The Very Good Effect of More CO2

Ever since the late Margaret Mead organized a conference in 1975 to deliberately propagate an unscientific fear campaign, fraudulently claiming that manmade emissions of CO2 gases were endangering the global climate, the UN, countless NGOs and many governments have spent billions of dollars trying to find ways to reduce CO2 “man-made” emissions. In those days it was known as Global Warming until measured temperatures began falling, whereupon when the sponsors of the colossal scientific fraud changed the name to Climate Change. The campaign has largely failed, fortunately for the future of life on the planet. One indication of a return to scientific honesty is a study just published by Washington’s NASA on the effects of CO2 across the planet since the 1980s.

A new scientific study published in April in the journal Nature Climate Change reveals that between 25% up to possibly 50% of Earth’s vegetated lands have shown significant greening over the last 35 years. Moreover, the study says that the greening is largely due to rising levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide.

The study was carried out by an international scientific team consisting of 32 scientific authors from 24 institutions in eight countries. They used satellite data from NASA’s Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectrometer and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer instruments to help determine the leaf area index, or amount of leaf cover, over the planet’s vegetated regions. They found that the measured greening represents an increase in leaves on plants and trees equivalent in area to two times the continental United States. The research determined that increased “fertilization” by CO2 accounted for fully 70% of the planet’s increased greening area, with increased nitrogen deposition another 9%. That’s an impressive statistic.

A recent National Aeronautical and Space Administration (NASA) review of the CO2 findings noted that, “Green leaves use energy from sunlight through photosynthesis to chemically combine carbon dioxide drawn in from the air with water and nutrients tapped from the ground to produce sugars, which are the main source of food, fiber and fuel for life on Earth. Studies have shown that increased concentrations of carbon dioxide increase photosynthesis, spurring plant growth.”

The report’s lead author, Zaichun Zhu, a researcher from Beijing University, pointed out that the extent of the greening over the past 35 years “has the ability to fundamentally change the cycling of water and carbon in the climate system.”

What does it mean in terms of life on our planet?

USDA’s Kimball Study

It has quite a lot to do with life on our planet, and very positively so. Over the years, ever since 1804 when Swiss plant physiologist Nicolas-Théodore de Saussure first demonstrated that peas exposed to high C02 concentrations grew better than control plants in ambient air, numerous experiments have been performed to determine the effects of enriched C02 atmospheres on plants.

In 1982 Dr. Bruce A. Kimball, a plant physiologist at the Agricultural Research Service of the US Department of Agriculture undertook a comprehensive review of all such studies on effects of higher CO2 concentrations on plant growth and agriculture yields. Kimball found that C02 enrichment had an overwhelmingly positive effect on yield. Of 437 separate observations only 39 yielded less than their respective controls.

In brief, the billions of taxpayer dollars that have gone to study ways of burying or otherwise eliminating CO2 from our atmosphere are little more than attempts to diminish one of the essential drivers of “the main source of food, fiber and fuel for life on Earth.” Perhaps the future of our planet is not as bleak as doomsday prophets like Bill Gates or Al Gore claim.

F. William Engdahl is strategic risk consultant and lecturer, he holds a degree in politics from Princeton University and is a best-selling author on oil and geopolitics, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”