Global Greening From Higher CO2 Hits “Striking” New Heights – but the Mainstream Media Won’t Tell You About It

Significant new evidence has emerged of widespread and significant increases in plant vegetation across the Earth due to the recent rise of the trace gas carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Using what they describe as True Significant Trends – a workflow programme integrating sophisticated spatial and time-period data – a geographer and an agrobiologist in Spain found “robust quantitative evidence” of widespread global greening, describing it as “striking” – “with a significant portion of Earth’s terrestrial land surface showing measurable increases in vegetation cover over the last four decades”.

This is the CO₂ story that dare not print its tale in the mainstream media. Recent dramatic world vegetation boosts are easily tracked by satellite, and estimates of growth range around 14-20% over just 40 years. Recent scientific work has found the rate of greening has actually been increasing since the turn of the century. Ask Grok for recent coverage of this important trend in the BBC and Guardian, and the answer comes back with none since 2016. Global greening heads a long list of taboo subjects for captured journalists promoting the political Net Zero fantasy. Also on the not-to-do list is the pause of the Arctic sea ice extent since 2007, the continued strength of the Gulf Stream, record growth for three years of coral on the Great Barrier Reef and North American wildfires in the last 100 years running at barely a quarter of those recorded back to 1600.

Global greening helps reduce world famine and reclaim desert areas but it is not of the slightest interest in the mainstream since it disrupts the fake claims of a climate in crisis due to humans burning hydrocarbons. It is easier to stick with the witch doctor attribution pronouncements of extreme weather and all the dodgy temperature data pumped out at unnaturally heat-ravaged measuring sites. To consider all the data that show extreme events are not getting worse, with or without human involvement, risks the punters concluding that a little extra warmth and CO₂ in the atmosphere is probably a good thing. Perish the thought that the climate is currently in a rather pleasant and benign phase of Earth’s existence. If that is the uplifting take, cue, of course, the end of Net Zero and that would never do. Net Zero relies on fake science and much of the real stuff is fatal to the collectivist ambitions of its hard-Left promoters.

The Spanish researchers do not quantify the amount of new vegetation but conclude that 38% of the world’s land surface shows significant vegetation change. It was found that 76% of the change total showed more greening and, interestingly, those areas with more plant life showed higher rates of additional growth. The results help confirm global greening, with the researchers hoping their work incorporating addition relevant data will provide a clearer picture of what is going on. (Just don’t tell the mainstream press!)

These striking growth trends are replicated in recent scientific work. They should not be a surprise since plants on Earth have evolved to thrive in levels of atmospheric CO₂ much higher than the current historically-sparse totals around 400 parts per million (ppm). Far from being a politicised ‘pollutant’, CO₂ is rightly known as the gas of life. A group of American scientists recently highlighted 2020 as an “historic landmark” since it registered as the greenest year in the satellite  record from 2001 to 2020.

Debate over the percentage of total global land greening and ‘browning’ is ongoing. The Spanish team suggests 38% greening but other work finds a greening change over at least 50% of the surface. A group of Chinese scientists noted there has been an “accelerated rate” of recent vegetation growth. Drought supposedly caused by climate change is a favourite fearmongering tactic with activists but the Chinese scientists also found that any water scarcity trend only slowed global greening and “was far from triggering browning”.

In fact some of the deserts across the world are reducing in size, particularly around areas prone to subsistence living. The map below shows recent greening south of the Sahara and in other famine-prone areas in eastern Africa. Considerable greening across Eurasia has also been found by many scientific teams.

Everywhere you look these days, the mainstream media are making themselves look stupid by putting a blind faith in the unworkable Net Zero agenda and turning a Nelsonian eye to the actual science around climate, including the benefits of CO₂. The authors of a recent science paper, Charles Taylor and Wolfram Schlenker, recently found what they called a consistently large fertilisation effect of a 1 ppm increase in CO₂, equating to a 0.4%, 0.6% and 1% higher yield for corn, soybean and wheat respectively. You don’t need Grok to tell you that the BBC and the Guardian are uninterested in reporting on the astonishing improvements in crop yields caused by extra enriching atmospheric CO₂.

Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor.