What kind of pollution do you want to feed your plants? The carbon kind.
Yet again, a satellite study of leaf area shows that the world is greener than it was in 1982. There are more plants mostly thanks to CO2 aerial fertilization. The biggest benefits from CO2 are in the warm tropics. The extra greenery in colder areas was due to that other disaster called “global warming”. About a tenth of the greening had nothing to do with either carbon pollution or extra warmth and was apparently thanks to nitrogen from man-made fertilizers.
Obviously we need a $10 billion dollar program to stop this immediately.
Click to enlarge.
Humans are Greening planet Earth — ABC
The most comprehensive modelling of remote sensing data so far shows the area on Earth covered by plants in this time has increased by 18 million square kilometres — about 2.5 times the size of the Australian continent — largely due to the fertilising effect of carbon dioxide (CO2).
“[The greening] has the ability to fundamentally change the cycling of water and carbon in the climate system,” said Dr Zaichun Zhu, from Peking University in China and lead author of the new study, which appears today in the journal Nature Climate Change.
Drs Zhu, Canadell and colleagues found that the 46 parts per million increase in atmospheric CO2 between 1982 and 2009 was responsible for 50 to 70 per cent of the observed greening.
“Carbon fertilisation is the dominant process for greening across the globe, particularly in the tropics because there’s so much leaf area there,” Dr Canadell said.
The new study found other causes of the greening, including nitrogen from agricultural fertilisers.
As I keep saying: burn fossil fuels and feed the world.
Plants are so dependent on CO2 that they suck out half the CO2 out of the air before lunchtime each day.
ABSTRACT
Global environmental change is rapidly altering the dynamics of terrestrial vegetation, with consequences for the functioning of the Earth system and provision of ecosystem services1, 2. Yet how global vegetation is responding to the changing environment is not well established. Here we use three long-term satellite leaf area index (LAI) records and ten global ecosystem models to investigate four key drivers of LAI trends during 1982–2009. We show a persistent and widespread increase of growing season integrated LAI (greening) over 25% to 50% of the global vegetated area, whereas less than 4% of the globe shows decreasing LAI (browning). Factorial simulations with multiple global ecosystem models suggest that CO2 fertilization effects explain 70% of the observed greening trend, followed by nitrogen deposition (9%), climate change (8%) and land cover change (LCC) (4%). CO2 fertilization effects explain most of the greening trends in the tropics, whereas climate change resulted in greening of the high latitudes and the Tibetan Plateau. LCC contributed most to the regional greening observed in southeast China and the eastern United States. The regional effects of unexplained factors suggest that the next generation of ecosystem models will need to explore the impacts of forest demography, differences in regional management intensities for cropland and pastures, and other emerging productivity constraints such as phosphorus availability.
This study appears to show a reduction in leaf area across a lot of Western Australia which is rather at odds with most other studies that show that arid dry areas are exactly the ones that benefit most from CO2 enrichment, since the extra CO2 helps plants cope with droughts. I don’t know why this study shows the opposite effect in WA. Nor do I know why they say that global vegetation’s response is “not well established” when skeptical scientists have been predicting this for decades and past studies also showed plants grow faster, and there are increases in Net Primary Productivity and biomass in many locations.
h/t OriginalSteve, Bulldust, handjive.
REFERENCE
Zaichun Zhu, et al (2016) Greening of the Earth and its drivers, Nature Climate Change, Letter, doi:10.1038/nclimate3004
CO2 beneficial?
This has been pretty obvious for most of us capable of thinking, while those who prefer to parrot alarmist mantras will undoubtedly either dismiss this an extreme heresy or declare that commenting on these kinds of inconvenient facts is beneath contempt.
The bottom line is for disclosing this great truth, be very afraid for the Climate Inquisition is now definitely coming to get you.
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Along the lines of the Romans in Monty Python’s memorable Life of Brian, we should start a “What has CO2 done for us?” list. Thanks to Another Graeme for the thought in the previous thread.
So what has CO2 done for us? Well there’s the greening, obviously…
Next
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Cough “all life on earth” cough….
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Er sorry Bulldust- hit der wrong button.
50
+100 to bulldust for alerting Jo to this.
40
Less landfall hurricanes
41
I suspect that “up here” in the wonderful EU, saying this about “carbon” will be banned before too long.
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Yes, that should protect the planet by killingall human life…allthough to be fair, this is what the Elites *actually* want….Georgia guidestones and all…
It is what it is.
41
Anyone care to dig into this and explain it please?
I’m guess ing whatever it is , it will further restrict human activity, achievement and well being.
People whould also research the term “rewilding” in conjunction with Agenda 21.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-04-27/labor-reveals-climate-plan-for-twin-emissions-trading-schemes/7362980
“The Federal Opposition has released a climate change policy involving two emissions trading schemes (ETS), more expensive, but better fuel economy cars by 2025, and a “climate trigger” to prevent the states from allowing the clearing of large tracts of land.
There will be an ETS for electricity generators and a separate one for businesses in other industries who emit more than 25,000 tonnes of carbon pollution per year.
The latter scheme will be rolled out in two phases, with Labor promising phase one will not involve a carbon price.
Under the general industries scheme, companies would be able to emit carbon to a certain level without paying a penalty but any emissions over the cap would need to be offset.
Labor said 100 per cent of the offset obligations could be met by buying cheap international permits.
The agriculture, road transport and refrigerants industries would be exempt from the first-phase ETS.
The first-phase ETS would run from July 1, 2018, to June 30, 2020.
Labor also plans to introduce mandatory light vehicle standards, which it says will save drivers $8,500 in fuel costs over the life of car but add $1,500 to the price of a new car in 2025.
The policy document also outlines a plan for a “carbon trigger” enshrined in federal legislation to allow the Commonwealth to regulate broad-scale land clearing, “to prevent a repeat of the fiasco under the last LNP Government in Queensland”.”
31
“to prevent a repeat of the fiasco under the last LNP Government in Queensland”.
Curiously, should Labor proceed with that plan, in the situation where the State did allow the clearing of vegetation, the Commonwealth would be liable go pay fair and just compensation under the federal constitution. The State constitutions are not bound in this way which is how property rights have been usurped in Australia to date. Viz.Peter Spencer and an awful lot of farmers and property owners.
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“The bottom line is for disclosing this great truth, be very afraid for the Climate Inquisition is now definitely coming to get you.”
See even your considered writing is annoying some that read and think (poorly). This is evidenced by the red thumb! Remember in the cold war, near Germany’s Fulda Gap, the Soviets had more TANKS than the west had BULLETS!
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Will! Peter is guilty of missing a semicolon.
I will refrain from mentioning where he should have stuck it.
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😉 et all!
20
“Noooooobody expects the Spanish Inquisition….”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7WJXHY2OXGE
– Monty Python
Enjoy…..!
21
… commenting on these kinds of inconvenient facts is beneath contempt
Not really, just inappropriate
21
That’s a great example of what was discussed in the previous post.
11
Just thought it worth mentioning that natural gas (and air) are the main ingredients for manufacturing ammonia as the starting point for making synthetic nitrogen-based fertilisers. So again, fossil fuels to the rescue, and bonus CO2 emissions as part of the process! Win-win!
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Oops looks like Electricity Bill doesn’t like the planet being greener – the ETS is back on Labor’s radar:
https://au.news.yahoo.com/thewest/a/31442836/coal-power-plants-to-be-closed-under-alp-plan/
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Look really closely at that map.
Back in the 70’s, as a member of the RAAF, I was looked upon as somewhat weird, in that I mainly watched the ABC. Well, they did have the Cricket in those days. The rest I grew to find not only interesting, but also entertaining, having all those English comedies, which nearly all later went to the Commercials.
Part of that, and way way long before he became trendy, David Attenborough did what he does today, spoken voice overs for nature doco’s with an occasional appearance, which, back in those days was more often. Watching these occasionally made me look good with my friends, as I would come out with what seemed like useless information (they called it) and it won me some credence at times, knowing this stuff, and usually ended with the response when a question was asked, and that reply was “Ask Lang, he’d know.”
Attenborough did one of those doco’s on forests, I think, and I was dumbfounded to find that the Amazon was not the World’s largest place for trees.
The morning after I saw it, I went to work, and sprung it on them. Now I couldn’t ask what was the biggest Biome on Earth, because (as usual) they would ask for that word in English, so I asked what was the largest forest on Earth. The expected response from everyone was the Amazon, but it is in fact that vast Northern Biome, the Taiga, just south of the Arctic, North Canada, and North Russia, and all land sub Arctic.
In the actual growing season, the Northern Summer, it is actually the greenest place on Planet earth.
As on some of those Attenborough programs, they had a speeded up version of the yearly growth in just one area in far North Russia, something new fangled even in the 70’s, and it was just incredible to watch from a white snowy plain with virtual sticks, and then through to the thickest greenest thing I have ever seen, and then back to white again, typical time lapse blended. Just that scene stayed in my mind till this day.
Now, again, look at the map, and note the area of the greenest expansion.
What goes around comes around.
Tony.
Link to Taiga
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Tony, I can confirm that from travelling on the Trans Siberian from Vladivostock to Moscow and on to Odessa. The forests are endless, as far as you can see and they are not touched by man. Tigers, wolves, bears roam. Do not sleep out at night. Even the bigger cities are small in radius, restricted by the radius of hot water supplied free to a fixed radius and then just forest. Live outside that in winter at your peril.
However the lungs of the world are the phytoplankton which cover the oceans, lunch for the krill, those tiny prawns which feed the fish and the whales. I have read that phytoplankton are half the production of oxygen for the planet.
Days on the express though where you can tell where you are from the species of trees in the forests which fly past. A relaxing experience. Another discovery was that the entire line, up to 8 tracks side by side, is electric. There is no shortage of power in Siberia. Just watch out for winter. There is a good reason no one much lives there.
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Days on the express though where you can tell where you are from the species of trees in the forests which fly past. A relaxing experience. Another discovery was that the entire line, up to 8 tracks side by side, is electric. There is no shortage of power in Siberia. Just watch out for winter. There is a good reason no one much lives there.
