Campbell and …. Here are four reasons he believes nobody should be celebrating “global greening.””
Remember, just the April before, Zimmer talked to Dr. Campbell, and wrote the first news item about Global Greening — a fair scientific approach and mostly positive about the effects of greening. But now, Zimmer has gone back to Dr. Campbell to find out what is bad about greening…..and he tells us exactly why he is now trying to make a good thing look bad.
Apparently, when Global Greening was Good News, it was also Good News for the Bad Guys. And you know what that means….all right thinking “good guys” (those in the Climate Alarm business) now have to make sure that the Good News is really Bad News so that the general public won’t listen to those Bad Guys – the Climate Science Skeptics. Zimmer has to double back and paint his earlier views over with some green-wash — because here’s what the Bad Guys said:
“So-called carbon pollution has done much more to expand and invigorate the planet’s greenery than all the climate policies of all the world’s governments combined,” the Competitive Enterprise Institute declared shortly after the study came out.
“The best messages are positive: CO2 increases crop yields, the earth is greening,” wrote Joseph Bast, the chief executive officer of the Heartland Institute, in an October 2017 email obtained by EE News.
In June, Mr. Bast co-authored an opinion piece in The Wall Street Journal in which he cited Dr. Campbell’s work as evidence of the benefits of fossil fuels. Our unleashing of carbon dioxide contributes “to the greening of the Earth,” he said.
— Carl Zimmer, writing in “‘Global Greening’ Sounds Good. In the Long Run, It’s Terrible.”
So, Zimmer now says, in July 2018, “Recently I talked Dr. Campbell, and as it turns out, he feels people like Mr. Bast are drawing the wrong lessons from his research.” Let me translate that for you…just guessing of course, but roughly this means — “For heaven’s sake, Campbell, the climate skeptics are making hay out of your global greening study, and pointing to my piece in the NY Times for support! I’ve had a dozen calls complaining that I’m helping the skeptics — you’ve got to tell me what’s bad about global greening so I can debunk my own April 2017 article on your research!”. So that’s what Campbell does — together, he and Zimmer manage to squeak out four “bad things” about Global Greening.
Bad Things About Global Greening: (quoted from Zimmer’s article — not my fault if they don’t make sense –kh)
1. “More Photosynthesis Doesn’t Mean More Food“
2. “Extra Carbon Dioxide Can Make Plants Less Nutritious”
3. “More Plants Won’t Prevent Climate Change”
4. “Global Greening Won’t Last Forever”
It is fascinating how Zimmer (and Campbell, we are told) agree that these points, which range from not-true through vaguely-true to trivially-true, add up to “It’s Terrible!” — but Zimmer has been caught out on the wrong side of the Climate Wars DMZ and must prove his loyalty to the Consensus Team — and makes a fool of himself in doing so. As each of these points requires their own discussion, this essay will be Part 1 of 4
Let’s look at #1 — “More Photosynthesis Doesn’t Mean More Food”.
Zimmer quotes Campbell saying “Yes, we now get far more food from each acre of farmland than we did a century ago. But extra carbon dioxide only accounts for a small fraction of the increase.” “A 30 percent increase in photosynthesis does not translate into a 30 percent increase in strawberries off the land,” said Dr. Campbell.” This is, of course, trivially true — the increase in photosynthesis doesn’t all go into production of food for humans — it does translate into an equal increase in food for the living things of Earth.
Zimmer should have quoted the IPCC — as Vanessa Schipani, writing at https://www.factcheck.org, does in her piece CO2: Friend or Foe to Agriculture? [ NB: FactCheck.org is a left-leaning political “fact checking” site — generally happy to confirm any liberal/progressive statement and deny or denigrate conservative viewpoints] telling readers:
“The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s 2014 report does say that increased atmospheric CO2 has “virtually certainly enhanced [crop] water use efficiency and yields.” So, [Lamar] Smith is right that more CO2 leads to more photosynthesis, which correlates to increased crop yields. And he’s also right that “[s]tudies indicate that crops would utilize water more efficiently” in an atmosphere with more CO2.
