“Our results showed that the global greening was still present in 2001–2020, with 55.15% of areas greening at an accelerated rate…compared with 7.28% of browning.” – Chen et al., 2024
The CO2 fertilization effect has been dominant driver of the global-scale increase in “leaf area index” (LAI), or greening, since the 1980s. Scientists have estimated that CO2’s photosynthesis-enhancing capacity is 70% responsible for the greening trend (Zhu et al., 2016).
Using Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR) data sources of questionable quality, some recent studies have suggested the greening trend has slowed or has even been reversed to browning since the 21st century began. As suggested, these data sources “should be used in caution” (Chen et al., 2024) as it is “well known that AVHRR-based NDVI and LAI have multiple sources of uncertainty,” such as “obvious artificial signals from the orbital drift.”
Using much more reliable MODIS data, scientists (Chen et al., 2024) can now say the LAI trend in the 21st century is robustly positive, and that 2001-2020 “global greening is an indisputable fact.”
The satellite data indicate 55.15% of global areas are greening “at an accelerated rate,” whereas just 7.28% have undergone a browning trend since 2001.
CO2 fertilization is still the dominant (75.63%) driver of Earth’s 21st century greening trend. Any drought trends in recent decades cannot overtake the positive CO2 fertilization effect, as all drought can do is slightly slow down the acceleration of the CO2-induced greening trend.
Image Source: Chen et al., 2024
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Thank you China.. thank you India… and thank you all other countries doing their part for nature.
US.. If you want to lead the world… then pull your finger out and get producing !!
Plant lives matter.
Yeah, but if the greening is leading to the cool summers I am experiencing here, there will be hell to pay. I’m gonna drag out the chainsaw and do some real damage…
Drill Baby, Drill!
But but I have heard that even China is considering banning ICE engines by some future date. The goal of eliminating CO2 has even resulted in consideration of ammonia powered engines….no CO2 for 100% ammonia but better performance by adding some other fuel with ammonia means 90% CO2 elimination. CO2 must be bad, no?
How is ammonia made? Hint: it involves the release of CO2 into the atmosphere.
Can’t solar/wind be used to make ammonia….the smelly stuff? I know, solar/wind is not green either becuz being green is very hard.
In theory, yes. In reality, probably not, at least without subsidies.
Scissor is correct, but has it a bit the wrong way round.
Like all the other genius schemes, the object of the exercise is to generate “subsidies”. Or a stealth tax on the plebs financing the elites, academia and politicians.
Whether, or how, any NH3 (Ammonia) is produced and whether this helps to “save the Planet”, is unimportant.
Your body makes ammonia in the process of digesting proteins. Sometimes too much ammonia is generated, which can be bad if you don’t have healthy kidneys and liver.
https://www.urmc.rochester.edu/encyclopedia/content.aspx?ContentTypeID=167&ContentID=ammonia
I would imagine that the motivation of the Chinese government in banning ICE cars is similar to that of Western governments. The common folk are getting far too much freedom and may very well decide that they have no use for these so called “elites”, so they need to be put back in their place.
It was never about getting everyone into EVs to “save the world/whales”, it was always about control and power. They wanted to ban ICE cars, but knew that an outright ban would not stand with ordinary people, so the plan was to “transition” to EVs, then discover that they were technically and economically infeasible (so would need to be severely limited).
The fact that the CCP “considers” banning ICE cars is irrelevant.
I don’t, but might often “consider” being a Prima Ballerina.
But, being a fat and not very fit 76 year old male, might influence the outcome of any such inclination. No matter how I identify, even these strange days.
I suggest that the CCP thinks they can damage the economies of the West by producing and exporting cheap BEVs and solar panels and whirligig turbines. I guess they are correct, whilst ever our own Beloved Leaders are both gormless and well bribed.
Westminster Council (far-left) in London is proposing to introduce parking charges for EV’s of c£38 per day, a 1,800% increase.
This is designed to reflect the lifetime emissions of EV’s which are considerably higher than ICE cars.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/11/28/electric-vehicle-charged-extra-westminster-london/
These people are making a rod for their own back but just don’t get it.
The Chinese don’t care what cars anyone drives, they are just rubbing their hands that the western Gweilo’s are dumb enough to mandate them when there’s only one factory in the world that can produce them at competitive prices, China.
China’s BEVs run on a 60% coal fuel blend. They don’t have a shale oil and gas boom going on.
Chinese leaders speak with forked tongues–why would they ban ICE engines when they’re building a coal-fired power plant EVERY WEEK?
Chinese leaders are paying lip service to the global-warming alarmists so they can sell solar panels, since they have a near-monopoly on the rare-earth metals needed to make them. But in reality, they have no intention of reducing their consumption of coal, which is their most abundant fuel source.
China is a dictatorship, with four times the population of the USA, and nuclear weapons. Their leaders don’t care what the rest of the world thinks, or even their own people–remember the massive outcry of the people of Shanghai locked in their apartments over COVID restrictions?
But Chinese leaders aren’t stupid–they will take advantage of any weakness in other nations to further their own cause. Nobody should believe their propaganda–watch only what they DO.
I would think that with all that nice coal fired power, China might be the only country capable of charging all those EV’s. A bunch of wind generators and solar certainly can’t do it. 🤷♂️😉
Ammonia doesn’t burn as well as methane or other hydrocarbons, but when it does burn it emits nitrogen oxides, which are much more toxic than CO2, and also tend to break down the ozone layer.
But ammonia does work well as a raw material for fertilizers, which would contribute to the “greening of the world” mentioned in the article above.
But the raw material for manufacturing ammonia is natural gas, meaning that some CO2 is emitted. This has some European regulators worried about global warming trying to ban farming, which has led to massive protests by farmers in Germany and the Netherlands. The regulators don’t seem to realize that if farming is banned, what will people eat?
