“Our climate conversation is lopsided. There is ample room to suggest that climate change has caused this problem or that negative outcome, but any mention of positives is frowned upon,” say Bjorn Lomborg. (1) He adds, “A climate economics approach finds that today—contrary to the alarmists' massive insistence on negative stories only, global warming causes about as much damage as benefits.” (2)
The prestigious journal Nature recently revealed just how much CO2 increases have greened the Earth over the past three decades. Because CO2 acts as a fertilizer, as much as half of all vegetated land is persistently greener today. The additional greening over the past 33 years is enough to cover the entire continental USA twice over. (3)
NASA recently reported that rising CO2 will help food crops. (4) Researchers found that crops responded better with higher temperatures and double the CO2 values compared to those in the year 2000. Higher CO2 levels reduce the amount of water crops lose. Leaves contain tiny pores called stomata that open and collect carbon dioxide molecules for photosynthesis, a process known as transpiration. As carbon dioxide concentrations increase, the pores don't open as wide, resulting in lower levels of transpiration by plants and therefore increased water-use efficiency. (5)
There are literally thousands of articles in the scientific research literature showing that essentially all plants grow faster when atmospheric carbon dioxide is increased. This effect is plant type specific, with trees generally being affected more than many other plant types. A $2.5 million project to study redwood and giant sequoia trees is finding that these trees have been growing faster during the past century. The study found that redwoods near the California-Oregon border are showing growth rates 45% higher than at any time during the past 200 years. (6)
You've undoubtedly heard that as temperature increases more people will die from heat. What you probably haven't heard is that fewer people will die from the cold. The biggest study on heat and cold deaths published last year in Lancet examined more than 74 million deaths from 384 locations in 13 countries from cold Sweden to hot Thailand. The researchers found that heat caused almost one-half of one percent of all deaths, while more than 7 percent were caused by cold. (7)
One study for England and Wales shows that heat kills 1,500 annually and cold kills 32,000. By the 2080s, increased heat waves will kill nearly 5,000 in a comparable population But cold deaths will have dropped by 10,000, meaning 6,500 fewer die altogether. (8)
In addition, as the world develops, it has become much less vulnerable to unusual weather events. A hurricane hitting Florida kills few people while a similar event in Guatemala kills tens of thousands. Climate related deaths have dropped from half a million per year in the 1920s to less than 25,000 per year in the 2010s. (2)
Then there's Al Gore's concern that 40 percent of the world gets drinking water from the Himalayas and melting glaciers means 'those 40 percent of the people on Earth are going to face a very serious shortage.' Yet a new study of 60 climate models and scenarios shows this warning fails to take into account the fact that global warming will mean precipitation increases. Indeed, water flow will actually increase over this century, which is likely beneficial in increasing water availability in the Indus Basin irrigation scheme during the spring growing season. (2)
References
Bjorn Lomborg, “No one ever says it, but in many ways global warming will be a good thing,” The Telegraph, May 5, 2016
Bjorn Lomborg, “Deaths from climate and non-climate catastrophes, 1900-2014, “facebook.com/bjornlomborg, December 8, 2015
Zaichun Zhu et al., “Greening of the Earth and its drivers,” Nature Climate Change, (2016), doi:10.1038/nclimate3004
“NASA: rising CO2 will help food crops,” junkscience.com, May 4, 2016
Delphine Deryng et al., “Regional disparities in the beneficial effects of rising CO2 concentrations on crop water productivity,” Nature Climate Change, April 18, 2016, doi:10.1038/nclimate2995
Arthur B. Robinson, “Uncooperative trees,” Access to Energy, 43, 3, March 2016
Antonio Gasparrini et al., “Mortality risk attributable to high and low ambient temperature: a multicountry observational study,” The Lancet, 386, 369, July 2015
Sotris Vardoularkis et al., “Comparative assessment of the effects of climate change on heat and cold related mortality in the United Kingdom and Australia,” Environ. Health Perspectives; doi:10.1289/ehp.1307524
Jack Dini is author of Challenging Environmental Mythology. He has also written for American Council on Science and Health, Environment & Climate News, and Hawaii Reporter.