Yes, the part of that train trip I most liked was the ever-changing forest/river/ice mix. This was in mid-October and everything had started to freeze over again. The rivers were becoming ice-dammed but water was still flowing. Fascinating sceneery …
I agree on the adage – do not be outside at night in winter Siberia with no place to go. Absolutely lethal. I was nearly caught like that twice. Both times was a sudden late-night cancellation of a plane flight. It is 11pm, the plane is abruptly cancelled, my booked motel room is 1000km away and I have no language, no minder, and the small airport is closing down, locking up for the night.
From those two experiences, my definition of intelligence is what you do when you don’t know what to do.
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I used to fly around Russia quite a lot in the days after the collapse of communism, so I saw lots of forest.
On one flight from Moscow to Norilsk, north of the Arctic Circle, I was amazed to pass over a +1,500km length of almost unbroken forest with no roads and in which I saw only one man made track.
Somehow, “Save the taiga,” does not have quite the same emotional call as, “Save the rain forest.” Anyhow, there so many bogus appeals to “Save the rain forest,” where to be effective you would need to declare war against the peasant population.
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Would that be the Siberian taiga or the Bengal taiga?
20
I guess the Taiga bounced back pretty well from the Tunguska event then, eh!
That flattened 2000 SqKm of the forest.
Tony.
161
Correct. Siberia alone, ignoring European Russia West of the Urals is 13,000,000 square km, so 2,000 would hardly be noticed.
161
.
EVERYTHING begins by being MINED or GROWN
Mankind’s absolute needs to live at the minimum survival level;
Water
Without water, a human might survive for very roughly, about four days
Food;
Without Food and assuming the absolute minimum energy expenditure, the human survival period is roughly around three weeks.
Shelter;
Without shelter; survival may be for a lifetime in some climes or a few minutes in some other climes and conditions.
Which leads to the possible changes in yields and losses or increases in food production across the globe in the natural open atmosphere’s increasing CO2 levels of the last half a century when such food crops are grown under entirely natural conditions;
—————————
Published May 2014; “Nature” scientific reports;
How much has the increase in atmospheric CO2 directly affected past soybean production?
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Yes ROM.
As you say “EVERYTHING begins by being MINED or GROWN”, our sources of true wealth and well-being.
I note also that mining appears to be one of humankind’s instinctive as well as important methods of gaining the materials to construct a more enhanced life. From the stone-age till now we have been digging ‘stuff’ out of the ground.
100
If all this is true, then the problem is not that CO2 levels will increase, but that there will be not enough of it as the greenery gobbles it up.
“[The greening] has the ability to fundamentally change the cycling of water and carbon in the climate system,” It has already done this and continues to.
“including nitrogen from agricultural fertilisers.” Agricultural nitrogenous fertilisers have a substantial CO2 content in their manufacture, so that complicates the calculations. Also, I have seen so many examples of men greatly overestimating the power of man that i would like to see their data before I make up my mind.
The sceptic in me asks : “is this real?” Is information coming out of China still subject to political control?
I remember walking into the house one morning about 25 years ago to hear a schools program on ABCTV declare: “The trouble all started when the farmers cut down all the trees!” Anybody with eyes in their head can see that the farmers did not cut down all the trees, but it is amazing how many people never open their eyes.
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On an ANZAC tour in 2003, driving from Kanchanbiri top Three Pagoda Pass our guide told us that “naughty people cut off the trees and soon Thailand become a dessert”, despite all evidence to the contrary going pasty the windows of the bus at the time. Thirteen years later the scenery is unchanged. Hyper-bowl is alive and well.
30
End of last year I worked in Mid West WA in one of the renown dry areas. Exmouth can go for years without rain, and I had been there once before and seen how dry it gets. I just could not get over how green it was, lush tall green grass, birds were there.
Observational data. Doesn’t fit the models, so I must be mistaken.
150
Peter, it’s a miracle that you haven’t had a red thumb yet for daring to use your eyes!
31
Scientists are surprised !
It should concern everyone when Climate Scientists who after placing high levels of certaintity on their predictions are then surprised when the planet behaves differently.
As Skeptics we should be asking … why are Scientists so surprised ?
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Talk about finding the something negative in VERY GOOD NEWS!
Not one of his negatives has been found in the evidence to date. Hanrahan would be proud.
http://users.tpg.com.au/dandsc/job/job01.htm
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How many million more mouths will the
greener Earth feed, Dr Canadell?
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I calculated one that you could put all 7 billion people on earth into NSW alone, and every person would still have an approx 3m x 3m area……
Tony from Oz, as per solar discussions last week, I now have a handle to let non-scientific people know that if you want to run Sydney on solar powe ralone using heliostats on solar farms,t hat you need approx 30-50% additional city surface area above its existing footprint.
You can see the cogs turning in peopls heads….then I mention the cost and what power would likely cost if you had to set it all up…..that focusses thier minds even more….the $$$$ is king these days….
41
While a greener Earth might seem like a positive from CO2-induced global warming, along with milder winters and longer growing seasons, he said there were many more negative impacts — including rising sea levels and severe weather.
“These will eventually outweigh by far any benefit from the greening,” he said.
I thought that severe weather and rising sea levels were not getting worse?????
What is this guy on?
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It is called, “Reframing the Argument”.
If an argument doesn’t work, because of the weight of contrary evidence, then it is reframed it in different terms, that are not related to the contrary evidence.
In this case, “rising sea levels”, and “severe weather”.
In this debate, I always switch tack, to follow the diversion, and ask, “How much will sea levels rise, and by when, given that the oceans cover two thirds of the surface area of the planet, and considering the thermal inertia of such a large volume of water?” And, “How, exactly, is ‘severe weather’ defined, and quantified? What is the metric, for ‘severity’?”.
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I’d have called it “Do not look at that little man behind the curtain…”
We aint in Kansas any more, Toto….he he
61
As I understand it, with enhanced greening comes more clouds and enhanced precipitation (more water and albedo cooling) and perhaps some warming by trapping…net effect..?
But the fresh water issue becomes another one of those alarmist ducks in a row gets that gets knocked over?
30
South eastern Australia is where all the people live.
And Rereke @ 7:14 am. As I remember, in the waybacks when the alarmists were swamping us with rising sea levels, sceptics were citing satellite data to prove that things were not as the alarmists were saying. Now the alarmists are citing satellite data to tell us the sea levels are rising much faster than the tide gauge data show.
If and when the sea levels do swamp us, it will be at the tide gauges, not at the satellites, that this happens.
41
I’ve been considering this chart. I think it shows how poor their algorithms more than anything. Take WA as the example. The state is covered in red dots (-15) and green dots (15+) over the same area. This is more likely a net zero for the state with an error margin of +-15, probably more. QLD is mostly green and orange, therefor averages out at +5 to +10, hard to say. It’s a pretty chart, but I’m doubtful of any conclusions given.
20
I noticed WA was speckled. It has green spots and red spots. Whatever is happening there, it’s either very local effects, both positive and negative, or the data/algorithms have a wide margin of result.
41
It could be worse than expected..
30
Or ,in other words when you spend your existence looking at computer models whilst having your head half-way up your jacksey..naïveté galore.
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It’s greening folks! Modellers
look to your models – again.
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Two points:
“‘Scientists’ are surprised” – “climate scientists” one observes, appear inclined to mono-ideation. It is likely they would be “surprised” by almost anything.
“high levels of certainty on their predictions” – speaks to mono-ideation and reflects a hand holding consensual round table head nodding agreement. Nothing whatsoever to do with statistical probability. Deliberately designed to confuse and impossible to contradict – like UN defined ‘climate change‘ or UN defined ‘civil society‘.
70
There are a couple of points to keep in mind about the UN:
(1) Its a private organization without any real acocunt ability or requirement to be openly and accontably audited.
(2) See (1) and also a law literally unto itself – if you read many Australian Bills that become law, many of them are framed around the many
straight jacketsUN treaties Australia is signed up to, in effect making the UN ICC the highest law of the land ( at least thats how I understand it )(3) The UN has a clear dislike if not open hatred of Israel and the Christian/Judeo way of life. One should question why if our society is indeed of this heritage why we would be beholden to such and organization.
(4) As my wise grandmother used to say, as we witness the UNs embrace of every conceivable iffy (*cough*) “alternative lifestyle”, its easy to stoop and pick up nothing.
Nuff said…
20
As I insist, CO2 is not just a fertilizer as Terry McCran wrote so positively this morning in the Melbourne Herald Sun. It is not just plant food. It is the plant itself, the source of both all tissues and energy for all living things. From the Xylem of trees to the tip of your nose, everything comes from CO2 capture. That is why everything burns to nothing.
There are only three things required for photosynthesis, CO2, H2O and light plus a catalyst, chlorophyll, a long chain hydrocarbon. The carbohydrate is used to make all tissue and we humans, trees, insects, birds, animals, fish all burn carbohydrates to make CO2 and H2O and power our muscles. Your breath is 0.04% CO2 on the way in and up to 24% CO2 on the way out. You produce CH4 as well. Internal combustion and the odd noxious gases like H2S.
So increase the world’s CO2 and plants will go mad. They will spread too. The limiting factor is H2O, but strangely moisture produces humidity and that causes fogs and rain which spread the moisture. Just as you have desertification, you can green the deserts with CO2.
All this is simple known science. At least Terry McCran quoted Viv Forbes whose current point is that not only are fossil fuels the greatest gift ever for a clean planet, clean power, they will even green the planet with carbon dioxide which has been lost, buried for eons, now able to live again.
So we should be cheering the increase in CO2, but that would not please the Profiteers of Doom who want Carbon Dioxide Taxes packaged deceitfully as ‘Trading Schemes’, carbon indulgences enforced by the UN and managed by the new Medicis, the Merchant Banks. You can be sure Turnbull’s Goldman Sachs is waiting anxiously.
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Also of note TdeF —
As Dr Tim Ball explains here trees and plants have methods to control the local Macro, Meso, and Micro Climates to some degree.
