Image: Green areas saw a growth in foliage from 2000 to 2017, while brown areas saw a drop. JOSHUA STEVENS / NASA EARTH OBSERVATORY
A July 16th article published by Yale Environment 360 claims global greening is not a positive, but rather a negative because it will harm water supplies. This claim is at best amusing, and at worst, misleading. While acknowledging that many scientists see the greening of the Earth due to rising CO2, especially its desert regions, to be beneficial, the writer tries spin that as a negative.
The Yale Environment 360 article titled “With CO2 Levels Rising, World’s Drylands Are Turning Green,” is amusing because its author, Fred Pearce, couldn’t help putting a negative spin on some very positive news.
The subtitle of the article reads:
Despite warnings that climate change would create widespread desertification, many drylands are getting greener because of increased CO2 in the air — a trend that recent studies indicate will continue. But scientists warn this added vegetation may soak up scarce water supplies.
First, we should applaud Yale Environment 360 for bringing out the good news about the effect of carbon dioxide (CO2) towards greening the planet. The article adds:
What is going on? The primary reason, most recent studies conclude, is the 50-percent rise in carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere since preindustrial times. This increased C02 is not just driving climate change, but also fast-tracking photosynthesis in plants. By allowing them to use scarce water more efficiently, the CO2-rich air fertilizes vegetation growth in even some of the driest places.
This greening due to increased CO2 is something we have reported before here on Climate Realism. Data from satellite measurements indicates that the globe has increased its green area about 5% over the first 20 years of the 21st century. The Sahara Desert is becoming smaller as a result. A 2018 study by Venter et al found the Sahara desert had shrunk in area by 8 percent over the previous three decades.
At issue is the claim made by Pearce, “But scientists warn this added vegetation may soak up scarce water supplies.”
This is simply untrue. For example, in Africa, trees make desert land fertile again:
For once there is some good news from Africa. Farmers are reclaiming the desert, turning the barren wastelands of the Sahel region on the Sahara’s southern edge into green, productive farmland.
Satellite images taken this year and 20 years ago show that the desert is in retreat thanks to a resurgence of trees. They are mainly ana trees (Faidherbia albida), a type of acacia. Wherever the trees grow, farming can resume.
Tree planting has led to the re-greening of as much as 3 million hectares of land in Niger, enabling some 250,000 hectares to be farmed again.
The key factor is evapotranspiration. Evapotranspiration, which is the combination of evaporation and plant transpiration (water into the air from leaves), is a key factor in the formation of deserts. Deserts form when the amount of water that evaporates from the ground is greater than the amount of rain or snow that falls. This is because deserts are arid, or dry, and receive no more than 10 inches of precipitation per year.
Evapotranspiration is an energy-driven process that increases with temperature, solar radiation, and wind. In deserts, the rapid heating and cooling of the air creates strong winds that circulate hot, dry air, which further increases evaporation rates. For example, in American deserts, evaporation can range from 70 to 160 inches per year. With that rate of water loss, deserts remain deserts – they are locked in by the evaporation process.
But with trees, the cycle is broken. Tree leaves both reflect and absorb sunlight so that solar radiation to the ground is reduced and thus ground temperatures are reduced. With lower ground temperatures, the tree canopy sunshield actually reduces evaporation, and therefore helps the desert retain more ground water.
Modest warming has already produced slightly higher rainfall totals. Also, as Agronomy and Botany explain under higher CO2 conditions plants use water more efficiently, losing less moisture to transpiration. So, plants use water more efficiently and the increase in plants reduces moisture loss in arid regions. How terrible!
This is basic plant science, known for decades that reduces any claimed increase in water use, but Pearce missed it entirely. Or perhaps, he knows of it and preferred to keep the narrative of “CO2 driven climate change is the cause of everything bad happening on Earth” alive and well, facts be damned.
Given the many examples we illustrate weekly here at Climate Realism of the media sticking to that narrative in the face of contrary facts, it isn’t at all surprising that Yale Environment 360 attempted to spin good news about global greening into bad. Shameful, but not surprising. For climate alarmists, it seems, maintaining narrative is more important than reporting the facts.
