This is the fifth posting of a series listing things that the alarmists and the mainstream media do not want made public.  At the top of this posting is a link to the preceding postings.

To hear the global warming alarmists, carbon dioxide (CO2) is poison.  It is on a mission to destroy the Earth.  It is a pollutant that must be stopped.  There are some people convinced that if fossil fuels burning was completely stopped, there would be no more CO2 anywhere.  The alarmists do not want you to know how beneficial CO2 is.    

“Carbon is the backbone of life on Earth. We are made of carbon, we eat carbon, and our civilizations—our economies, our homes, our means of transport—are built on carbon”.  That is a quote from NASA’s posting, the Carbon Cycle.

POISON

Let us begin by disposing of the myth that CO2 is a poison.   Do you know that every time you exhale, your breath contains about 40,000 parts per million (ppm) CO2.  That contrasts with air you breathe that has a concentration of about 415ppm.    

MAN-MADE CO2 IS A SMALL FRACTION OF THE CARBON CYCLE

The NASA chart below tells the story of the CO2 from manmade sources, and natural source. The natural sources are in white and the man-made sources are in red.  The numbers are gigatons of carbon presumably because the form that carbon assumes in this chart might not always be in the form of carbon dioxide **.  

According to this chart, five of the nine manmade gigatonnes of carbon are removed from the atmosphere.  The “greening” of the Earth’s surface is attributable to an increase in atmospheric CO2, that would explain the “Net terrestrial uptake shown on the chart.

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GtC/Y is gigatonnes of carbon per year.   (1 gigatonne =billion tonnes.) (1 tonne =2205 pounds)

** CO2’s  molecular weight is 44 because it is made up of 12 from carbon and 32 from two oxygens.   Thus, the gigatonnes of CO2 are larger than the fraction of carbon (C)  numbers shown on the chart. 

The most accurate number on the chart is probably the net increase in the atmosphere as it is considered well mixed.  Measurements of atmospheric CO2 concentration are made frequently and in several places around the globe. 

It is likely, that the fossil fuel, etc.  number is the next most accurate number on this chart. Emission sources are reasonably known so a fairly good estimate can be made.  The other numbers may be swags (Scientific Wild Ass Guess).

The amount of manmade CO2 relative to the amount of natural CO2 is quite small.  It is about 4% of the total.

 CROP PRODUCTION SETS RECORDS DUE TO INCREASED ATMOSPHERIC CONCENTRATION OF C02.

                                  Trend in Annual Average Leaf Area   2000 to 2017

Satellite images show that plant cover has become lush all over the world. This increase in green biomass worldwide is equivalent to a new green continent twice the size of the US.

Gregory Wrightstone provides us with a summary of the greening.

 It has been long known that increasing CO2 benefits plant growth through the CO2 fertilization effect. Recognizing the benefits of this, greenhouses often increase CO2 to 1,500 ppm. Research from laboratory studies by the Center for the Study of CO2 and Global Change has documented that a 300 ppm rise in CO2 levels would increase plant biomass by 25 to 50%. This significant boost in plant productivity, along with a boost from lengthening growing seasons, means that we are better able to feed a hungry planet.

An additional significant benefit from this increasing CO2 fertilization is that the plants have smaller stomata (pores) and have lessened water needs. Less water used means that more stays in the ground and is leading to increased soil moisture across much of the planet and a “greening” of the Earth. According to NASA, up to 50% of the Earth is “greening,” in part due to higher CO2 levels. This increased soil moisture is a primary cause for the long-term decrease in forest fires and droughts worldwide.

A group of scientists from Australia,  focusing on the southwestern corner of North America, Australia’s outback, the Middle East, and some parts of Africa studied satellite imagery by teasing out the influence of carbon dioxide on greening from other factors such as precipitation, air temperature, the amount of light, and land-use changes. The team’s model predicted that foliage would increase by some 5 to 10 percent given the 14 percent increase in atmospheric CO₂ concentration during the study period. The satellite data agreed, showing an 11 percent increase in foliage after adjusting the data for precipitation, yielding “strong support for our hypothesis,” the team reports.

In addition to greening dry regions, the CO₂ fertilization effect could switch the types of vegetation that dominate in those regions. “Trees are re-invading grass lands, and this could quite possibly be related to the CO₂ effect,” Donohue said. “Long lived woody plants are deep rooted and are likely to benefit more than grasses from an increase in CO₂.”

And food crops are setting new records in addition to its record forecast for global wheat production in 2021, the FAO said it’s expecting a new and higher estimate for world cereal production in 2020, now seen at 2.76 billion tonnes, a 1.9% increase from the previous year, lifted by higher-than-expected outturns reported for maize in West Africa, for rice in India, and wheat harvests in the European Union, Kazakhstan, and the Russian Federation.

“ … the global wheat out turn is seen at a record, while maize is placed at the second largest ever and barley at the highest in a decade,” the report said.

The leader in studying CO2 effects on plant growth is the CO2 Science Organization. One of their studies is as follows:

“The Positive Externalities of Carbon Dioxide: Estimating the Monetary Benefits of Rising Atmospheric CO2 Concentrations on Global Food Production.”

I have picked out one page of the study, titled

“Historic Monetary Benefit Calculations and Results”

 The first step in determining the monetary benefit of historical atmospheric CO2 enrichment on historic crop production begins by calculating what portion of each crop’s annual yield over the period 1961-2011 was due to each year’s increase in atmospheric CO2 concentration above the baseline value of 280 ppm that existed at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution.