But the IPCC adds that the CO2 effect has a greater impact on wheat and rice, than on corn and sugarcane. [NB: 95% of plants are C3, like wheat and rice, and only 5% are C4 like maize and sugarcane – kh]
Photosynthesis in wheat and rice relies more on CO2 in the atmosphere, while corn and sugarcane rely more on “internal cycling” during photosynthesis, Jerry Hatfield, the director of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Laboratory for Agriculture and The Environment, explained to us over the phone.”
Schipani at least quotes the real science as it applies to the question. CO2 fertilization enhances both crop water usage and yields — more in some crops than others — but the enhancement is across the entire plant spectrum. [The difference is due to what are known as C3 and C4 plants ]
Zimmer tries to downplay the increase in production of food crops due to CO2 enhancement — playing the percentages game, “not all of it is food production.” Of course, an increase in photosynthesis of phytoplankton in the sea doesn’t produce more strawberries — and no one ever said it did — it will, however, produce more fish. But it has been proven over and over again that enhanced CO2 does increase crop yields and can be expected to increase crop yields into the future.
This question is, you guessed it, a Modern Scientific Controversy — in which there is a Consensus View (informed and dictated by the Climate Consensus) and a Contrarian or Pragmatic View — which is based on real world, on the farm results. Total crop yields all around the world have continued to grow and increase in output per acre, owing to the Green Revolution, improved crop varieties, improved agricultural practices, increased use of fertilizers and atmospheric CO2 enhancement.
It is a questionably true to say “extra carbon dioxide only accounts for a small fraction of the increase” and would only be true to the extent that the other factors are currently so large, depending on the crop and the state of local agriculture. In areas using modern farming methods, seeds, and fertilizers the increases are largely due to CO2 fertilization. In areas of more primitive agriculture, the gains from shifting to better seed varieties, modern methods and fertilizers outweigh, but don’t negate, the contributions of CO2.
As always — the benefits are real in real time — but the “climate models” say “things might/may not keep getting better in the future” therefore ”Global Greening is Terrible!” — especially IF ( the inevitable IF — if climate sensitivity is very high — which is looking less-and-less likely as climate science matures) temperatures rise 5-8 degrees C and current crop areas suffer continual droughts and no one substitutes drought resistant varieties and the Greens keep up their attacks on improved plant varieties. This argument is rather like saying exercise will improve your health now but it will not prevent your eventual aging — therefore, Exercise is Terrible!
You may rest assured that global greening will benefit all life on Earth — it is the evidence of that benefit that is called global greening — increased plant life (> 30% increase) leads to increased well-being of all animal life, including mankind. You can’t just wave away basic biology.
Not satisfied with this first nonsensical argument against Global Greening, Zimmer makes an additional hash of some sort of weird attempt to negate the whole concept of carbon bio-sequestration of carbon (CO2) by plants. Zimmer and Campbell state:
“While photosynthesis does pull carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere, much of that gas goes right back into the air. The reason: At night, the chemical reactions in plants essentially run backward. In a process known as respiration, plants pump out carbon dioxide instead of pulling it in.
“Part of the story is that photosynthesis is going up, and part of the story is that so is respiration,” said Dr. Campbell.”
The basic scientific facts are: Plants take in carbon dioxide during photosynthesis during the day and release carbon dioxide during respiration at night. This said, plants take up much more carbon dioxide during the process of photosynthesis than they give off in respiration.
The reason for that is that plants use sunlight (energy), CO2 and water to make sugars (carbohydrates) which are used by the plants for energy and to then make more “plant” — fibers, tissues, wood, twigs, leaves, seeds, fruits and all other bio-mass of the plant is constructed from the basic elements of water, oxygen, (oops — kh), CO2 and trace elements taken up by roots and from the air. (Biology professors: please feel free to expand on my simplistic rendering). Some of the sugars are “oxidized” at night, producing CO2 and water, which the plants give off through their leaves, a process called plant respiration.
It is this process of taking in sunlight, CO2, and water and using them to “manufacture” carbohydrates (sugars, plant tissues, wood, seeds, fruits) that is the basis of “Biological Carbon Sequestration” and the reason Climate Activists run campaigns to urge the planting of trees.
The sequestration takes place in the growth of the plants themselves and where the brown arrow shows carbon-based material entering the soil. Of course, with trees, the longer term sequestration is the storage of carbon in the wood itself, often for a hundred years or more. Your home may be made of sequestered carbon in the form of wooden 2x4s, wooden siding and floor joists. Much of the furniture in your home may be bio-sequestered carbon — like that that fine oak dining room table.