Originally posted at ClimateREALISM
Anthony Watts is a senior fellow for environment and climate at The Heartland Institute. Watts has been in the weather business both in front of, and behind the camera as an on-air television meteorologist since 1978, and currently does daily radio forecasts. He has created weather graphics presentation systems for television, specialized weather instrumentation, as well as co-authored peer-reviewed papers on climate issues. He operates the most viewed website in the world on climate, the award-winning website wattsupwiththat.com.
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So, green is bad.
It looks almost like change is bad. The environment must be in perfect stasis or it’s bad and we’re the cause.
No, green is bad, Green is good 😉
Here’s NASA’s page
Carbon Dioxide Fertilization Greening Earth, Study Finds
with this link free and probably fact free assertion:
The beneficial impacts of carbon dioxide on plants may also be limited, said Dr. Philippe Ciais, . . . “Studies have shown that plants acclimatize, or adjust, to rising carbon dioxide concentration and the fertilization effect diminishes over time.”
That link ln went up in 2016, so the spin doctors have been at it for over 8 years.
The misleading fertilization vs building block / basic component issue will probably never be resolved.
“Studies have shown that plants acclimatize, or adjust, to rising carbon dioxide concentration and the fertilization effect diminishes over time.”
Do plants acclimatize, or adjust, to falling carbon dioxide concentration?
It doesn’t make sense that plants would absorb less CO2 as the level rises since it’s food for them.
“ rising carbon dioxide concentration and the
fertilizationgrowth enhancement effectdiminishesincreases as CO2 increases.””Fixed !!
It’s the narrative that has to change to avoid the risk of truth being exposed. Information today is about the narrative, not about truth. “Misinformation” and “Disinformation” are codes for “we can’t have truth being told”.
KevinM posits: “Do plants acclimatize, or adjust, to falling carbon dioxide concentration?”. He knows that plants start dying as CO2 levels approach 120ish PPM. And why would Greenhouse growers waste money burning propane to increase greenhouse CO2 levels to over 1,000 PPM?
“They” (we know who they are), can’t control truth, so “they” jack the narrative, leaving it for the rest of us to discern what is true. WUWT is highly discerning.
A little bit of drip irrigation can turn dry desert into a garden. Eventually the shade provided by taller vegetation allows higher ground moisture levels to exist. Successful human civilizations have been dependent on their irrigation prowess since before recorded history.
In fact, it is likely that the hierarchy required to design and operate irrigation systems are a fundamental building block of ancient political systems.
It isn’t easy being green…
— Kermit the Frog
Our MY2007 Ford Hybrid Escape was then advertised by Kermit the Frog as ‘green’. So we bought ours in the only available greenish color and named it Kermey. Kermey is still going strong today. The then $3000 hybrid premium over the comparable V6 cost nothing, as that was also exactly that year’s hybrid federal tax credit. Kermey has since saved us over $12k in gas costs, with essentially no difference in maintenance costs ($25 plus 1/2 hour labor to replace the battery compartment small cooling fan when it failed after about 10 years).
It can also be easy being green.
When the goal is to destroy Capitalism every change from the norm is bad and propaganda fodder. And it’s not limited to weather or climate.
Capitalists are planing on making $US trillions in profits from so-called ‘climate change” spending. They own the media that is pushing the “climate change” agenda, control the politicians with their campaign contributions(bribes) and the universities with their grants.
Investors Call for Policy Unleashing $275 Trillion for Net Zero
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-09-21/investors-call-for-policy-unleashing-275-trillion-for-net-zero
Keep Government out of it, subsidies etc., and let the market decide what really works.
If it works, people will be willing to pay for it. The supplier will profit and be able to hire and pay more people.
If people don’t want to buy it, it won’t prosper
Government’s “job” is to keep them “honest”.
Let the market decide what energy source is the most economical.
Black is white, in is out, good is bad.
War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, and Ignorance is Strength.
Orwell was on to something in 1984.
Except it was a warning, not a set of instructions.
The Little Ice Age was Paradise, and any movement away from that is doubleplus ungood. Except that we also believe His Holiness, Michael Mann, debunked the very existence of the LIA. And we love deserts because they are barren wastes.
What was that line about believing three impossible things before breakfast?
How are alarmists going to alarm, if we do not let them use the formula, “Things are getting better but that may change”?
