This just in: Carbon dioxide (CO2) is good for trees. It's good for plant life in general, in fact. Anyone who has taken a 5th-grade science course knows this and knows that every scrap of food eaten by any animal anywhere on the planet was produced by plants, through the wonders of photosynthesis. That's why biologists call plants producers, and animals and fungi, consumers.
Turns out that a recent study in the Amazon rain forest - yet another study, I should say - has revealed something we should have already known.
NBC News is reporting on a new study which found that the Amazon rain forest is benefitting from increased carbon dioxide (CO2) levels in the atmosphere. The findings of the study, while informative, are unsurprising. Multiple studies have confirmed what agronomists, botanists, and farmers and greenhouse operators have long known, that higher CO2 makes plants grow faster, stronger, and more lushly, and as a result, recent increases in CO2 have is contributed to a general greening of the Earth.
The NBC News story, “Giant trees of the Amazon get taller as forests fatten up on carbon dioxide,” reports on a study published in the journal Nature Plants which found trees in the Amazon were growing larger and, when undisturbed by deforestation, increasing in number due to rising atmospheric CO2 levels.
“The giants of the Amazon are getting even bigger,” says NBC News. “A sweeping, new study has found the rainforest’s largest trees are not only holding their ground, but they’re thriving — growing, multiplying in number and continuing to play a major role in mitigating the impacts of climate change.”
As a biologist, I can only say, "Well, duh."
We should note that, yes, the CO2 levels in our atmosphere have risen somewhat in the recent past and are rising now, slowly and slightly. In the distant past, levels were much higher. In the Carboniferous, roughly 360-300 million years ago, carbon dioxide levels were as high as 9,000 parts per million (ppm). For reference, today's CO2 levels, the ones that are causing climate scolds to break out in monkey bites, are a tad over 400 ppm. In the early Carboniferous, the planet was covered with heavy, dank forests. It is from these forests that most of our coal supply comes.
CO2 is good for plants.
The Amazon, we should note, is an important biome. It produces a lot of oxygen and is home to a rich variety of plant and animal species. So is the great northern taiga, which out Susitna Valley homestead is on the edge of. The taiga is even larger and produces more oxygen than the Amazon.
Let's not forget agricultural crops, which also benefit from the slight increases in CO2. These plants are the champions at turning sunlight, CO2, and trace minerals into sugars and carbohydrates - food.
All of this apparently had to be confirmed, once more, in yet another study.
The study, which included participation by more than 100 researchers from more than 60 universities and research institutes in Brazil, Bolivia, Columbia, and the United Kingdom, among other countries, tracked changes across 188 plots in the Amazonian rainforest for more than 30 years. It found, in the words of the study, “trees have become larger over time, with mean tree basal area increasing by 3.3% per decade.
“Larger trees have increased in both number and size, yet we observed similar rates of relative size gain in large and small trees,” said the study.
You don't say. Here's the onion:
“There was an understanding that big trees were ‘expected to be vulnerable to climate change,’ Adriane Esquivel-Muelbert, one of the study’s lead authors, told NBC News . . .. ‘What we see here is actually they seem to be showing quite a resilience.’
“‘We’re not seeing signs of them dying off,’ said Esquivel-Muelbert [continued], . . . . ‘They are increasing in size and number as well.’”
Again, I would refer this study's lead authors to any 5th-grade science teacher.
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It's nice to see a legacy media outlet admitting that, yes, science is a thing, and that facts matter. Oh, they get in the usual disclaimers, with a treatise on how "a little more CO2 is good, but more may be bad" - along with an admittedly valid statement that excessive cutting and burning might do the Amazon rain forests some serious damage. What's a science story in NBC News without a little climate panic-mongering?
If the Amazon is in any trouble, it's from humans overcutting and burning, not from a slight CO2 level increase; indeed, an increase in CO2 would increase, not decrease, the ability of the rainforest to rebound from human activities. More trees and bigger trees are good, as are more food crops, as are the same factors in the vast northern taiga, and in pretty much every other biome on the planet.
These are facts. They have been known for many years. It's good to see the legacy media at least paying lip service to these facts. Could the climate scolds be in trouble? Is even the legacy media, those bastions of the anti-capitalist left, beginning to see through the hype?
We can hope. But I wouldn't hold my breath.