Vegetation is an important positive feedback mechanism for the water cycle, as it helps to reduce and stabilize run-off and evaporation while beneficially modifying the local extremes of temperature variation.
It is interesting to note that evergreen forests in-the-main leak VOCs into the atmosphere and all forests seasonally emit small airborne particles (pollen, fungal spores, etc.) this allows for more precipitation at, or close to, the tree’s locality as condensation occurs on these micro/macro particles during humid periods.
See http://news.mongabay.com/2012/02/new-meteorological-theory-argues-that-the-worlds-forests-are-rainmakers/ for more.
Three cheers for green plant life for assisting in keeping our climate stable!
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Additionally there is this interesting piece “Forests suck more CO2 during drought”
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Carbon dioxide is not a fertilizer in the sense as a minor addition to soils to increase plant growth: It is the basic substrate (plus water) of the photo-chemical reaction of photosynthesis which produces carbohydrate upon which life is dependent.
Think about it, no sunlight and no heat for a few weeks and we would be either freezing or starving, more likely both when we have run out of food and energy to keep us warm. I don’t think renewable energy would help much in the darkness and cold either.
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Such things almost appended here before, just at the start of the European Dark-age it was, err, dark…
Extreme weather events of 535–536…
I would surmise that cannibalism would be quite common during this period, especially reducing the monastery populations of literate fat monks…
80
Oops…
Replace
“… almost appended here before …”
with
… almost happened here before …
41
But tom0mason, no-one was using SUV’s so the climate cannot have changed!
Seriously, if the sulphate levels were much higher than Mt. Tambora in 1815-6, that was either one huge eruption or a series. Tambora pumped up around a 100 cubic km. and dwarfed the later Krakatau explosion that gets all the publicity. Perhaps several volcanoes at once? Set off by asteroid impact causing seismic instability? Unlike today when earthquakes and volcanoes aren’t happen……
81
Graeme No.3
But the Romans had been using lots of massive vehicles.
Running to and from Rome using the massive 16 and 20 horsepower wagons. Pollution everywhere 🙂
10
Also, increased atmospheric co2 improves plants drought resistance due to the stomata not having to be open so much to let the co2 diffuse into the leaves. This means improved water usage.
71
before industrialization plant growth must have been grinding ever slower to a halt due to more and more sequestering of CO2.
Looks like mankind has saved the world in my book
41
From UK’s Rothamsted Agricultural Research Institute, one of the world’s most respected Ag research organisations.
There are some assumptions re increasing global temperatures and increasing ozone levels made in this 2010 paper which are now becoming seriously doubtful as global temperatures have stabilised and have statistically plateaued for close to 20 plus years now
——————
[ my bolding ]
Possible changes to arable crop yields by 2050
By 2050, the world population is likely to be 9.1 billion, the CO2 concentration 550 ppm, the ozone concentration 60 ppb and the climate warmer by ca 2C.[??? ]
In these conditions, what contribution can increased crop yield make to feeding the world?
CO2 enrichment is likely to increase yields of most crops by approximately 13 per cent but leave yields of C4 crops unchanged.
It will tend to reduce water consumption by all crops, but this effect will be approximately cancelled out by the effect of the increased temperature on evaporation rates. [ ??? ]
In many places increased temperature will provide opportunities to manipulate agronomy to improve crop performance.
Ozone concentration increases will decrease yields by 5 per cent or more. [ ??? ]
Plant breeders will probably be able to increase yields considerably in the CO2-enriched environment of the future, and most weeds and airborne pests and diseases should remain controllable, so long as policy changes do not remove too many types of crop-protection chemicals.
However, soil borne pathogens are likely to be an increasing problem when warmer weather will increase their multiplication rates; control is likely to need a transgenic approach to breeding for resistance.
There is a large gap between achievable yields and those delivered by farmers, even in the most efficient agricultural systems.
A gap is inevitable, but there are large differences between farmers, even between those who have used the same resources.
If this gap is closed and accompanied by improvements in potential yields then there is a good prospect that crop production will increase by approximately 50 per cent or more by 2050 without extra land.
However, the demands for land to produce bio-energy have not been factored into these calculations.
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“but leave yields of C4 crops unchanged.”
I saw a paper recently that indicated that C4 plants might have the capability to turn off the 4th process and revert to C3 type once CO2 was high enough. Rapid growth.
Sorry, bookmark was on my computer that died.
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“Sorry, bookmark was on my computer that died.”
What ever happens to the soul of a computer that dies? Perhaps it is reincarnated elsewhere/when on a .3kg laptop with 100 day battery charge! Do deceased bookmarks try to find their nice original owner?
92
Global warming causes computer deaths. Only good bookmarks (e.g. those to Skepticalscience etc.) go to heaven.
61
That’s a bit metaphysical, for the early hours of the morning.
40
Bookmarks.
Hmm! Interesting exercise. I just had a look, and just in my Folder for Electrical Power and the 10 sub folders within that main Electrical Folder, I have, umm, 235 Bookmarks.
Tony.
31
If a flea is on a dog when the dog dies, does the flea die too?
I think you’ll find your book marks have simply got off your dead computer and are looking for a new home.
31
Thing is, I didn’t have them microchipped,….
…. so even if they do turn up at someone else’s place, they wouldn’t know where to send them.
I’m afraid my bookmarks are probably lost forever 🙁
But I can always train some new ones, given time.
21
My bookmarks seem to follow me around. Apparently they precipitate from some mysterious entity known simply as The Cloud.
10
Well see there you go, increase CO2 is good and the planet and allows more people to exist due to higher crop production……
Thats gotta hurt the warmist argument, surely, unless I have missed something?
I suspect they will come back with a reframing the argument manoevre , but we need to be ready to counter every reframeing attempt to keep them to the science, use their beloved Alynskis’ tactics aaginst them…..
41
Since Eden there hasn’t been seen,
Such a spread of a lush leafy green,
Being worldwide profuse,
Due to mankind’s good use,
Of fuels the Greens find obscene.
391
That’s really good Ruairi! Thank you, Annie.
131
The opening comment over at TheConversation makes a wry point.
You’d normally think that’s gonna leave a mark.
But nope . . let’s extract some negatives from all this good news.
It must be very depressing to think like that.
260
I was talking today to an individual who recently completed his masters degree in industrial chemistry. He professed his interest in Mars. I mentioned that the Martian surface atmosphere had a pressure altitude equivalent to approx 90,000ft on Earth and was largely comprised of CO2. His response, “why isn’t it warm there?”
When I asked him what proportion of the atmosphere on Earth was CO2, he didn’t know. I outlined this and the associated anthropogenic contribution, in addition to the comment that 95% of so called greenhouse gases was H2O.
Silence. Subject changed.
Where are the custodians of a rational future?
30
I must say that I don’t particularly agree with the term “carbon fertilisation”
Its should be “carbon FOOD”
When I eat a nice steak with mushroom and bacon pepper sauce, I doubt it makes me more fertile. 😉
Its the trace elements of nitrogen, phosphorus that are fertilizers for plants.
CO2 is PLANT FOOD !!
Let’s feed the world’s biosphere and tell the AGW anti-carbon brigade to GET ****** !!!
175
A carpetbag steak with err… extra carpet could do the trick Andy?
71
I really don’t think carpet would be very tasty.
104
I meant the oysters but somehow mixed up the carpet aspect, I believe munching on carpet is a matter of personal taste.
After doing a VLCD diet for 3 months I found the first serve of meat to have dramatic positive effects on your body, I believe it’s a good natural source of carbon for humans.
91
Oh, come on, red thumb.. seriously !
Is that all you have ?
How do you red thumb that !!
DUMB !!!
127
Or have I upset you once in the distance past… Poor thing !
115
Hah!
I still gotz mor total red thumbs than you and Konrad combined! Ya gotz to present as nasty to all, not just a few! 😉
122
Andy:
collect those red thumbs until you’ve got enough to get them valued on Antiques Roadshow.
91
Life is a Gas! CO2, the Gas of Life.
Enjoy it while it lasts. Because, gentle readers, the world will one day run out of CO2. And that will be that. The End of Life.
No, not life as we know it, but The End of Life on Earth. Totally. Even in the seas.
Right, that’s the BAD news.
The good news is that it probably won’t happen for a few hundred years yet. 🙂
It might not happen for a thousand or a million years 🙂 🙂
It may not even happen in this Galactic Year. (Darn, there’s no dancing Polar Bear Smiley …)
Just remember, another Shoemaker-Levy could happen at any time.
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Let’s all hope, for the sake of our great, great etc grandchildren, that is anti-CO2 idiocy goes away.
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Wow.. that got to the red-thumbers.
Sweet 🙂
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You make a good point here Sophocles,
There are indications that the Earth,s atmosphere was much thicker in the past. The missing gas is CO2 . Where did it all go? Well some got used up by plants and got buried as coal etc but the real depository is likely limestone, CaCO3.
There are millions of cubic kilometers of limestone deposits on Earth. The process is still happening due to corals, shellfish and micro lithic creatures living , converting H2CO3 (H2O + CO2) into shells, then dying and settling into mud, then limestone rock.
The process seems to go one way. Atmospheric CO2 to rock. When we finish burning fossil fuel we need to find a way to regenerate the atmospheric CO2 from limestone, otherwise we are finished.
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Peter,
Check the work of Thomas Gold, “The Deep, Hot Biosphere.
“ABSTRACT There are strong indications that microbial life is widespread at depth in the crust ofthe Earth,just as such life has been identified in numerous ocean vents. This life is not dependent on solar energy and photosynthesis for its primary energy supply, and it is essentially independent of the surface circumstances. Its energy supply comes from chemical sources, due to fluids that migrate upward from deeper levels in the Earth. In mass and volume it may be comparable with all surface life. Such microbial life may account for the presence of biological molecules in all carbonaceous materials in the outer crust, and the inference that these materials must have derived from biological deposits accumulated at the surface is therefore not necessarily valid. Subsurface life may be widespread among the planetary bodies of our solar system, since many of them have equally suitable conditions below, while having totally inhospitable surfaces. One may even speculate that such life may be widely disseminated in the universe, since planetary type bodies with similar subsurface conditions may be common as solitary objects in space, as well as in other solar-type systems.”
