Guest essay by Eric Worrall
Even if you believe the predictions of alarmists, climate change is not going to be universally bad; cold countries like Canada and Russia will benefit from longer growing seasons.
But for people who write for The Conversation, nothing good can be allowed to come from global warming.
Longer growing seasons have a limited effect on combating climate change
May 12, 2020 3.57am AEST
Alemu Gonsamo
Assistant professor, Remote Sensing at School of Geography & Earth Sciences, McMaster UniversityClimate warming is leading to early springs and delayed autumns in colder environments, allowing plants to grow for a longer period of time during each growing season. Plants are absorbing more carbon dioxide (CO2) as a result of this longer growing season.
The earlier arrival of spring is fighting climate change by allowing plants to absorb CO2 over a longer period of time and thus slowing the rate at which atmospheric CO2 is rising. What we don’t know is how long can we count on earlier springs and longer growing seasons.
I am a remote sensing scientist who studies the impact of climate change on seasonal cycle of plant activity. Using satellite observations, long-term ground measurements and mechanistic computer models, I also study the impacts of climate change and variability on global land ecosystems and related feedbacks to the atmosphere through carbon cycle.
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In addition, in many northern ecosystems, the benefits of warmer springs on increased CO2 absorption is offset by the accumulation of seasonal water deficits. New evidence shows that the increased spring plant growth and earlier start of the growing season actually deplete summer soil moisture and decrease the overall summer time plant growth in boreal and tundra ecosystems. With increasing warming throughout the growing season, summer moisture stress may be exacerbated in the future in temperate, boreal and Arctic ecosystems.
Climate change is leading to warmer and longer growing seasons, reduced snow pack in winter, earlier spring snow melt and soil water depletion. This in turn increases moisture stress on plants and makes forests more susceptible to severe wildfire, which already becoming increasingly frequent and severe in large parts of Canada. Severe fires can release huge amounts of CO2, not only from the burning plant tissues but also from top soils and peat lands.
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Read more: https://theconversation.com/longer-growing-seasons-have-a-limited-effect-on-combating-climate-change-130384
Assuming global warming continues, warmer temperatures might melt a little snow, but Skeptical Science tells us global warming will also increase rain and snowfall, because warmer air can carry more moisture, so the author’s claim that water stress will rise is at best uncertain.
A little warming might even open the far North of Arctic countries to people who currently find the polar climate unbearably cold. Any demographic map of Canada or Russia shows most people cluster along the warm Souther edge of Northern countries, likely because most people can’t stand the long, dark and bitterly cold winters in the far North.
Of course, all of this assumes the warming predicted by climate models will actually occur. Given climate model’s dismal track record of prediction failure, predictions of future global warming are far from certain.
Forest fires occur wherever there are forests from boreal Canada to the Amazon. Climate has nothing to do with forest fires; availability of fuel has everything to do with it.
Weather is also a factor, but weather is not climate. Fire weather also occurs in every climate zone where forests grow. Even rain forests get some dry weather sometimes, and then they can and do burn. You cannot find a forest that doesn’t have charcoal in the soil.
Offing all the cows and banning SUV’s will not prevent forest fires. Forest management, however, can make forests resilient to fires and lessen the scope and impact. We should spend our tax dollars on forest management instead of silliness like McMaster University. Slash their budget and put the money to good use instead.
Warmer Is Better. Fight The Ice.
Natural forest fires don’t occur in rain forests with no dry season, no matter how much fuel there is.
The much-touted fires in the Amazon are nearly 100 % set by humans.
The cerrado and caatinga south of the Amazon on the other hand are naturally fire-prone and fire-adapted.
Increasing CO2 levels are helping plant respiratory efficiency, reducing the sizes of the stoma on leaves. This results in less evapotranspiration, and greater drought resistance.
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpls.2016.00657/full
The author is certainly aware of this and chose not to include in the report.
Ding Ding Ding!
We have a winnah!
This is an excellent point. Coastal WA rainforests like the Hoh have been burned by indigenous peoples (Klallam, Skokomish, Quinault, Hoh, Quileute, and Makah, for instance) for millennia. The huckleberry and salal fields are ample evidence, as well as oral histories and testimonies.
Similarly, the Cerrado and other SA savannas have been burned by the resident natives for thousands of years. The natives also cleared and burned Amazonian rainforests in much the same fashion. The evidence of human presence(terra preta and ancient canals and mound systems) is abundant.
“Natural fire” is a poorly defined concept and must remain so because the amount of historical anthropogenic fire has been so large and has gone on for so long. Nobody knows what the amount of “natural fire” was; it can’t be distinguished from human-set fires. Even today a lightning fire in a landscape managed (or unmanaged) by humans is an artifact of, or conditional response to, prior human impacts and influences.
Another poorly defined concept is “fire adapted”. All forests have experienced fire, and all forest vegetation is thus “adapted” to fire. There are no endemic species that cannot withstand fire; if there were, they wouldn’t be there.
Mike our indigenous tribes here in Australia also have a long history of using fire to there advantage. Even our early settlers learned their techniques. It’s only in fairly modern times that the National Parks were gated up and it became near impossible to remove dangerous trees from your own property, in the name of environmentalism.
People are still mostly the cause of fires though, we had four fires within 7 kilometers of our property that required the fire brigade. That was in a three month period, two were from lit cigarette buts flicked out of the car window, one from a campfire that wasn’t extinguished properly and one from a fencing welder. Sadly too many are lit deliberately.
