Scientists destroy another climate denier myth: Rising CO2 levels aren’t good for plants

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Scientists destroy another climate denier myth: Rising CO2 levels aren’t good for plants

by Lindsay Abrams at Salon

http://www.salon.com/2015/05/22/scientists_destroy_another_climate_denier_myth_rising_co2_levels_arent_good_for_plants/

"SNIP...............

Plants need carbon dioxide to grow. Humans are emitting the stuff into the atmosphere in excess. Therefore, humans are helping plants.

So goes one of the more long-lived arguments put forward by people who deny the reality of man-made climate change — an who attempt to turn the CO2 –> global warming –> bad narrative on its head. The Heartland Institute, most recently, made it the focal point of a campaign asserting that CO2 is actually good for human and environmental health.

There are already a number of flaws in this line of reasoning, but new research from Montana State University illustrates how, in reality, the benefits of added CO2 can’t necessarily compete with the harmful downsides of a changed climate.

The study, published last week in the journal Nature Communication, examines one Montana meadow over 44 years — a period during which atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations increased by about 75 ppm (they were 20 percent lower when the study started, in 1969, than they were when it ended in 2012). At the same time, the greater Yellowstone climate became more arid — and the grasslands’ productivity, by the study’s end, had decreased by half.


...............SNIP"