[HN Gopher] The Earth is getting greener
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The Earth is getting greener
Author : besmirch
Score : 137 points
Date : 2024-02-24 05:48 UTC (17 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.vox.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.vox.com)
| Aardwolf wrote:
| > industrial cropland typically produces more carbon emissions
| than it absorbs over the long term
|
| Question about this: where does the extra carbon it emits come
| from? Is it already in the land beforehand?
| dvh wrote:
| From trucks coming to and from fields?
| virgildotcodes wrote:
| Fertilizer?
| nicklecompte wrote:
| I believe Vox slightly screwed this up but it's an
| understandable mistake: the article[1] refers to _CO2
| equivalent_ of emissions, not literal CO2. In particular
| methane from fertilizers seems to have a more negative impact
| on overall greenhouse gases than whatever CO2 the plants are
| absorbing.
|
| [1] https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/acd5e8
| api wrote:
| It has a much shorter atmospheric half life though, on the
| order of a decade vs thousands of years for CO2. If we cut
| methane emissions this will have a near term impact whereas
| cutting CO2 emissions just stops things from getting worse as
| fast. It reverses nothing.
| hanniabu wrote:
| Atmospheric methane converts to co2
| bsza wrote:
| Methane's greenhouse effect is 80 times more powerful
| than that of CO2, so cutting methane right now would have
| near-immediate effects as it would convert to less potent
| CO2 in a matter of years. Whereas cutting CO2 would stop
| things from getting worse, but wouldn't have an immediate
| reversal effect like methane would.
|
| It's a one-off trick that would buy us some time
| (assuming we can implement it).
| traverseda wrote:
| Petro chemical based fertilizer and gas powered equipment.
| pmayrgundter wrote:
| Related study that blew my mind.. DOE & USDA funded a 2021 NBER
| study of CO2 fertilization on US agriculture:
|
| "we apply the CO2 fertilization effect... backwards to 1940, and,
| assuming no other limiting factors, find that CO2 was the
| dominant driver of yield growth
|
| https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w29320/w293...
| zdragnar wrote:
| "assuming no other limiting factors" is doing a lot of the
| heavy lifting there.
| dsizzle wrote:
| Seems that greenhouse experiments would allow us to get a
| pretty good estimate for the effect of CO2 on yields, so
| actually I wouldn't think we'd need to do that much assuming?
| varelaseb wrote:
| I think what they're getting at is the most common limiting
| factor for plant growth is almost never CO2. It's usually
| Nitrogen, or another two of the macro (P,K) or
| micronutrients.
| zdragnar wrote:
| That, and weed management, and GPS assisted machinery.
|
| Pretty much every agriculture advancement since the
| tractor and other machinery has been getting around the
| limiting factors of plant growth.
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| In an industrial greenhouse setting sometimes CO2 is pumped in
| for yields.
| throw310822 wrote:
| So one of the climate feedback loops we forgot to consider is
| more CO2 -> more food -> more people -> more energy consumption
| -> more CO2?
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| England is very green at the moment. At least the areas that
| aren't flooded are.
|
| The issue for humans isn't the "amount of green", it's high
| quality crop yields.
|
| Increasing CO2 increases plant growth, but also lowers
| nutritional value.
|
| https://cupblog.org/2023/04/06/the-truth-about-rising-co2-an...
| DinaCoder99 wrote:
| We overproduce food for the human race by like 35% right now,
| we have a long ways to go before we hit a population issue.
| Regardless of all the hand-wringing certain rich people do
| about the birth rates in Africa. A much more pressing concern
| is our lack of any inclination to reasonably distribute it.
| CalRobert wrote:
| The population of cattle is a bigger concern than the
| population of humans
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| Just the inefficiencies in beef yields alone could probably
| feed half of Africa.
|
| We've got a long, long, long way to go before half the world
| is starving to death.
| ADeerAppeared wrote:
| It's so much more than that.
|
| We produce ~77 million tonnes of beef, using (at the 1:25
| ratio) 1925 million tonnes of feed.
|
| Africa currently imports most of it's grains, let's take a
| generous estimate of ~75 million tonnes of grain. Add
| another 25 million tonnes for their local production.
|
| And we're still off by a factor of 19x.
|
| Food production capacity is a non-issue. Availability to
| the people who need it is the real problem, and that is
| primarily about our willingness to aid those who need it
| and make some personal sacrifices for the greater good.
| Razengan wrote:
| > _we have a long ways to go before we hit a population
| issue._
|
| I wish people who say that would actually live in the
| overpopulated regions of the world for just 1 month.
