By James Taylor -December 6, 2021
The New York Times published an article Friday titled, “A Slow-Motion Climate Disaster: The Spread of Barren Land.” The article claims global warming is causing drought in northeastern Brazil, turning the region into a desert. Objective satellite measurements of vegetation, however, show increasing vegetation in northeast Brazil and throughout Brazil as a whole, not the other way around. The Times article is merely another example of agenda-driven fake climate news.
In its subtitle, the article claims, “Brazil’s northeast, long a victim of droughts, is now effectively turning into desert. The cause? Climate change and the landowners who are most affected.” The article adds, “Climate change is intensifying droughts in Brazil’s northeast, leaving the land barren. The phenomenon, called desertification, is happening across the planet.”
NASA satellite instruments have precisely measured the amount of vegetation throughout the Earth since the early 1980s. NASA reported its findings in an article titled “Carbon Dioxide Fertilization Greening Earth, Study Finds.” According to NASA, “From a quarter to half of Earth’s vegetated lands has shown significant greening over the last 35 years largely due to rising levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide.” Most of the rest of the land shows little change one way or the other, while a very small amount of land shows a decline in vegetation.
As a whole, “The greening represents an increase in leaves on plants and trees equivalent in area to two times the continental United States,” NASA reports.
In the chart below, provided by NASA, you can see that nearly all of Brazil, including nearly all of northeast Brazil, is enjoying a significant increase in vegetation. Only a few, very small areas of Brazil and northeast Brazil are seeing a decline in vegetation.
The Times is right that where farmers or ranchers are deliberately removing rainforest and replacing it with farms or rangeland, vegetation declines. But that is not due to climate change, and those are about the only places in Brazil where vegetation is not increasing as the Earth modestly warms.
The simple, undeniable truth is that vegetation is increasing virtually everywhere in Brazil. The New York Times, in order to promote a fictitious climate crisis, is telling provably wrong lies to sell newspapers and to sell alarm. James Taylor is the President of the Heartland Institute. Taylor is also director of Heartland’s Arthur B. Robinson Center for Climate and Environmental Policy. Taylor is the former managing editor (2001-2014) of Environment & Climate News, a national monthly publication devoted to sound science and free-market environmentalism.
NASA satellite instruments have precisely measured the amount of vegetation throughout the Earth since the early 1980s. NASA reported its findings in an article titled “Carbon Dioxide Fertilization Greening Earth, Study Finds.”
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There’s also this page from NOAA:
NOAA Satellite Data Used in Study Finding Significant Greening in Earth’s Vegetative Areas
Never let facts get in the way of a good story!!!
Never let facts get in the way of a tall story!!!
Who ya gonna blieve me or you own lying eyes?
As an antidotal story, I have noted that even in drought years ( Southern California) the native vegetation stays green longer and greens sooner then fifty years ago when I was a teenager.
I am guessing that was some 100 plus PPM reduced CO2. ( very early in the Anthropocene ) sarc
OCO satellite data mappings also show increased levels of atmospheric CO2 located where vegetation is most intense (forests and jungles). If such areas are primarily net users and not producers of CO2 then why doesn’t the OCO-2 based mapping show a dearth of atmospheric CO2 in those areas? Further, if human activity is responsible for only five percent of the Atmospheric CO2, according to the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, then what is the source of the other ninety-five percent? I can’t think of any corresponding increase in Nature that could be the cause other than the increase of global vegetation which has been primarily caused by global warming not CO2.
“…I can’t think of any corresponding increase in Nature that could be the cause other than the increase of global vegetation which has been primarily caused by global warming not CO2.”
Some 71% of our planet’s surface area is covered by ocean.
(i) As the oceans warm, which takes many thousands of years, they release carbon dioxide into the atmosphere according to the principles described by ‘Henry’s Law’.
(ii) Some 80% or more of the worlds volcanoes are located and emit huge amounts of carbon dioxide, under the worlds oceans.
This clearly means that during a regular cyclical warming period such as we are currently experiencing as we recover from the ‘Little Ice Age’ cooling period, the oceans become a significant net source of carbon dioxide emissions to the atmosphere, in addition to the terrestrial based sources.