Thank you Kenneth. Needless to say that, here in the U.K., this news is all over the BBC. Oh hang on. Just a minute. Ah yes. I’ve just checked again. And. It isn’t…..
More good news.
It’s been a slow process so far , but I’ve been reviewing a number of peer-reviewed papers on the effect of increased CO2 levels and other factors such as reduced ice extent and increased nutrient concentrations on various phytoplankton populations. While not complete, a premininary review indicates that the phytoplankton populations, particularly coccolithophores and diatoms are thriving, in some cases dramatically, as a result of the increased marine CO2 levels and the greater exposure to sunlight that comes with reduced ice cover of polar waters, which makes excellent sense considering the basic requirements for photosynthesis. Additionally, many of the 100,000 species of phytoplankton seem to adapt quite well to a wide range of pH levels; much higher than we expect to experience in the even distant future.
At the higher levels of the food chain we seem to see many positive indications in the populations of many whale species that add credance to what we see at the base of the food chain; the phytoplankton community.
I wonder at what point will the greening outstrip the animal increase and anything we puny humans are doing, and the CO2 emissions stop increasing every year?
Right now CO2 levels are increasing by about 10ppm during northern winter but by April-May that will dramatically stop and CO2 levels will drop until about September-October, almost back to the same level as before, except for about 2-3ppm.
If that huge regrowth during spring was increased by about 25% we would have NetZero without impoverishing or bankrupting anyone, and with solutions that everyone could agree are truly green and not greenwashing.
If the number of trees or the leaf area continues to increase, this will also increase the photosynthesis rate, which removes CO2 from the air. Eventually the photosynthesis rate will catch up to the CO2 emission rate, and CO2 concentration will level out at some higher level, enabling the earth to provide more food than it does now.
To all the alarmists out there, what’s wrong with this scenario?
Now now, drhealy!
You know perfectly well that only alleged disbenefits of CO2 can be considered. No matter how fake and improbable.
Obvious benefits must rigorously be denied or, at least, strictly ignored.
Much the same for trivial, even unmeasurable, increases in “Glowbull Temperature” must be handled the same way.
I’ve seen reports of Arctic sea creatures returning there that last existed there during the latter part of the MWP.
They were driven out by the extreme ice levels of the LIA.
It is not only greening.
The white teeth of people born after about 1990 are bigger than those of their parents and grandparents, born when CO2 was lower.
A former Prime Minister of New Zealand displayed this effect when she attended the recent Davos gabfest. Geoff S
“”Indisputable Fact
Absolutely agree, here are some more of these facts….
….Black is white
….What my friends tell me is indisputable
….Hot is cold
….Sputniks are indisputable
….Red and infra red are = Green
….Rising CO₂ levels mean falling CO₂ levels
….Wet is dry
….What I was told in Kindergarten is indisputable
….I know all the trade & horticultural secrets of commercial glasshouses
….(I learned them off The Interweb)
….Computer models are indisputable
….Brown is Green
….Dead is alive
….Nothing else matters but CO₂
….Old is new ###
….What I say is indisputable
….I believe I can fly
….I could fly, if I ever stepped away from The Computer
….but it’s indisputable that I am a child, am totally addicted/brainwashed and quite unable to
…I can still fly if I wanted to though
### This is the only indisputable thing in here, this ‘new’ study is a rehash of old data and the original haha NASA assertion from 2016
ya very misleading. More bright in certain channels viewed from space and yet more dry. Notice how the golf courses show up as super bright spots in the normalized differenced vegetation indices [NDVI]. brighter than anything, irrespective of the desert underneath.
I have been warning people of this outcome for years. Biomass already outweighs humans by 7500 times. And trees kill. Google search of “falling tree kills” gets 117M hits.
Trees have already starved themselves once to just survival. Humans are now burning what was left; pumping CO2 into the atmosphere like there is no tomorrow. That is feeding these deadly monsters. But the situation is even worse.
Trees hold moisture and some of that moisture gets released in hotter weather to moderate the temperature but also creates convective instability that just brings more water in from the ocean. Then there is more H2O creating the ideal conditions for plants to flourish –
CO2+H2O gives trees. .
The only way to beat the trees is to stop releasing CO2 and replacing exiting trees with wind turbines and solar panels. That way humans will win the war of survival over trees by turning land areas into barren landscape like those before the Carboniferous period. .
Can we all wake up and stop feeding the enemy!
__________________________________________
CO2 is way more important than mere fertilizer and
is a necessary component of photosynthesis:
6CO2 + 6H2O → C6H12O6 + 6O2
CO2 absolutely must be present in the atmosphere.
Without CO2, green plants would not exist.
Photosynthesis releases O2 into the atmosphere.
Without oxygen, you would not exist.
What is a city tree made from. Is it dirt? Or car exhaust?
In NYC, once, I saw a “tree of heaven” (Ailanthus altissima) growing up through a drainage grate on a sidewalk. It must have been rooted in various scum, cigarette butts, and the like. And of course, breathing car exhaust. Yet, this species is considered invasive. City dwellers should appreciate it for loving the city so much.
China wants the west to ban the ICE because China owns the future BEV market.
This along with green energy and net zero will bring about the economic collapse of the west as repayment for the century of humiliation.
Few in the west understand this resentment and the part it plays in China’s long term objectives.
This is good news – a very rare commodity these days.
But I don’t like to see the authors using the word “indisputable” to describe their findings. Most likely their findings are right – but in science the debate is never over.
I’ve always thought these findings – confirming the NASA findings a few years ago – show how completely barking mad the climate cult is.
The people who claim to be green endlessly demonise the very thing that makes the planet green.
Chris
The Green Movement should be renamed the Stop Greening Movement.