Some of the bio-sequestered carbon is returned to the atmosphere as soil-dwelling life forms consume the plant materials as part of its decomposition. Some of the bio-sequestered carbon gets pushed further and further into the soil and environment and one day may end up as a peat bog, oil or coal.
In the oceans, phytoplankton undergoes photosynthesis, taking in CO2 from the water, and then is eaten by little sea creatures, who themselves are eaten by others. Eventually, something dies and drifts to the bottom of the ocean, there to decompose and return some CO2 to the sea water and maybe to the atmosphere, much to remain there for a long, long time.
Bio-sequestration of carbon from the atmosphere through the process of photosynthesis (green plant life) is only a good thing — there is no down side. The lame attempt to paint it as a bad thing mocks a huge part of the Green Movement’s efforts to stop deforestation and encourage reforestation and afforestation, all which are carried out in the name of bio-sequestration.
Increased photosynthesis, aka Global Greening, is the process of increased bio-sequestration of CO2 by plant life. It is a positive thing, a good thing, a desired thing, a Win-Win for environmentalists as it reduces atmospheric CO2 and adds life to the biosphere.
It is not terrible — it is wonderful.
# # # # #
Author’s Comment Policy:
The idea that caught my interest was that the Climate Team feels it necessary to throw Global Greening under a bus — based solely on the fact that the skeptics use Global Greening to score points for their side of the Climate Wars. Unfortunately for Carl Zimmer and Dr. Campbell, their arguments against Greening are ridiculously weak and must be stretched past their breaking points to be made at all.
Comments addressed to me personally (“Kip… ) will elicit a response — especially if on topic and collegial.
If you know of any scientific justification for the position “Global Greening is Terrible!” I’d be happy to read it.
# # # # #
Quick Links: (added 10:00 ET 14/Aug/’18)
“Antarctic Ice Reveals Earth’s Accelerating Plant Growth”
“Large historical growth in global terrestrial gross primary production”
“Carbon Dioxide Fertilization Greening Earth, Study Finds” – NY Times
“‘Global Greening’ Sounds Good. In the Long Run, It’s Terrible.” – NY Times
bing search for “global greening”
declared shortly after the study came out
October 2017 email obtained by EE News
contributes “to the greening of the Earth,”
Far more food from each acre of farmland
CO2: Friend or Foe to Agriculture?
“Biological Carbon Sequestration”
WUWT news brief on the 30 July ’18 Carl Zimmer article
Not only does greening provide food for the consumers of the world, not all of which are humans, but that which is not consumed provides organic content to the soil. In brief, global greening makes it less expensive to make use of green manure to build soil and make it less susceptible to wind erosion and more productive. It’s a win-win.
K. Kilty ==> Exactly right!
2. “Extra Carbon Dioxide Can Make Plants Less Nutritious”
3. “More Plants Won’t Prevent Climate Change”
4. “Global Greening Won’t Last Forever”
Let us demolish the last 3 points.
No 2 was taken care of by a study reported 2 months ago on WUWT. Yes the researchers did find slightly less nutrition in some species of plants, but that can be negated by certain fertilizers when you grow the crops.
No. 3 is completely ridiculous. The 2 have no connection anyway and if he means global warming, nothing can prevent any warming or cooling to the planet since the CO2 theory of global warming has been proven to be false..
No. 4 Does this argument matter in the grand scheme of things? And if there is a finite limit to global greening so what?
One could guess Zimmer couldn’t stand the heat, or maybe even the threats (veiled or otherwise), and turned. In the Age of Lies, truth becomes revolutionary (dangerous).
The crabgrass in my yard is loving the increase in CO2, which means I have to burn more fossil fuels to cut it more often, which creates more CO2 and more fast growing crabgrass. I’m caught in this endless little shop of horrors cycle. Help!
Roundup, then rocks.
Block sunlight with a tarp until reduced to bare earth, then reseed.
Covering the ground won’t kill the seeds. To be sure you’d better apply a pre-emergent crabgrass preventer and go through a growing season to make sure you’ve rid yourself of crabgrass.