It’s speculative but not without evidence.
80
Deep Earth Life?
Does it exist?
The evidence is now starting to coming in.
Nature ; December 2014.
Earth’s deep crust could support widespread life
More >>
90
https://www.princeton.edu/main/news/archive/S16/13/72E53/index.xml
Articles such as the one attached, have been reported for years.
10
Link
The deep, hot biosphere – Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
10
“The process seems to go one way. Atmospheric CO2 to rock.”
With all due respect, I take issue with that statement.
Sediments collected on the bottom of the sea floor (clastics as well as carbonates) will eventually end up at a subduction zone, wherein they are incorporated into upper mantle material(s). If the subduction zone creates a magmatic event zone (extrusive and intrusive igneous rocks), then what was once limestone is typically CaO minerals, entrained water, and carbon dioxide (along with many other species, obviously). Note that many volcanic events include CO2 as a constituent of the gasses escaping from the vent.
We note that the oldest sea floor sediments are but of Jurassic age, near Japan, yet the oldest migmatites in Greenland are pushing 4.0 ga.
Hope that helps,
Vlad
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(“The process seems to go one way. Atmospheric CO2 to rock.”)
With all due respect, I take issue with that statement.
‘Sediments collected on the bottom of the sea floor (clastics as well as carbonates) will eventually end up at a subduction zone, wherein they are incorporated into upper mantle material(s). If the subduction zone creates a magmatic event zone (extrusive and intrusive igneous rocks), then what was once limestone is typically CaO minerals, entrained water, and carbon dioxide (along with many other species, obviously). Note that many volcanic events include CO2 as a constituent of the gasses escaping from the vent.’
OK can you please translate that into LATIN,
Sanskrit, or even Brooklyn-ize for the rest of us!
60
Hi Will,
As we know, plate tectonics creates raw basaltic crust at oceanic ridges, which moves along (over millions of years) until it is finally consumed at some type of trench (Mariana Trench, South American trench … ) and becomes part of the upper mantle.
The sediments resting on top of the sea floor crust are carried along, undergo the same subduction as the floor, and eventually resurface through an igneous terrane. The whole process has been active since about 3.8 billion years ago (ga), though some prefer the ‘beginning’ of plate tectonics as a somewhat younger 3.5 ga. Oceanic crust undergoes a constant “recycling” back into juvenile crust, hence the relatively young age of oceanic crust (trying to recall off the top of my head, I think the floor dated off Japan is about 200 million years [ma] old), very early Jurassic).
Does that help?
Vlad
61
Thank you Vlad!! As we know?, or as you fantasize? Not to be disrespectful, but at those pressures, IS ceases, only conjecture and fantasy remain. I can learn from your conjecture to be not so certain of “my conjecture” of IS. Latin ‘est’ 😉
All the best! -will-
[block quote added for clarity] ED
50
Thanks Vlad,
Following your lead I found a bit of comforting information at Columbia.edu
So maybe there is hope for us yet!
70
Hi Peter,
Yes, CaSiO3 is the mineral wollastonite, which we make artificially as concrete. The calc-alkalic suite of minerals in orogenic/igneous areas include pyroxenes and the solid-solution plagioclase series albite-anorthite (the ‘CaO minerals’ I referred to earlier). At least half of the liberated CO2 is coming from reprocessed carbonates, while the rest may be “juvenile”, meaning that it has not been part of the surficial carbon cycle prior to its release in a volcanic event.
If we are fortunate enough that Mother Gaia will bless us with increased tectonic activity, much of the sequestered “carbon” (sic) we are deprived of now, will be made available to those life-giving plants all animals depend upon.
Fortunately for us, since carbon (sic) is mostly non-discriminatory, we might expect to all benefit equally. This is one case where ‘all animals are equal, and NONE are more equal than others … ‘
Vlad
60
Hi Peter: Actually, wollastonite is quite rare (and a very valuable mineral when it’s found in any decent concentration because of its ability to break into very long needles when finely ground, which can be used as a filler in plastics that makes an incredibly strong composite material) – but the idea is right, calcium carbonate plus calcium-poor silicate minerals gives CO2 plus calcium-rich silicate minerals.
There’s another mechanism where CO2 from limestones gets recycled – by weathering when they are exposed at surface. The CO2 mostly ends up in ground and surface water as bicarbonate, which ultimately ends up in the oceans where it equilibrates with the atmosphere. The weathering process borrows CO2 from the atmosphere to make the bicarbonate, and then returns it into the hydrosphere/atmosphere when it’s done.
The idea that all the CO2 is going to get sequestered and then life as we know it will be over, is something of an alarmist statement that doesn’t do much credit to a self-declared climate sceptic. What will probably happen is that life will slow down quite a bit, the populations of CO2-eating coccoliths will get reduced, and a kind of low-CO2 equilibrium will be established until something happens: like a new species appearing that finds it can improve its material comfort by burning coal and oil and natural gas in immense quantities, or (more likely in the long term) a really big volcanic event takes place and floods the atmosphere with CO2. You can read about really big volcanic events at http://www.largeigneousprovinces.org/
30
Perhaps not quite as simple as the diagrams we all saw explaining subduction, because some of the top layer gets scraped off as the lower strata are subducted. The top layer is where the limestone and other organic strata (like coal) occur.
20
I read about twenty years ago — possibly in one of Dixy Lee Ray’s books — that the availability of atmospheric CO2 is the limiting factor for plant biomass on Earth. I remember thinking “this is radical stuff” and wondering where the substantiation could be found. It appears we have found it. Excellent!
180
Most plant cease to grow at around 200-250ppm atmospheric CO2.
We are still very much on the low side of what is required form optimum plant growth.
Greenhouse growers use between 800ppm and 1200ppm for the most efficient cost/growth outcome.
244
With 98% of all CO2 stored in the ocean and only 400ppm in the atmosphere we need all the CO2 we can get.
170
Gees the docile, voiceless (as in dumb) red thumbers are on me tonight.
Come out and play little child-minds…. if you DARE. ! 🙂
156
Jo, mods, how about you make it that a person cannot give a red thumb until they have commented on the particular post ?
Let’s lure them out of hiding, 😉
156
Naw! Konrad waz payn folk for red thumbs!
Mor fun dis way! Da mor red thumbs ya gitz, the more that are noticing! It is da green thumbers dat agree without tinking! 🙂
71
I will walk with Will with that.
71
So AndyG55 how much warmer do these CO2 enhanced greenhouses get compared to greenhouses with ‘normal’ air in them? No additional warmth at all! Proving CO2 does not warm the atmosphere.
For those of you that don’t believe me, then try it yourself and prove me wrong with your figures. No BS, no hypothesis, no quotes from others, just your own verified work with figures.
Time for believers to put-up…
Hint — look here
http://www.biocab.org/Experiment_on_Greenhouses__Effect.pdf
where it ends with —
141
My friend has done that experiment more than once.
Slightly lower in some cases in the CO2 enhanced greenhouse, possibly because of the increased foliage.
104
Tom and Andy. Say 2 reasonable sized identical greenhouses were built on a sun-following turn table. Say both were completely empty (no plants, nothing) and then the CO2 level in one was bought up to 800ppm.
From what you are saying here there would be no temperature difference between the 2. Is that correct?
This is not a “smart alec” question. I am a science illiterate ACGW sceptic looking for a non eye-glazing argument to counter ACGW believers.
60
Hat Rack,
You can easily try this for yourself, as Dr Richard Pearson did. The cost of this experiment/demonstration are minimal.
http://galileomovement.com.au/blog/?p=25
61
“From what you are saying here there would be no temperature difference between the 2. Is that correct?”
Precisely.
The heat is trapped by the glass of the greenhouse stopping convection(assuming we are talking about a glass greenhouse), NOT by the CO2 inside.
CO2 does not stop convection.
The guy down on the Central Coast actually has a large number of plastic covered greenhouses, but they seal well enough for their use in that region.
93
Exactly AndyG55,
A greenhouse provides the enironment for CO2 – CO2 does not provide the environment for a greenhouse.
70
For those who have declared CO2 a pollutant, the message above is mainly about its role as ‘plant food,’ but it may be expressed another way. All the carbon in those carbon dioxide molecules are necessary for building just about all of the compounds in one’s body, which is built on real organic – i.e. carbon – chemistry. If you call CO2 a pollutant, your body must be very polluted and please do not pollute others, stop breathing out!
160
Humanity is carbon based, we are children of the sun.
70
Stardust brothers
00
/pedant alert.
Actually, we are children of an earlier sun (or suns).
00
I think we sceptics should start calling ourselves “Greens” – afterall I seems we are the only group in favour of greening the planet. In contrast the “Green=gullibles” are the number one destroyer of the wilderness in Scotland.
00
Here is a lukewarmers view of the world, a yarn about a carbon sink overreacting to industrial CO2.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/11/09/peat_ice_age_coming_only_co2_can_save_us/
80
They must need funding! The oceans already cover 2/3 of the planet to an average depth of 3.4km and contain 98% of the world’s CO2 but they are worried about a few shallow peat bogs getting slightly bigger? You cannot beat peat bogs blogs for exciting news. Now repeat that quickly.
100
Andy. Thanks for the laugh. When I’ve mastered rapidly repeating “toy boat” I’ll work on “beat peat bogs blogs.”
20
Ooops. Sorry TdeF. I mistakenly gave credit to Andy for the “beat peat bogs blogs” tongue twister. I must be getting old.
20
The bumper sticker should read
“Greening the planet through CO2”
00
And just in case you run into a green sleaze -climate change fanatic somewhere who wants to “decarbonise” the planet ;
Elements in the Human Body by percentage of mass
Element– Percent by Mass
Oxygen ……………65
Carbon ———- 18
Hydrogen…………. 10
Nitrogen ……… ……..3
Calcium …………..1.5
Phosphorus ……..1.2
Potassium …… ..0.2
Sulfur ………… … 0.2
Chlorine…………… 0.2
Sodium …………..0.1
Magnesium …….0.05
Iron, Cobalt, Copper, Zinc, Iodine
Selenium, Fluorine
90
Interesting stat, Rom.. I will sure use it. 🙂
Mind you, some of us could do with losing 18% of our body mass.
