INCREASING GREENING OF PLANET EARTH- DOES IT JUSTIFY CURRENT ATMOSPHERIC CONTENT OF CARBON DIOXIDE?

 

Findings show that planet Earth is experiencing increasing greening steadily, partly due to fertilization by atmospheric carbon dioxide.

This point is expanded by an abstract from “nature sustainability”, a website, through the link https://www.nature.com/articles/s41893-019-0220-7 as follows:

Satellite data show increasing leaf area of vegetation due to direct factors (human land-use management) and indirect factors (such as climate change, CO₂ fertilization, nitrogen deposition and recovery from natural disturbances). Among these, climate change and CO₂ fertilization effects seem to be the dominant drivers. However, recent satellite data (2000–2017) reveal a greening pattern that is strikingly prominent in China and India and overlaps with croplands world-wide. China alone accounts for 25% of the global net increase in leaf area with only 6.6% of global vegetated area. The greening in China is from forests (42%) and croplands (32%), but in India is mostly from croplands (82%) with minor contribution from forests (4.4%). China is engineering ambitious programmes to conserve and expand forests with the goal of mitigating land degradation, air pollution and climate change. Food production in China and India has increased by over 35% since 2000 mostly owing to an increase in harvested area through multiple cropping facilitated by fertilizer use and surface- and/or groundwater irrigation. Our results indicate that the direct factor is a key driver of the ‘Greening Earth’, accounting for over a third, and probably more, of the observed net increase in green leaf area. They highlight the need for a realistic representation of human land-use practices in Earth system models.

How does this trend affect global warming? Does this trend reduce global warming? Does this trend mitigate climate change?

Climate skeptics have all along argued that carbon dioxide in the atmosphere being attributed to global warming will be absorbed by plants in the photosynthesis process.

So, are climate skeptics being justified? Is the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere now justified?

This post intends tackling questions raised hitherto.

 The next section should give us a hint on how the thoughts of climate skeptics are formed on the issue of carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere.

CLIMATE SKEPTIC IDEOLOGICAL JUSTIFICATION OF CO2

This section is resourced from the website “THE HEARTLAND INSTITUTE” through the link https://www.heartland.org/topics/climate-change/biological-impacts/index.html, and the justification idea follows thus:

The productivity and growth rates of forests, crops, and wild vegetation throughout the world have gradually increased since the Industrial Revolution in concert with, and in response to, the historical increase in the air’s carbon dioxide (CO2) concentration. As the atmosphere’s CO2 concentration continues to rise, plants will likely respond by growing more robustly and expanding their ranges.

How CO2 enrichment has affected global food production and biospheric productivity is a matter of fact and not opinion. The evidence is overwhelming that it has and will continue to help plants thrive, leading to greater biodiversity, shrinking deserts, expanded habitat for wildlife, and more food for a growing human population.

 

ATMOSPHERIC CARBON DIOXIDE SPIKING

Let us turn to https://research.noaa.gov/News/ArtMID/451/ArticleID/2636/Rise-of-carbon-dioxide-unabated to find out whether the ideology of climate skeptics as indicated in the preceding section is holding its own in that which follows:

Atmospheric carbon dioxide measured at Mauna Loa Observatory reached a seasonal peak of 417.1 parts per million for 2020 in May, the highest monthly reading ever recorded, scientists from NOAA and Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California San Diego announced today. 

This year’s peak value was 2.4 parts per million (ppm) higher than the 2019 peak of 414.7 ppm recorded in May 2019. NOAA scientists reported a May average of 417.1 ppm. Scripps scientists reported a May average of 417.2 ppm. Monthly carbon dioxide (CO₂₎ values at Mauna Loa first breached the 400 ppm threshold in 2014, and are now at levels not experienced by the atmosphere in several million years.

“Progress in emissions reductions is not visible in the CO₂ record,” said Pieter Tans, senior scientist with NOAA’s Global Monitoring Laboratory. ”We continue to commit our planet - for centuries or longer - to more global heating, sea level rise, and extreme weather events every year.” If humans were to suddenly stop emitting CO₂, it would take thousands of years for our CO₂ emissions so far to be absorbed into the Deep Ocean and atmospheric CO₂ to return to pre-industrial levels.

With the increasing greening of planet Earth due to usage by plants one might expect a reduction in the atmospheric content of carbon dioxide but the foregoing tells us something different.