I’m serious. I’ve been struggling with it for 15 years, and I still get plants from seeds that drift in. I spot treat these plants with Roundup, which leaves small hole in your yard, but you know that plant is history.
I took note of this non-sequitur in Zimmer’s July 2018 piece; “And the carbon dioxide we’ve injected into the atmosphere is already having major impacts across the planet. The six warmest years on record all occurred after 2010. ” On a planet emerging from a ‘little ice age’ it would be expected that at any point after the emergence began that ‘six of the hottest years on record’ would have happened during the last decade or so. The second sentence quoted doesn’t justify the conclusion stated in the first sentence.
Moderator, why did my earlier comment vanish?
KK ==> This comment? –kh
…and completely “or-ganic” using the “C” in CO2! Inhale and then exhale👏🏻
“Recently I talked Dr. Campbell and …. Here are four reasons he believes nobody should be celebrating “global greening.””:
1. The inquisition
2. The inquisition
3. The inquisition
4. The inquisition
Nobody expects the carbon inquisition.
Phil ==> You meant “Nobody escapes the carbon inquisition.” ???
Monty Python joke…
“‘Global Greening’ Sounds Good. In the Long Run, It’s Terrible.”
Socialist eco-fascism and cognitive inversion sound good. In the long run, they’re terrible.
This is true given that the Fruit of the berry doesn’t photosynthesize at all.
It isn’t true for Leafy Veggies,
Lettuce
Kale
Green Onions
Spinach
etc.
These leafy greens is where the photosynthesis occurs and production of these food types does increase.
Root Vegetables do increase in mass with increased photosynthesis as well.
Beets
Radishes
Carrots
As well as legumes and Corn
I have noticed that any scientific study which might contradict the global warming agenda seems to be required to have a section which essentially states that the study does not contradict global warming with some kind of rationalization.
Jim W ==> Astute — and so true.
Kip,
Having seen the annual increase in CO2 as measured on a Hawaii mountaintop, I wonder if that continual rise does not make the CO2 greening effect into a sideshow. The real question then becomes: what’s the harm of 500 or 600 PPM in a hundred years or so?
Andre ==> There is no harm from the simple fact that there might be 500- 600 PPM CO2 in the atmosphere. No one has even suggested that there might be. Increased CO2 at that level will be a benefit to all life on Earth.
This essay notes that the Climate Consensus attempts to conflate benefits of rising CO2 now with the possibility of a high-sensitivity climate scenario causing problems in 100 years. The imagined problems are 5-8 degree general warming, various weather problems caused by the imagined warming and what is incorrectly called “ocean acidification” (which is not now and will never be a problem).
The state of climate science this decade is that the climate’s sensitivity to CO2 is very unlikely to be high although it will certainly not be “nothing”. Without the high warming, the other fears disappear. That’s it in a nutshell.
No harm. IPCC climate models are bunk.
And given technological increases, who says that CO2 will continue to increase as in the past?
If you believe that CO2 greening is a “sideshow,” then you don’t understand the full benefits of such greening. Read more, B.S. less.
Dave, I may not have expressed myself well enough. All the greening effect so far is already incorporated in the annual readings in Hawaii, as it will be in the future. At the very least, there is no obvious reason why the increases should stop at any time in the future on account of the greening effect. i.e. the greening effect cannot be seen as a self-regulating factor. By the way, your final sentence is less than constructive.
Andre ==> Thank you for contributing here — and please forgive those who don’t recognize that English is not your native tongue.
No one has suggested, not even the CO2 IS LIFE folks, that Global Greening will absorb all or even most of the CO2 that modern society is putting into the atmosphere.
Zimmer and Campbell do try to use this point as an attack on Global Greening and turn this obviously trivially true fact, through the process of cognitive transmogrification, into Global Greening Is Terrible.
Also, Andre, please forgive those here with poor manners.
Short answer: The same harm as 7000ppm caused thousands of years ago. None!
Global greening is bad simply because it takes the wind out of the ‘catastrophic nightmarish planetary emergency so we need to switch to socialism’ cause.
You can bet dollars to doughnuts that anything good that skeptics note that comes out of the extra plant and tree food in the atmosphere is going to have at least one ‘science study’ done on it and the results will almost certainly be ‘found’ to be bad.
