I recall in high school being part of a debate "should we rape the deserts?" What a set-up in terminology by the Left-wing feminist teacher, even in those early days! I was leading the pro-case, arguing that deserts are barren places that have increased in size due to bad farming practices, at least for those that did not re-exist human activities. I recall arguing that if there was some way of regenerating the deserts, it should be taken. And, of course my side lost the debate, the Left-wing early feminist teacher decided.
However, the issue is arising today, with deserts across the world shrinking due to a greening of the deserts by increased plant growth from our good friend carbon dioxide, plant food. This evidence, summarised below, flies in the face of the climate change alarmist/catastrophe paradigm, which holds that deserts are increasing because of climate change, and that desertification is one of the greatest threats to human civilisation.
But, that is not so. A 2020 study from scientists at the Woodwell Climate Research Centre, concluded that greening was "much more extensive than previously acknowledged," and more than three times greater than desertification. This was due to increased levels of carbon dioxide.
The greening of the planet will in fact be a great protection against any of the problems in the fertile imaginations of the climate change environmentalists. Green plants will use carbon dioxide in photosynthesis, producing a "waste product," life-giving oxygen. Green plants are a carbon sink, absorbing the carbon produced by industrial activity. There is no need to abandon fossil fuels and engage in the madness of attacking farming. In fact, the environmentalist agenda, if it succeeds, will increase carbon emissions, given that the transformation of economies based upon fossil fuels to illusory renewables will require vast resources to be used to produce the alternative infrastructure, all carbon producing.
"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.
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.