After a thousand headlines told us Climate Change would make deserts grow, a new study suggests it won’t. It’s a finding that shocks no one who knew that climate models have no predictive skill with rainfall, and that a warmer world means higher global precipitation. Plus there’s the awkward clue that for the last forty years the arid regions of the world have been getting greener instead of more deserty.
Looks a bit different?
The top map (below) shows the deserts expanding — but that’s the old predictions which are based only on “atmospheric data” like temperature and rainfall. The bottom map is the new work which uses soil and vegetation data too. Red means growing deserts. Blue means shrinking.
Remember, all contradictory conclusions are based on expert opinions using worlds best practice and done by Nobel-Prize-winning people. Shame about all the farmers and investors making decisions based on junk models.
Deserts were expanding until experts got a better model.
The new study is based on modeling too so it is still wrong, but less useless than previous studies.
The hugely different forecasts show how vaporously thin the past doom and gloom was, and how so many headlines were generated out of a banal omission from an inadequate model.
Cancel the cover shots of cracked Earth
Or not. | The Independent & nearly every other media outlet on Earth.
Now they tell us?
Now we find that all the past expert predictions were made with models that only used “atmospheric information” like rain and temperature — to predict the condition of plants and soil. You’d think they might have mentioned that. Now that they have some actual soil moisture data and flora involved — things look very different. As all good skeptics know (but apparently not science journalists) increasing CO2 means plants need less water. Thus more carbon dioxide makes plants “drought resistant”.
Note the attention getting headline:
Climate change may not expand drylands
Previous studies used atmospheric information, including rainfall and temperature, to make projections about future land conditions. The real picture is more complicated than that, said Kaighin McColl, Assistant Professor of Earth and Planetary Sciences and of Environmental Science and Engineering at SEAS and senior author of the paper.
“Historically, we have relatively good records of rainfall and temperature but really poor records of the land surface, things like soil moisture and vegetation,” said McColl. “As a result, previous definitions of drylands are based only on how the atmosphere is behaving, as an approximation of the land surface. But models can now simulate both atmospheric and land conditions. By just looking directly at the land surface in climate models, we find that the models aren’t showing a clear increase of drylands over time and that there is huge uncertainty about the global average state of drylands in the future.”
Plants need less water when there is more CO2:
While climate models have historically focused on the atmosphere, modern climate models now also simulate vegetation behavior and land hydrology.
For example, when plants absorb CO2, they lose water. If there is more CO2 in the air, plants can release less water and become more water efficient. More CO2 also results in more fertilizer for plants, which helps them grow and reduces water stress.
These effects have long been known, but previous atmospheric-only indicators of drylands just weren’t capturing these land surface effects.
What does “high confidence” mean anyway
The big news here, is less about deserts and more about what it says about consensuses and past media coverage. The IPCC says on “Desertification” that Risks from desertification are projected to increase due climate change (high confidence).” They knew that CO2 makes plants grow, but figured that the reduction in rain was more important. The problem was, and still is, that none of their models work for rainfall.
Past posts:
- Arid regions of the world are 11% greener, mostly thanks to CO2
- 18 million square kilometers more greenery due to “carbon pollution” that the Greens hate
h/t Willie Soon — join him on his Parler Account.
REFERENCE
Berg and McColl (2021) No projected global drylands expansion under greenhouse warming, Nature Climate Change.
The custom R code written to read and analyse the data and generate the figures is available on GitHub at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4490414 (ref. 51).
Models?
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Yes, you know the computer generated problems for your given conclusion. The thing is those using and generating them forget the first law of computing – Garbage IN = Garbage Out (GIGO).
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Sorry Ivan,I must correct you.
In Climatology “Gospel Out” has replaced any awareness of GIGO as we understood it.
Same skill levels that depend on calculators to disgorge answers to the third decimal place,while missing the error rate being orders of magnitude greater.
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Well said John! As Bob Lange (Reader in Botany, U of Adelaide) warned his students 60 years ago – “beware of those who can describe the curb and the snaffle (parts of a bridle) with exactitude, while no one can find the bloody horse”!
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I remember being amused at my workmate watching me fill in a lotto coupon once. Looking over my shoulder he laughed and proclaimed “Ha! You’ll never win anything with those numbers.”
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John, I stand corrected and it does explain the need for bigger and faster super computers if only to uphold the egos of the modelers.
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Exactly. One of my favourite ‘letters to the editor’ was from an elderly mathematician who remembered when the first wave of computers were wowing the public back in the late 50’s. Vastly inferior to modern machines, they seemed incredible at the time. He recalled the ridiculous claims made about their ability to produce infallible results and solutions to every imaginable problem. He warned that it was no different currently and with each new leap in computing power came another raft of claims of absolute certainty that the results of their modelling were perfect.
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Dear Ivan, The problem is not the garbage in garbage out (GIGO) phenomenon, but the status of the (super) computer on which the model is run. Hence such a machine, the investment is substantial the value of the GO is also substantial. A known human fallacy…..
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Actually Ivan a study using models published in Nature Climate Science in April 2016 showed some compensation for the adverse impacts of temperature extremes and water scarcity caused by increasing emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.
https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2016/nasa-study-rising-carbon-dioxide-levels-will-help-and-hurt-crops
“Studies have shown that higher concentrations of atmospheric carbon dioxide affect crops in two important ways: they boost crop yields by increasing the rate of photosynthesis, which spurs growth, and they reduce the amount of water crops lose through transpiration. Plants transpire through their leaves, which contain tiny pores called stomata that open and collect carbon dioxide molecules for photosynthesis. During that process they release water vapor. As carbon dioxide concentrations increase, the pores don’t open as wide, resulting in lower levels of transpiration by plants and thus increased water-use efficiency.
Global climate impact assessments for crops have focused primarily on the impacts of elevated atmospheric carbon dioxide on yields, said Delphine Deryng, lead author and a climate scientist at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) in New York City. “There has been very little impact assessment analysis that looked at the dual effect on yield and water use and how they play out in different regions of the world, which is critical to anticipating future agricultural water demands,” she said.”
To study those effects, for wheat, maize, soybean and rice crops, Deryng and her co-authors simulated changes in crop yield and evapotranspiration (the combined transfer of water vapor to the atmosphere due to evaporation and transpiration) to estimate crop water productivity. Specifically, they looked at the amount of yield produced per unit of water, which is a common measurement for assessing crop water-use efficiency.
The results were synthesized from an ensemble of 30 simulations produced by six global crop models driven by climate data from five different global climate models under a “business-as-usual” greenhouse gases emissions scenario, whereby concentrations of carbon dioxide double by the year 2080 compared with 2000. Two sets of crop experiments were conducted: one which considered the effects of both atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations and their associated climatic changes, and one in which only the associated climatic conditions were taken into account, which meant keeping carbon dioxide concentrations at 2000 levels.
