CO2 Is Greening the Planet

Whether higher CO2 levels are more a cause or an effect of warmer temperatures is still debated. What we do know is that higher CO2 levels benefit humanity by benefiting plants. This is one reason the use of fossil fuels is inversely correlated with global poverty. CO2 is greening the planet.

Via Watts Up With That:

In 2016 a paper was published by 32 authors from 24 institutions in eight countries that analysed satellite data and concluded that there had been a roughly 14% increase in green vegetation over 30 years. The study attributed 70% of this increase to the extra carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. The lead author on the study, Zaichun Zhu of Beijing University, says this is equivalent to adding a new continent of green vegetation twice the size of the mainland United States.

Global greening has affected all ecosystems – from arctic tundra to coral reefs to plankton to tropical rain forests – but shows up most strongly in arid places like the Sahel region of Africa, where desertification has largely now reversed. This is because plants lose less water in the process of absorbing carbon dioxide if the concentration of carbon dioxide is higher.

If it turns out that CO2 really does measurably increase temperature, this too will contribute to the availability of food, freeing up farmland that is currently buried under ice. In warmer times, Scandinavians farmed Greenland. It got its name from the lushness that characterized this vast tract of land before global cooling set in.

The benefits of CO2 are hardly unknown:

Thousands of experiments have been conducted over many years in which levels of CO2 had been increased over crops or wild ecosystems and boosted their growth. The owners of commercial greenhouses usually pump CO2 into the air to speed up the growth of plants. CO2 is plant food.

More plant life benefits mankind and wildlife alike. The problem is, it does not benefit authoritarian leftists, who cherish a pretext to assert control over energy and transportation.

On a tip from Occam’s Stubble.

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