It’s not like greenhouse farmers use concentrations of CO2 around 1000ppm to help with their crops . . . wait, they do? Uhhh.
Yes, that kills their argument immediately. Patrick Moore made the same point when he tweeted about the NYT article:
“Try to tell a greenhouse grower that the effect of higher CO2 is “small”. They will laugh you out of the room with their 25-80% gain in yield. The @nytimes has become a bad joke. 800-1200 ppm CO2 is optimal. It has been lower during Pleistocene than any time in Earth history.”
Here is an interesting study from 1994:
Abstract:
“This paper presents a detailed analysis of several hundred plant carbon exchange rates and dry weight responses to atmospheric CO2 enrichment determined over the past 10 years. It demonstrates that the percentage increase in plant growth produced by raising the Air´s CO2 content is generally not reduced by less than optimal levels of light, water or soil nutrients, nor by high temperatures, salinity or gaseous air pollution. More often than not, in fact, the data show the relative growth enhancing effects of atmospheric CO2 enrichment to be the greatest when resource limitations and environmental stresses are most severe.”
https://pubag.nal.usda.gov/download/50288/PDF
Since plants take in CO2 during the day and emit it at night, I’m surprised no one at the IPCC or NYT has proposed the obvious solution yet: Simply cut down all of the plants at night and plant new seeds. Repeat daily!
Tsk Tsk ==> In China, they could just decree that the Chinese people should only inhale, and forbid exhaling…..
” “Recently I talked Dr. Campbell, and as it turns out, he feels people like Mr. Bast are drawing the wrong lessons from his research.” Let me translate that for you…just guessing of course, but roughly this means….”
Yes, you are just guessing. You are inserting your own ideas into someone else’s writing. That is not good journalism, it is propaganda.
I see no reason not to take what Dr. Campbell says literally. I see no evidence that Zimmer has flip-flopped; he is just reporting.
” “Yes, we now get far more food from each acre of farmland than we did a century ago. But extra carbon dioxide only accounts for a small fraction of the increase.” “A 30 percent increase in photosynthesis does not translate into a 30 percent increase in strawberries off the land,” said Dr. Campbell.” This is, of course, trivially true — the increase in photosynthesis doesn’t all go into production of food for humans — it does translate into an equal increase in food for the living things of Earth.”
No, this is poor reasoning. The point I believe they were trying to make is that the increase is mostly due to changes in farming practices. If all the 30% increase were due to CO2, there’s no reason you would expect most of it to be in plant parts that are not edible by humans. Even if that were the case, it still supports the idea that the greening doesn’t necessarily lead to greater food for humans.
Of course, to some extent, it probably does – but how much is unknown. There are many limitations on plant growth. Even an increase in water use efficiency is not necessarily going to increase crop yields, since the temperature and amount and timing of precipitation may limit the beneficial effects. A nice, moist spring could lead to so much growth that the greater biomass could be unsupportable during a normal summer hot spell, for example. Weeds may be a bigger problem, since they would be expected to increase growth at least as much as crops. Nitrogen demands could escalate. Higher nighttime temperatures could lead to greater respiration rates. The point is, it’s not simply a matter of more CO2 = more food, always and under all circumstances.
Schipani quotes real science, yes – but you ignore the parts of the fact check you don’t want to deal with, like “Hatfield, who was also part of the IPCC process that received the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize and who currently serves on an IPCC special committee, also explained to us that the positive impacts of CO2 may “reach a point of diminishing return,” or “saturation,” in the future.” In other words, all your IFs may be immaterial once a certain level of CO2 is reached unless we can engineer plants to make use of it.
“This question is, you guessed it, a Modern Scientific Controversy — in which there is a Consensus View (informed and dictated by the Climate Consensus) and a Contrarian or Pragmatic View — which is based on real world, on the farm results. ” Oh, please! As if scientists don’t deal with the “real world,” and only do research that will support a particular agenda! I’m so sick of this insipid, baseless assertion, offered without any evidence.
“The lame attempt to paint it as a bad thing mocks a huge part of the Green Movement’s efforts to stop deforestation and encourage reforestation and afforestation, all which are carried out in the name of bio-sequestration.”
Who paints it as a bad thing??? This is nothing but a lame attempt to portray scientists as idiots through a simplistic approach to a complex issue involving not only crops, but the ecosystems in which they are grown.