Results show that yields for all four crops grown at levels of carbon dioxide remaining at 2000 levels would experience severe declines in yield due to higher temperatures and drier conditions. But when grown at doubled carbon dioxide levels, all four crops fare better due to increased photosynthesis and crop water productivity, partially offsetting the impacts from those adverse climate changes. For wheat and soybean crops, in terms of yield the median negative impacts are fully compensated, and rice crops recoup up to 90 percent and maize up to 60 percent of their losses.”
It seems that the study by Professor McColl supports the earlier study by NASA
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Except that the “caused by carbon dioxide” is an assumption.
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“It seems that the study by Professor McColl”
The authors are Berg and McColl
Correspondence to be addressed to Berg
Why that citation?
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Sorry for the duplicate posting but when I checked to see if the earlier post was showing it wasn’t so I assumed I’d closed off without posting hence the re-post
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Doesn’t sound as if they included the effect of CO2 and the reduction in water-need it brings to plants in their model along with the resultant increasing encroachment of plants into deserts.
Another factor where vegetative growth is concerned and not apparently considered anywhere in climactivist ‘studies’ is that trees have mechanisms to control the temperature of their leave to the optimum for photosynthesis. Thee were a number of published studies in the tropics and temperate regions which discovered this and some of the mechanisms.
Makes you understand that trees are nowhere as sensitive to temperature change as the climate doom-mongers want you to believe.
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The same old problem with post-modern science, they disregard such outdated thingys like observation ,empirical evidence and plain common sense. Not fit for purpose if it does not conform to the mainstream. This study does not come as a surprise given the satellite imagery which was largely ignored by all outlets. Models?? nah, give me birds entrails.
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So I just spent the day collecting water data from the local estuary, analysing the samples, and posting that information, I’m guessing that I will get more red thumbs than green. The reason is that Model, or observation, or sampling, does not matter, only the answer that is acceptable to the right is validated on this site
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We have to acknowledge that industrial CO2 is greening the planet, probably in marginal areas like the Sahel.
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El gordo- greening (add more chloroplasts) is not the same as greening (add more plants) – we are seeing the first type.
15 Red thumbs for me for doing science. Shows what this blog is all about
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Peter you say:
Have you thought of C4 plants only being 3% of all plant species – yet 20% of global photosynthesis?
Maybe general statements like yours above should be linked to evidence Peter?
Have you also considered the respiration advantages of C4 plants over C3?
All of which make your statement invalid totally!
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If all readers of this blog are “the right”, then doesn’t that include you too…?
What aspects of an estuary are you monitoring? Personally, I like the fact that people do this sort of thing, be it as a job, or as a hobby.
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Salinity, Dissolved oxygen, pH, temperature, conductivity, specific conductivity, Sulphate, Phosphate, Aluminium, Iron, Nitrogen, Nitrates, turbidity, total dissolved solids, Tannins, Surfactants, Ammonia and Sulphides
This is a long term project funded via Waterwatch and OZFish
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It’s like they’ve just got let out of kindergarten and are still trying to figure out how the world works.
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“There Are Models And There Are Models”
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2021/03/12/there-are-climate-models-and-there-are-climate-models/
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A classic “throwing good money after bad” situation. I can’t imagine any climate scientist rejecting government largess on the basis that climate models need to improve resolution by at least two orders of magnitude, and potentially add even more complexity by including more and better ecological models. Instead, they will ask for more money, apply more effort, and use even bigger models to continue delivering wrong answers.
As long as gullible politicians keep getting the answers they want. Because, of course, we know how little science politicians understand. Isn’t it interesting that “consensus” is now the new form of totalitarian control? And don’t politicians love telling us when it’s for our own “benefit”!
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This study gives Jo the answer she wants and I quote “ The new study is based on modeling too so it is still wrong, but less useless than previous studies”
So by your logic everyone on this site should also be “throwing good money after bad”
Science isn’t, and never was about getting the answers you want, despite Jo’s quote above
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Why bother with science if you don’t want answers ? Ahh ergo Climate science !
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Further studies may refute this study. That will balance things out for you and in the fullness of time keep these PHD types with something to occupy their time. Whatever happened to the Humboldt type.
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“Further studies may refute this study. ”
This study actually supports the findings of an earlier study based on modelling. The link is in an earlier post of mine
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So I think you are agreeing that you can’t depend on models, because depending on how you program them they give different answers. Yet your climastrolgy religion is built on nothing but models.
But we first need to do a survey of a hand picked group of scientists to see what percentage agree with this new model? Then we can say the science has been settled again, right? Isn’t that the new scientific method?
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Hmm, Let’s check
http://phzoe.com/2021/02/27/surface-change/
Looks good. Just another lie from TPTB.
Not unlike
[Snip]Too early for off topic]AD
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[Off Topic]AD
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Very informative Zoe.
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The propaganda expands and continues. For years satellite data have shown greening of desert areas, especially around their boundaries.
The good that increasing CO2 was doing to expand green productive into previous barren nonproductive areas, must have grated on the climate change propagandists who testified over and over about the horrors of climate change.
It seems that if they could conger up and paste together a counter argument that climate change could not ever have any benefits to humanity, they could strengthen their case for a one world communist government. Now, there appears a “new” model that proves there is no greening of the deserts. How long until they remake the satellite images to support their new modelling results?
May God help us!
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As Sahara is greening, it is naturally expanding 🙂
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“As Sahara is greening, it is naturally expanding ”
On the contrary if the desert is greening it is contracting. The definition of a desert is”a region so arid because of little rainfall that it supports only sparse and widely spaced vegetation or no vegetation at all:” Thus areas of greening are no longer desert.
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Exactly, so it’s not the Sahara Desert that is expanding, it’s the Sahara Greening that is expanding, right Ian?
Whatever it’s called, it’s bad. (And it’s worse than we thought)
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There is a scientific reason why increasing CO2 levels causes a reduction in desertification in every region of the world.
Plants loss roughly 50% of the water that they draw up their roots….
From evaporation out of the holes (stomata) in their leaves. Plants must have holes in their leaves (stomata) to let CO2 in.
When atmospheric CO2 is higher plants immediately (which is interesting as this is evidence that CO2 levels change rapidly in the atmosphere so plants take advantage of an increase in CO2 to reduce their water loss.) adjust their biological machinery and produce leaves with less stomata (holes) so they lose less water from evaporation out of their leaves.
Less stomata on their leaves, leaves more water in the plant’s roots. This water is used by nitrogen producing synergistic bacteria at the plant roots to produce more nitrogen which helps the plant grow.
When atmospheric CO2 is less than optimum…. Optimum is 1200 ppm.
The plants are forced decide which they need more: 1) water or 2) carbon dioxide.
“A group of scientists headed by Prof. Dan Yakir of the Weizmann Institute’s Environmental Sciences and Energy Department found that the Yatir forest, planted at the edge of the Negev Desert 35 years ago, is expanding at an unexpected rate. The findings, published in the current issue of Global Change Biology, suggest that forests in other parts of the globe could also be expanding into arid lands, absorbing carbon dioxide in the process.”
