Forests Expanding!

[alancalverd]

There's a difference between environmental industries (forestry, river conservation, garbage disposal....) and the environment industry (getting tax money for telling you it's all your fault, and building windmills to generate subsidies).

The environment industry (more properly called the ecoscam business) cannot tolerate good news.

[marchesarosa]

Unwelcome because it demonstrates a REAL benefit of extra CO2 in the air as opposed to your irrational fears of merely predicted thermageddon, nickrr.

[marchesarosa]

And don't forget that CO2 fertilisation enhances the ocean's productivity, too, not just that of the land.

[nickrr]

Unwelcome because it demonstrates a REAL benefit of extra CO2 in the air as opposed to your irrational fears of merely predicted thermageddon, nickrr.

Changing the climate will have many consequences. No-one has ever said that they will all be negative. Do you think that because there is a positive consequence of AGW all the negative consequences are automatically false?

The two main reasons for any greening are increased rainfall and the retreat of ice cover. Both of these are predicted by AGW so this is exactly what we would expect.

It is positive though to see a sceptic admitting humans are affecting the climate. I assume from your endorsement of the piece that you agree with this. Of course it's only acknowledging positive effects but it's a start!

[marchesarosa]

I think you meant to say CO2 when you said AGW above.

CO2 exists and is measurable and its role in enhancing photosynthesis is unequivocal. AGW is a hypothesis for which no satisfactory demonstration has ever been forthcoming. Whereas there has been a slight warming since the end of the Little Ice Age there is no proof it is down to man's efforts AT ALL.

We are not just talking about the extent (area) of greening but the density of the primary production, too. To claim this is due simply to rainfall and ignore the fertilisation effect of higher levels of CO2, which permits plants to resist dry conditions by making better use of available water, is daft.

The benefits of more Co2 in the atmosphere for agriculture and for plant life in general are KNOWN. The disbenefits are very MOOT indeed.

[alancalverd]

AGW is no longer fashionable, probably because the hypothesis does not stand up to the evidence.

Climate change is nature's bogeyman, and CO2 is the taxman's assistant. They are not related and don't need to be. It was an amicable divorce.

[nickrr]

AGW is a hypothesis for which no satisfactory demonstration has ever been forthcoming. Whereas there has been a slight warming since the end of the Little Ice Age there is no proof it is down to man's efforts AT ALL.

Oh dear. A sceptic might claim that they think the evidence for AGW is poor or that it is mostly down to natural cycles or whatever. To deny that there is any evidence at all is laughable. Your denial is even worse than I realised!

To claim this is due simply to rainfall

I didn't claim this. Try reading a post properly before replying. Having said that if you want to put this down as a reason for a greener earth then that's fine by me.

By the way here's another benefit of AGW:

www.trust.org/alertnet/news/pre-viking-tunic-found-by-glacier-as-warming-aids-archaeology

A pre-Viking woollen tunic found beside a thawing glacier in south Norway shows how global warming is proving something of a boon for archaeology

[marchesarosa]

People have been aware of signs of human habitation and fossil forests beneath retreating glaciers for a long time, nickrr. It is a demonstration of the cycle of growth and recession of glaciers. If this is the sort of "evidence" you have for anthropogenic global warming I'm sorry, but the fact that a recession of glaciers happens at the same time as atmospheric CO2 is increasing is not proof of causality. There are umpteen other possible contributory factors.

For all we know weather and climate change may be COMPLETELY INDEPENDENT of the change in CO2.

Get used to considering that idea, nickrr!

[mrsonde]

Mar 27, 2013 15:16:19 GMT 1 nickrr said:

AGW is a hypothesis for which no satisfactory demonstration has ever been forthcoming. Whereas there has been a slight warming since the end of the Little Ice Age there is no proof it is down to man's efforts AT ALL.

Oh dear. A sceptic might claim that they think the evidence for AGW is poor or that it is mostly down to natural cycles or whatever. To deny that there is any evidence at all is laughable. Your denial is even worse than I realised!

Well, I've personally asked you directly twice before what you take this evidence to be, and so far you haven't answered. So enlighten us please: what exactly is the evidence for AGW, do you think?

A pre-Viking woollen tunic found beside a thawing glacier in south Norway shows how global warming is proving something of a boon for archaeology

Dear me - presumably this dates from a time when it was considerably warmer than today? Unless it somehow dug itself in? I guess this would date from what climate scientists everywhere used to call the Holocene Optimum, eh? I'm not sure Mann and Jones would entirely approve of your heresy, Nick.