Conversely when the world enters a glaciation phase, the oceans become net absorbers of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, and as a result plant life suffers, desert areas and dust increase and all biota life is reduced proportionately.
We are extraordinarily fortunate to be living during the current highly beneficial interglacial.
From the same mouth that sold aluminum tubes and chemical weapons
I’m sure Chris is trying to say something, but it’s not clear at all who he’s talking about or what it it exactly means.
Are you lost? Did you stumble onto this site and mistakenly think people were discussing the war in Iraq from 20+ years ago?
Easy, Chris just got his booster.
Except those pesky deserts that are greening.
“We’d have got away with it if it weren’t for those pesky greening deserts!”
It’s a very simple fundamental botanical equation. The stomata on the underside of a leaf open and close to allow CO2 into the leaf for photosynthesis. While open, the leaf loses water via transpiration to the surrounding air.
The higher CO2 concentration in the air requires the stomata to be open for a shorter amount of time to absorb the required amount. This reduces the amount of water loss experienced while acquiring the needed CO2. It is a “truth” that increasing the CO2 concentration in the air reduces the amount of water that a plant needs to grow.
Without changes in rainfall distribution, higher CO2 will lead to increased vegetation.
Kindergarten Science always gives such wholesome returns, especially for Magical Thinkers
For other sorts of thinkers:
here’s A Ponderation for y’all
Premise: If CO2 was an actual fertiliser that would mean that it was/is the Liebig Limiter for plant growth.
Question: if the premise is correct, why then do farmers & growers all around The World spend so much time and money adding Nitrogen, Phosphorus, Potassium and Sulphur to their fields & crops and why does their doing so seem to work so well?
It gets worse, many farmers now add this stuff to their crops
See its list of ingredients, does CO2 feature there?
See what’s there, now consider the epic outbreaks of Anaemia among the world’s (female) population
Note also that Cu, inside us critters, is essential for Iron metabolism.
Then combine Anaemia with a Vitamin B (has Facebook really cancelled mention of that word) deficiency brought on from a plant based diet (what is all that greenery Sputnik is seeing) and you get the now apparent epidemic of Autism Spectrum Disorders
(how does NASA not know these things, what agenda are they on. Are they to be trusted anymore?)
My family once had a greenhouse business that distributed vegetables plants and flowers all over the Midwest. We supplied more than 2000 nurseries.
We raised the co2 levels of the growing buildings to between 1200 and 2000 ppm depending on the particular crops. The strong growth and lushness of our products were largely due to the “poison” alarmist fear so greatly .
Right on, Doug D, and the “greenhouse effect” was due to the transparent roof and walls of the greenhouse, permitting solar energy to enter, change wavelength, and warm the inside. Next.
and also impermeable roof and walls, which prevented convection from carrying the heat away.
Crank.
The true “Greenhouse Effect” is caused by solar radiation passing through the glass and warming the ground in greenhouse. The warmed ground then transfers its heat to the air, which then rises by convection, warming the whole greenhouse. Greenhouses cool rapidly when the vents on the roof are opened. This would not happen if your explanation was correct.
Try walking barefoot through a greenhouse…
The first thing you’ll notice is that the ground is cool. The first part of your premise is wrong.
Ron Long is closer to the truth. Only wavelengths don’t “change”.
Every object, including those dark green leaves and mostly transparent glass, absorbs solar energy, warms up and fails to convect higher in the atmosphere.
That failure to convect removes any possibility of the greenhouse to cool.
Nope.
Vents do allow hot air to convect up out of the greenhouse.
Except, someone who is spending a lot of money raising CO₂ levels in the greenhouse would not be smart to vent that higher level of CO₂ back to background.
On top of that, open windows in greenhouses invite in insects, parasites, molds, pollen and a number of other undesirables when someone is trying to achieve an excellent crop.
Modern greenhouses use coolers, frequently swamp coolers or wet blanket coolers that increase humidity as they cool.
Historical Corn Grain Yields In The U.S. | Purdue University Pest&Crop newsletter
not what you’re hearing from those farmers in Newark?
“Corn grain yields in the U.S. have steadily increased since the late 1930’s.”