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2003/05/030509084556.htm
“Greenhouse Gas Might Green Up The Desert; Weizmann Institute Study Suggests That Rising Carbon Dioxide Levels Might Cause Forests To Spread Into Dry Environments
The Weizmann team found, to its surprise, that the Yatir forest is a substantial “sink” (CO2-absorbing site): its absorbing efficiency is similar to that of many of its counterparts in more fertile lands.
These results were unexpected since forests in dry regions are considered to develop very slowly, if at all, and thus are not expected to soak up much carbon dioxide (the more rapidly the forest develops the more carbon dioxide it needs, since carbon dioxide drives the production of sugars).
However, the Yatir forest is growing at a relatively quick pace, and is even expanding further into the desert.
Plants need carbon dioxide for photosynthesis, which leads to the production of sugars. But to obtain it, they must open pores in their leaves and consequently lose large quantities of water to evaporation.
The plant must decide which it needs more: water or carbon dioxide. Yakir suggests that the 30 percent increase of atmospheric carbon dioxide since the start of the industrial revolution eases the plant’s dilemma.
Under such conditions, the plant doesn’t have to fully open the pores for carbon dioxide to seep in – a relatively small opening is sufficient. Consequently, less water escapes the plant’s pores. This efficient water preservation technique keeps moisture in the ground, allowing forests to grow in areas that previously were too dry.”
The other issue (obvious in your fact is a warmer world is a more hospital world. At the current temperature is not optimum for life. When it is warmer there is more rainfall in the Sahara and less severe storms.
During the glacial periods there is a factor of ten increase in atmospheric dust deposited on the Greenland ice sheet from the Sahara desert when there are super cold Heinrich events.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/07/090731-green-sahara.html
In 2008 Kröpelin—not involved in the new satellite research—visited Western Sahara, a disputed territory controlled by Morocco.
“The nomads there told me there was never as much rainfall as in the past few years,” Kröpelin said. “They have never seen so much grazing land.” “Before, there was not a single scorpion, not a single blade of grass,” he said.
“Now you have people grazing their camels in areas which may not have been used for hundreds or even thousands of years. You see birds, ostriches, gazelles coming back, even sorts of amphibians coming back,” he said. “The trend has continued for more than 20 years. It is indisputable.”
The green shoots of recovery are showing up on satellite images of regions including the Sahel, a semi-desert zone bordering the Sahara to the south that stretches some 2,400 miles (3,860 kilometers). Images taken between 1982 and 2002 revealed extensive regreening throughout the Sahel, according to a new study in the journal Biogeosciences. The study suggests huge increases in vegetation in areas including central Chad and western Sudan.
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These sound like the nodes on legumes’ roots. Are there such nitrogen fixing bacteria on other plants as well?
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VA mycorrhiza for example
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arbuscular_mycorrhiza
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It’s not easy to fix atmospheric N into the soil as plant food. Off-hand I only know of crop rotation with legumes and lightening oxidising it and the oxide dissolves in the rain.
It is not an illusion how green things look after a thunderstorm.
Are there others I’m unaware of?
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Yes, there are others known, and probably many more that we don’t yet know of. There are certainly other fungi at work in the N cycle.
Azotobacter is also a major independent fixer of soil N.
We only hear about nodule-forming Rhizobium because it was the first such made public and it was commercialised. Since roughly the 60s, farmers have been able to buy different strains of Rhizobium to inoculate whichever legume they are planting — one size does not fit all.
Old cockies in my district (Hunter Valley) used to grab a handful of soil from an existing clover or lucerne paddock and throw it in with their new seed. They didn’t know why it worked, only that it did make a big difference in plant vigour over sowing seed “clean”. The NPK scientists called it an old wives tale until the role of Rhyzobium was discovered.
Additionally in the early 90s they discovered a three-way symbiosis in large glands call domatia on the underside of non-leguminous tree leaves. In these glands an alga plus either a bacterium or a fungus set up house together with the host tree and supply it with N directly from the air, regardless of soil conditions. This is particularly important in rainforest species and one of the reasons why poor soils can grow lush rainforest. The humidity in a rainforest is conducive to the propagation of the algae on the leaves.
I seem to recall that in rice paddies it is algae that fix N for the crop too.
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Politically Inconvenient truths!
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When I first saw these reports that the Yatir Forest on the borders of the Negev Desert is expanding I was immediately interested. The natural regeneration of woodlands was the basis of my MSc Conservation dissertation, and so I set about doing some research on this for me interesting topic.
So where is the Yatir Forest? It is located here just south of the 1949 Armistice Agreement Line in Israel.
Next what is the Yatir Forest? It is a plantation woodland of Aleppo Pine (Pinus halepensis), cypress and various broadleaved species such as Terebinth and Tamarisk that was first established in 1964 on a dissected plateau composed of Turonian era chalk and limestone at an elevation of between 400 and 850 metres. The plantation is located in a region that experiences an average annual winter rainfall (December to April) of between 200 to 370 mm, has low humidity (45%) and with a water table at a depth of 300 metres (Schiller 2010) [1]. So, it is a man-made ecosystem, not an ecologically established area of woodland and the trees there rely solely on rainfall for their source of water.
On first planting in 1964 a density of 1,800 saplings per hectare was used, however this was thinned down to 600 trees /hectare and is now typically 300 trees/hectare. The recent state of the plantation can be judged on this Google View taken in 2015.
According to literature none of the problems related to natural regeneration have been solved (Yavlovich 2008) [2], although it is not stated as to the nature of these problems and I have not been able to source the relevant document, however, I will offer the following opinions.
1. This is a highly managed area; the trees have all been brashed and the cut lower branches removed so there is little woody fuel load on the ground. There is also apparent evidence of grazing pressure with the presence of a consistent browse line.
2. Aleppo pine are an obligatory fire-regeneration species and are shade intolerant (Osem et al. 2013) [3], they have persistent branch-embarked serotinous cones and are therefore typically able to naturally regenerate after a destructive crown fire.
3. Given the nature and location of the plantation a management strategy involving fire in this way seems unlikely and the canopy separation is probably too large at the plantation’s present state of maturity.
4. Rocks and shrubs that provide physical protection appear to provide the best nursery conditions for Aleppo Pine (Waltz et al., 2015) [4].
Other regeneration strategies clearly need to be adopted (Prévosto and Ripert, 2008) [5]. From this I find it unlikely that the Yatir Forest is extending its range by natural ecological means in the absence of fire, the presence of endemic smothering herbaceous ground cover and the prevalence of grazing pressure (Volcani et al., 2008) [6]. The apparent lack of sapling grove outliers is in my view further evidence for this lack of natural regeneration at Yatir Forest.
References:
[1] Schiller, G., 2010. The case of Yatir forest. In Forest Management and the Water Cycle (pp. 163-186). Springer, Dordrecht. https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-90-481-9834-4_9
[2] Yavlovich H (2008) Natural regeneration of Pinus halepensis forest in semi-arid regions. M.Sc thesis, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel.
