This map is the result of 8 scientists poring over satellite data for 18 months. It shows how plant growth (NPP or net primary productivity) around the world has changed in the past 20 years of global warming and CO2 buildup in the atmosphere. The result is a 6% increase when all the globe’s vegetation is tallied up and averaged. The research appeared in Science. The article I got the picture from is at NASA titled Global Garden.
Why is it that we don’t hear about this in the popular press? We are inundated with conjecture based on computer models of CO2 induced warming and the supposed ill effects of it. Yet when the facts are allowed to speak we see the earth blooming like a spring flower garden from higher temperatures and increased CO2. Moreover study after study shows when CO2 concentration is higher plants are more efficient in their use of water. So even those who say that water, not CO2, is the limiting factor in plant growth should welcome more CO2.
In a rational world we’d be thrilled that this is happening and if we weren’t pumping CO2 into the atmosphere through fossil fuel burning to make the global greenhouse greener we’d be looking for some other way to increase atmospheric CO2. More CO2 is a good thing. Every commercial greenhouse knows it and many of them artificially boost it by releasing CO2 from tanks. It’s important that everyone else knows it too.
For those friendly to intelligent design I’d ask if this relationship between fossil fuel, atmospheric CO2, increased plant growth, lengthening the growing season in higher latitude land masses, and better water efficiency is all just a happy coincidence that helps feed a growing human population or whether it’s not a coincidence at all but rather part of some larger plan for humanity.