 To summarize what they did was begin with the wheat body mass and yield that occurred in 1961 and what it would be 50 years later using the CO2 growth factor.  The atmospheric CO2 concentration went up during those 50 years by 37.4 ppm.  They did account for the factors such as new improvements in the wheat seed, the amount of planting of during those years for example. This was to make sure that only the CO2 enhancement part would be used to determine the money benefits.  The resultant value of 4.35% indicates the degree by which the 1961 yield was enhanced above the baseline yield value corresponding to an atmospheric CO2 concentration of 280 ppm. They also used constant dollars for the study.

Table 3. The total monetary benefit of Earth’s rising atmospheric CO2 concentration on each of the forty-five crops listed in Table 1 for the 50-year period 1961-2011. Values are in constant 2004-2006 U.S. dollars.

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As can be seen from Table 3, the financial benefit of Earth’s rising atmospheric CO2 concentration on global food production is enormous. Such benefits over the period 1961-2011 have amounted to at least $1 billion for each of the 45 crops examined; and for nine of the crops the monetary increase due to CO2 over this period is well over $100 billion. The largest of these benefits is noted for rice, wheat, and grapes, which saw increases of $579 billion, $274 billion and $270 billion, respective.

Yes, the monetary benefit of all the crops, is $3,170,050,955,544.  $3+trillion.

This report also calculates what the benefit would be by 2050.  That sums up to $9.765 trillion.  The full report can be seen by clicking this link. 

These results will be rehashed when this series discusses the Social Cost of Carbon.

The following, recent study found that the greening was playing a “beneficial role of the land carbon sinks……”

A new study finds rising CO2 concentrations (and warming) have driven the rapid increase in Earth’s photosynthesis processes, or greening.

CO2-induced planetary greening leads to an enormous expansion of Earth’s carbon sink.

By 2100 this greening-sink effect will offset 17 years of equivalent human CO2 emissions.

This easily supersedes the effect of the Paris Agreement’s CO2-mitigation policies.

In a break from the deflating global news of viral infections and rising death rates, a groundbreaking new study (Haverd et al., 2020) affirms the “beneficial role of the land carbon sink in modulating future excess anthropogenic CO2 consistent with the target of the Paris Agreement” via the fertilization effect of rising CO2.

There has been a 30% rise in global greening since 1900. CO2 fertilization is the “dominant driver” of these greening trends, with an additional positive contribution from climate warming.

When CO2 levels double (to 560 ppm), this CO2-fertilization-greening effect is expected to increase to 47%.

Growth in the land’s carbon sink – absorbing excess CO2 emissions – will reach 174 PgC by the end of the century.”

This is the equivalent of eliminating 17 full years of human CO2 emissions.”

There are still some government groups and alarmists that are denigrating the crops produced by the CO2 greening effect.    

“In their Summary for Policymakers issued in 2014, the UN intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change acknowledges that the planet has greened, but they say that major crops that 1C above preindustrial levels will negatively impact yields, further they say that thereafter median yields will be reduced by 0 to 2% per decade”.

We are 7 years down the road, and the greening and crop records just keep rolling in despite this forecast by the IPCC.

 “We analyzed the impact of elevated CO₂ concentrations on the sufficiency of dietary intake of iron, zinc and protein for the populations of 151 countries using a model of per-capita food availability stratified by age and sex, assuming constant diets and excluding other climate impacts on food production. We estimate that elevated CO₂ could cause an additional 175 million people to be zinc deficient and an additional 122 million people to be protein deficient (assuming 2050 population and CO₂ projections). For iron, 1.4 billion women of childbearing age and children under 5 are in countries with greater than 20% anaemia prevalence and would lose >4% of dietary iron.”

Don’t you like how these experts think they can detail the numbers of people that will be harmed. They are not good at this.  Never do these IPCC types ever find anything but doom for any theory but theirs.

Now for a quote from the distinguished skeptic, Judith Curry

“And Prof Judith Curry, the former chair of Earth and atmospheric sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology, added: “It is inappropriate to dismiss the arguments of the so-called contrarians, since their disagreement with the consensus reflects conflicts of values and a preference for the empirical (i.e., what has been observed) versus the hypothetical (i.e., what is projected from climate models).

“These disagreements are at the heart of the public debate on climate change, and these issues should be debated, not dismissed.”

NASA has not hidden this information, but the alarmists and the mainstream media have done their best to prevent you from seeing it. 

No matter how they try to eliminate CO2 it just keeps making life more livable.   It is part of the energy making process in plants and animals. without which we would all die.  The mass starvation predicted by the alarmists as the world’s population ballooned, did not happen because CO2 increased the food supply.

From a recent Dr. Roy Spencer blog:

Seldom is the public ever informed of these glaring discrepancies between basic science and what politicians and pop-scientists tell us.
Why does it matter?
It matters because there is no Climate Crisis. There is no Climate Emergency.
Yes, irregular warming is occurring. Yes, it is at least partly due to human greenhouse gas emissions. But seldom are the benefits of a somewhat warmer climate system mentioned, or the benefits of more CO2 in the atmosphere (which is required for life on Earth to exist).
But if we waste trillions of dollars (that’s just here in the U.S. — meanwhile, China will always do what is in the best interests of China) then that is trillions of dollars not available for the real necessities of life.
Prosperity will suffer, and for no good reason.“

Now take this to your children to read.

cbdakota