Rise In CO2 Has 'Greened Planet Earth' (bbc.com)

schwit1 quotes a report from BBC: Carbon dioxide emissions from industrial society have driven a huge growth in trees and other plants. A new study says that if the extra green leaves prompted by rising CO2 levels were laid in a carpet, it would cover twice the continental USA. Climate skeptics argue the findings show that the extra CO2 is actually benefiting the planet. But the researchers say the fertilization effect diminishes over time. They warn the positives of CO2 are likely to be outweighed by the negatives. The lead author, Professor Ranga Myneni from Boston University, told BBC News the extra tree growth would not compensate for global warming, rising sea levels, melting glaciers, ocean acidification, the loss of Arctic sea ice, and the prediction of more severe tropical storms. The new study is published in the journal Nature Climate Change by a team of 32 authors from 24 institutions in eight countries. A new study has also shown that ever since Americans first heard the term global warming in the 1970's, the weather has actually improved for most people living in the U.S. The study published in the journal Nature found that 80% of the U.S. population lives in counties experiencing more pleasant weather than they did four decades ago.

Comments

Re:As long as the weather gets more pleasant in mo

[sg_oneill]

But now I've moved to the Philippines. We recently had a high of 37 degrees in the shade - the temperature when fans stop cooling you and start warming you up. And the thing is, most people in this town can't afford air conditioning. Many of them don't have electricity. And among those with AC and electricity, some of them have to work outdoors in the daytime.

Try a month of 40c+ like we had a few years back in west australia. That was hellish.

And the fun part is some of the areas in the north of australia had regular 50c days. Thats the point where people start dying without some sort of cooling.

I should note the article states "Since we started talking about global warning in the 1970s" or something to that effect. No, we've been talking about it since the late 1800s when the greenhouse effect was first discovered and worried scientist started wondering if all the coal being sooted into the air from the industrial revolution might have unintended consequences. The science was always fairly solid. CO2 (and other gases like methane) absorb gases at various spectra, which then becomes either heat (warming) or disipates into kinetic energy (storms and general chaos). There has never really been any proposed new physics that would prevent this happening, nor reliable observations that it isn't, yet unfortunately a large population still thinks its this whacky idea invented by environmentalists in the 70s and then adopted by some spooky lizard people cartel looking to lie about physics for some reason nobody seems to be able to explain.So I still call it the greenhouse effect, because thats what it is.

Re: More "pleasant" weather

[Karmashock]

California suffers cyclical droughts roughly every 40 years. They tend to last about 5 years and to sustain the population, reserves of water must last through the drought.

There are two ways to make sure the reserves are enough.

1. Build reserves to match consumption for roughly 5 years.
2. Limit consumption to match 5 year reserve capacity.

If Cali does that, then its fine.

Our problem in the Golden State is that we didn't build reserves to keep pace with population growth... or we didn't limit development and zoning to what could be sustained through droughts.

To blame the whole thing on Global Warming when it was spelled out very clearly in the fucking 70s with blueprints, time tables, budget forecasts... Its fucking comical.