Human beings and animals need plants for survival. All our food consists of plants or animals. Whether from plants or animals all our food depends on the presence of plants in the food chain. Plants form the very backbone of the planets natural ecosystems. Plants absorb 30% or more of all the carbon dioxide emitted by us humans each year. But as the climate change hysteria increases, we should ask, how are the present or even higher levels of CO2 in the atmosphere and warmer temperatures affecting the plant world? The results may surprise you.
Nature Climate Change
Using satellite data from NASA’s Modern Resolution Imaging Spectrometer and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer instruments a team of 32 authors from 24 institutions in 8 countries determined the amount of leaf cover or leaf area index over the planets vegetated regions. The greening represents an increase in leaves on plants and trees equivalent to an area two times that of the continental United States. “From a quarter to half of Earths vegetated land has shown significant greening over the last 35 years largely due to rising levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide according to a new study published in the journal Nature Climate Change on April 26th 2016.”
CO2 Boosts Plant Productivity
Plants thrive on sunlight, carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and water for photosynthesis which in turn produce oxygen and carbohydrates that plants feed on for energy and growth. The rising levels of CO2 in our atmosphere result in a marked increase in plant photosynthesis. This is known as the carbon fertilization effect. Between 1982 and 2020, according to research, global plant photosynthesis increased by 12%, with a present level rising as high as 17%. The greatest increase in photosynthesis is due to carbon dioxide fertilization.
Increased Plant Growth
The increased presence of photosynthesis stimulates increased growth in most plants. Scientists say that in response to the elevated levels of CO2, above-ground plant growth increased an average of 21% and below-ground growth levels increased by a whopping 28%. As a result, crops such as wheat, rice and soybeans are expected to produce an increase in yields of between 12% and 14%. The increased growth of some sub-tropical and tropical grasses and crops such as corn, sugar cane, sorghum, and millet do not benefit from CO2 to the same extent.
Greening of the Deserts
As a result of increased CO2 absorption, plants require less water during photosynthesis thus making the greening of deserts more viable. Plants openings called stomata allow CO2 absorption and moisture to be released into the atmosphere. With the rising levels of CO2, plants maintain a high rate of photosynthesis thus partially closing their stomata that decreases a plant’s water loss of between 5 and 20%. Scientists suggest that this could result in plants retaining more water and returning it into the atmosphere, thus resulting of more water availability on land, in the soil and in the streams. Elevated CO2 enable plants to benefit from the carbon fertilization effect and require less water to grow. Already desert areas are being greened as a result.
Nitrogen limitations
Nitrogen the most abundant element on Earth, consists of about 80% of the atmosphere. It is an essential element in both DNA and RNA. Plants need it to make carbohydrates and proteins for growth. The nitrogen gas found in the atmosphere cannot be used by plants because its two atoms of nitrogen are triply bonded together so tightly that it makes it difficult for it to separate into a form plants can use. Lightning however has sufficient energy to break the triple bond, a process called nitrogen fixation. Nitrogen is processed industrially as a crop fertilizer. Most nitrogen fixation however occurs naturally in the soil, where bacteria attach to the plant roots such as legumes. The bacteria extract carbon from plants and in a symbiotic exchange, fix the nitrogen, and combine it with oxygen or hydrogen into nutritional compounds or fertiliser that plants can use. The presence of animals, birds and insect waste accelerate this.
CO2 and the Cycle of Growth
Most life has a relatively fixed ratio between carbon and nitrogen. This means that plants taking up more CO2 create more carbohydrates because there is more CO2 in the atmosphere. A plant’s productivity also depends on having enough usable nitrogen. The increase of CO2 around forest leaves usually results in increased growth but it depends on whether enough nitrogen is present. Without sufficient nitrogen levels a plant cannot use the increased levels of CO2 and increased growth would be short lived. Trees currently absorb about a third of human-caused CO2 emissions, but their ability to continue to do this depends on how much nitrogen is available to them. If nitrogen is limited, the benefit of increased CO2 will be limited too. Such fears are expressed as a result of projections from computer models which are only as good as the information fed into them. Increased foliage and forest results in increased proliferation of usable nitrogen producing animals, birds, insects and bacteria. They process a huge increase in the amount of useable nitrogen availability for plant life.
Effect of Rising temperatures
Computer models claim that in a warming world a runaway scenario would take place where nitrogen fixing would decrease as temperatures rise, resulting in less plant productivity. Plants would then remove less CO2 from the atmosphere which would cause further warming and less nitrogen fixing. That would only hold true if no increased proliferation of nitrogen producing animals, birds, insects and bacteria take place in nature, which without human interference would not happen. Rising temperatures also cause growing seasons to become longer and warmer. Because of this plants will grow more and for a longer growing season. As a result, they will use more water, thus offsetting the benefits of partially closing their stomata. Computer models project that this will result in drier soils and less runoff needed for streams and rivers and lead to more localised warming. Where greening of desert areas has taken place, in contradiction of computer models, new springs and streams have spontaneously and naturally occurred as nature responds to the effect of greening.
Warmer Longer Growing Seasons
Computer models also project that warmer winters and a longer growing season also result in the proliferation of pests, pathogens, and invasive species that harm vegetation. During longer growing seasons such models project that more generations of pests can reproduce as warmer temperatures speeds up the insect life cycles, and more pests and pathogens survive during warmer winters. Such models also claim that rising temperatures drive some insects to invade new territories, sometimes with devastating effects for the local plant life. If this was the case, warm areas of the planet would already have been devastated by insects and other pests which is not the case as nature comes to the rescue again as predators always follow such invaders and keeps them in check.
Abusive industrial Farming
Computer models also project that higher temperatures and increased moisture also make crops more vulnerable claiming that weeds, many of which thrive in heat and elevated CO2 levels, already cause about 34% of crop losses with insects causing 18% of losses, and disease 16%. The traditional farming practice of crop rotation which is no longer practiced as a result of imposed ignorance would solve that problem in one fell swoop. College trained farmers are a danger to the ecosystem. The real problem here is the overuse of industrial agricultural practices resulting in the soil being depleted of nutrients and poisoned with pesticides and weed killer which in turn results in weakened crops made vulnerable as a result to every attack and disease that healthy crops would have no problem of fending off. Agriculture is regressing rather than progressing as the result of the abandonment of traditional farming methods.
Green Madness
Green politicians rely completely on incomplete and thus flawed computer models which project devastatingly flawed projections and results. Those results of course are only devastating because Green politicians enact laws based on false information which are dangerously damaging to the environment, to agriculture, agricultural and food production and to humanity. The meddling of Green politicians based on their flawed perception of the workings of nature and their subsequent interference with it are more dangerous to the environment than any of their climate change computer projected models or CO2 emissions hysteria. They are a driven and a driving disaster in action that endangers all life on the planet. Their incoherent madness must stop or be stopped.
