Breaking Down the Last Decade of Climate Change in 7 Charts

This article on Grist (h/t to James Taylor, The Heartland Institute) tries to point out how “terrible” the last decade was due to “climate change”. They write:

As this hottest-on-record, godforsaken decade draws to a close, it’s clear that global warming is no longer a problem for future generations but one that’s already displacing communities, costing billions, and driving mass extinctions. And it’s worth asking: Where did the past 10 years get us?

The seven charts below begin to hint at an answer to that question. Some of the changes they document, like the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and the number of billion dollar disasters that occur each year, illustrate how little we did to reduce emissions and how unprepared the world is to deal with the warming we’ve already locked in.

https://grist.org/climate/we-broke-down-the-last-decade-of-climate-change-in-7-charts/

We can also provide 7 charts that illustrate the last decade of climate change, and they tell a different story.


What they say: 1. Atmospheric carbon dioxide rose by about 25 parts per million.

There’s no disputing that ambient CO2 has gone up in the atmosphere, however, that isn’t necessarily a bad thing. NASA, for example has this to say about the effects of that increased CO2 in study about CO2 and greening derived from satellite data.

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, according to a new study published in the journal Nature Climate Change on April 25 2016

“We were able to tie the greening largely to the fertilizing effect of rising atmospheric CO2 concentration by tasking several computer models to mimic plant growth observed in the satellite data,” says co-author Prof. Ranga Myneni of the Department of Earth and Environment at Boston University.

“The greening over the past 33 years reported in this study is equivalent to adding a green continent about two-times the size of mainland USA (18 million km2)…”

https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2016-04/bu-cfg042216.php

This image shows the change in leaf area across the globe from 1982-2015. CREDIT Credits: Boston University/R. Myneni
Source: http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nclimate3004.html

It seems the Earth’s biosphere is responding to increased CO2 in a positive way, that’s also undeniable.

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