Thanks for confirming my point, mhaze.

You quoted the Zhu study to try and "prove" CO2 is good. What you left out is that the same paper warns of ecosystem disruption, changing carbon and water cycles, and long-term risks. That’s the part you conveniently skipped.

//So is greening of the planet a red herring or not?//

Yes. As a rebuttal to anthropogenic climate change, it absolutely is.

You’re using it as if it somehow disproves or downplays the problem. That’s the red herring. No one said greening isn’t happening. I said the "CO2 is plant food = therefore climate change is good" argument is simplistic and misleading.

And it is.

Greening and fertilisation effects are part of the climate system’s response to CO2, not a blanket benefit.

- Crops do grow faster in high CO2 - if they’re not constrained by water, nutrients, or heatwaves.
- Some weeds benefit more than food crops.
- Higher CO2 can lower the nutrient density of key staples like rice and wheat.
- And greening in some regions correlates with desertification in others.

You’re cherry-picking one short-term upside and ignoring the long-term system-level trade-offs - like someone saying, "Alcohol gives me confidence!" while ignoring the liver damage.

And as for "previous warm periods being good for civilisation" - you mean like the Medieval Warm Period, which was regional, or the Holocene Climatic Optimum, which had different forcing mechanisms entirely? Not great comparisons for a global, rapid, anthropogenic change.

I’m not the one reversing course, mhaze. I’ve been consistent. You’re just discovering that "not all bad" doesn’t mean "no problem." You’re conflating some benefit with no risk. That's not realism. That’s wishful thinking dressed up as contrarianism.

You're not very good at following lines of discussion, are you?

Speaking of climate trends, I think I know now why mhaze is now on-board with science:
___

Poirot wrote:"Hows about we invite you, mhaze, to list the things that would convince you that your denialism is misplaced? "

Well I wrote in a previous thread the following. As I recall you assiduously avoided the issue which is where I first realised that your belief is more religious than scientific.

My list is:
* we had rapid warming of approx 1c over the next decade or two
* we saw evidence that the postulated positive feedbacks are indeed positive and exist outside the models and that they overwhelm negative feedbacks
* we saw evidence that models are able to simulate cloud movement/formation and still predict a warming
* we saw evidence that models were able to replicate past climate changes

http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?discussion=5631#157270
___

Well, good news (or bad), mhaze. We’re there!

Unless, of course, you’ve got a new list? I'm guessing you do since denialism adapts to new findings using motivated reasoning.

Funny how it never admits it was wrong. It just quietly redraws the battlelines and pretends they were there all along.

"You’re just discovering that "not all bad" doesn’t mean "no problem." "

Except I didn't say, I've never said, "no problem". Just making up more false quotes from me. Will you ever get embarrassed enough to stop doing that?

CO2 causes some warming. That's potentially bad. But the increases in CO2 in the atmosphere isn't all bad. You always pretend to understand nuance. But always fail to demonstrate it.

WTF?

Yes mhaze I did make reference to your source material.

But there is much more in it then just greening.

I think that most high school Biology students (back in my time anyway) would have learned about Blackman's Law Of Limiting Factors. So greening due to an increase in CO2 would be of no surprise, even an expectation, to many with a post Year 10 education.

NASA acknowledges this: "carbon dioxide fertilization isn’t the only cause of increased plant growth — nitrogen, land cover change and climate change by way of global temperature, precipitation and sunlight changes all contribute to the greening effect."

The beneficial impacts of carbon dioxide on plants may also be limited, said co-author Dr. Philippe Ciais, associate director of the Laboratory of Climate and Environmental Sciences, Gif-suv-Yvette, France. “Studies have shown that plants acclimatize, or adjust, to rising carbon dioxide concentration and the fertilization effect diminishes over time.” Once again - limiting factors at play.

I hope your new found embracing of NASA research and analysis leads to you taking some of the denialists on OLO to task.

Now let's couple your material with my original post.

Clearly, unsophisticated (by todays standards) yet well formulated climate models (now over 50 years old) predicted many of the patterns and trends we now see in climate observations.

The 2016 analysis from Zhu you mention builds on known science and verifies what Scientists expected to see - a greening effect from rising carbon dioxide levels.

Add to this 2016 analysis, newer analysis published in Nature Climate Change this year include titles:

Unexpected decline in the ocean carbon sink under record-high sea surface temperatures in 2023.

Seasonal stabilization effects slowed the greening of the Northern Hemisphere over the last two decades.

Global greening drives significant soil moisture loss.

Future increase in compound soil drought-heat extremes exacerbated by vegetation greening.

You guys are hilarious.

JD tries to poo-poo the greening effects of CO2.

I point out that indeed greening is both happening and well known to those who are blinded by the CAGW mantra.

And then you all release the daleks...exterminate, exterminate.

I specifically didn't say the greening data affects the warming data. I specifically didn't say that the dangers of warming are negated by the greening. I specifically didn't say there were no dangers from the warming. Yet you're all piling on trying to disprove something I didn't say.

I don't deny warming or that warming carries some problems But I don't buy the CAGW mantra and think that whatever problems warming brings will be easily resolved by those it most affects...the grandkids of our grandkids.

mhaze,

You’ve slipped into the usual routine here: claim you’ve been misquoted, and then quietly concede the very points you used to deny.

To recap:

- You did frame greening as a rebuttal. That’s why you introduced Zhu et al. in the first place.

- When I called it a red herring, I wasn’t denying greening. I was pointing out that it doesn’t undermine the case for anthropogenic warming. That’s still true.

- Now, after being pressed, you say "I never claimed warming is no problem" and "I didn’t say greening negates warming." But that’s precisely the rhetorical sleight-of-hand: you raise greening as though it offsets the dangers, then backpedal when challenged.

You call this "nuance," but it’s not. Nuance means weighing evidence in proportion, not cherry-picking the one superficially positive datapoint and downplaying the rest.

Nuance isn’t cherry-picking the one upside. It’s taking the whole thing together. Yes, greening is happening. But it’s limited by resources, it comes with downsides, and the same paper you waved around makes that clear.

And your fallback that "the grandkids of our grandkids will sort it out" isn’t nuance either. It’s just punting the responsibility forward while ignoring the scientific reality that some changes - melting ice sheets, disrupted ocean currents, lost biodiversity - are irreversible on human timescales.

So no, I’m not embarrassed. What’s embarrassing is pretending that waving vaguely at "future generations will cope" is a serious argument.

That’s not logic. That’s faith.