Guest Essay by Kip Hansen

This is Part 3 of a four part series.  If you are not familiar with The Fight Against Global Greening – Part 1 and Part 2, you can either read them in their  entirety and then read this, or read the introduction of Part 1 up to the line “Let’s look at #1” and then read this. — kh

Carl Zimmer of the NY Times has said “‘Global Greening’ Sounds Good. In the Long Run, It’s Terrible.”.  In collaboration with Dr. J. E. Campbell of the Sierra Nevada Research Institute, he has stated that position,  offering us these:

Bad Things About Global Greening: (quoted from Zimmer’s article)

1. “More Photosynthesis Doesn’t Mean More Food“

2. “Extra Carbon Dioxide Can Make Plants Less Nutritious”

3. “More Plants Won’t Prevent Climate Change”

4. “Global Greening Won’t Last Forever”

In Part 1, we looked at the question of the relationship between increased photosynthesis and food production (Zimmer’s #1).  In Part 2, we discussed the claim that “extra carbon dioxide can make plants less nutritious”.

Let’s Look at #3:  “More Plants Won’t Prevent Climate Change”

Here’s what Zimmer and Campbell say:

“More Plants Won’t Prevent Climate Change

“It’s not just strawberries and other crops that are taking in extra carbon dioxide. So are the forests, grasslands and other wild ecosystems of the world.

When scientists take into account both extra photosynthesis and respiration, they estimate that plants remove a quarter of the carbon dioxide we put in the atmosphere.

“That’s on par with what China emits,” said Dr. Campbell. “And China is the biggest global polluter.”

Even more remarkably, the plants have been scrubbing the same fraction of carbon dioxide out of the air even as our emissions explode.

“Every year we build more power plants, and every year the plants take out more CO2,” Dr. Campbell said.

But that isn’t cause to celebrate. It’s a bit like hearing that your chemotherapy is slowing the growth of your tumor by 25 percent.

Despite global greening, carbon dioxide levels have climbed over the past two centuries to levels not seen on Earth for millions of years. And the carbon dioxide we’ve injected into the atmosphere is already having major impacts across the planet.

The six warmest years on record all occurred after 2010. The weather has already become more extreme. Sea levels have risen. The oceans are acidifying.

If plants keep on absorbing only a quarter of our carbon dioxide in the future, then we can expect all these trends to get stronger.

In other words, if global greening isn’t saving us now, we can’t rely on it to save us in the future.”

Let’s try to figure out the logic to what Zimmer and Campbell are saying.  They accept without argument that:

1. “plants remove a quarter of the carbon dioxide we put in the atmosphere.”

“That’s on par with what China emits,” said Dr. Campbell. “And China is the biggest global polluter.”

2. “the plants have been scrubbing the same fraction of carbon dioxide out of the air even as our emissions explode.”

“Every year we build more power plants, and every year the plants take out more CO2,” Dr. Campbell said.

Now, if any other process could be credited with removing a full 25% of all CO₂ emitted by mankind every year, year after year, it would be labelled heroic.  Governments and laboratories are fielding schemes to hopefully remove fairly small  amounts of CO₂  or to prevent them from being emitted in the first place — these pages here at WUWT  feature these ideas, one after another — schemes to convert CO₂ into rocks, capture CO₂ into fuels like ammonia, capture and store CO₂ in caves and oil wells.  Just  imagine for a moment that we were talking about China reducing its CO2  emissions to zero overnight.  This is what Global Greening is currently doing, cost free.

But instead of applauding this biologically-induced geoengineering feat, Zimmer offers us (and I am actually embarrassed, on his behalf,  to quote him) this:

“But that isn’t cause to celebrate.

It’s a bit like hearing that your chemotherapy is slowing the growth of your tumor by 25 percent.”

[ Let’s ignore the insensitivity of this statement — how hurtful it must be to those fighting cancer themselves, or with relatives fighting cancer,  around the world, who would be thrilled to hear that the growth their tumors had been slowed.  The comparison of CO₂ emissions to cancer is itself is a vicious bit of insensitive propaganda hype. ]

The reduction of CO2 emissions by an entire “China’s worth” is “not a cause for celebration”?  Apparently, for Zimmer and Campbell, all of the Paris Agreement targets, even if actually being met by any country, would also not be “cause to celebrate”.  After all, they only slow the growth of atmospheric CO₂ , they do not eliminate it altogether.

It is difficult to follow this line of reasoning….it doesn’t actually seem to be a line of reasoning, but rather a line of unreasoning.  The majority of the scientific world concerned with atmospheric CO₂ is struggling, fighting, to reduce emissions and, if possible, remove CO₂  from the atmosphere in order to reduce CO₂ concentrations, which the IPCC has claimed to be dangerous.  Yet Zimmer vainly tries to convince us that a no-cost,  no-effort method that annually removes an amount of CO₂  equivalent to the entire annual emissions of the world’s worst emitter, China, is “not a cause to celebrate.”

His position is simply paraphrased as:  “There is no good in removing CO₂  from the atmosphere unless you can entirely stop its concentration  from growing.”   With this he has  thrown the entire Paris Agreement effort  under the bus.

What effect does Global Greening have on atmospheric CO₂ concentrations?  Zimmer and Campbell have stipulated [agreed without the necessity of argument] that Global Greening removes from the atmosphere some about 10 billion tons of CO₂ annually.  Not only that, but it keeps removing more each year as the globe greens.