Not me of course.. I’m in peak condition 😉
105
Remember how light H is, only 1amu. So by atoms, not weight
Oxygen 24%
Carbon 12%
Hydrogen an amazing 62%!
So most of our atoms, nearly 2/3rds are like the stars, hydrogen.
Then 98.1% of all atoms in the human body are combinations of Hydrogen, Carbon and Oxygen with a tiny bit of Nitrogen. Counting atoms, we are from 3 gases and carbon. Feel a bit light headed?
Now remove all the H2O which is your blood and so much of your tissues, coming as you do from the oceans filled with saline. H2O 24%+48% = 72%, so we are 3/4 water! Slosh. That is why you have to stay hydrated and keep the salt up. Salt was white gold in Roman times, thus salary.
This leaves just Hydrogen 14% and Carbon 12%, HydroCarbon.
After water we are 26% CH. Given C12 is 12x as heavy as Hydrogen, 12/13ths of our dry weight is just carbon. We are nearly 90% solid carbon by weight! No wonder we burn. We are just carbon pollution filled with water, creatures made almost entirely from CO2. Carbon lifeforms. Very creative carbon. Thinking, walking, talking briquettes.
140
Of course we hate coal. It is a near relative. Left over salads from the Jurassic.
110
“Of course we hate coal. It is a near relative.”
That just means we probably shouldn’t marry it. !
72
Plus it’s why the greens hate the coalition
60
So gatherings of Greens, are thickets of briquettes … ?
I always knew that, but needed the evidence.
140
Rereke! Please! Green briquettes?? Such a low opinion of our green friends!
They surely qualify to at least the levels of Acanthonus armatus
90
ROM, I believe that is the high opinion. There is undoubtedly much lower.
30
A bony eared ass fish? Is that a relative of the tin eared bottom feeder?
Someone is joking surely and don’t call me Shirley.
40
Nope!
Not joking.
Link as provided above;
With all those fish species to name, Ichthyologists have had to develop a very well honed sense of humour.
And it was a bunch of Ichthyologists, NOT climatologists despite the tax payer funding thrown at them over the last couple of decades to research every nook and cranny of the climate, who discovered and named the climate affecting Pacific Decadal Oscillation [PDO ] and its 60 approximate cycle.
.
Reference;
60
Many people are allergic to Icthyologists.
30
This response to rising CO2 should be of keen interest to all Australians. Here is one perspective our State and Federal governments would be wise to consider: http://atse.uberflip.com/i/665800-focus-195-innovate-or-perish-thats-the-mantra-we-must-turn-our-ideas-into-world-products-and-services/29 .
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Matt Ridley has been mocked by Greens for pointing out for a few years that evidence shows CO2 has been greening the planet.
This “official” confirmation that he was correct will not stop them from denigrating him.
120
link to substantiate?
14
Desmog is full of bile and smugness.
http://www.desmogblog.com/2015/10/19/climate-science-denialist-matt-ridley-criticised-scientist-he-sourced-claims-about-greening-planet
50
thanks… true while the article did not mock or produce bile, the comments did and we can assume that some of them are the people that Don B characterises as “greens”.
Tell me that Don B’s comment is not as trivial as saying “isn’t it awful that some greens in blog comments mocked someone”? Maybe he has a more substantial substantiation? On the internet you can find an example of anything, but meaningful examples are harder to find.
15
More to the point, CO2 is good for humanity.
30
Critters in the sea love the CO2 abundance —
http://principia-scientific.org/atlantic-coccolithophores-thrive-as-the-airs-co2-content-rises/
Some very eminent scientists know that it’s all BS —
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TCy_UOjEir0
Only mass hysteria linked to powerful advertising could keep such a worthless idea going.
The hypothesis (aka guess) that CO2 as a danger to life on this planet has no merit! This mad hypothesis is destroying societies by impoverishing productive people everywhere. It focuses on destroying the beneficial environmental resources we and all nature require.
Stop this madness — CO2 is good for plants, is good for life! Even if the fiction were true and CO2 could somehow warm the world this would be good for life. Just look up the history of this planet — when warmer all life thrives in the dampness, when cooler much of life struggles and often fails in the cold and dry.
90
To quote Dr. Tim Ball here –
90
One of the reasons we were given to panic was the long residence time of CO2 in the atmosphere once emitted. Another scare bites the dust.
130
All this extra CO2 with its hypothetical warmth could boost area suitable for double cropping says Christopher Seifert of Stanford University told environmentalresearchweb.
“The question of when farmland becomes suitable for a new practice has relevance beyond any one family’s small plot of land. Importantly, this crop-production technique keeps key crop-yield formation times out of the hottest period of the year in the US.”
Now if CO2 could just warm the planet everything would be so rosy…
50
And here are the links to excellent databases of improved plant growth in enhanced CO2 atmospheres.
http://www.co2science.org/data/plant_growth/plantgrowth.php
70
How did we get to this point anyway? Real evidence says Earth isn’t warming at all, just having normal weather variations. Yet the temperature is rising precipitously and we’re in danger of being boiled in our own sweat almost any minute now. Oh my aching head! Both cannot be true.
How can we resolve this conflicting realities problem?
I know, let’s do it the democratic way and hold an election. The winning viewpoint is the way it shall be from the end of the ballot tabulating on into infinity. 😉
That sounds about as sensible as current and proposed government policies and is much more fair and democratic because every voter gets a say about it.
Good idea, Roy. Now I dare you to try it.
50
” Yet the temperature is rising precipitously and we’re in danger of being boiled in our own sweat almost any minute now. Oh my aching head! Both cannot be true.”
Yep, it’s the temperatures that have rocketed away at nearly 0.6°C in 30 years. From the Nobel laureate Ivar Giaever’s speech at the Nobel Laureates meeting 1st July 2015 quoted in the video I linked (comment #19) above —
He shows that the Global Average temperature is a meaningless term both scientifically and logically especially when you realize the South Pole (according to NASA) only has 8 thermometers, and he then asks ‘What is the Earth’s optimum temperature?’.
As he points out that for more than a hundred years atmosphere air temperature was measured *only* over the land. These days, the hockey-stick graph that purports to show rapid warming, all of +0.8°C anomaly in about 100 years, also allegedly includes temperatures over the Oceans and seas — but strangely the satellites do not see this apparently ‘massive’ rise!
Most of the upswing has happened in the last 30 years, thus (IMO) looks very much like an oceanic effect (part of the Pacific’s 60 year cycle maybe?), or maybe as
Ivar Giaever asserts NASA is fiddling the data (about 9 minute mark on the video).
80
Jo says
In actual fact they suck out ALL the available CO2.
Most plant cannot operate below about 200ppm CO2
73
Dear Joanne,
Great article as usual.
What really gets my goat is when yourself and other bloggers fall into the scaremongers trap of referring to plant food as “carbon pollution” As you, and all of us realists know Carbon Dioxide is plant food – NOT pollution.
Similarly Climate Change is a natural phenomenon, I never call Global Warming ‘climate change’ which is a natural occurrence.
Sorry to be an old curmudgeon, but we must not play the game by ‘their’ rules.
80
” trap of referring to plant food as “carbon pollution””
Its always done in a mocking, satirical kind of way. 🙂
103
Patrick humor is how we intend to smash the warmists and humiliate the Klimatariat.
92
Does this not invalidate the current modelling of climate warming? With all this co2 sucked up and sequestered, how could it be causing warming?
90
CO2 does not cause warming, it was only a theory which has since been falsified
63
With all this CO2 sucked up and sequestered has been water. Will the photosynthesis sequestration of water cause sealevels to drop?
90
See:http://www.waterparadigm.org/download/Water_for_the_Recovery_of_the_Climate_A_New_Water_Paradigm.pdf
It’s about 100 pages, a good read, by some very good hydrologists.
The short answer to your question is yes, more water is retained on land. This paper is not new but it’s lodgic is never out of date.
30
Thanks Robk. Will check it out when I have 100 pages of time.
00
REGIONAL WARMING MYSTERY
‘Professor Matthew England examines why the recent slew of record-breaking hot weather has climate scientists alarmed.
‘Sydney’s abnormally warm autumn will extend well into May, with unusually dry conditions inland creating late-season heat records across large parts of Australia in play.
“We’re still missing the significant cold fronts that are normally due this time of the year,” said Brett Dutschke, senior meteorologist with Weatherzone.
‘Sydney’s temperatures are running about 2 degrees warmer than average for April for both daytime and nighttime. Minimum temperatures for the first 24 days of the month were all warmer than usual.
“This week’s temperatures through south-eastern Australia are likely to be well above normal,” said Blair Trewin, senior climatologist with the bureau, said.
Nationally, this April will “very likely” be the second warmest on record, trailing only the balmy April 2005, when records were broken by about 1 degree, Dr Trewin said.
Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/environment/weather/sydney-weather-warm-weather-to-extend-well-into-may-as-nation-heats-up-20160426-gofb0x.html#ixzz46yHiJoFy
Follow us: @smh on Twitter | sydneymorningherald on Facebook
30
Actually at the moment there are some very strong northerlies blowing over SE Aust. ahead of cold front. Have a look at BOM and see the temperatures drop after it crosses.
Incidentally, I have not seen the wind turbines generate as much electricity for 2 months as they are at the moment, around 70% capacity or 2500 GW!
20
The Subtropical Ridge has intensified and the cold fronts are being pushed to the south.
10
…and what do you make of this?
http://www.weatherzone.com.au/news/arrival-of-giant-moths-brings-promise-of-rain-to-south-east-south-australia/484896
10
Dated APRIL 7;
There is a cold front sweeping across and should bring rain tomorrow, so the only explanation is that the moths had been listening to the ABC.
20
Here is the Anzac Day update.
http://www.weatherzone.com.au/news/south-australian-farmers-look-to-nature-for-signs-of-imminent-rain/495370
00
Quick, lets save some for a calm day. Oh wait, WE CAN’T
30
And I bet that a slightly warmer April is well within 1 standard deviation of the “mean”, and therefore totally insignificant.
