By Jo Nova
Thanks to Kenneth Richard at NoTricksZone for finding this paper.
It’s time we stopped messing around. Clearly, fossil fuels are feeding the world, greening the land, and boosting tree growth. Anyone who gives a damn about the environment needs to start campaigning to increase our fossil fuel emissions.
Recently a batch of studies announced that the era of global greening might be over, or that drought stress might be browning the Earth faster than it was being greened. But a new study shows that the Earth is not only still getting greener, but that the rate of green growth is accelerating on more than half of the world.
Chen et al used four satellite datasets to estimate the Leaf Area Index (LAI). They found the long feared desertification of Earth is only accelerating over 7% of the globe while the long ignored greening is not increasing but even accelerating over 55% of the Earth. At this rate, the barren corners of the Earth are in danger of going missing.
Obviously, the habitat of koalas is benefiting hugely from coal, gas and petrol. But to be more serious, so are the worlds poor. If we care about the children of Haiti, we have a duty to liberate that coal, burn that oil and free up those stores of diesel.
Do it for the children…
LAI = Leaf Area Index. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2351989423004262#fig0020
All over the world, the dominant driver (according to the paper) was nearly always CO2.
Chen et al 2024
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2351989423004262
CO2 fertilization is still the dominant (75.63%) driver of the trends on Earth in the last 20 years.
REFERENCE
Chen et al (2024) The global greening continues despite increased drought stress since 2000, Global Ecology and Conservation
Volume 49, January 2024, e02791
Photo by Waren Brasse on Unsplash