Atmospheric Fertilization - Another Point in Support of A Climate Reformation - Granite Grok

Atmospheric Fertilization – Another Point in Support of A Climate Reformation

Co2 has been acting like an aerial super-fertilizer
Co2 has been acting like an aerial super-fertilizer

It is wise to question why the computer models of the environmentalists who cried wolf have failed so spectacularly.   We should ask how the data provided to justify climate fear-mongering in general has failed to produce any of the results claimed.  We should ask why limousine liberals who insist the seas are rising continue to pay top dollar for island get aways and beach-front property.  We should also ask if more CO2, or even a warming trend–which we’ve not actually had for 16 years now to the dismay of many, would actually be as bad for the world as the government funded, rent-seeking IPCC  fairy tale author’s claim?

What if fertilizing the atmosphere with co2 is actually good for the planet?

A recent paper that collected satellite data on global plant life, published in Geophysical Research Letters, reports that fertilizing the atmosphere with co2 has produced a world-wide growth-spurt in plant life.

A team of scientists led by environmental physicist Randall Donohue, a research scientist at the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization in Australia, analyzed satellite data from 1982 through 2010. The scientists documented a carbon dioxide “fertilization effect” that has caused a gradual greening of the Earth, and particularly the Earth’s arid regions, since 1982. The satellite data showed rising carbon dioxide levels caused a remarkable 11 percent increase in foliage in arid regions since 1982, versus what would be the case if atmospheric carbon dioxide levels had remained at 1982 levels.

Carbon dioxide acts as aerial fertilizer and also helps plants thrive under arid conditions. Although global precipitation has increased during the past century as the Earth has warmed, elevated carbon dioxide levels are assisting plant life in warm, dry regions independent of – and in addition to – increases in global precipitation.

Fear not global alarmists.  I am not advocating for pollution.  In fact I recently advocated for a massive increase in free-market US domestic production of fossil fuels because the world will continue to need them long into the foreseeable future and we’d be more conscientious about their extraction.  Ramping up US production would come at the expense of energy companies instead of taxpayers, create jobs, grow our economy, fill state and federal coffers, reduce the transfer of US dollars to hostile foreign entities, and reduce overall global pollution.  We’d be doing the earth a favor.

I believe strongly in engaging in sensible energy policy, responsible use and reuse, including recycling, and the debt relief that comes from allowing innovators to risk their money on solutions we need instead of politicians demagouging so they can spend our money on schemes that can’t begin to meet our real needs or solve any real-world problems.

And I have long questioned the motivations of the climate theocrats and their doom and gloom predictions.  Nothing they have said has come to pass, and recent research indicates what seems obvious if you are not pandring to rent-seekers or plying a political agenda.  Plants feed on CO2.  They thrive on it.  If you give them more of it they will grow more, grow larger, and in more places, expanding the amount of plant life feeding on the atmospheric fertilizer.

This report suggests just that.  As we exited our freezing world fearmongering period and entered into our warming fearmongering trend, increased CO2  fed plants that began to expand their ranges thanks to an abundance of the aerial plant food to sustain them.  This has permitted plants to thrive in arrid areas where they had not been seen in decdes or perhsp centuries.

This also bodes well for crop production, yields, and the number of places where crops can be grown, all thanks to an increase in atmospheric fertilization.  A result that suggets that yet another bullet point in the climate theocrats dogma is suspect.

The satellite data show plant life in the United States has especially benefited from rising atmospheric carbon dioxide levels and gradually warming temperatures. Satellite data show foliage has increased in the vast majority of the United States since 1982, with the western U.S. benefiting the most. Indeed, many western regions experienced a greater than 30 percent increase in foliage since 1982. 

They have been wrong about animals, ice melt, sea levels, Polar bears, temperature increase, and now drought and plant growth, which means they are also wrong about starvation-although the left’s obsession with food as fuel is doing its best to create starvation by force of will.   So the only thing the state mandated environmental theocracy has managed to do is take money from producers and prouctive activitiy and dump it down a hole surrounded by Democrats, environmentalists, and rent-seeking climate “scientists,” who all take a cut before those fiscal resources vanish.

Isn’t there enough evidence yet?  Isn’t it time for a climate refomation?

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