Yale Environment 360 Delivers Alarming Story on Carbon Dioxide, Despite Benefits of Global Greening – Watts Up With That?
Originally posted on ClimateREALISM
Image: Green areas saw foliage growth from 2000 to 2017, while brown areas saw decline. JOSHUA STEVENS / NASA EARTH OBSERVATORY
A July 16 article published by Yale Environment 360 claims that global greening is not a positive but a negative because it will harm water supplies. The claim is amusing at best, but misleading at worst. While acknowledging that many scientists believe that the greening of the Earth due to increased CO2, especially in desert regions, is beneficial, the author attempts to frame it in a negative light.
Yale Environment 360 article titled “With rising CO2 levels, drylands around the world are turning green”, which is funny because its author, Fred Pearce, can’t help but add a negative spin to some very positive news.
The subtitle of the article is as follows:
Despite warnings that climate change will cause widespread desertification, many drylands are becoming greener due to rising levels of CO2 in the air—a trend that recent studies suggest will continue. But scientists warn that this additional vegetation could absorb scarce water resources.
First, we should commend Yale Environment 360 for reporting the good news about the impact of carbon dioxide (CO2) on greening the planet. The article adds:
What’s happening? The main reason, most recent studies conclude, is that atmospheric carbon dioxide levels have increased by 50 percent since pre-industrial times. This increase in CO2 not only drives climate change, it also boosts photosynthesis in plants. By allowing them to use scarce water more efficiently, CO2-rich air fertilizes vegetation growth even in some of the driest places.
This greening due to increased CO2 is something we have been reported before here on Climate realism. Data from satellite measurements show that global green space increased by about 5% in the first 20 years of the 21st century.rank century. The Sahara Desert is getting smaller as a result. A 2018 study by Venter et al. found that the area of the Sahara desert has decreased by 8 percent in the past three decades.
The problem here is Pearce’s statement, “But scientists warn that this additional vegetation could absorb scarce water resources.”
This is not true at all. For example, in Africa, Plants make desert soil fertile again.:
This time there is good news from Africa. Farmers are reclaiming the desert, turning the barren wasteland of the Sahel region on the southern edge of the Sahara into lush, fertile farmland.
Satellite images taken this year and 20 years ago show the desert is shrinking thanks to a resurgence of vegetation. These are mainly ana trees (Faidherbia albida), a type of acacia tree. Wherever the tree grows, farming can continue.
Tree planting has helped reforest up to 3 million hectares of land in Niger, making about 250,000 hectares arable again.
The key factor is transpiration. Evapotranspiration, which is the combination of evaporation and transpiration (water from plant leaves into the air), is a major factor in desert formation. 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 do not receive more than 10 inches of precipitation per year.
Transpiration is an energy-driven process that increases with temperature, solar radiation, and wind. In deserts, rapid heating and cooling of the air creates strong winds that circulate hot, dry air, further accelerating the rate of evaporation. In the deserts of the United States, for example, evaporation rates can range from 70 to 160 inches per year. At that rate of water loss, deserts remain deserts—they are locked in by evaporation.
But with trees, this cycle is broken. The leaves both reflect and absorb sunlight, so that less solar radiation reaches the ground and therefore lowers ground temperatures. With lower ground temperatures, the sunshade provided by the tree canopy actually reduces evaporation and thus helps the desert retain more groundwater.
Moderate warming has produced slightly higher total rainfall. In addition, as Agronomy and Botany explain that under higher CO2 conditions, plants use water more efficiently, losing less moisture through transpiration. So plants use water more efficiently, and the increase in vegetation reduces moisture loss in arid regions. How terrible!
This is basic plant science, known for decades That would offset any supposed increase in water use, but Pearce missed it entirely. Or perhaps he knew about it and preferred to keep the “CO2-induced climate change is the cause of everything bad happening on Earth” narrative alive and well, regardless of the truth.
With many examples we illustrate here every week Climate realism With the media clinging to that narrative in the face of contrary facts, it’s no surprise that Yale Environment 360 is trying to turn good news about global greening into bad news. It’s embarrassing, but not surprising. For climate alarmists, it seems like maintaining the narrative is more important than reporting the facts.
Anthony Watts is a senior fellow for climate and environment at the Heartland Institute. Watts has worked in the weather industry in front of and behind the camera as a broadcast meteorologist since 1978, and currently does daily radio forecasting. He has created graphic weather presentation systems for television, specialized weather measuring equipment, and co-authored peer-reviewed articles on climate issues. He runs the world’s most viewed climate website, the award-winning wattsupwiththat.com.
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