[3] Osem, Y., Yavlovich, H., Zecharia, N., Atzmon, N., Moshe, Y. and Schiller, G., 2013. Fire-free natural regeneration in water limited Pinus halepensis forests: a silvicultural approach. European journal of forest research, 132(5), pp.679-690. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10342-013-0704-3
[4] Waitz, Y., Cohen, Y., Dorman, M. and Perevolotsky, A., 2015. From microsite selection to population spatial distribution: Pinus halepensis colonization in mediterranean-type ecosystems. Plant Ecology, 216(9), pp.1311-1324. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11258-015-0511-7
[5] Prévosto, B. and Ripert, C., 2008. Regeneration of Pinus halepensis stands after partial cutting in southern France: Impacts of different ground vegetation, soil and logging slash treatments. Forest Ecology and Management, 256(12), pp.2058-2064. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0378112708005902
[6] Volcani, A., Karnieli, A. and Svoray, T., 2005. The use of remote sensing and GIS for spatio-temporal analysis of the physiological state of a semi-arid forest with respect to drought years. Forest Ecology and Management, 215(1-3), pp.239-250. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0378112705003348
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Done some more wandering on Google View.
This is what I am looking for as an example of natural regeneration.
Note the requirement for surface run-off flush, the possibility of snow catchment in this north facing bowel, the massive lower stem grazing pressure, the presence of rocks for nursery shelter and the inclusion of cypress regeneration.
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But, but, but, our Australian “experts” told us it was never going to rain enough to ever fill our dams again. And after the last drought, the alarmists told us that the Murray Darling Basin was doomed.
Here’s the BoM rainfall chart for the MDB for the past 120 years.
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Robber, looking at NSW shows same pattern – http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/change/#tabs=Tracker&tracker=timeseries&tQ=graph%3Drain%26area%3Dnsw%26season%3D0112%26ave_yr%3D11
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Robber if you change that graph to anomaly (zero is average rainfall) and even reduce the moving average to 8 years it looks more interesting.
From 1896 ( FED drought 1896 to 1902) to about 1949 the entire line is BELOW average and after that is much higher in the 1950s and 1970s and OK until about 2000.
Then we have 9 years of below average (MIL drought) and then the highest rainfall year ( 2010) and then within 10 years we have the lowest year in 2019. At least last year was a bit above average again and this year will be higher, but so far no big floods in lower MDB. And this is a la nina season and certainly very heavy rainfall over eastern OZ and top end, but parts of inland QLD still in drought.
Yes it has been variable but I still can’t see any evidence of IPCC, Biden, Kerry, Labor, Greens, Flannery etc CLIMATE CRISIS in OZ or around the world at all. In fact the reverse is true and check out AFRICA pop in 1970- 363 mil and today about 1340 mil people and life expectancy has increased there from about 47 to about 64 today. UNBELIEVABLE but TRUE, in just 50 years. Yet the first 363 mil people up to 1970 took about 200,000 years and our poorest continent has added another 1,000 million people in just the last 50 years. Some climate crisis, what a load of BS and fra-d.
And best year for Aussie farm income and crops on record, see ABARE season 2020 to 21 and total of about 66 billion $.
http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/change/#tabs=Tracker&tracker=timeseries&tQ=graph%3Drranom%26area%3Dmdb%26season%3D0112%26ave_yr%3D8
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I Should explain my choice of 200K for fully evolved Humans above.
This has been changing recently and today nearly all scientists use a range of about 100+K to 300K and so I used 200K above for my reference for African population of 363 mil up to 1970. Here’s a link.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_human_evolution#Homo_sapiens
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There are three essential ingredients and so three limits to plant life, two gases, CO2 and H2O and sunshine. Increase any of these things and you will get more plants. None of these and you get no plant life. No plant life means no life. All energy comes from the sun through photosynthesis.
One of these gases is a deadly enemy of mankind, an industrial pollutant which needs to be banned, taxed, driven from our atmosphere as evil without regard to cost and suffering this causes. But only in evil Christian democracies.
Everyone else is a victim of historic CO2 pollution and needs coal, gas and petrol to catch up economically. Especially the third world destitute country we know as China.
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TdeF, oxides of nitrogen from vehicle exhausts particularly diesels, turns to nitrogen fertilizer when washed out of the atmosphere by rain.
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Nitrogen is problematic in dry places like Los Angeles. Fortunately cleaned up by the serendipitous invention of the catalytic converter during the administration of RM Nixon the environmental president.
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Yep.
It turns out that the entire AGW lie was based on computer models deliberately designed to cause alarm.
Every single *peer-reviewed* paper supporting AGW has the phrase “models have shown” somewhere near the top, and then entire paper goes on to be based entirely on a wrong premise.
The AGW lie is produced and directed by the corporatist fascists at the UN IPCC.
Question:
Which country’s communist government controls the manufacturing of the raw materials for every single solar panel and wind turbine in the world?
Think: Climate Industrial Complex.
Jo, I sincerely and profoundly thank you for your work on exposing this lie.
I’ve been reading your work for many years, and I cannot thank you enough for the work you have done.
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Catallaxy Files has a Forum on this
Energy Roundup
Posted on March 12, 2021 by Rafe Champion
Comment of the week. Bruce from Newcastle on Potemkin RE in China.
It’s in part with the Chinese strategy to encourage the West to commit energy suicide. They make a great show of Chinese commitment to renewable energy but it’s really a Potemkin village.
Who would have thought? Wind power killing British industry.
The impact of UK carbon and other policies on the price of electricity to the steel industry is approximately double that in France or Germany.
Worse still, industrial electricity prices in Europe themselves are nearly 50% higher than in the G20 — never mind China and India where industrial electricity prices are estimated to be just a third of UK prices.
Coal Surging in India. Not to be outdone by China, the Indians are busy as well.
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Why a hydrogen economy doesn’t make sense
In a recent study, fuel cell expert Ulf Bossel explains that a hydrogen economy is a wasteful
economy. The large amount of energy required to isolate hydrogen from natural compounds (water,
natural gas, biomass), package the light gas by compression or liquefaction, transfer the energy
carrier to the user, plus the energy lost when it is converted to useful electricity with fuel cells,
leaves around 25% for practical use — an unacceptable value to run an economy in a sustainable
future. Only niche applications like submarines and spacecraft might use hydrogen.
“More energy is needed to isolate hydrogen from natural compounds than can ever be recovered
from its use,” Bossel explains to PhysOrg.com. “Therefore, making the new chemical energy carrier
form natural gas would not make sense, as it would increase the gas consumption and the
emission of CO . Instead, the dwindling fossil fuel reserves must be replaced by energy from
renewable sources.”
While scientists from around the world have been piecing together the technology, Bossel has
taken a broader look at how realistic the use of hydrogen for carrying energy would be. His overall
energy analysis of a hydrogen economy demonstrates that high energy losses inevitably resulting
from the laws of physics mean that a hydrogen economy will never make sense.