WHY PLANTS ARE NOT COPING

 Through the link https://research.noaa.gov/News/ArtMID/451/ArticleID/2636/Rise-of-carbon-dioxide-unabated the reason is given below:

Even though terrestrial plants and the global ocean absorb an amount of CO₂ equivalent to about half of the 40 billion tons of CO₂ pollution emitted by humans each year, the rate of CO₂ increase in the atmosphere has been steadily accelerating. In the 1960s, the annual growth averaged about 0.8 ppm per year. It doubled to 1.6 ppm per year in the 1980s and remained steady at 1.5 ppm per year in the 1990s. The average growth rate again surged to 2.0 ppm per year in the 2000s, and increased to 2.4 ppm per year during the last decade. “There is abundant and conclusive evidence that the acceleration is caused by increased emissions,” Tans said.

Tans is a senior scientist with NOAA’s Global Monitoring Laboratory, and had been cited in the preceding section.

HOW ATMOSPHERIC CARBON DIOXIDE IS MEASURED

As a follow up to the preceding section we should know how atmospheric carbon dioxide is measured.  Let the NOAA link (https://research.noaa.gov/News/ArtMID/451/ArticleID/2636/Rise-of-carbon-dioxide-unabated) that has informed us thus far continue to inform us, and we are informed thus:

Charles David Keeling of Scripps Oceanography, located at the University of California San Diego, began on-site CO₂ measurements at a NOAA’s weather building on Mauna Loa in 1958, initiating what has become the longest unbroken record of CO₂ measurements in the world. NOAA measurements began in 1974, and the two research institutions have made complementary, independent measurements ever since. 

The Mauna Loa observatory is a benchmark sampling location for CO₂. Perched on a barren volcano in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, the observatory is ideally situated for sampling well-mixed air - undisturbed by the influence of local pollution sources or vegetation - that represents the global background for the northern hemisphere. The Mauna Loa data, together with measurements from sampling stations around the world, are incorporated into NOAA’s Global Greenhouse Gas Reference Network, a foundational research dataset for international climate scientists.

This tells us that the tracking and measurement of atmospheric carbon dioxide content is a concerted, collaborative, coordinated, scientific and synergic global effort. 

A HEADWAY

If the increasing greening (vegetation) of planet Earth is not proving to be justification for global-warming carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, and contrary to the ideology of climate skeptics, what is man to do then to address the issue of climate change?

At the virtual Leaders Summit on Climate on April 23, 2021, hosted by United States President Joe Biden, Bill Gates was invited to make a statement, and in his statement he proffered a headway. That headway will be adopted as the main constituent of this section, and it is as follows:

But climate change is an incredibly complex issue—and using today’s technology, it will be virtually impossible to meet our goals. The reason is that nearly all of today’s zero-carbon technologies are more expensive than their fossil-fuel counterparts. To provide all the benefits of the modern lifestyle to people around the world, we need new zero-carbon products that are just as affordable—that have what I call a Green Premium of zero.

It will be hard to create those products, but we can do it—if we invest in innovation and build the infrastructure for the transition to a clean economy.

This will require doing three things at once. 

First, we need to develop and deploy breakthrough technologies that allow us to eliminate emissions throughout the physical economy.

Second, we need to tap the power of markets to fund and deploy these innovations— for example, by finding creative ways to finance technologies, and by leveling the playing field so they can compete with fossil fuels.

Third, governments and corporations need to adopt policies that will make it faster and cheaper to make the transition, and leaders will need to reward those who take difficult steps.

CONCLUSION

Notwithstanding the increasing greening of planet Earth, global warming accelerates, thus proving that greening of planet Earth does not justify anthropogenic carbon dioxide content in the atmosphere. Global warming accelerates because carbon dioxide, a heat-trapping gas, increasingly and at an accelerated rate fill the atmosphere from human activities! Climate skeptics have argued that the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere today is not harmful because plants or vegetation have use for it. There is nothing wrong with carbon dioxide in itself as an atmospheric gas, for it is part of the gaseous structure of planet Earth, alongside nitrogen, oxygen etc. It is the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere that is the issue.  A balance in the gaseous content of the atmosphere is therefore needed!  A headway is being proffered by Bill Gates of Microsoft. The headway is the deployment of “breakthrough technologies” to eliminate emissions “throughout the physical economy.”

As a matter of fact that which is being proffered is substantially nothing new. It is being done in patches in parts of the world. The critical thing now is a global unity of purpose, urgency and action!