Global Greening Becomes so Obvious That Climate Alarmists Start Arguing We Need to “Save the Deserts”!
The world is ‘greening’ at an astonishing and rapidly growing rate and deserts are shrinking almost everywhere you look. All due, it seems, to a natural rise in carbon ‘plant food’ dioxide, not forgetting the small annual 4% portion contributed by humans burning hydrocarbons. Inconvenient to the political Net Zero narrative of course – along with high numbers of polar bears, cyclical recovery in Arctic sea ice and recent record growth of coral on the Great Barrier Reef – so there is naturally little mention in mainstream media and politics. “Desertification is turning the Earth barren,” reports the Guardian, and the expansion of drylands is leaving entire countries “facing famine”. Great story, shame about the facts. A recent article in Yale Environment 360 states that rather than shrivelling and dying, vegetation is growing faster and deserts are retreating.
In fact many scientists now think that this process will continue to accelerate into the future. According to the Yale article, CO2 is “fast-tracking” photosynthesis in plants. By allowing them to use scarce water more efficiently, the CO2-rich air fertilises vegetation growth in even some of the driest places, observes Yale. For some time there has been “growing evidence” of global greening in all biomes, not just drylands, evidence that we can note has been ignored by the promoters of Net Zero. A Carbon Brief ‘explainer’ claimed that desertification has been described as the greatest environmental challenge of our time “and climate change is making it worse”.
Carbon Brief is funded by green activist billionaires including Sir Christopher Hohn, a past provider for recently jailed Roger Hallam and Extinction Rebellion. Its desert climate hysteria, like that of the Guardian, is therefore to be expected. Interestingly, Yale Environment 360, which is part of the Yale University School of the Environment, also receives heavy direct and indirect financial support from activist groups including ClimateWorks along with the Hewlett and Ford Foundations. The article is significant since it represents a ‘mainstream’ breakthrough in discussing global greening which has been obvious for some time in specialist scientific circles.
Perhaps it is not surprising that the Yale article tries to rain a little on the greening parade with a dose of climate gloom. Greening created by agricultural irrigation of fields can “obliterate arid-land ecosystems”. But this surely is human-caused and nothing to do with a changing climate. “Save the deserts” may not be a popular environmental message, “but arid eco-systems matter”, continues Yale. Of course there will be many who point out that if a few scorpions have to up sticks to make way for the better nutrition of millions of African children, this is a small price to pay.
The article highlights much of the recent scientific work on global greening that has received coverage in publications like the Daily Sceptic but has been downplayed and more often than not ignored by messengers of the Net Zero narrative.
Ground-breaking work in 2016 saw a team of 33 scientists from eight countries study NASA satellite images, and they found that since 1980 between a quarter and a half of the planet’s vegetated areas had shown an increase in their leaf area index (LAI), a standard measure of the abundance of plant life. Work at this time suggested a 14% increase in vegetation. A 2021 study at the University of California concluded that there had been a 12% increase in photosynthesis, with CO2 fertilisation again the primary cause. A 2020 assessment from scientists at the Woodwell Climate Research Centre found that greening was “much more extensive than previously acknowledged”, and more than three times greater than desertification. Yale noted findings that the greening encompassed 41% of the world’s drylands, from India to the African Sahel and northern China to south-eastern Australia.
Chinese scientists have also been on the case. Last year, researchers at Lanzhou University found a “global divergence” between aridity and leaf area in drylands during the past three decades. This “decoupling” was said to be due to the effect of CO2.
In February, the Daily Sceptic reported on another group of Chinese scientists who found that over the last two decades about 55% of global land mass revealed an “accelerated rate” of vegetation growth. “Global greening is an indisputable fact,” they state.
They produced the above map based on four datasets that showed greening accelerating since 2000 in 55.8% of the globe. Faster growth in India and the European plains (dark blue colouring) was said to be the most obvious. Healthy growth can also be observed in the Amazon region, equatorial East Africa, southern coastal Australia and Ireland.
None of these findings should be a great surprise. CO2 levels have been much higher in the past going back 600 million years. Plants thrive at levels three times higher than current atmospheric CO2 and the near denudation amounts of the last few million years. During the last glacial period up to around 12,000 years ago, levels of atmospheric CO2 dropped to such dangerously low levels that plant – and human – life was severely threated. Even with the small recovery we have seen in the recent past, plants grow larger and utilise existing water resources much more efficiently. This recovery of CO2 levels in the atmosphere holds out hope for higher food resources in many parts of the world that suffer from periodic famines.
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This Is Why Electricity Costs Twice As Much In Britain As In The USA
The peak electricity demand in Britain is in the winter when we need to heat our homes, offices, shops, warehouses, factories etc.
But in the winter solar farms produce almost no electricity in Britain. This is because it is dark for around 16 hours a day and when the Sun does appear it is weak and usually hidden behind thick cloud.
Solar energy may make sense in some countries, for example the countries of North Africa, but building solar farms in Britain is completely brainless.
The new Energy Secretary Ed Milliband has just given the green light to the biggest solar farm in the U.K. He claims that building the Sunnica solar farm in East Anglia will “cut bills for families”. As is often the case with politicians, the opposite is true.
Because solar farms produce almost no electricity in the winter there will need to be back-up electricity generation. So essentially two electricity generation facilities will have to be built and operated, one for the summer and one for the winter. This will increase electricity bills for families not cut them.
Subsidies to companies operating solar farms and wind farms is one of the reasons electricity bills in Britain are already amongst the highest in the world. We pay five times as much for our electricity as China and twice as much as the USA.
