House kills Dem proposals on environment, renewable energy
Global Warming on Free Republic
Posted on 07/09/2013 2:18:49 PM PDT by kathsua
Increased levels of carbon dioxide (CO2) have helped boost green foliage across the world’s arid regions over the past 30 years through a process called CO2 fertilisation, according to CSIRO research.
In findings based on satellite observations, CSIRO, in collaboration with the Australian National University (ANU), found that this CO2 fertilisation correlated with an 11 per cent increase in foliage cover from 1982-2010 across parts of the arid areas studied in Australia, North America, the Middle East and Africa, according to CSIRO research scientist, Dr Randall Donohue.
“In Australia, our native vegetation is superbly adapted to surviving in arid environments and it consequently uses water very efficiently,” Dr Donohue said. “Australian vegetation seems quite sensitive to CO2 fertilisation.
The fertilisation effect occurs where elevated CO2 enables a leaf during photosynthesis, the process by which green plants convert sunlight into sugar, to extract more carbon from the air or lose less water to the air, or both.
This, along with the vast extents of arid landscapes, means Australia featured prominently in our results.”
“While a CO2 effect on foliage response has long been speculated, until now it has been difficult to demonstrate,” according to Dr Donohue.
“Our work was able to tease-out the CO2 fertilisation effect by using mathematical modelling together with satellite data adjusted to take out the observed effects of other influences such as precipitation, air temperature, the amount of light, and land-use changes.”
The fertilisation effect occurs where elevated CO2 enables a leaf during photosynthesis, the process by which green plants convert sunlight into sugar, to extract more carbon from the air or lose less water to the air, or both.
If elevated CO2 causes the water use of individual leaves to drop, plants in arid environments will respond by increasing their total numbers of leaves. These changes in leaf cover can be detected by satellite, particularly in deserts and savannas where the cover is less complete than in wet locations, according to Dr Donohue.
“On the face of it, elevated CO2 boosting the foliage in dry country is good news and could assist forestry and agriculture in such areas; however there will be secondary effects that are likely to influence water availability, the carbon cycle, fire regimes and biodiversity, for example,” Dr Donohue said.
“Ongoing research is required if we are to fully comprehend the potential extent and severity of such secondary effects.”
This study was published in the US Geophysical Research Letters journal and was funded by CSIRO’s Sustainable Agriculture Flagship, Water for a Healthy Country Flagship, the Australian Research Council and Land & Water Australia.
I’ll have to ask the next eco-commissar how their climate-change model accounted for this.
The bottom line is that plants need to open their pores to get CO2, but they lose moisture through those pores at the same time. With more CO2, they need to open them less, lose less moisture, so uptake less moisture from the ground. In turn this means the ground can support more plants over a given area.
While this is most obvious in deserts, it wetter grounds it means that soil can now support different flora, which uses more water, and is more resistant to root rots that live in wet soil.
It also means expanding jungles and wetlands.
Hurricanes and Tornadoes are real?! I thought that was only in Sci-Fi movies or something... O.O
“Greenhouse growers have known of the effects of higher co2 levels.”
When I had a nursery in Calif. we read where many Greenhouse growers were buying and discharging CO2 into the houses for greater plant growth.
It works! More co2 in the atmosphere will continue to feed people and expand the range of food crops. Gimme a slice of co2!
wait a minute
CO2 helps make the planet, and more of it, “greener” and yet the anti-CO2 religion takes the name of a “green” movement, comfiscating the color green into everything attached to “less CO2”
irrational or what?
House kills Dem proposals on environment, renewable energy
Global Warming on Free Republic
AND the number of polar bears is UP...
Years ago an experiment was done with a real greenhouse (not fancy 'mathematical modelling' - turned out more CO2 made things grow - but especially weeds. Might be interesting.
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