Ecofascism is becoming so perverse that now even photosynthesis is painted in republican red and has become the enemy. As your convoluted narrative clearly shows. I guess you won’t look at your back garden in the same way ever again – now that it’s full of hiding demons and goblins.
Exactly how does her narrative show that photosynthesis is pained in republican red and has become the enemy?
Please, do explain that.
Philip
See Kip’s answer below – both Zimmer and Campbell calling CO2 global greening “terrible”. What is more terrible than Donald the Terrible?
What happened to the bit where you explain how Kristi’s narrative clearly shows that ecofascism has become so perverse that now even photosynthesis is painted in republican red, and has become the enemy?
Exactly how did Krist’s narrative show that?
You do have an answer, don’t you?
Kristi ==> You would be well served to read beyond the sentences that you object to. In your first complaint, I go on to cover all your objections in the essay, expand on Campbell’s point, discuss farming practices, better seeds and crop varieties, modern fertilizers, and when and where they make the major differences — It seems silly to have you object, then say the exact same things things I’ve already said in the essay as examples of how wrong I am.
Skipping to your last point: Zimmer says in his headline “Global Greening ….it’s Terrible” — you can’t argue that he doesn’t say it’s a bad thing. I make the point that Global Greening IS the evidence of increased biosequestration, which is a good thing, and not terrible.
Who paints this as a bad thing? Zimmer and Campbell — Zimmer says “it’s Terrible”.
I’ve tried to help you to get established here as one of the readers whose comments are worth reading — but screeds like the above, high on emotion, but which lack any logical argument (not already included and explained in the essay by the author) and no science are not the way to do that.
In short, she needs to RTFOP. 🙂
Kip, thanks.
“ a greater impact on wheat and rice, than on corn and sugarcane.”
Regarding sugar, true or not, about CO2:
Sugar price on world markets (not the rigged US cost) has gone south as demand drops and supplies increase. Now at a 3 year low.
John ==> Sugarcane is a C4 plant, like corn. C4 plants do not benefit as much from CO2 enhancement as C3 plants — so — True.
Some of the drop in the price of sugar (cane sugar) is due to the War on Sugar in general, and the replacement of cane sugar with HFCS (high fructose corn syrup) as a general sweetener in food manufacture. I think…..
Commodity prices are very difficult to follow and predict, despite the simplistic “supply and demand” framework.
Recently I talked Dr. Campbell and …. Here are four reasons he believes nobody should be celebrating “global greening.”
The ecofascists are Gish-galloping again like creationists.
At least God looked upon the world in its natural greenness and saw that it was good.
The ecofascists looked upon the world in its natural greenness and saw that it was bad.
Hi these are the most effective illustration of the effect and you don’t need to have a doctorate in plant physiology.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jODIYw_5A40
or
http://www.use-due-diligence-on-climate.org/home/climate-change/greenhouse-gases/co2-for-plants/
The link above has a good illustration for pine trees
Kevin ==> Thanks for the links — the second is a good summary list of papers supporting CO2 Fertilization effects (which have never really been in doubt in the world of biology).
Thanks for this very important piece Kip !
It is always fun and a bit sad to see to what extend do warmist try to downplay or even negate the CO2 greening effect.
I’ve seen the same thing any time I tried to explain that due to CO2 we have more food for more then 1 billion people. I think I encountered the calculation at Freeman Dyson, but it is a simple thought: if we consider only 15% (!) increase in food due to CO2 at 7 billion people 15% is over 1 billion.
It is thus very important to have this point again highlighted!
“Part of the story is that photosynthesis is going up, and part of the story is that so is respiration,”
Sure respiration also increases when the biosphere increases but that is not a bad thing and anyhow photosynthesis increase trumps respiration increase.
The whole issue of global greening has already been debunked. Plants green for a short-term period but then cannot continue to absorb increased CO2 levels in the atmosphere.
Why doesn’t this author concentrate more on how to mitigate the effects of climate change. Much better use of his time and resources. This article by The Guardian’s Economics Editor is a good place to start: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/aug/16/capitalism-climate-change-risks-profits-china
[???? .mod]
Ivan,
Sorry, but clearly, you’re an idiot and ignoramus.
How does one debunk a fact?