The pain that these high bills cause British families is of no concern to the small group of eco-zealots in Government and the TV news who peddle scare stories about global warming and tell half-truths about the cost of renewables.
They want Britain to be a world leader in Net Zero and don’t care about the price the rest of us have to pay for this utterly pointless ambition. Britain is responsible for only 1% of global CO2 emissions so even if we achieved Net Zero tomorrow it would have no measurable impact on global temperatures.
Meanwhile the big CO2 emitters, like China (30% of global CO2 emissions) and the USA (10% of global CO2 emissions), move far more slowly towards Net Zero. They continue to build and operate fossil-fuel power stations.
Unlike solar farms and wind farms, these power stations are both cheap and reliable, they work every hour of every day summer and winter. This is why the electricity bills for Chinese and American families are so much lower than the bills for British families.
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Australia: experts have refuted Leftist claims about nuclear energy water use
ALL power stations vaporize a lot of water for cooling purposes
Leading nuclear experts have rejected Agriculture Minister Murray Watt’s claims that nuclear power stations would take water from farmers and put cropping and grazing land at risk of accidents.
State and territory agriculture ministers from around the country raised concerns on Thursday about potential effects of proposed nuclear power stations on farming land.
A joint statement issued ahead of the quarterly meeting of agriculture ministers called on the opposition to outline plans to protect land used for cropping and raising livestock in the event of an emergency.
Agriculture ministers or government representatives from Labor states endorsed the joint statement, but Tasmania, a Liberal state that is not home to a proposed nuclear reactor, was not included.
Federal Agriculture Minister Murray Watt, speaking at The Australian’s Global Food Forum in Brisbane on Wednesday, said the Coalition’s plan to build nuclear plants on seven coal-fired power station sites in Queensland, NSW, Victoria, Western Australia and South Australia would take water from farmers.
Senator Watt on Thursday rejected Coalition claims that Labor was running a scare campaign, and cited parliamentary research showing there were 11,955 farms located within an 80km radius of the selected sites, requiring “expensive” risk mitigation plans.
“I think it’s about time the federal opposition provided some answers to Australia’s farmers and our ag sector, about where the water will come from, what would happen in the event of a nuclear accident, and what preparations they would be making with the agriculture sector to prepare for such an event,” he said.
“What are those 12,000 farmers going to be expected to do if we do have an accident, and what steps would they need to take to ensure that the food and fibre that they produce is safe?”
The claims have been refuted by nuclear engineering experts and Nationals leader David Littleproud, who accused Senator Watt of misunderstanding the science of nuclear energy production and the comparable rate of water usage between coal and nuclear power plants.
Nuclear engineer and advocate Tony Irwin, an honorary associate professor at the Australian National University, said new technologies meant reactors were safer than ever and could be set up for use with significantly less cooling water.
“Solar and wind farms have far more effects on farming in Australia than nuclear will ever have,” Dr Irwin told The Australian. “There’s far less impact from nuclear plants because they are on existing industrial sites … using existing cooling water supplies.
“I think Labor are getting a bit desperate … Wind and solar have definitely a part to play … but when you start taking farmland for solar and wind, that’s a bad idea.”
Dr Irwin said the concerns around nuclear accidents on farmland were unfounded.
“There’s always fallback plans for any sort of disaster,” he said.
Nationals MP Keith Pitt, a former water and resources minister, said Australians wanted a nuclear energy debate based on facts. “Nuclear reactors in Europe have been operational for decades in agricultural environments and coal-fired power stations already have significant water allocations and storage,” he said.
Minerals Council of Australia CEO Tania Constable said it was disappointing “misinformation” was being used to stir fear in regional communities.
“For decades, operating nuclear power stations have coexisted with productive agricultural regions throughout Europe and North America without any negative impact,” she said.
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Greenie idiots
A sad end to their efforts to prove they were better than everyone else
A couple who embarked on an eco-friendly voyage across the Atlantic were found dead in a lifeboat after seemingly being forced to abandon their yacht.
Brett Clibbery, 70, and British woman Sarah Justine Packwood, 54, were reported missing after setting off from Nova Scotia in Canada in their 42ft sailing boat Theros on June 11 - and were found last week in a washed-up liferaft.
The couple's remains were found on Sable Island, nicknamed the 'Graveyard of the Atlantic', 180 miles off the coast of Nova Scotia, the liferaft having washed ashore. They had intended to sail to the Azores 900 miles west of Portugal.
The Theros was a wind and solar-powered vessel piloted by the pair to show how travel can be done without using fossil fuels. The pair also shared videos on their YouTube channel showing them driving across Canada in an electric car.
Investigators are assessing whether the boat may have been struck by a larger vessel. No distress calls appear to have been issued by the couple.
In a message shared on their Facebook page, the pair had written: 'We aim to sail across the ocean, all being well, fair winds and following seas with us!' They labelled the journey part of their 'green odyssey'.
The couple were wed on the Theros in 2016, according to Ms Packwood's personal blog, a year after meeting at a bus stop in London. Mr Clibbery has been described as an experienced sailor and mechanic.
Ms Packwood, from Long Itchington, Warwickshire, was in the process of donating a kidney to her sister, Glory, the Vancouver Sun reported.
They later held a 'handfasting' Celtic ceremony at Stonehenge in April 2017, posting a video of the encounter on their YouTube channel.
Their trip to the Azores was meant to be the first fully 'green' journey on Theros after removing its diesel engine in favour of wind and solar power.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13654791/myster-british-eco-explorer-couple-dead.html
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Jim Hansen and his twin
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