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It burns to form H2O, water. This is the problem. As this article shows, CO2 is vastly more useful for living things even in a desert and there is already far too much water. And H2O is far more deadly than water. All storms are caused by water, evaporation, tempests, floods, tsunamis and even pool drownings. Ever heard of a CO2 spout?
How many people die from CO2 each year? None. How many from water? Millions. And what does a Hydrogen economy do? Makes more water. We should be making more CO2 and greening the planet. And carbohydrates formed by the sun in photosynthesis are the greatest source of clean solar power on the planet and power and form all life on earth. Carbohydrates of course are hydrated carbon dioxide. Free. Clean energy.
So let’s ban carbohydrates in the name of science and ecology. And use wind to create hydrogen at huge energy cost.
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I thought it was all about the new frontier of subsidy farming – solar and wind subsidies are decreasing, but hand-outs for hydrogen are increasing.
10
Mick
See #1.5
20
Mick,
You say – “It turns out that the entire AGW lie was based on computer models deliberately designed to cause alarm.”
Very Very true.
.
The computer models run on a fundamental flaw in that the sun’s effect is divided by four to give an average of solar input across the whole global area (at any instant). To do this the sun’s energy flux is averaged across a representation of the Earth as a flat surface and not a sphere. This systematically removes the sun’s major ability to cause weather or climate. This dilution of the sun’s effect means that the modelers now have room (in an energy sense) to insert their imaginative CO2 supposition and its powerful (not) radiative effect. Modelers have a flat Earth (LOL 🙂 )
This is the error!
Insolation of this planet does not happens the way these models are programmed. This planet is a sphere.
On sunlit side of the globe the solar energy causes the temperature to rise to about 40°C or so, at the solar zenith around a region of equatorial part of the planet. The poles are at 0°C or less and so there is a basic 40°C temperature differential across the planet. Also there is the difference in temperature between the sunlit side and the night side of the planet. These differentials leads to atmospheric pressure/humidity differentials. All these differences are what sets-up this planet’s basic requirements for weather to form. Now add in the effect of all that atmospheric convection, oceanic moving water, wind and vertical air movement, clouds effects, spin of the Earth and its tilt, change of terrain under the full glare of the sun, etc., etc., and the chaotic nature of the weather and climate soon appears.
So the very basics in the models are wrong (a flat Earth), sure the averaging of solar energy flux may give them the correct answer for an average but it is a profoundly useless metric! It averages away the very area specific solar warming that gives this planet its weather and climate.
Basically it’s the sun and not CO2 that drives the Earth’s weather and climate. 😉
A analogy:
You need to know how far and in what direction a vehicle has been driven.
The climate change method first requirement is to average the vehicle’s acceleration! Then invent mysterious unreal processes to get to the correct answer afterward :-0
00
Area of a circle = pi x radius squared
Surface area of a sphere = 4 x pi x radius squared
So the surface area of a sphere is four times greater than the surface area of a circle of the same radius.
Radiant energy received by the earth is proportional to the area facing the sun
= area of a circle of that diameter
Since the sphere, the earth, rotates and wobbles, this energy is spread over the whole area of the sphere, equally, one forth.
Agreed, nor equal everywhere at all times.
Over many days, the average for any spot is the same.
00
Morning Jo,
I just love this sentence you quoted:
” More CO2 also results in more fertilizer for plants, which helps them grow and reduces water stress. ”
“Fertiliser”? I guess I should be delighted that the author recognised CO2 is needed by plants, but “fertiliser”? Surely “food” is a more accurate descriptor. And has been used in this context by Professor Plimer.
Certainly the stuff I eat at breakfast is “food”. And plants are consuming theirs all day.
Perhaps they’ll get to recognition sometime, and hopefully soon.
Cheers
Dave B
101
Climate experts will need a rethink,
As CO2 helps deserts shrink,
Letting plant life reclaim,
A barren domain,
Making climate-change good, one would think.
170
Um no, Ruairi. Climate change bad. Always bad.
20
I have also read that higher CO2 concentrations allow the plant to “spend” more resources on developing a bigger root system. ergo, more drought resistant.
110
Proof that the so-called “Greenhouse Gas Effect” does not exist.
The Earth has an atmosphere with 0.04% CO2
Venus has an atmosphere with 96.5% CO2
Yet the near-surface equilibrium temperature can be accurately determined by the following formula:
Near-Surface Atmospheric Temperature in Kelvin (T) = PM/Rp where
P = Near-Surface Pressure in KPa
R = gas constant = 8.314
P = Near-Surface atmospheric density in kg/m2
M = Near-Surface atmospheric mean molar mass gm/mol-1
Earth: Calculated T = 288.14K Actual T = 288K
Venus: Calculated T = 739.7 Actual T = 740K
That is no reference as to the type of gases in the atmosphere is required to determine the near-surface temperature.
This formula leads directly to the conclusion that a small change in any single atmospheric gas, such as a doubling of the carbon dioxide level, (CO2) from the ‘pre-industrial’ 0.03% to 0.06% can have no measurable positive or negative effect on atmospheric temperatures.
121
Does the distance from the Sun matter?
30
No only anthropogenic CO2 matters, just asking Greta.
41
I cannot see that this equation proves anything. PV=nRT is the usual gas equation connecting pressure and temperature with moles, not average densitys. It means that if temperature goes up, pressure goes up. And as you say, this does not tell you why the temperature goes up. It is simple physical chemistry for all gases.
It was projection from his studies of the atmosphere on Venus that NASA atmospheric scientist James Hansen stated categorically in 1988 to the US congress that we were doomed to CO2 driven rapid warming which would wipe out modern civilization quickly. And we are still being told that James, now 80, was correct as he and his theory passes into history debunked by reality.
What I find odd is that logically you would look at the two sources of heat, the sun and the massive heat and gas store in the oceans for predicting temperature and even gas levels. When 98% of CO2 is dissolved in the ocean, how much surface heating do you need for the CO2 in the air to go up 50%? Not much.
61
I don’t wish to become a pain here, but I have been battling this idea that temperature is determined by the ideal gas law in all situations for years. It is not.
Because heat will always flow from hot places to cold places, temperature is always determined by an energy balance — that is, by applying the first law of thermodynamics along with equations of heat transport. This is how nature does it, and we understand the transport processes of nature well enough to write them in mathematical form.
Now, with temperature nailed down, we need to know the gas constant for whatever gas we are working in, and the density or specific volume, and then we can use the ideal gas law to find the remaining unkown, which in this present hypothetical case is pressure. The rule is, with an equation of state, like the ideal gas law, we can find one unknown P, or v, or T so long as we know the others a priori.
Now it should be obvious from its name that the ideal gas law applies only to gases, and only to ideal gases at that. CO2 on the surface of Venus is, i am pretty sure, a supercritical fluid, so the ideal gas law does not apply at all. Even the gaseous CO2 which resides atop the fluid is so compressed that it is no longer ideal, and we must use the real gas law instead. This is all more compex than just applying the ideal gas law. I hope this clarifies things.
