Scientists Surprised to Find Earth's Biosphere Booming

radioweather writes "An article from the Financial Post says that recent studies of biosphere imaging from the NASA SEAWIFS satellite indicate that the Earth's biomass is booming: 'The results surprised Steven Running of the University of Montana and Ramakrishna Nemani of NASA, scientists involved in analyzing the NASA satellite data. They found that over a period of almost two decades, the Earth as a whole became more bountiful by a whopping 6.2%. About 25% of the Earth's vegetated landmass — almost 110 million square kilometers — enjoyed significant increases and only 7% showed significant declines. When the satellite data zooms in, it finds that each square meter of land, on average, now produces almost 500 grams of greenery per year.' Their 2004 study, and other more recent ones, point to the warming of the planet and the presence of CO2, fertilizing the biota and resulting in the increased green side effect."

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Re:So now we have the

[cthulhuology]

Because, frankly, the stated aims of environmentalists - improving the forests, saving the fuzzy animals, and so on, is actually served by the increasing CO2 in the atmosphere, as plants grow better in richer CO2 atmospheres and that leads to a stronger biosphere all round. My BS detector pegged a 10 here. If you actually read the projections by the US Govt, you'll see that increased CO2 will increase the total amount of biomass, but will also kill off the old growth forests, and reduce much of the country to desert grasslands. Crop production is also hurt by increased CO2 because while the plants in take more CO2 that doesn't translate to increased yields of fruits. Additionally, many of our plants are extremely temperature sensitive. If you ever try to grow a Sycamore or White Oak from seed, you'll be amazed at the conditions for germination. The facts are increase CO2 = increase in weeds and grasslands & lower quantities of forest and fruits; you know those economically valuable plants.