A recent study shows that the Earth is greening as the CO2 in the atmosphere rises. In fact the rise greatly exceeds their “vaunted” climate model projections. The BBC posted “Rise in CO2 has greened Planet 
Earth” that relates the studies findings and quotes several of the authors as to what the study tells them:
“It is called Greening of the Earth and its Drivers, and it is based on data from the Modis and AVHRR instruments which have been carried on American satellites over the past 33 years. The sensors show significant greening of something between 25% and 50% of the Earth’s vegetated land, which in turn is slowing the pace of climate change as the plants are drawing CO2 from the atmosphere.”
“A new study says that if the extra green leaves prompted by rising CO2 levels were laid in a carpet, it would cover twice the continental USA.”
“The scientists say several factors play a part in the plant boom, including climate change (8%), more nitrogen in the environment (9%), and shifts in land management (4%).
But the main factor, they say, is plants using extra CO2 from human society to fertilise their growth (70%).”
The BBC posting lets the authors take their required bow to the IPCC saying that this is only temporary and besides while CO2 brought about the greening, it will also bring about floods, winds, high temps and ocean acidification.
Once again,we are being asked to believe in the undocumented climate models that can’t forecast global temperatures accurately, nor the sea levels accurately and now we know they did not forecast the greening accurately.
To their credit, the BBC did allow some skeptic voices to enter the discussion as follows:
“Nic Lewis, an independent scientist often critical of the IPCC, told BBC News: “The magnitude of the increase in vegetation appears to be considerably larger than suggested by previous studies.
“This suggests that projected atmospheric CO2 levels in IPCC scenarios are significantly too high, which implies that global temperature rises projected by IPCC models are also too high, even if the climate is as sensitive to CO2 increases as the models imply.”
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.”
Curry’s comments are really relevant since there is a serious effort underway by our Government to ban skeptics from speaking about this issue.
Furthermore, the EPA uses what they call the “social cost of carbon” to justify their regulations. Everything they use for this calculation echoes the catastrophic outcome predicted by the climate models. They refuse to consider any benefit from global warming. Skeptics have demonstrated that the benefits exceed the EPA negatives and much of that is accomplished by greening–bigger and better crop growth, for example. This study is the anathema of the social cost of carbon BS.
cbdakota
Climate Change Sanity 