Rising Carbon Dioxide Levels, Fossil Fuels, and the Greening of Planet Earth

Der Park, Gustav Klimt (1910)

Instapundit had this article link that links to this article by Matt Ridley.  There are a lot of great links and data in this Ridley article.  If you have the time, I encourage you to check them all out.  

As carbon dioxide levels have risen over the last few decades, Ridley cites this source that plant life has expanded world wide (In the 1980s forest biologists started to report striking increases in the growth rates of trees and the density of forests: in Douglas firs in British Columbia, Scots pines in Finland, bristlecone pines in Colorado and even tropical rain forests) in response to CO2 increases (thanks in large part to fossil fuels):

There is no empirical evidence to support the model-based claim that future carbon uptake by plants will diminish on a global scale due to rising temperatures. In fact, just the opposite situation has been observed in the real world. 

Earth's land surfaces were a net source of CO2-carbon to the atmosphere until about 1940. From 1940 onward, however, the terrestrial biosphere has become, in the mean, an increasingly greatersink for CO2-carbon. 

Over the past 50 years, for example, global carbon uptake has doubled from 2.4 ± 0.8 billion tons in 1960 to 5.0 ± 0.9 billion tons in 2010 (see figure below). 

The observed global greening has occurred in spite of all the many real and imagined assaults on Earth's vegetation that have occurred over the past several decades, including wildfires, disease, pest outbreaks, deforestation, and climatic changes in temperature and precipitation, more than compensating for any of the negative effects these phenomena may have had on the global biosphere. 

There is compelling evidence that the atmosphere's rising CO2 content - which alarmists consider to be the chief culprit behind all of their concerns about the future of the biosphere (via the indirect threats they claim it poses as a result of CO2-induced climate change) - is most likely the primary cause of the observed greening trends. 

In the future, Earth's plants should be able to successfully adjust their physiology to accommodate a warming of the magnitude and rate-of-rise that is typically predicted by climate models to accompany the projected future increase in the air's CO2 content. Factoring in plant productivity gains that will occur as a result of the aerial fertilization effect of the ongoing rise in atmospheric CO2, plus its accompanying transpiration- reducing effect that boosts plant water use efficiency, the world's vegetation possesses an ideal mix of abilities to reap a tremendous benefit in the years and decades to come.

So maybe Al Gore really is not a hypocrite in selling out Current TV to Qatar oil sheiks.

The Garden of Earthly Delight, Hieronymus Bosch (circa 1480-1505)