22
no matter…
27 Apr: Australian: Sid Maher: Federal election 2016: Labor’s bid to cut power on carbon scare campaign
Bill Shorten will nearly double Australia’s emissions reduction targets if he wins government but will seek to counter a carbon-tax and electricity-price scare campaign with a range of measures including rolling out smart meters to manage home power use…
Mr Shorten, releasing Labor’s pre-election climate policy in Queensland, will promise the reintroduction of an emissions trading scheme — in two steps — and repeat his target of 50 per cent electricity generation by renewable energy by 2030…
The contentious detail and price implications will be thrashed out by consultation after the election.
The first phase of the ETS, to start in June 2018, will avoid imposing a direct carbon price for industries that remain below a cap and offer up to 100 per cent access to international carbon credits for trade-exposed industries that exceed a cap to keep its economic and political impact low…
The policy promises: an “orderly’’ phasing out of coal-fired power stations in the electricity industry, which is responsible for one-third of national emissions; tougher carbon dioxide emissions regulation on light vehicles; and a raft of energy-efficiency measures including access to solar power for renters…
All industries will have access to international permits and emissions-intensive trade exposed industries will have access to 100 per cent international permits.
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/federal-election-2016/federal-election-2016-labors-bid-to-cut-power-on-carbon-scare-campaign/news-story/4dee43743c27aa10932b4f1152e35fdc
5 Apr: Belfast Telegraph: More smart meters needed to save Northern Ireland peak power use, say experts
http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/northern-ireland/more-smart-meters-needed-to-save-northern-ireland-peak-power-use-say-experts-34601460.html
30
pat:
I put a comment on The Australian this morning in the article, but I see it has since been deleted. Since it started “I don’t know if Shorten is trying to delude people or himself” I suppose it went a bit far, though judging by some of the other comments I would have thought it acceptable.
30
Wonder of wonders; the comment has surfaced hours later. With all the Bill bashing going on the sub-editor must have thought it politer than some.
Shorten is either trying to delude the public or he is deluding himself. Renewable energy is more expensive than conventional sources. (roughly $120 per MWh for solar PV, 275 for solar heat, 140 for wind v 30 for coal). They sell at the same bulk price because they get Renewable Energy Certificates handed to them by the Government, and they sell them to the conventional producers, forcing the cost (and price) of conventional power up, while cutting the cost of renewables. Who pays for this? The consumer through higher prices on their electricity bill.
Carbon taxes, trading schemes etc. do the same thing, so promising more renewables and lower electricity prices is contradictory.
And as for the garbage that come from the grid authorities not spend money when they weren’t going to spend it, unless forced to do so by the increasing amount of variable and unpredictable renewables, I can cost that as $0 saved.
And yes, I have heard that renewables will be cheap real soon, I have an article from 1987 which says it will happen by 1993.
20
Here’s something I picked up from Judith Curry’s site which illustrates the stupidity of catering for intermittent (ie wind and solar) generation. Of particular interest is the way the Ontario’s CANDU reactors are forced to “spill” thermal energy during windy periods so that they don’t get penalised for generating “unwanted” power (when the intermittents decide to generate and drive the spot pricing into the negative)
http://nuclear-economics.com/12-nuclear-flexibility/
It’s quite depressing to read of all the dancing around that is required for a nuclear plant to operate these days.
The issue of mothballing uneconomical plants is quite an interesting read too – those Canucks have it all over the Yanks on that front.
40
Analytic:
I believe that some of the French plants can ‘load follow’ by dumping steam straight to the cooling system as well as that described.
Have you looked at https://chiefio.wordpress.com/ recently? A short time ago he posted on various types of nuclear reactors, some getting more interest again. e.g. Homogeneous reactors that work with unenriched uranium and don’t melt down.
20
Are you referring to the Freon Moderated Reactor post? Sadly, I’m old enough to have read (and been quite excited) about Thorium reactors as a kid when the AEC was still in existence.
If you can get past the CAGW mentality, Barry Brook’s site, Brave New Climate, has quite a lot of discussion about the Integral Fast Reactor
https://bravenewclimate.com/integral-fast-reactor-ifr-nuclear-power/
10
Analitik mentions this:
Sadly this will be a thing of the past, as no plant operator will be able to afford the gas, or a replacement.
Check out the list at this link. This is enshrined already in Australian Legislation, and is a direct copy of the UN list for GHG.
Freon is one of those HFC’s, now rarely used, and every aircon tech laments the day it disappeared. It was also perfect, and extensively used, for cleaning electronic circuitry, and we used it by the gallon in the RAAF.
Now, note the multiplier here. That’s whatever the CO2 price is set at multiplied by that number, and some of them are up around 3000 to 7000.
Now, it’s not like airconditioning units which use these gases, as these types of plant will use huge amounts of the gas used as a coolant here.
And how clever is this then.
There is no real replacement for Freon, because to date, no suitable, general use alternatives to the halocarbons have been found for refrigeration that are not flammable or toxic, problems the original Freon was devised to avoid.
Makes you think eh!
And also be fully aware that under any Labor ETS, the price, whatever it is set at, then multiplies for every one of these gases.
Tony.
10
pat mentions this: (my bolding here)
You know, so they can pack it all up and take it with them from house to house.
Give me strength!
Oh, and good luck with that, umm ‘orderly’ phasing out of coal-fired power stations.
Ahh! Promises, Promises.
Tony.
61
They’re doing their best – Fairfax and the Victorian State Government are ganging up on the nasty Latrobe Valley so Victoria can join South Australia and Tasmania on the precipice.
http://www.smh.com.au/business/energy/brown-coal-royalty-rise-to-hit-power-bills-victorian-generators-say-20160426-gofnpw.html
http://www.smh.com.au/business/energy/brown-coal-counting-the-cost-of-burning-mud-20160427-goftnc.html
20
Or to put it another way; Bill Shorten hasn’t any idea how to cost it
Or, as Sir Humphrey would say . .
“That’s a very courageous decision, Prime Minister.” 😉
40
“Humans are Greening planet Earth — ABC”
No, this is misleading Green half truth. Humans are doing nothing. A slightly warmer ocean surface alone is releasing extra CO2 which is one of the critical and limited ingredients for all plant growth. So it is no surprise that plants spread. Temperature is not the key to plant growth. Nothing grows without sunlight, water and adequate CO2, above 200ppm. Almost all CO2 is in the oceans.
Increased CO2 is Greening the planet. ABC alleges humans are to blame.
110
Demonstration that added CO2 is greening the planet. (Anyone paying attention was not surprised.)
Emergent structures analysis reveals climate drivers and discloses that the influence of CO2 on average global temperature is not significant.
80
In breaking news, new research has demonstrated that CO2 is not a pollutant. It is contributing to increased plant growth around the world resulting in a greener planet and more food to support a growing population. The IPCC has been asked to redirect its efforts to understand the benefits of CO2 and to focus on how to deliver cheap electricity and clean water to create a more prosperous world.
110
I wish.
40
How The Burning of Coal Vitiates The Atmosphere
“ It has been called to our attention by Prof. Arrhenius, the consumption of coal at present is returning to the atmosphere the carbon dioxide of which it was robbed when deposits of carbon were stored away in coal beds during the carboniferous period.”
“… a doubling of the quantity in the atmosphere would more than double the growth of plant life.”
60
btw Sid Maher’s piece on Labor’s CAGW policies includes:
“rollout of smart meters that could save households $100 to $200 a year in some regions”
reminder of some potential tech/economic issues elsewhere:
19 Jan: TheProvince Canada: Bob Mackin: B.C. Hydro must remove more than 88,000 smart meters
Crown corporation executive says most of the 1.9 million devices will last 20 years, as originally promised
B.C. Hydro needs to remove more than 88,000 smart meters that are either faulty or may not meet Measurement Canada standards, public records show…
New meters cost $200 each, including installation. Anderson (B.C. Hydro) said he was unable to release the budget for the replacement project and could not comment on the length of warranty for smart meters from supplier Itron…
Doubts have been raised elsewhere in North America about the lifespan of smart meters. The 2014 annual report by the Office of the Auditor General of Ontario said “distribution companies we consulted said the 15-year estimate is overly optimistic,” compared to 40 years for an analog meter.
The report said smart meters are like other types of information technology: subject to upgrades, short warranties and malfunctions. Moreover, they will likely be obsolete by the time they are re-verified every six-to-10 years by Measurement Canada.
Last October, the chief information officer for Ohio-based FirstEnergy told a U.S. Congress subcommittee on power system security that the lifespan is five to seven years.
“These devices are now computers, and so they have to be maintained,” Bennett Gaines testified…
The project was budgeted at $930 million…
Dix said the number of failures would “presumably continue to go up as the smart meters get older.”
“Would you amortize your TV over 20 years? Would you amortize your cellphone over 20 years?” Dix said. “I don’t think you would. This is what B.C. Hydro has done or been ordered to do by the government.”
http://www.theprovince.com/health/Hydro+must+remove+more+than+smart+meters/11660282/story.html
40
this bit is unhelpful. What do they actually say? I’m still sourcing the article but will read it soon. In the meantime… any more info? More a comment than anything from me is, accepting that global CO2 goes up does not mean that every single plant or other photosythesising organisms is going to grow more. A global average increase is a different thing to what is observed on a local scale.
23
The sound of back-paddling.
Aw Gee, how can you keep a straight face talking about a “global average” ? Isn’t that what “measured” warming is all about?
50
back paddling from what? I don’t have the article yet but I do have the cited reference list and I am pleased to say I have read most of them. This one for instance is the first on the list from 1997;
Increased Plant Growth in the Northern High Latitudes from 1981 to 1991
Full-text · Article · Apr 1997 · Nature
None of the authors are people who call themselves skeptics which seems contrary to the mantra that, “greens hate this”, “skeptics have been saying this for years but the mainstram don’t listen” etc. The findings of the latest paper are interesting and an excellent addition to what has gone before.