Really?  Yes, here’s the graph:

This graph, from UCSD/Scripps, represents the Earth’s “breathing” — in the Northern spring and summer, growing plants remove CO₂  faster than we emit it and the monthly data points go down. As growth slows in the mid-summer and through winter, plants don’t take up as much CO₂ and emissions get ahead.  The Southern hemisphere does not have as much an effect on the graph as does the Northern hemisphere. We see though that as Global Greening takes hold, it takes up more parts-per-million year to year — in the 1960s, the seasonal difference was 6.2 ppm, by 2018 it has risen to 9 ppm.

Then this:

The other thing that is obvious is that CO₂ concentrations (in ppm) continue to rise as modern societies (and Nature) continue to emit more CO₂ than increased plant photosynthesis takes up.   Since 2000, from the first chart above,  the annual increase in ppm of seasonal uptake of CO₂ has been about 0.125ppm/year — or 1/8^th of a ppm per year.  In eight years, that increase is 1 ppm.  But CO₂  is increasing at an average rate (2010-2017) of 2.54 ppm/year.  Global Greening will not catch up at these rates, will not stop and will not reverse the increase of CO₂ atmospheric concentrations by itself.

Zimmer and Campbell are right on this score:

Global Greening, by itself, will not stop the rise in atmospheric CO_2. 

Now that we’ve got a good handle on the facts, let’s revisit what claim Zimmer was attempting to refute with his odd claim that “Global Greening is terrible because  “More Plants Won’t Prevent Climate Change””.

Did anyone ever claim that Global Greening would prevent climate change?

In Zimmer’s “Global Greening….it’s Terrible” article in the NY Times, Zimmer says:

“Climate change denialists were quick to jump on Dr. Campbell’s research <b>as proof that increased carbon dioxide is making the world a better place.</b>

“So-called carbon pollution has done much more to expand and invigorate the planet’s greenery than all the climate policies of all the world’s governments combined,” the Competitive Enterprise Institute declared shortly after the study came out.

“The best messages are positive: CO2 increases crop yields, the earth is greening,” wrote Joseph Bast, the chief executive officer of the Heartland Institute, in an October 2017 email obtained by EE News.

In June, Mr. Bast co-authored an opinion piece in The Wall Street Journal in which he cited Dr. Campbell’s work as evidence of the benefits of fossil fuels. Our unleashing of carbon dioxide contributes “to the greening of the Earth,” he said. “

Zimmer engages in a journalistic trick — he jumps in with both boots to refute something that was never claimed in the first place — no one ever claimed that Global Greening would stop climate change.

How many things can you list that are good that will not stop climate change?  World Peace, an AIDS vaccine, ending poverty, an unbiased press.  The list is pretty long.  None of these would be terrible just because they don’t stop climate change, and neither is Global Greening.

It is not that Zimmer and Campbell don’t have a valid point — they do, but they don’t state it and they don’t use it — they do something illogical and try to establish a falsehood as true instead.

It would have been simple enough to say that,  from their viewpoint, while Global Greening may be a positive side effect of rising atmospheric CO₂, their concerns about the potential negative effects of global warming/climate change lead them to continue to believe that rising atmospheric CO₂ is, on balance, a negative thing, a bad thing, and in their odd choice of words, “terrible”.   We could accept that — they are allowed to have a point of view and to state it along with their reasoning for holding that viewpoint.   But Zimmer seems to have allowed himself to be swept up by emotion-fueled advocacy — his need to fight “climate change” at any cost — and lost his thread of rationality, abandoned his journalistic ethics and destroyed my respect for him as a science journalist.   Had he been writing on the Opinion pages of the NY Times, as Andy Revkin did, he could bang away with his climate change advocacy to his heart’s content —  but personal opinion disguised as facts doesn’t belong in the Science news section of any newspaper.

What he never should have tried to do is to convince his readers that “Global Greening is terrible” — it is not — GLOBAL GREENING IS WONDERFUL

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Author’s Comment Policy:

I was saddened by Carl Zimmer’s descent into irrational advocacy.  He is a sharp guy and usually writes good science journalism.   We often see the same thing here with our readers and their comments — someone who normally writes good comments, makes good observations, raises interesting questions suddenly flips and becomes an irrational advocate blathering illogic about some specialized topic — be it GMOs or Feral Cats.   It takes a very strong mind to keep on the rather narrow path of good science, rational thought, critical thinking and logical argument when dealing with a subject about which one is passionate.  The ability to do so is a trait we ascribe to scientists — who, because they are human like the rest of us, often let us down in this regard.

I hope readers will confine their comments to the subject of this essay.  Hint: it is about science journalism, Global Greening good-or-bad, and how advocacy and science reporting must not be mixed.

Recently, I have noticed that many readers treat every comment thread as an Open Thread — in which they are free to discuss — and endless argue —  whatever is on their minds.  This is not true.  The Policy of WUWT states: “Some off topic comments may get deleted, don’t take it personally, it happens. Commenters that routinely lead threads astray in areas that are not relevant or are of personal interest only to them may find these posts deleted.”   Moderation here is done with a light hand, but the principle of commenting on topic remains.

Address your comments to “Kip…” if you are speaking specifically to me and I’ll try to respond.

Thanks for reading.

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Quick Links:

The Fight Against Global Greening – Part 1

The Fight Against Global Greening – Part 2

Zimmer’s NY Times article “Global Greening….it’s Terrible”

The Competitive Enterprise Institute declared shortly after the study came out

EE News: Skeptics suspicious of Pruitt plan to press him on red team

October 2017 Heartland email [illegally?] obtained by EE News [pdf]

Our unleashing of carbon dioxide contributes “to the greening of the Earth,”

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