Another smoking gun

WUWT have just published a paper that has found evidence showing that evaporation form plants causes cooling. Let’s go through the implications:

1. Throughout the world, mankind has been cutting down forests and ploughing up fields. Plants vastly increase the rate of evaporation. This paper now shows that this process is very likely to have led to a significant reduction in cloud cover and subsequent heating.
2. Cities & towns are areas that were formally vegetation. The net result of such areas is therefore likely to lead to warming in the area as there is less evaporation to create solar-blocking clouds leading to urban heating.

So, I go to the internet to find the study comparing e.g. rainforests and global temperature. Surely, even the environmentalists wouldn’t try to hide this one. Failed! All I could find is this:

Estimates vary widely as to the extent of tropical deforestation.Scientists estimate that one fifth of the world’s tropical rainforest was destroyed between 1960 and 1990. They claim that that rainforests 50 years ago covered 14%of the world’s land surface, now only cover 5–7%, and that all tropical forests will be gone by the middle of the 21st century. (Wikipedia)

Is deforestation the cause of all that 20th century warming? Can you trust the figures on deforestation? Probably not, and without firm evidence it would be wrong to say: “the world’s forests did decline at the same time in the latter 20th century when global warming occurred” and two correlation (especially this bad) isn’t causation, but it’s certainly another strong contender along with reduction in global dimming to explain the strange deviation between temperature series like SET and Meto