33
and yes… precisely the comparison I meant to be noticed. A global average can have a meaning but even if it is unambiguous and “real”, it can be quite uninformative about what is actually happening to life on the ground.
24
The greening of the planet is clearly one of those ecological horrors which must be added to the list of threats to humanity as a result of fossil fuel use, like warmer weather, less polar ice, longer growing seasons, and a myriad of social and economic threats caused by enhanced production and distribution of clean water, food and goods.
Is there no end to the horror of fossil fuel use?
90
26 Apr: CarbonPulse: Stian Reklev: Australia’s main opposition party to launch carbon pricing plan ahead of election
•Until 2020, manufacturers facing international competition would be able to meet their entire obligation using foreign credits, which could cost as little as ***A$0.03 per tonne, climate spokesman Mark Butler told Fairfax media.
•Other sectors would be allowed to use international units to cover an as-yet undecided share of their obligation.
http://carbon-pulse.com/18916/
***why not bid 3 cents a tonne?
26 Apr: CarbonPulse: Stian Reklev: Regulator talks down price ahead of Australia’s third ERF auction
Regulator talks down price ahead of Australia’s third ERF auction
The third sale is scheduled for Wednesday and Thursday this week.
“As always, my advice to participants is to maximise your prospect of success in the auction by offering the lowest price at which it is worth your while to undertake your project,” Chloe Munro, the regulator’s chair, said in a statement.
“Based on current registrations, we expect this auction to be highly competitive with good volumes on offer. At the same time, with a strong pipeline of new projects in the wings, we see no need to chase volume at the expense of price.”
Australia bought 47.3 million tonnes of CO2e at an average price of A$13.95/tonne ($10.02) in the first auction in Apr. 2015. In the next auction seven months later, it contracted 45.5 million tonnes at A$12.25 each.
Observers expect the price to drop further in this round as more projects have registered, including several industrial schemes that can cut emissions at low cost.
The government’s goal is to buy emission cuts as cheaply as possible, and no project types are preferred over others…
With no fresh funding in sight for the ERF, experts expect the two planned auctions for this year to be the last for a while.
But Munro was optimistic a secondary ACCU market is developing, meaning the government would no longer be the sole buyer of the offsets…
http://carbon-pulse.com/18888/
20
Nitrogen based synthetic fertilizers most commonly use natural (fossil) gas as the primary feed, mixed with N2 from the air and passed over a catalyst to make ammonia or urea.
Fossil fuel is thus adding to plant growth as well as the CO2 paaths.
91
Viv Forbes explains why fossil fuels are the true green energy and includes a very interesting video.
http://carbon-sense.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/PR-true-green-fuels .pdf
51
beyond hilarious:
26 Apr: CarbonBrief: John Swain: Mapped: The climate change conversation on Twitter
So Carbon Brief has commissioned Right Relevance to start harvesting data from Twitter and use it to build maps periodically showing how the influencers within the climate change conversation shift over time…
So, for example, Al Gore is recognised as a global influencer for climate change with a large number of Twitter followers…
In order to make sense of such volumes of information, we use a process borrowed from military intelligence called “OODA Loop”, where OODA stands for Observe, Orient, Decide, Act…
The colours indicate communities – or “tribes”, as we’ll call them – of users that communicate frequently with each other and may, therefore, share common interests, some of which are highlighted below. It’s worth noting that we haven’t manually coloured these tribes, or assigned them a specific colour. A machine-learning algorithm detects each “community” and they are coloured accordingly to provide the reader with a visual representation…
To help smooth out the day-to-day fluctuations in the conversation, we chose to analyse a period of six weeks (28 Feb -10 April, inclusive…
We had just started collecting data over the last few days of February when the actor Leonardo DiCaprio won an Oscar, citing climate change in his acceptance speech…
Below is a list of the top tweets from our data set during the week that referenced Leonardo DiCaprio. You can see that there are some serious influencers in the list, such as the White House, Greenpeace and UN…
The table below shows the top 40 influencers during this first week…(TABLE)…
Highlighted in the “Tribes” list (our name for communities) is the tribe in which SteveSGoddard is the most influential user…
Once the SteveSGoddard tribe is selected, the topic list is filtered to the topic which is detected in the tweets from that Tribe.
***The highlighted term “deniers” is of potential interest. (“Deniers” is not a term we have chosen, rather it’s one the algorithm detects from the tweets and highlights as best representing this group).
(LIST) List of top tweets (by number of retweets) in the Tribe of SteveSGoddard during the week ending 13 March…
Here is the list of topics in which SteveSGoddard is influential, as detected by the Right Relevance service…
It is immediately clear that the overall topic of interest is climate change skepticism and the term “deniers” appears in some of their own top tweets (which is why the algorithm chooses that term to describe the tribe)…
What is striking about this particular group is their comparative isolation from the rest of the map. This means that they converse a lot about climate change, but almost exclusively among themselves. They rarely retweet or converse with people outside of their tribe. Equally, they are rarely ever retweeted or mentioned by people outside of their tribe. This would more conventionally be called an “echo chamber”…
In future articles, we will focus on some of the other detectable tribes…
http://www.carbonbrief.org/mapped-the-climate-change-conversation-on-twitter?utm_content=buffer4cbf9&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer
from CarbonBrief’s Twitter page:
Carbon Brief Retweeted
Michael E. Mann @MichaelEMann · 14h14 hours ago State College, PA
Honored to be listed as top climate “connector” on twitter by @CarbonBrief:
https://twitter.com/carbonbrief
30
speaking of Twitter, last week i tried to locate the following article on Popular Science, but kept getting Popsci page state “Oops! Something went wrong”. it has seemingly been disappeared. i wondered if readers were mocking it in the comments or something.
i eventually found this cached version, which states at the bottom that it is in the May/June issue – who knows:
20 Apr: Popular Science: Science Confirms The Obvious: We Hate Being Hot
Which could become a bigger issue over the next century
By Corinne Iozzio
As if the climate-change debate weren’t heated enough, it turns out that as global temperatures rise, so do tempers. A UC Berkeley researcher has gathered a dataset from social media that links warmer weather and general crankiness.
Hot Tempers
Environmental economist Patrick Baylis wanted to quantify what the incremental effects of climate change mean for the average person, so he fed a billion geo-located tweets from 2014 and 2015 into a computer model. It scored each post’s sentiment based on factors such as profanity and word choice (e.g., “furious” meant a greater displeasure than “hate”)…
As Earth warms, he predicts unfavorable mood swings—largely in cool states like Wisconsin and Minnesota. Since people might crank up the air conditioner to counteract rising temps, he hinted at climate change’s broader cost. “Would I be willing to pay a buck to have it be a 70-degree day?” Baylis wonders. A $1 isn’t much, but the beach might just be a cheaper option to beat the heat.
(This article was originally published in the May/June 2016 issue of Popular Science, under the title “We Hate Being Hot.”)
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:FD4nx45XxxYJ:www.popsci.com/science-confirms-obvious-we-hate-being-hot+&cd=11&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=au
talk about academic gobbledygook:
PDF: 60 pages: Energy Institute at Haas/Berkley Uni: Temperature and Temperament: Evidence from a Billion Tweets
Patrick Baylis – November 2015
This paper presents an alternative method of estimating preferences over nonmarket goods which accounts for
unobserved cross-sectional and temporal variation and allows for precise estimates of nonlinear effects. Specifically, I create a rich dataset on hedonic state: a geographically and temporally dense collection of updates from the social media platform Twitter, scored using a set of both human- and machine-trained sentiment analysis algorithms.
Using this dataset, I find limited evidence of temperature effects on hedonic state in low temperatures and strong evidence of a sharp decline in hedonic state above 70F…
https://ei.haas.berkeley.edu/research/papers/WP265.pdf
20
We hate being hot? Does anyone really suggest that an increase of 0.8C is enough to drive people mad? How many can even guess the temperature to +/-2C? Even +/-1C was hard to read on thermometers and largely irrelevant. Historically the real driver behind improved temperature accuracy was the making of beer. Now politicians want massive taxes for +2C, when that is just conjecture?
As for the seas rising suddenly due to Global Warming, firstly the air temperature has not changed for twenty years. Then even if it did the oceans are 400x heavier than the air, so 100 years becomes 40,000 years and we should be coming out of a new ice age by then and the fossil fuels will be long gone.
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Ya know….
TdeF, you sparked something in my feeble brane here – “Then even if it did the oceans are 400x heavier than the air, so 100 years becomes 40,000 years and we should be coming out of a new ice age by then and the fossil fuels will be long gone.”
This whole thing, the CAGW, the IPCC, the UN committees on everything, it isn’t meant to save the world, or anyone – EXCEPT those few chosen to live through the upcoming ice age and pass on their genes.
All the fuss about using non-fossil fuels is a cover for the elite who are hoarding all the fossil fuels they can, marking where the best coal seams are, the best oil wells, natural gas seams; ensuring there is enough supply to get through the upcoming deep freeze.
This is all to ensure the fossil fuel supply won’t be gone until the earth has once again warmed to the point the survivors can venture out of their deeply buried, insulated tunnels and look into the face of the sun.
I hope they go blind.
10
Fascinating coincidental nonsense. If the premise is true, the tropics should be the hotbed of tempers running riot…,…. and the temperate zone? Well we are all so calm….
20
Imagine that. Freeman Dyson was right all along.
https://video.search.yahoo.com/video/play;_ylt=A2KLqIAFISBXSHIAx237w8QF;_ylu=X3oDMTBzc2M2MjdyBHNlYwNzcgRzbGsDdmlkBHZ0aWQDBGdwb3MDMTE-?p=Freeman+Dyson+Global+Warming+Co2&vid=16062919e299b8d71f6f31d711b5686a&turl=http%3A%2F%2Ftse3.mm.bing.net%2Fth%3Fid%3DOVP.V94a91bc453376adaa7397a20ade49567%26pid%3D15.1%26h%3D168%26w%3D300%26c%3D7%26rs%3D1&rurl=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DresMHX45zPY&tit=Renowned+Princeton+Physicist+Freeman+Dyson%3A+%26quot%3BI+like+carbon+dioxide%26quot%3B&c=10&h=168&w=300&l=179&sigr=11b2ilo92&sigt=12dan3g5a&sigi=131oae62r&age=1424534400&fr2=p%3As%2Cv%3Av&fr=yfp-t-201&tt=b
30
Hard not to like him. Some good points.