Localized crop failures and year to year variations are just blips in the trend.
Major contributing factors to the explosive growth would be:
1) Petroleum-derived nitrogen fertilizers (those net zero fools who want to put a stop to fossil fuels need to be pressed to address what to replace it with to prevent catastrophic crop declines!)
2) Rising CO2 (plants main foodstock)
3) Genetic modifications (mostly by hybrid breeding)
4) Improved farming practices (soil management, irrigation, weed and pest control, petroleum powered farm machinery, etc.)
yes,in greenhouses they prefere to have 800ppm co2
WTF, over.
@Peta said:
” … why then do farmers & growers all around The World spend so much time and money adding Nitrogen, Phosphorus, Potassium and Sulphur to their fields & crops and why does their doing so seem to work so well?
It gets worse, many farmers now add this stuff [Active Ingredient0.7% boron (B), 0.4% copper (Cu), 3.4% iron (Fe) chelated with EDTA, 2.1% manganese (Mn), 0.2% molybdenum (Mo), 0.6% zinc (Zn)] to their crops
See its list of ingredients, does CO2 feature there?”
You missed the point, Peta. Plants are carbon-based organisms, which need to ingest (“eat”) carbon to increase their mass (“grow”).
Does your “list of ingredients” contain any carbon?
Q: Guess where the carbon comes from?
A: CO2 (“food”)
“Question: if the premise is correct, why then do farmers & growers all around The World spend so much time and money adding Nitrogen, Phosphorus, Potassium and Sulphur to their fields & crops and why does their doing so seem to work so well?”
Adding the other nutrients does boost growth too. But its not possible to economically “add” CO2 to outdoor crops? Greenhouse growers do, though.
In the USA, I’d recommend that you sign up at your local state agriculture extension for classes and learning.
Surely, the UK has similar initiatives.
Exactly how do you fertilize crops with CO₂, Peta?
Doug D explicitly describes how his family increased CO₂ feedstock in greenhouses.
You can only accomplish CO₂ fertilization in a garden by somehow encasing the garden.
Nevertheless, Increasing CO₂ levels is fertilization.
Which brings us towards the next point. Nitrogen, phosphorus?? do you mean phosphate, potassium are also feedstocks and the most frequent components in any fertilizer you purchase or compost.
Sulfur is primarily an amendment. Yes, sulfur in trace amounts is a feedstock. Mostly the sulfur amends the soils acidic.
Boron, copper, chelated iron, manganese, molybdenum, zinc are all trace elements necessary for plant life.
Insufficient trace element symptoms are often misdiagnosed as caused by disease, water levels, pests, etc.
These are things the local garden experts can help you spot.
Farmers should already know who to contact regarding spotting trace element deficiencies.
Yawn… Another New York Times article about a “story” that was too good to fact check.
More Co2 means more plants, more plants means more oxygen and more food. To leftists more oxygen and more food are BAD and must be stopped. Please get with the program, chi’drens! 😉
I’m curious, 2hotel9, is hotel and 9 where the coordinate boxes/rows intersected in Laos during the Vietnam War?
No. Radio call sign I used in Army.
NYT: Grocery store checkout isle journalism
The subscribers don’t know any different either.
The NYT , formerly a newspaper, lies about everything else. Why expect truth in climate news ?
eco-warriors lack the realization that forests spread all by themselves. Farmers spend considerable time keeping their fields fields.
And that’s true even in cities, as evidenced by those pictures of abandoned neighborhoods in Detroit years ago. After three or four years with no one tending the trees and shrubbery you could barely see some of the houses anymore.
This is why I am continually amused by “Plant a Tree” initiatives. Trees happen. When they are in my flowerbeds, they are weeds, and every spring I pluck them out by the hundreds.
The main deforestation problems are elsewhere in the world, where desperate populations are clearing for farms or scrounging for fuel, grossly worsened by the hapless and idiotic biofuels movement.
Just you wait. At some point the alarmists will suddenly recognise that increased levels of CO2 makes Japanese Knot Weed grow more vigorously. It will be true, of course, but that will be the bad fact they have managed to discover among an ocean of good facts.