If they only knew how it easy and how inconvenient it would be to lower the temperature of this planet.
Right said Fred. And dutifully followed the narrative
“By allowing them to use scarce water more efficiently, the CO2-rich air fertilizes vegetation growth in even some of the driest places.”
So what does it do in some of the wettest places?
Been very wet here in Wokeachusetts- and a bit warm- the vegetation is starting to look like the Amazon. Usually by mid summer I don’t have to mow the law so often- not this year- it’s growing like crazy. And the same for my garden- and the weeds in it- I have to pull a great deal of weeds every day- they never grew so fast and gotten so large if I don’t do the weeding for a few days. More water and more CO2 plant food. The plants are happy!
I have gotten into the habit of checking author qualifications. Fred Pierce is not affiliated with Yale. He is a free lance writer based in the UK, with several ‘climate alarm’ books published there. Formerly also the editor of UK’s alarmist “New Scientist” publication—although he is not one.
Explains why he has desert greening bad rather than good. In his upside-down world, renewables are reliables. Reliably expensive, and reliably intermittent, both good for shutting down UK industry.
Most of the writers on that site are unaffiliated with Yale. I used to look at it but it kept having anti forestry articles so I stopped.
Nuclear desalinization.
California could do that. But they’d delete Lake Mead.
(A review of “water rights” from a century or more ago might be in order?)
If California really is the world’s 5th largest economy, it seems that they could afford to build few nuclear power plants dedicated to making salt water into fresh water and let the Colorado River recover?
That’s why they renamed it climate change. It makes no difference whether the change is up or down, left or right, in or out….. It’s the change that is bad. So much better than global warming don’t you think?
Weird because conservatives were always accused of being fearful of change- but it’s the lefties who don’t want any change- whether the climate or major policies like immigration and many others. It’s now the conservatives who are the true progressives! And the progressives are the reactionaries.
Conservatives are not progressives. The word is liberals.
Conservatives are not reactionaries.
The UN’s World Meteorological Organization also redefined the word “climate” to mean only 30 years of weather instead of the thousands to millions of years most people learned in school, so it is always changing.
That is very seldom, if ever, mentioned in the alarmist media “climate change” reports.
Why is it surprising that the Left changes the definition of words used before to fit their current meme?
If, say, “sex’, occurred in a past law, just make the definition of ‘sex” more … fluid.
(Forget biology.)
Considering that the definition goes back to the beginning of the last century, I doubt the UN had much to do with it.
I suspect when they were hyping “Global Warming” they ALWAYS knew that things would “cool down” eventually. So “Climate Change” was injected, slowly, into the meme.
The change arose when the globe didn’t warm in the 1980s for 15 years. Big alarmist panic hence cc vs GW. Unprecedented Brazilian snowfall – GW gets you laughed at; cc and stroke your beard in wisdom
Deserts:
“…greener because of increased CO2 in the air — a trend that recent studies indicate will continue. But scientists warn this added vegetation may soak up scarce water supplies.”
Do these post normal ‘scientists’ not think before they knee-jerk a response? Scarce water supplies is what caused the desert in the first place, Doh! The scraggly peripheral greenery that enclosed the desert turns green because of the reduced need for water makes the scraggly plants healthy! In subsequent years, new growth fringes inwards to the desert as the Greening shades the formerly sun-dried land.
Also, already fringing the scraggly fringe is a broader rim of dry savanna with sparse trees – so-called orchard bush because of spacing out of the trees. These trees begin their slow march out into the former desert, giving deeper shading. If you have captured the dynamics correctly, the process us an exponential one – the Greening accelerates!
The pathetic illogic of the worry about “using up” precious water with Greening is a prime example of the zero sum linear minds of the corrupted , static biological sciences. Ya see, if greening used up the water resources, then the plants wouldn’t grow… and…it would turn back into desert!!! In the real world, this greening would change the weather and expand the water supply.
“…CO2-rich air…? If 0.04% is rich, what is Nitrogen at 78% and Oxygen at 21%? What word is about 2,000 times better than “rich”? I’m a snarky troll wannabe, but I have no idea.
“CO2-rich air…?”
Once you reach around 1000ppm !
Anything less is a deficit as far as plants are concerned.