However his biology is interesting that if CO2 is low, plants need more water, creating deserts. I have never heard this. Maybe it is true but I would have thought the ratio of CO2 to H2O would be fixed for a given plant and the more common limit is H2O. In deserts, there is almost no water, but as much CO2 as in the tropics. Sunshine can be the same, say from the deserts of Africa on the tropic of Cancer to the jungles of S.E. Asia. The difference is not sunshine or CO2 but water. Also as a physicist, he is making the point the climate is extraordinarily complex, so anyone who says they understand it is likely wrong and has no reason to be arrogant.
The principle I find utterly missing in most scientists is the presumption that mankind can and does change the CO2 levels. This is bordering outrageous without proof.
While even to physicists that sounds like a reasonable assumption, that is not only unusual in a physical equilibrium system, it is easy to prove wrong. The sad thing is that many physicists know no biology or physical chemistry. They are often applied mathematicians. They could however ask for proof that mankind has changed CO2 levels substantially, not just accept this because someone said it.
20
Plants of the rain forest are some of the main sources of co2. Plants are a local positive feed back in both water and co2. A higher co2 concentration will tend to allow plants to use water more sparingly thereby building up humus and decaying matter etc colonizing deserts.
00
Very off topic, but this is kinda scary….
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-10-07/wildcat-robot-could-be-running-into-battle-soon/5002356
I often wondered how when Agenda 21 was in full swing and humans were kicked out of most land mass and forced into mega city slums, how they could patrol the countryside. I suspect these robots could roam semi-autonomously with IR sensors and keep humans “pests” out. Then put a gun on board and you have a hunter-killer robot.
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By using biofuels Europe has been unknowingly playing their part in the greening of the planet.
http://www.transportenvironment.org/press/biodiesel%E2%80%99s-impact-emissions-extra-12m-cars-our-roads-latest-figures-show
Using biodiesel for transport was supposed to reduce CO2 emissions but instead it’s set to increase Europe’s overall transport emissions by almost 4%, according to a new analysis of the European Commission’s latest study on biofuels. These extra emissions are equivalent to putting around 12 million additional cars on Europe’s roads in 2020, the analysis by green group Transport & Environment (T&E) finds. This analysis takes into account the 7% cap on the contribution of biofuels produced from food crops.
70
Oh the irony.
Good catch, its a scoop.
70
Ironic to see you siding with a green group
11
I wonder if all the CAGW warming models have the greening of the plantet due to Co2 increases factored in.
20
Very selective, to the point of misinformation. The authors of the same study tell you that concluding “higher CO2 is good” ignores:
1. The other dangers of increased CO2
2. The facts that plants acclimatize to the higher level of CO2 and the effect diminishes.
https://ca.news.yahoo.com/planet-earth-getting-greener-oddly-210005683.html
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John, you may be correct when you say the study authors ignore: “the other dangers of increased CO2.” If you can’t see the irony in that statement, I’ll explain it to you. With a few minor, minor, minor exceptions, the entire AGW crowd has knowingly and willfully ignored the benefits of increased CO2.
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Why does the acclimatization not occur in commercial greenhouses. I think they are making stuff up.
50
more irony:
26 Apr: ClimateChangeNews: Megan Darby: EU carbon market is subsidising Polish coal plants – NGO
Carbon markets are supposed to make polluters pay, encouraging investment in carbon-cutting kit.
Yet a provision in the EU’s flagship emissions trading scheme mean it is doing the opposite, Carbon Market Watch warned in a report on Tuesday: subsidising coal.
Poland, Romania and Czechia are the biggest beneficiaries of free permits worth an estimated €12 billion over 2013-19, analysts found…
In 2013, far from bringing in new, clean sources, 90% went to upgrade existing fossil fuel infrastructure.
That included investment in Europe’s most polluting plant, the lignite-fired Belchatow in Poland…
The NGO called for coal projects to be excluded from the fund and renewable or energy efficiency schemes be given priority.
Climate Action Network Europe agreed. “To turn carbon trading into a tool that helps end our addiction to fossil fuel, especially coal, polluter handouts must end,” said coal policy expert Joanna Flisowska…
http://www.climatechangenews.com/2016/04/26/eu-carbon-market-is-subsidising-polish-coal-plants-ngo/
meanwhile, African countries should leapfrog fossil fuels! lol.
26 Apr:CBS7: Chevron Plans to Invest Billions in Permian Basin
According to a report by the Hobbs News-Sun, Chevron is planning on bringing massive, billion-dollar oil and gas projects to West Texas and eastern New Mexico…
During an annual analyst meeting Watson predicted by 2020 Chevron could pump 350,000 barrels a day in West Texas which is almost triple their current 125,000 barrels a day.
http://www.cbs7.com/content/news/377132141.html
20
[…] blog of the day is Jo Nova, with a post on 18 million square miles carbon pollution induced greenery. Share […]
00
Reed – had any more droughts or floods lately? If you haven’t, count your blessings. Many communities have.
Pat – Polish Coal mines earmarked for closure. More complete info:
http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/4915277c-c0ed-11e4-9949-00144feab7de.html#axzz4753gPrRe
Rob – Plants in greenhouses lower the CO2 there. More is added to enrich it,plants consume it again. Means CO2 in a greenhouse fluctuates from above ambient level to below it and back again. I believe this is why acclimatization does not take place there. If the atmosphere were rich in CO2, say 1000 ppm, it would stay about there and not fluctuate. Tat is the difference.
http://www.omafra.gov.on.ca/english/crops/facts/00-077.htm
03
John – Not sure of your origins or if you are old enough to have a memory yet. Your comment asked a question of Reed which I thought might be relevant to this excellent representation of weather in the land “of drought and flooding rains” (See: https://www.longpaddock.qld.gov.au/products/pdf/australiasvariablerainfall.pdf ). We sorta treat such long term weather patterns as “normal” here ‘down under’. We still count our blessings too!
00
Bill- I’m Canadian(BC) Thanks for input from your Aussie land! I found historical(155 years worth) of weather info for Melbourne – a coastal city – therefore temp there will have been moderated all those years by the Tasman and Great Australian Bight. Here’s the link:
http://www.eldersweather.com.au/climate.jsp?lt=site&lc=86071
Contrast the monthly records with the long-term averages(155y average). Note that both the high monthly max and the low monthly max are consistently 3C-5C above their corresponding long-term averages. You are warming up. If your temp had been stable over this time, the monthly max temps would have oscillated above and below their corresponding averages.
The rain – your high rain exceeds the averages (month by month) by ~150mm. Your low rain approaches 0 – about 2-9mm below averages. You’re getting much more rain in Melbourne overall, but when it isn’t raining you seem parched. For Melbourne folks, it seems you’re “drenched or drought”.
You can hover over the monthly figures to see which year the extreme occurred. Your extreme lows seem mostly to be ~a century ago. Your extreme highs seem mostly in recent years(though not 2015) Overall, you’re moving from cold to hot in Melbourne – in spite of the sea moderating its temp. And you’re getting more rainfall extremes at both ends of the scale.
Drought – you had a prolonged drought there – worst on record since you were founded, from 2003-2010. in later years, near drought conditions, but not as bad as that big one.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drought_in_Australia#2013-2014
It’s not just long-term weather patterns; it’s records being set. I think climate change is affecting Australia – don’t you?
12
John – If you looked at the link I provided your reply gives no indication that you understood it. I was replying to your question to Reed asking him if he was experiencing more “droughts or floods”. My link dramatically illustrates Australia’s consistently variable rainfall pattern between 1890 – 2015 which Australian’s speak of when they describe their country’s weather in the vernacular I quoted.
Given you are a Canadian I would not expect you to have this understanding. There is no shame in admitting you don’t know what you don’t know. It is usually the initial path to learning. Focusing on Melbourne’s weather in the context of the continental patterns shown in the link I provided is simply a diversion from my message. Akin to the mistake I would make if I ‘implied’ Vancouver’s weather was representative of Canada’s.
Finally, I see no objective evidence of recent ‘climate change’ in this country, but the weather has been as variable as it has always been – in my long life and in that recorded in the spoken history of my pioneering forefathers. My link is simply quantification of the latter.
21
Bill- I apologize – somehow overlooked the link you put there. It does seem to show variable rainfall over Australia. Yet the drought 2003-10 was an all-time record. We have to give some weight to that fact.
I only demonstrated Melbourne as a sample of the effect of climate change in Australia – not at all trying to say all Australia has Melbourne’s climate. I would think we could pick any Australian city, or other location, and come to the same inference that climate change is having an effect in each place(mainly, warming over time, and more temperature and rainfall extremes) – even though each location may have a different climate from the other.
The drought in Australia link above should indicate climate change there. Perhaps this link would also help:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2015/09/09/the-simple-statistic-that-perfectly-captures-what-climate-change-means/
You seem better informed than most people I talk with on climate. But as coincidence would have it, this article popped up in my mailbox just today – about how climate change education in Queensland could be much better(despite good intentions):
http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/queensland/schools-failing-in-climate-change-education-researcher-20160425-goensx.html
12
There will be plenty of rain in central Australia.
http://www.ospo.noaa.gov/Products/ocean/sst/anomaly/anim.html
00
http://www.bom.gov.au/fwo/IDYPME03/2016050712/PME24_aus.png
00
ren, Rain out in that area is pointless.
No-one lives out there…. rain is a very rare occurrence where that map shows rain.
The places they REALLY need rain are in Queensland which is the western part of the NE state.
00
Do not worry, La Niña is coming.
00
The polar vortex in the lower stratosphere.
http://earth.nullschool.net/#2016/05/07/1200Z/wind/isobaric/70hPa/orthographic=-238.47,-35.38,345
00
Rain also in the Sahara.
http://pl.sat24.com/pl/dz/rain
00