[mrsonde]

Mar 27, 2013 15:36:54 GMT 1 marchesarosa said:

People have been aware of signs of human habitation and fossil forests beneath retreating glaciers for a long time, nickrr. It is a demonstration of the cycle of growth and recession of glaciers. If this is the sort of "evidence" you have for anthropogenic global warming I'm sorry, but the fact that a recession of glaciers happens at the same time as atmospheric CO2 is increasing is not proof of causality. There are umpteen other possible contributory factors.

For all we know weather and climate change may be COMPLETELY INDEPENDENT of the change in CO2.

Get used to considering that idea!

But the majority of glaciers in the world stopped retreating several years ago. Those insulated from the dissipating heat of the oceans are happily increasing, in fact. It's a mystery all right.

[alancalverd]

For as long as the CO2 graph follows the temperature graph and not the other way around, and for as long as the infrared absorption spectrum and interphase energies of water dominate the transfer of energy through the atmosphere, the AGW hypothesis remains nonsense.

However much politicians and their pseudoscientific acolytes may wish otherwise, the universe is run by physics, not human guilt.

[marchesarosa]

Here's a thought for those alarmists who ponder over the relationship between anthropogenic CO2-induced warming and natural variation -

IF the natural variation of global temperature is now "masking" or concealing the otherwise inexorable upward rise of temperature due to CO2 who's to say that natural variation in the late 1980s and 1990s was not also "enhancing" or exaggerating putative CO2-induced anthropogenic warming!

It's neat! Geddit? You can't admit to the former possibility without admitting the possibility of the latter.

Mention it to your alarmist acquaintances.




Thanks to Tallbloke for this insight, 'tis not my own!

[marchesarosa]

Here's an important and fairly balanced article (at least it doesn't use the D-word or call sceptics flat-earthers) in the formerly alarmist Economist, mentioned on Bishop Hill, here bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2013/3/27/the-economist-on-climate-sensitivity.html

It is about the purportedly "anomalous" flatlining of the temperature for 15 years alongside record growth in CO2 emissions .

A Sensitive Matter
www.economist.com/news/science-and-technology/21574461-climate-may-be-heating-up-less-response-greenhouse-gas-emissions

The mismatch might mean that—for some unexplained reason—there has been a temporary lag between more carbon dioxide and higher temperatures in 2000-10. Or it might be that the 1990s, when temperatures were rising fast, was the anomalous period. Or, as an increasing body of research is suggesting, it may be that the climate is responding to higher concentrations of carbon dioxide in ways that had not been properly understood before. This possibility, if true, could have profound significance both for climate science and for environmental and social policy.

AND a leader article wittily entitled Apocalypse perhaps a little later here www.economist.com/news/leaders/21574490-climate-change-may-be-happening-more-slowly-scientists-thought-world-still-needs

These articles (anonymous but well informed) and others in a similar vein are a sign of the times - the growing suspicion that the relationship between CO2 and temperature may be a little different from that posited so stridently and simplistically by the IPCC for so long.

[alancalverd]

Can't see what the fuss is about.

If the facts don't fit the hypothesis, the hypothesis is wrong. At least that's how us proper scientists work.

In the case of CO2-driven AGW, the hypothesis never made sense anyway. The only anomaly is that people presumed to be rational have for several years ignored every fact about the atmosphere and clung to a superstition, building it up into a world faith complete with tithes and sacrifices.

[marchesarosa]

Even James Hansen now acknowledges publicly that CO2 plant fertilisation means the biosphere is sequestering more of the CO2 mankind produces.

We suggest that the surge of fossil fuel use, mainly coal, since 2000 is a basic cause of the large increase of carbon uptake by the combined terrestrial and ocean carbon sinks. One mechanism by which fossil fuel emissions increase carbon uptake is by fertilizing the biosphere via provision of nutrients essential for tissue building, especially nitrogen, which plays a critical role in controlling net primary productivity and is limited in many ecosystems (Gruber and Galloway 2008). Modeling (e.g., Thornton et al 2009) and field studies (Magnani et al 2007) confirm a major role of nitrogen deposition, working in concert with CO2 fertilization, in causing a large increase in net primary productivity of temperate and boreal forests.

Environmental Research Letters Volume 8 Number 1
James Hansen et al 2013 Environ. Res. Lett. 8 011006 doi:10.1088/1748-9326/8/1/011006

Climate forcing growth rates: doubling down on our Faustian bargain