31
Kevin,
you say “Because heat will always flow from hot places to cold places…”
Surprisingly even people at NASA agrees with this see https://www.grc.nasa.gov/WWW/K-12/airplane/thermo2.html
00
“Proof that the so-called “Greenhouse Gas Effect” does not exist.”
In a published paper Deepak Singh (2019) calculates that the average nighttime surface temperature of Venus is 698 Kelvin with a diurnal range of 2 Kelvin, so the average surface temperature for the planet is 699 Kelvin.
Singh, D., 2019. Venus nightside surface temperature. Scientific reports, 9(1), pp.1-5.
So re-running the equation for Venus with that temperature value and by applying the Ideal Gas Law I get:
P = Near-Surface Pressure is 9,321.9 kPa
R = gas constant = 8.314
P = Near-Surface atmospheric density is 69.6914 kg/m2
M = Near-Surface atmospheric mean molar mass 43.45 gm/mol-1
Venus surface temperature = 9321.9 * 43.45/8.314/69.6914 = 699 Kelvin.
The Maxwell Mass Effect in action.
A Modelled Atmospheric Pressure Profile of Venus
30
Higher CO2 levels help increase the growth of plants at every stage of their life. The only time when researchers could show a reaction contrary to this was when they went out of their way to rob the soil of nitrogen. And even then it was only some plants and only at some parts of their development. Here I rely on my memory of going through the IDSO families CO2 science site maybe 15 years or so ago. The site is still going and a quick look I find the following:
“Over the past 30 years intrinsic water use efficiencies (iWUE) of three Bangladesh tree species rose by a respectable 29-46% in response to a mere 15% rise in atmospheric CO2.”
We don’t know how long this CO2 blessing is going to last so we better get busy with greening these deserts while we still have the chance.
Another study I got hold of about 15 years ago was quoted in “Access To Energy” which is a newsletter I used to get. It was a summary study and it showed that the benefits of CO2 to unstressed plants didn’t level off until about 600 parts per million. Whereas the benefits to stressed plants didn’t level off until 1500 parts per million. What this means is that the CO2 hysterics are divided between the ignorant and the lunatic. Because we should see the kind of damage we have done to the land and we should seek to repair the damage.
51
There is a Chinese proverb which says it is not hard to ride a tiger, the trick it knowing when to get off. We have seen it with the current over-reaction to the Wuflu with the government struggling to find a way to ease up the economy without admitting they should never have shut it down. Likewise I feel sure elements of government know that the CO2 scam is fraudulent but cannot afford to admit it so make the problem much worse by doubling down. They could reverse the trajectory by conducting an audit of the BoM for example. If they find, as they would, that data has been manipulated to show warming when it did not exist it would be easy to throw a few data fiddlers under the bus and tell the public they were mislead. A few well publicised papers by Jennifer and Peter showing how well the reef was really doing even a government funded series of ads to cast doubt on the perceived wisdom. If it caused people to ask questions, particularly school children of their teachers, the government could get off the tiger and put us on a path to common sense once more. Such a program would cost a fraction of one wind farm and achieve so much. A large section of the Australian population know the climate hysteria is BS already so very few need to be convinced to cement a good majority that would support reliable power generation, coal, gas or nuclear for example. The alternative is eventual destitution and a country begging to be taken over by the CCP.
151
The first step to stabilizing the topography of the planet to unchanging permanence is computer modeling.
It is such a shame that almost all the asteroid impact craters on Earth have been lost to climate change.
41
I was just reading a review of a Toyota hydrogen fuel cell car. Amazing technology. Why? Four hydrogen filling stations in Australia. Hydrogen at 700bar! (700x atmosphere, equivalent to a distance of 7km under water). It seems insane at the limit of technology. But the author praises it, as all car writers do, as part of the need for ‘decarbonization’.
You see carbon is pollution and we need to be free of it, especially carbon dioxide. By 2030 or 2050 for amoral countries.
Now how many people know that a tree, every tree is grown entirely from CO2. Trees are a manifestation of carbon dioxide. Without it, no trees or plants. A tree gets only water and a few minerals from the soil and could be grown entirely in the air, from the air. This has been known for hundreds of years.
And it is ignorance of this fact that all living things are part of the essential carbon dioxide cycle of life which prompts car writers to talk enthusiastically of ‘decarbonization’. Of everything. Goodbye life on earth. Ignorance is not bliss. It is ignorance. Aided and abetted by your government. How much would it cost to tell people this? We could ask their ABC?
191
700 bar is 10,152 psi, that must be some compressor.
I see one member of the Top Gear team has sold his Toyota H2 fuel cell car, reason, not enough filling stations, in UK. !
30
‘The new study is based on modeling too so it is still wrong, but less useless than previous studies.’ What a scary statement! Where’s the anti Tim Flannery? The explanation in this article is everything past generations knew to be true, including those who only had a passing understanding. When is our conservative government going to put an ACTUAL climatologist in front of Australia and show the steps, with examples of today to provide bite size education to this and future generations – who have actually switched off from alarmists – but hear another selective, counterintuitive model screamed from their social media and say, ‘ well it must be true, they must know what they’re talking about, I think I remember something like that from what they told us in school!’
Australia has a very finite window to address this lunacy as an inevitable change of government will bring the climate brainwashing times a thousand and the added bonus of cancel culture, where the careers of the logical will be terminated.
41
Humans are geo engineering the planet, the African Humid Period can be recreated artificially.
‘The humid period began about 14,600–14,500 years ago at the end of Heinrich event 1, simultaneously to the Bølling-Allerød warming. Rivers and lakes such as Lake Chad formed or expanded, glaciers grew on Mount Kilimanjaro and the Sahara retreated. Two major dry fluctuations occurred; during the Younger Dryas and the short 8.2 kiloyear event. The African humid period ended 6,000–5,000 years ago during the Piora Oscillation cold period.’ wiki
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Australian Grains Free Air CO2 Enrichment project (AGFACE) was established to allow researchers to examine how crops would respond under elevated CO2.
To mimic future atmospheric carbon dioxide levels, which over the next 35 years are predicted to rise from 405ppm to 550ppm, a gas cylinder was installed at the plant breeding centre which fed into pipes arranged into 12 metre wide octagonal rings around the field trials. Plants grown inside these rings were exposed to 550ppm levels of CO2 during daylight hours.
Dr Glenn Fitzgerald said a decade of experiments using the AGFACE infrastructure has produced a number of results and has significantly contributed to the collective understanding about food production under elevated CO2.
“A key finding was that crops grown under elevated CO2 grow bigger but they will need more nitrogen and phosphorus to support them, and grain quality will decrease,” Dr Fitzgerald said.
The research also showed that the impact elevated carbon dioxide had on crops varied according to cultivar, which suggests that adaptation to a changing climate is possible with targeted plant breeding.
