Climate change is simply the real state of the Earth. Over its four-billion-year life, Earth has experienced dramatic climate shifts, from the Carboniferous period hundreds of millions of years ago, when oxygen-rich air supported dragonflies with wingspans over two feet, to the last Ice Age twenty thousand years ago, when so much water was locked up in glaciers that sea levels were about 400 feet lower than today.
Climate fluctuates. It always has.
But when people talk about climate change now, it’s almost always framed as decline. Rising carbon dioxide is treated as contamination. Warming is treated as damage.
But carbon dioxide is not poison. It's the gas animals exhale and plants inhale, the raw material of photosynthesis. And a warmer world doesn’t erase life; it shifts it.
There are real risks from rapid climate change. Those are well covered in everything from scientific papers to hysterical media stories. What isn’t covered nearly as often are the measurable upsides already visible in the data.
Here are ten of them.
The Sahara Story Is More Complicated Than We Were Told
About a decade ago, headlines warned that the Sahara was steadily expanding (and usually they blamed it on "global warming.") One long-term study found that between 1920 and 2013, the Sahara Desert grew by roughly 10%. That’s not trivial.
But satellite data since the early 1980s show measurable re-greening across parts of the Sahel, the semi-arid belt just south of the Sahara into which the desert was expanding.
After devastating drought in the 1970s and 1980s, rainfall partially recovered. Vegetation indices show increased plant cover in parts of Niger, Chad, Mali, and Sudan compared to the drought decades. Some studies report roughly 6% increases in herbaceous plant mass and as much as 20% increases in woody foliage in portions of the Sahel over recent decades, much of it due to benefits from increased carbon dioxide.
The entire Sahara has not turned into farmland. But the idea of relentless desertification no longer fits the data at its southern margins.
The long-term picture shows expansion. The recent picture shows greening.
The Entire Planet Is Measurably Greener Than It Was 40 Years Ago
It isn’t just the Sahel.
Satellite records since the early 1980s show that global vegetation cover has increased significantly. A major analysis of 1982–2015 data found Earth’s total leaf area increased by about 5%, equivalent to adding a green area roughly the size of the continental United States.
Researchers concluded that rising atmospheric CO₂ accounted for roughly 70% of that observed greening.
Compared to 1980, the Earth today supports more vegetation.
Longer Growing Seasons in Cold Regions
In many northern regions including Canada, Scandinavia, northern Europe, parts of Russia, the frost-free season has lengthened over the past several decades.
Spring arrives earlier. First frost comes later. In parts of Canada, the frost-free season has lengthened by roughly one to three weeks since the mid-20th century.
That matters for agriculture and forests alike. In colder climates, modest warming can increase productivity. Imagine a world in which the vast open lands of central Russia become a breadbasket instead of timber and steppes.
Climate change doesn’t just remove opportunity. In some places, it creates it.
Fewer Deaths From Cold
Globally, cold temperatures currently cause more deaths than heat.
In a 2015 Lancet study, researchers found that 7.71& of all deaths globally were related to excess heat or cold. Of those, 7.29% were caused by cold; only 0.42% were caused by excess heat. Cold-related mortality is about 17 times as high as heat-related mortality.
Milder winters reduce cold stress, respiratory strain, and winter cardiovascular events. Heat waves can be dangerous, particularly in underdeveloped areas that lack widespread air conditioning. But historically, cold has killed more.
Moderate global warming may save lives.
Reduced Winter Energy Demand
Cold climates consume enormous energy just to stay warm. But as winters moderate, heating demand declines. Heating degree days have fallen in many northern regions, translating into lower fuel consumption and reduced strain on winter energy systems.
Summer cooling demand increases with warming, of course, but energy expended on heating historically dominates.
In some places, warmer winters mean less energy spent simply surviving them.
Arctic Shipping Routes Are Opening
The legendary Northwest Passage has been a navigatory dream for hundreds of years, but historically the Arctic has been largely impassible due to ice cover. However, since satellite monitoring began in 1979, Arctic summer sea ice extent has declined by roughly 40%. That reduction has allowed increased seasonal navigation along the Northwest Passage and the Northern Sea Route. These routes shorten travel between Europe and Asia by thousands of miles compared to the Suez Canal route.
They are still seasonal and complex. But they are real and increasingly used.
Geography is shifting.
Expanded Access to Arctic Resources
The Arctic holds substantial oil, gas, rare earth elements, and critical minerals. As sea ice retreats, access improves. Greenland, northern Canada, and Russia all sit atop mineral deposits that were previously difficult to reach.
Development carries tradeoffs. But from an economic and strategic perspective, accessibility increases opportunity.
Boreal Forests Are Growing Faster
In many northern regions, forests are expanding and thickening. Warmer temperatures and longer growing seasons have contributed to increased growth rates in parts of Canada, Scandinavia, and Russia. Some boreal forests are accumulating more biomass than they did mid-century. This provides rich timber resources, increased soil quality over time, and eventually benefits to crops like wind mitigation and decreased soil erosion.
There are countervailing pressures like wildfire and pests. But growth increases are measurable in certain regions.
Plants Are Using Water More Efficiently
One of the quieter effects of rising CO₂ is improved plant water-use efficiency.
When CO₂ levels increase, many plants partially close their stomata. That means:
- Less water lost through transpiration
- Better drought tolerance
- More biomass per unit of rainfall
This effect is particularly important in semi-arid regions. Higher CO₂ does not create rain. But it allows plants to do more with the water they receive. Even in California’s Central Valley, where water management is a constant constraint, improved plant efficiency may offset a portion of irrigation stress under moderate drought conditions.
The atmosphere is not just warmer. It is more favorable to plant growth under water-limited conditions.
Climate Pressure Is Accelerating Energy Innovation
Concern about warming has revived serious conversations about advanced nuclear power, grid modernization, electrification, and carbon-free industrial heat.
Nuclear energy, once politically sidelined, is back in policy discussions across multiple countries. In that sense, climate pressure is acting as a forcing function not only on the atmosphere, but on engineering.
The response to warming may leave us with a more resilient, more advanced energy system than the one we inherited.
Climate change is not the fairy tale of doom so often told by media and activists. Rather, it is a redistribution of climate zones, economic incentives, and environmental pressures. First and foremost, it's change. And historically, humans have been exceptionally good at adapting to change.
There are real risks. But there are also measurable gains. If we treat climate change as an engineering challenge rather than a moral drama, we are far more likely to manage it successfully.
And if we lean into high-density clean energy, infrastructure competence, and adaptation, it is entirely plausible that a century from now we will be living in a warmer world that is also greener, more energy-secure, and more technologically capable than the one we inhabit today.