Lightening isn’t as common as people think. There is a species of bird bird that has been known to pick up twigs with embers burning at one end from a dying fire only to drop them in a different place and start a new fire. It does this to flush out small animals.
So when are these dire conditions expected to show up? Because it’s nice and warm here for the past couple weeks, but before that we had a cold early spring and snowpack levels are 130% to 150% of normal.
Remote sensing scientists don’t believe in evolution – at least, they don’t use the word at all.
Northern Maine had a foot of snow last week. I know there are not a lot of folks up there but they would appreciate a little warming. We visits Quebec City for the skiing and the great food. In summer it’s for the sidewalk cafes. I don’t know the French pronunciation of eh. But then, all of my friends up there speak English, many of them a more correct version than my neighbors here in Maine. If we look at history, cold is bad and warming is good. And I’m old enough to remember the coming ice age that the same people who now predict global warming were predicting in 1970. FYI, the biggest snowstorm I remember was in 1952 and the newspapers I was supposed to deliver didn’t arrive for two days from the city 24 miles away.
“New evidence shows that the increased spring plant growth and earlier start of the growing season actually deplete summer soil moisture and decrease the overall summer time plant growth in boreal and tundra ecosystems.”
They neglect to mention that the longer growing season with plants having more CO2 also means plants are more efficient with the water as their water transpiration decreases.
Someone’s got to eat all the extra food you can grow in a longer growing season. Longer growing seasons will increase obesity and diabetes. Global warming bad.
I hope that it is not entirely off topic to draw attention to the ENSO meter which seems to be continuing to fall.
Does this mean a LaNina in prospect?
If so what will the effects be , and I have to admit I succumbed to Wiki:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Ni%C3%B1a
For us in the UK it seems the major effect will be an increase in Atlantic hurricanes which inevitably ends up as heavy rain storms over Britain at the end of their easterly track. Another typical summer then , just slightly colder and wetter.
Over Canada if it persists into winter it means , apparently, a colder , snowier winter. If this coincides as seems likely with a green obsessed new president in the US refusing exports of certain fuels (assuming Canada needs them) then canadians may be short of fuel – but there are plenty of trees of course.
I was a bit surprised that on the subject of climate change and ENSO the Wiki article was relatively neutral:
-“The recent discovery of ENSO Modoki (ie “similar but different”) has some scientists believing it to be linked to global warming.[42] However, comprehensive satellite data go back only to 1979. Generally, there is no scientific consensus on how/if climate change may affect ENSO.[43] “-
One thing puzzled me however about the effects in SE Asia : they give an example of its effect:
-” In March 2008, La Niña caused a drop in sea surface temperatures over Southeast Asia by 2 °C (36 °F). It also caused heavy rains over Malaysia, the Philippines, and Indonesia.[26]”-
I thought increased precipitation was associated with an increase , not decrease , in SST.
“…climate model’s dismal track record of prediction failure, …” What are you talking about? They have a sterling record of prediction failure.
The area forecast for my area is 7 more days of rain which started on Sunday evening. Then 3 days of clouds finishes the 10 day forecast. Quite a change from years past for this time of year.
I live in southern Ontario, about an hour’s drive from McMaster U. I almost fell off my chair when I read this latest research. Our spring this year has been, for the most part, unusually cool and wet. Yesterday, I had to sweep about 2 inches of heavy, wet snow off the car. Last night in toronto, the temperature fell to a low of minus 3 degrees celsius – beating the record for that day, set in 1939. PLEASE BRING ON WARMING.
The Alarmist have a continually expanded list of tasks to combat the increasing number of benefits to seen coming from warmer weather. People generally welcome warmer weather and also plants welcome and like increased CO2. Increased food production and reduced tempests are a spin-off that Alarmists must deal with. The adjustment of data in search of catastrophe is becoming a severe task for them.
More food means more people.
That has to be bad…
and well it may be, at least partly so. More people possibly means more crazy thinking of the sort seen in the quoted article.
I’ll take the increased chance of Australian bushfires due to slightly higher temperatures, as the offset is probably more rain (in my case – welcome summer rain) reducing that probability as well as making it easier to farm.
Alemu Gonsamo seems to be the Canadian equivalent of Australia’s Hanrahan…
http://www.boreelog.com.au/the-poems/said-hanrahan
A gradually warming earth (0.05C/decade since 1850/0.14C/decade since 1979) and higher CO2 levels have been a huge boon for all life on earth because: growing seasons are longer, less crop frost loss, higher CO2 levels reduce plant water requirements, massive increase in global greening, huge expansion of arable land in northern latitudes, much higher crop yields, lower Winter heating costs, more plankton, expanded tree lines, and fewer exposure deaths, etc.,
Leftists predicting global warming is an existential threat is utterly insane..
BTW, it’s likely we’ll soon enter a 30-year global cooling cycle when the PDO/AMO enter their respective 30-year cool cycles and a 50-year Grand Solar Minimum plays out.
There is a huge 4.5 million KM^2 cold blob developing along the Gulf Stream in the North Atlantic, and a strong La Niña cycle is developing:
https://theearthintime.com/
We are in that cooling cycle.
WHAT “longer growing seasons? In the Midwest we’re getting October snowstorms and May snowstorms. We’re getting hit by frost in May when we’re not getting snow.