There’s those unnamed scientists again, warning everyone by predicting the future.
At least they didn’t write “But science warns…”.
Steam comes out my ears when writers attribute words to nouns that can’t speak.
I understand the irony of using metaphor and hyperbole to say it.
Very nice Anthony. At some point responsible professors, scientists and political leaders are going to have to step up and call out all of the CAGW lies.
Those who own the media and hope to make trillions in profits from “climate change” spending won’t broadcast or print the truth tellers facts..
The Grand Solar Minimum, that is just starting, might turn it cold enough that the truth can no longer be ignored.
The reason they are “maintaining narrative is more important than reporting the facts” is because it has never been about global warming, it’s been politics from the beginning and spreading fear to achieve their political ends.
Deserts are dry because they do not have biomass – the premise of your article. Precipitation is a function of the water cycle and biomass accelerates the water cycle.
There is a critical threshold of 30mm of water in the atmosphere. Once that is reached, cyclic convective instability kicks in. Land that is warmer than 22C and with atmospheric water above 30mm will draw moisture water in from adjacent ocean areas.
The current warming is having an amazing impact on increasing the atmospheric water:
This increase in atmospheric water is also a significant contributor to the greening because it is also speeding up the water cycle. Most evident in the heat retention in the oceans in the regions of thew Ferrel Cells:
The image in the article showing the greening is a few years old now. Since 2020, inland Australia has been supporting convective instability with the monsoon coming as far south as Alice Springs.
The only difference between Australia and Brazil is the amount of green present on it. Trees beget water, water begets trees. It is a virtuous cycle.
Brazil could easily look like Australia if all the trees were chopped down for grazing and feeding metal smelters.
Look, it’s twenty years at least since academia specifically disavowed its centuries-long tradition of dispassionate, rigorous, analytical, evidence-led enquiry in favour of becoming public sector propagandists.
Saying that a tenured professor at an academic institution must be granted uncritical approval these days is like saying that estate agents operate ethically and honestly. Like saying that Arthur Andersen were honest auditors of Enron. Like saying that bankers care about anything but bankers.
No-one should be remotely surprised that ‘academic’ institutions’ employees publish non-scientific rubbish, any more than they should expect ‘peer reviewed journals’ to review manuscripts rigorously, professionally and in a non-partisan manner.
The reality now is that academic opinions are for sale, peer-reviewed journals are now equivalent to organs of the Mainstream Media and academic institutions are overtly political in enormous areas of daily life, cancelling those whose opinions they dislike, sacking those who go against political standpoints and in some cases, refusing to accept students who are not woke.
Saying that carbon dioxide is not the primary/dominant mechanism for transient warming since 1800 is about as acceptable in academia/peer-reviewed journals as saying that Israel had over-reacted to the events of 7th October 2023 (up until very recently, at least).
I no longer look to academia for ‘academic leadership’. You’re far more likely to find it amongst those forced out of academia due to corrosive internal politics.
No doubt Yale 360 and Great inspired the recent ill-fated sailing deaths of a couple off Nova Scotia.
“The couple’s trip was one leg of something they called the “Green Odyssey.” They were attempting to show that it is possible to travel all over the world without the use of fossil fuels.”
The bodies of a missing couple attempting to sail across the Atlantic have been found in a lifeboat that washed up on Sable Island, Nova Scotia.
Yahoo News
Anthony ==> Thank, great as always. My file on this topic is very thick — you’ve saved me a lot of time by covering it at Climate Realism.
Turning Greening into a Bad Thing is an overt, planned, coordinated action backed by CCNow, Inside Climate News and others to “pre-bunk” the good news about planetary greening which must be denigrated as it does not support, in fact opposes, the Climate Crisis narrative.
Hoping that someone here can help me out. My son starts college this year, and one of the books he was assigned for summer reading was Katharine Hayhoe’s Saving Us. I’m looking for an on-point rebuttal that I can offer to balance the scales.
I have a question for all the super sciency guys…
How much energy does the greening of the planet absorb? We always hear about the imbalance of incoming solar radiation and outgoing radiation. How much of that difference can be accounted for in the changing of solar radiation into biomass? That would be energy that is not released back to space as radiation, but instead is converted to chemical energy that is stored.