✍ Scribed by Idso, S. B.
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
An analysis of northern, low and southern latitude temperature trends of the past century, along with available atmospheric C 0 2 concentration and industrial carbon production data, suggests that the true climatic effect of increasing the C 0 2 content of the atmosphere may be to cool the Earth and not warm it, contrary to most past analyses of this phenomenon. A physical mechanism is thus proposed to explain how C 0 2 may act as an inverse greenhouse gas in Earth's atmosphere. However, a negative feedback mechanism related to a lowering of the planet's mean surface albedo, due to the migration of more mesic-adapted vegetation onto arid and semi-arid lands as a result of the increased water use efficiency which most plants experience under high levels of atmospheric COz, acts to counter this inverse greenhouse effect. Quantitative estimates of the magnitudes of both phenomena are made, and it is shown that they are probably compensatory. This finding suggests that we will not suffer any great climatic catastrophe but will instead reap great agricultural benefits from the rapid increase in atmospheric C02 which we are currently experiencing and which is projected to continue for perhaps another century or two into the future.
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