Dr Fitzgerald listed other AGFACE key findings as follows:
· In the absence of increased moisture and heat stresses, the growth and yield of wheat, field peas, lentils and canola, on average will increase due to elevated CO2. This is known as the ‘CO2 fertilisation effect’. On average, wheat and field peas grown under elevated CO2, yielded 25 per cent higher than plants grown under current CO2 levels.
· Bigger crops grown under higher CO2 are likely to need more nitrogen and phosphorus to support them.
· Cereal grain protein, micronutrient levels and bread quality will decrease. Because protein decreases more under elevated CO2 in semi-arid conditions, even with extra nitrogen fertiliser, Australia may be at a disadvantage in maintaining grain quality compared to other parts of the world.
· Diseases such as barley yellow dwarf virus and crown rot are likely to be more severe under elevated CO2.
Dr Fitzgerald said there were a number of important other findings resulting from the extensive AGFACE research.
“Increasing temperatures and reduced rainfall in the future may tend to lower yields, counteracting the benefits of CO2,” he said.
So, the upshot of this already completed research is that yields of some of the most common broadacre crops will rise and rise significantly. Anyone who has done any plant biochemistry or physiology studies knows this result arises because plants lose less water because the stomata are open less to draw in CO2 for photosynthesis. Effectively you turn C3 plants into C4 plants with all their growth benefits. But even with this research and such obvious results there is always the doom and gloom predictions – all of which are based on predictions of what is to occur in decades hence. All of which could ( and likely) be completely erroneous.
51
“Increasing temperatures and reduced rainfall in the future may tend to lower yields, counteracting the benefits of CO2,” he said.
So in the modern world, any benefits of increased CO2 have to be immediately countered by speculation about future increased temperatures which is an area completely outside the area of the researchers. You would think the dinosaurs never existed. And they were very big. And the vegetation so enormous we are still living on dead plant matter from a time of high temperatures and CO2.
101
As for a need for more nitrogen and trace elements, these are the same thing. An essesntial but very small 3-4% contribution by weight to plants or animals. Almost all is from CO2 and H2O. It is why, when dried, animals burn like wood. And Nitrogen need is why we use fertilizer, which would also be banned in the new Green caring world.
91
Possible cereal grain protein decreases could be avoided by different genetics, targeting different soil or some other agronomy tweek. It’s not as if the industry is going to stand still , there will be constant advances. As for the claim for more diseases, again yet to be proven, but could be solved by genetics or even better crop protection.
31
Monocultural cereal production is an inferior nutritional product. We ought not be basing all our decisions around this kind of thing. There is room for some cereals. Colin Seis has pioneered ways of growing annual cereals in the midst of perennial grasses and controlled cattle exploitation. This is using exquisite timing. So that it may seem like monoculture at any one time of the year. But really its the use of many special through-out any given year.
We don’t want to put the emphasis on agronomy tweeks and different genetics. Its getting in the way of working more with nature, rather than fighting against nature. Practices like those of Seis build soil and if it matters to some people, inter carbon in the soil. Whereas any attempts at cereal monoculture diminish our soils and mess with a good diet.
20
We know the researchers in any field with a link to “climate change” will always , irrespective of results, aspire to the doom and gloom. Why? They simply can then get more funding. If their prediction was all ” no worries mate, she’ll be right’, their funding would dry up overnight 🙂
101
The only source of N fertiliser in such quantities is urea. Urea manufacture NEEDS a lot of natural gas.
Bummer!!!
40
Oh good, a new model. Does this mean the science is settled … again?
51
Misplaced.
10
When will we ever see a documentary from, say, David Attenborough on how carbon dioxide is the foundation of all life on earth and without carbon dioxide, we would not exist? There would be no animal or plant kingdom. No life. Absolute silence. Never a good word to say about carbon dioxide.
Shhh. It’s a big secret at the ABC/BBC. And possibly a big fat lie. No one needs CO2. It is the essence of industrial pollution, even if 7 billion humans are breathing it out right now. That’s 5.5Billion more than 100 years ago.
Bring on your windmills made from metals created by using carbon to extract the oxide and produing carbon dioxide. And drive on those roads in metal cars on concrete which is made by extracting the carbon dioxide from calcium carbonate.
Populated with people who slow burn carbohydrates to water and CO2.
Not a good thing to say by their ABC about a world which runs essentially on carbon dioxide in every possible way.
You see, carbon dioxide is the biggest problem in the world. We must decarbonize.
191
And engineers and investors and film starts and climatologists are building, occupying, investing in more and more beach side buildings, airports and even cities in the water like Dubai. You see, no one actually believes it, especially Tim Flannery who has lived on the waters edge of the Hawksbury river for two decades without noticing even the slightest increase in sea level. It’s all to fool the punters. No one actually believes this stuff, except children.
181
I think you may mean David Attenborough as his brother Richard Attenborough died in 2014
70
Very inconvenient for my narrative. I used to love the parody about David Rabbit Burrow. What bothers me is that he understands that CO2 is the essential ingredient of all life, but says nothing. And at 94, old enough to know that nothing has changed with sea levels or temperatures or climates. So why does he go on with this end of world stuff?
151
We know why, and his culpability in promoting the fallacy that carbon dioxide is poisonous is obscene and reprehensible.Or maybe he really is a silly old coot.
111
Or maybe he just loves his job at 94 and knows if he does not say what he is told, he is finished. Like the late David Bellamy who called man made Global Warming ‘poppycock’ and never worked again. How many professionals are scared for their jobs? After all, how many ecologists work in industry? Their jobs depend on finding things wrong.
100
One word TdeF, BBC.
20
And the reverse is also true. Roughly halve the current level of CO2 and most life on earth would cease to exist. Surely we are scared about the wrong thing? CO2 up, good. CO2 down, bad. But then we are told our temperatures are rising rapidly and the seas as swamping the world.
It seems the island nation of the Maldives has built seven new airports on supposedly rapidly flooding land. Maybe they don’t believe it themselves after 33 years of nothing happening.
The disconnect between what the BBC/ABC is telling us and reality could not be more profound. Man made Global Warming is not just make believe is it?
111
And surely after 33 years since Hansen announced the end of the world through global warming, the question is whether such warming is even significant. The CO2 increase is significant and steady but the warming is not significant and not steady. In fact judging on Europe, America and Australian news, the world is rapidly cooling as predicted. But that’s a secret too.
131
Are there any flip sides to global greening? One rarely considered is the impact of increasing tree cover on rainfall runoff and stream flows. Any landholder can tell you that to increase intake into farm dams you reduce the tree cover within the dam’s catchment. You certainly would not let tree cover increase.
The 2005 WA State election drew nationwide attention to Perth’s parlous water supplies. It is less well known that during that campaign it was pointed out that uncontrolled growth of vegetation over the previous 25 years had reduced intake into Perth’s aquifers – thus compounding the problem in an area of Australia where rainfall and fire incidence have both knowingly decreased over the past 100 years.