C3 plants enjoy more and more CO2 up until around 1300 ppm. That’s a scientific fact.
Any attempt to mitigate “climate change” would invite disaster.
More CO2 is a good thing. Please follow the science, not the politics.
ivan, do you want to be mocked? because this is how you get mocked.
dopesplaining and huffposting is like wearing a ‘kickme’ sign.
Thank you Kip for a very good essay.
And then the trolls come out from under their rocks and we all waste so much space trying to talk some sense to them.
Take Ivan above , he posts an interview that the BBC undertook with a scientist and the scientist agreed that the world has greened in the last 30 years by an enormous amount but in the scientists opinion it some how is bad and they actually have proved nothing .
It is pure speculation that because they believe that CO2 is BAD so that any benefits must also be bad .
Then look at all the time spent educating Kristi S and all the others like her that are duped by the propaganda that is constantly poured out of the press and TV channels .
The 1930s were as warm if not warmer than present and the Medieval and the Roman optimums were warmer than present but these facts are suppressed with climate temperature reconstructions sliced and diced and no one has explained how the Vikings farmed in Greenland 800 years ago and never since .
I suppose that we might have some influence on those people and they might even begin to have doubt’s about what the main stream media are telling them .
Here’s hoping
Epilogue:
We have had a lot of interesting comments — and a lot of off-topic general Climate Wars sparring (which may be fun for the participants, but detracts from the conversation.)
For those of you who think that Carl Zimmer just suddenly, a year later, woke up one morning and decided that Global Greening was terrible and that he’d better go back and correct the impression he might have made with his April 2017 article, let me remind you of the flack that Andy Revkin (NY Times, Dot Earth columnist) got from the Climate Team — all documented in the ClimateGate emails. The basic story is that the core Climate Team (essentially those involved with the web site RealClimate.com) discussed shunning Revkin, refusing to respond to his scientific queries, because “He’s not as predictable as we’d like.” He even published one of my essays for which he got a fair amount of heat.
As always, thanks for reading.
oh, kip!
i guess you may propose a topic, but when the global warming hoax was never a scientific matter and when the talking points are all reruns for people who’ve now been visiting with the same cohort, here, for many years- it’s nothing new and to that extent is boring.
it was a frumpy premise with a very large dowry.
i’m here for the schadenfreude- hoping to see, one day, the discussion end and the trials begin.
mockery is an appropriate way to deal with abject stupidity; not ‘discussion on the merits’ because there is no merit.
if you have some evangelical fervor you need to express, fine. but i am really bored with evangelism too.
the disrespect that comes in truckloads of exhortation, activism, consciousness elevation and fervent wokeness is more than mere trespass on a person’s right to operate his own mind without interference – so preaching, per se, has a market exclusively among the desperately dumb. are you sad that we are not that market? pivot.
nobody ever has to take them seriously. anybody who argues that one must- is also not to be taken seriously. they are all to be mocked irreverently.
or do you think you are the idiot whisperer? shall i turn on subtitles to see what i’ve missed?
gnomish ==> There are blogs where the readers waste everyone’s time prattling along playing Junior Climate Warriors (consensus side) vs. Junior Climate Warriors (skeptic side).
This is not intended to be one of those — silly gamesters are invited to take that kind of thing elsewhere.
The TOPIC of the comment section is ALWAYS the topic of the essay to which it is attached.
Scientists announced today that a core drilled in Antarctica has yielded 2.7-million-year-old ice:
1. Bubbles in the ice contain greenhouse gases from Earth’s atmosphere at a time when the planet’s cycles of glacial advance and retreat were just beginning
– potentially offering clues to what triggered the ice ages.
– the ice revealed atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) levels that did not exceed 300 parts per million, well below today’s levels. Some models of ancient climate predict that
2. such relatively low levels would be needed to tip Earth into a series of ice ages.
3. Brook says, that the next attempt could come back with ice 5 million years old—a time when temperatures are thought to resemble what Earth is heading toward with human-driven warming.
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sciencemag’s messages / or is it an offer to debate:
1. greenhouse gasses trigger ice ages
2. low levels of greenhouse gasses trigger ice ages
3. bevore 5 mil. years is the “time when temperatures are thought to resemble what Earth is heading toward with human-driven warming.”
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Good, not that good, debatable.