Perhaps all we need to do is persuade the BBC that we need to start eating Japanese Knot Weed. I can already picture those lovely dishes prepared on Master Chef.
Yes, and the Dust Bowl of the 30s was also due to climate change.
Oh wait.
Brazil’s NE was ever and is a semi-arid. I am 50 and I heard all governments promising to end the drought in the region, with mega projects like transposing a river, water collection facilities, etc, etc. And this was happening way before I was born. It was partially solved when Obama’s “The Man” faux-socialist president Lula da Silva, a darling of the press, started the major irrigation project, changing the direction of the largest river in the region. But he couldn’t do anything wrong to press, even being the most corrupt person in the country and maybe the world.
Ha! You beat me by two minutes (-:
The north east “corner” of Brazil does have a fairly large section
LINK
that has a (hot semi arid) climate that is about the size of New Mexico and our good
friends in the press no doubt imagine it to be a new phenomenon and getting larger.
From the article: “and those are about the only places in Brazil where vegetation is not increasing as the Earth modestly warms.”
It is currently cooling globally.
Yeah, I know, you have to throw them a bone.
http://www.drroyspencer.com/2021/12/uah-global-temperature-update-for-november-2021-0-08-deg-c/
Hey, Roy, why isn’t there a direct link to your latest chart?
From the article: “The Times article is merely another example of agenda-driven fake climate news.”
Yes, and we are getting numerous examples of this kind of climate change propaganda every day.
The problem with this is people who have a propensity fo believe in Human-caused Climate Change use these stories as confirmation of their position.
True Believers pick and choose what they want to believe. They are not critical thinkers.
I suppose all of us pick and choose what we want to believe to a certain extent. Some of us apply more critical thinking to it than others.
All of us should always question ourselves and how we look at reality. Things aren’t always as they seem.
One thing I know is real: Climate Change Alarmists have never proven their case. Not even close. That’s reality.
NYT article behind a paywall, you can however read it here:
https://indianexpress.com/article/world/climate-change/brazil-climate-change-barren-land-7653866/
There is high variability in precipitation for that part of the world, nothing new.
The climate of North Eastern Brazil has natural variations that easily account for the recent conditions and worse, the 1877-1879 drought being a sad example.
‘G’reenlighting.
Hey come on guys, you are not still using that old fashioned idea of looking at the facts and data are you?
The NYT have moved forward from that corny old idea. They prefer the far more effective computer modelling and if that does not spit out the preferred result needed to support the desired climate alarm agenda, then the other modern climate science alarmist method of just make it all up, comes into play.
This article is arrant nonsense.
Nothing ‘greens’ when there’s drought.
Here’s some actual in depth science
Drought in Northeast Brazil: A review of agricultural and policy adaptation options for food security – Marengo – – Climate Resilience and Sustainability – Wiley Online Library
Did you bother to read the Abstract?
Here is the first paragraph,
It is already a dry region…… naturally. I live in one that gets 7.5″ precipitation annually which means you can barely grow anything without irrigation as rainfall is too scanty just like that region in Brazil.
They can try Dry Land farming as my region does in places with no irrigation available.
“Did you bother to read the Abstract?”
Lol! Good one.
1) Drought is relative. Things dry out in a drought, but don’t always go brown.
2) The claim that there is a “drought” in Brazil is claimed, not proven.
3) Griff will never actually read an article that he links to.
CRUTEM4 data for Northeast Brazil, is this allowed?
This is the closest data to Parelhas mentioned in the article, Cruzeta.
I just looked outside. Green grass where there was none for 9 months is growing everywhere.
As I recall, green grass doesn’t grow in deserts. So much for desertification here.
Report them to Facebook for misleading info on climate!
Much of Brazil is on or close to the equator. Rising air is not something that will ever be hard to find in that country.
So long as you have rising air, you won’t need to worry about finding rain storms.
You MUST believe the New York Slimes, not your lying eyes (or satellite images). Because they’re “the paper of record”, or something.
There’s no extra leaves here, said the person who walked through poison ivy wearing shorts!
It’s so depressing to me that the NYTimes has abandoned journalism in the pursuit of clicks irrespective of how they get them. Seriously, are they such incompetent writers that they can’t both write compelling and TRUE articles?