Landholders on the Edwards Plateau, the watershed for San Antonio, Texas, USA have been paid to clear trees off their land to enhance that city’s water supplies. And in South Africa first year stream flow increases from clearing tall woody vegetation (including eucalypts) in the riparian zone of water courses, have ranged from 9-44% per 10% of catchment cleared.
Robert Jackson and co-workers analysed the global effect of tree plantations and found they decreased stream flows by an average of 52%, with 13% of streams drying completely for at least 1 year. And John Powell has estimated that run-off & base-flow from cleared catchments in south eastern Australia can be 2-3 times the pre-clearing amount.
Reference sources for these citations can be found in: https://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Committees/Senate/Finance_and_Public_Administration/Completed%20inquiries/2008-10/climate_change/index {Click on the Link to Submission # 297 – Bill Burrows}.
Readers might ponder what would be the effect of increased tree cover over the last 100+ years on high rainfall, high country run-off areas for the Murray-Darling Basin water supplies. One of the illustrations in the above link compares a sketch of an area of the Carnarvon Range (“The Home of the Rivers”) in south – central Queensland drawn by Major Mitchell in 1846, compared with a modern day photo of the same site. And has the tree cover increased on the western high country slopes of the Dividing Range in NSW?
Then there are the well documented increases in tree/shrub cover over the previous 100+ years in the Pilliga scrub, the Cobar-Byrock peneplain and the mulga region of south west Queensland east of the Warrego river. All of these areas cited potentially contribute to stream flows in the Murray-Darling sytem.
By the way I am not advocating reducing CO2 levels in the atmosphere or bad mouthing ‘global greening’. Just hopefully pointing out that we need to manage all of its consequences.
50
Nature has a way of compensating Bill B. Sometimes over short timescales but mostly over longer periods. So the downside to greater greening may be a rise in leaf eating insects or possible foliar diseases as 2 specific examples. There are endless possibilities, all of which would most likely have happened before, thousands or millions of years ago.
20
Dinosaurs. Giant carnivorous chickens.
50
“Are there any flip sides to global greening? ”
There is only the issue of very powerful fires if we let the extra plant productivity lead to excessive buildups of fuel. Thats the only negative. Everything else is positive. We live on a CO2-deprived planet. The antidote to fuel buildup is goat-herding and we get great meat and milk from this process.
“So the downside to greater greening may be a rise in leaf eating insects or possible foliar diseases as 2 specific examples.”
The general principle is that pest problems are problems to do with monoculture. Insofar as the biblical locust plagues had any root reality to them, that sort of things come from attempts to grow annual monocultures over large areas. If we could choose our CO2 levels we would be foolish to choose any level below 600 parts per million. Any extensive monoculture is a rebellion against nature, a strategy for destroying soil, and brings the need for poisons with it. Rice is a little bit different because the rice paddy system preserves good soil development. But even in that case you do much better with the three-way action of ducklings, rice and azolla.
40
Pest problems are not entirely to do with monoculture FGR. Yes , that is true for a lot of horticulture particularly for tree systems. However, we commonly get “natural” locust plagues in Australia so there is reality. Not linked to human activities. They arise due to some abnormal greening events generally in the non farmed or outback areas of the country. Then spread to the pastoral/ cropping zones.
50
Jo stated:
It is interesting to look carefully at this statement.
When you know the upper limit of the sea surface temperature is controlled to 30C then the only way the globe gets warmer is to have more area at 30C. What that means is that the surface is actually getting less insolation because the convective clouds are reflecting more sunlight from areas at 30C; hence less evaporation not more. The linked paper goes into detail:
http://ocp.ldeo.columbia.edu/res/div/ocp/pub/seager/seager_mch_2003.pdf
Water runoff from land has been steady since 1900. A dip in the early 1990s but back up to same level after 2000. Precipitation over land very slight increase since 1960 – there was a dip also in the early 1990s.
41
Oh good, a new model. Does this mean the science is settled … again?
61
Science of course is never settled that is the basic principle of science LOL
10
This is only slightly O/T and is the reason we are gambling on our future energy needs.
More from Andrew Bolt and Alan Moran about the dirty, toxic and unreliable S&W fantasies and the closing of reliable Aussie base-load coal plants in the recent past and near future.
And overseas con merchants and fra-dsters are promising big time and losing billions $ of so called investors money trying to cover their backsides. See the video at link.
https://www.heraldsun.com.au/blogs/andrew-bolt/australians-are-being-sold-green-fantasies-that-will-cost-them-bolt/video/05621bb7a710ce2838d6cf11818836c1
40
Bolts not the committed truth-seeker he may have seemed to be. He’s going to end up doing more harm than good. See how terrific he was with Cardinal Pell, and then the American election, which required almost the exact same evidence analysis that he showed he was more than capable of ….. and he blows it. He’s acting the buffoon. These inside-outskies become annoying after awhile. Unreliable. Though I do admire his street-fighting. Us older gentlemen cannot let these kids push us around.
40
I don’t know if it’s just me but without Trump around to give us a voice their seems to be very little discussion about whether climate change is happening ( which of course it is ) and whether it’s a problem ( which of course it isn’t.). The warmists have now got to the space where everyone in control whether that be governments or bureaucracies both local and global. The discussion is really about which is the best way to resolve this problem, not whether there is a problem at all. A lot of argument is being pushed about science and sceptics being anti science and that whether global warming is happening or not those who fight against it are Neanderthals who are luddites standing in the way of technology and progress. What I think is the two main solutions are centuries old , windmills which have origins going back centuries and taxes which have always been a means of income redistribution.
The reality is the narrative that has been created has been portrayed as some sort of universal truth so needs no facts to support it . What is amazing is that predictions that have been made on this narrative have been virtually 100% wrong. When you consider that random chance would have a better result makes it unbelievable that not only is the narrative not attracting more sceptics it is gaining more popularity. I suppose this just reflects how successful coordinated propaganda is.
Anyway, whilst the temptation is there to give up one lives hope that.something will change . Who knows there may be another Trump out there somewhere.
30
Hahahahahaaaaaa. I’ve been arguing that for years. Oh how hilarious!
To all those memories of suffering those articles of expanding deserts, the arguments I’ve had and that perpetual irritant “because the scientist says so” excuse. Haha and cheers! To logic !
20
[…] Desertification cancelled: Climate Change won’t make the deserts grow […]
00
Climate Change is always happening. CAGW is not (unless you are a delusional God-Complex moron like Turnbull, Flannery et al).
10
The problem is the dopy public forget the water cycle and think global warming means more drought. So much ignorance. Much of it taught to school kids who come home to complain to mummy and daddy who vote. Even Andy Pitman came out during the last drought and stated that there is no link between human CO2 emissions and drought.
10
The Samizdata network pointed out an interesting web called ‘Extinction Clock’, where you can look at all the failed predictions of disaster over many years. I especially like the Maldives prediction, since you can still fly there on regular services, even though it should all be underwater by now!
10