| DinaCoder99 wrote:
| > I wish people who say that would actually live in the
| overpopulated regions of the world for just 1 month.
|
| People need to stop dragging 19th century nonsense into a
| globalized economy. Regional carrying capacity is certainly
| a thing, but the primary constraint in most areas today
| isn't food (which is, after all, rather easy to ship and
| process) but water. Anyway, you can apply the same
| reasoning to migration as I did to food. It's just not
| really an issue outside of political utility. The US alone
| could support literally billions of people if we gave a
| shit about anything other than money.
| starluz wrote:
| I've heard this argument before and it is insane to me.
| Re comment above have you been to an overpopulated
| region? It is not just about food. Logically movement
| becomes more limited and difficult with people literally
| in each others way. Regions become incredibly
| inefficient. We are independent beings not meant to live
| like sardines
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| spoken like a true "inner"
| api wrote:
| The whole environmental movement made a mistake framing things
| as a moralistic struggle to "save the Earth." Like George
| Carlin famously said on this subject: "the Earth will be fine.
| We're fucked.
|
| The Earth has been far warmer with higher CO2 concentrations in
| its past and it was fine, but there were no humans then. It's
| also been in an ice age fairly recently, but there was little
| civilization as far as we know and far fewer humans.
|
| Environmental concerns are selfish. They're about protecting
| our civilization and our quality of life. The Earth and its
| ecosystem will change and adapt as usual, but that doesn't mean
| we will.
|
| The biggest dangers I see from CO2 are ocean acidification
| leading to the collapse of ocean ecosystems that feed us, and
| insane heat waves causing crop failures or even deadly
| temperatures. Look up "wet bulb temperature limit." There are
| heat conditions under which humans die without shelter and
| unlike cold you can't fix it by bundling up and using simple
| tech. I could see heat waves where people without A/C die.
| spacecadet wrote:
| Ive used the same quote. This is an unpopular opinion, but
| true.
| zokier wrote:
| Unpopular?
| mylittlebrain wrote:
| How should the environmental movement frame things?
| api wrote:
| Finding ways for humans to live well now without consuming
| their children's ability to do the same in the future.
|
| A good framing would also draw a link to fiscal
| responsibility. A renewable sustainable civilization is
| paying its bills fully. Fossil fuels and other non
| renewable processes are putting it on a credit card, and
| one with an unknown interest rate. Eventually you can't do
| that anymore and the interest comes due. Right now humanity
| is still putting something like 75% of its primary energy
| use on credit.
|
| The worst framing is the anti-human framing you see from
| radical greens or films like Avatar. If you really hate
| humans the logical thing would be to do nothing and let us
| crap where we eat until we render our environment
| inhospitable to us. If humans are the problem the activists
| should go home.
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| >A good framing would also draw a link to fiscal
| responsibility
|
| A good analogy with an under the table jab really. The
| worst of the ultra green policies are absolutely murder
| for financial responsibility.
|
| There is no winning with the current "debate", and double
| so with current "solutions".
| rich_sasha wrote:
| The moral failure of humanity is not really that we're
| harming the world, but that we are harming humans. Humans
| affected by climate change today, and the future humans
| elsewhere, who will also suffer.
|
| In some way, one animal causing the extinction of others
| extracting resources and changing the environment is as
| long as evolutionary biology itself. This is what all
| animals do. We're just doing it at a much bigger scale.
| leni536 wrote:
| Save ourselves and our children.
| logicprog wrote:
| I agree with this. It's very frustrating seeing
| environmentalists frame the struggle to reduce anthropogenic
| climate change and pollution and use sustainable renewable
| resources and so on as some kind of moralistic obligation to
| some sort of abstract concept of nature, which is due
| deference and submission as something morally "greater" than
| ourselves that demands service, and as some kind of struggle
| to project very weird and Christian notions of virginity and
| purity onto the environment. It makes the logic singularly
| unappealing to those who are not interested in subjecting
| themselves to sacred ideas and don't buy into the ideas of
| duty and obligation, much less to an abstract concept, and
| don't like the aesthetics of purity -- and it is all the more
| infuriating because all that pseudoreligious stuff is built
| on a false premise anyway, as you point out. The "Earth
| mother" or whatever the fuck will be fine, we are doing all
| of this for ourselves and our own standards of living and
| aesthetic values and nothing more, so why pretend otherwise?
| silverquiet wrote:
| I guess that sort of response begs the question of if there
| is even anything greater to which humans owe some moral
| obligation; it sounds like you don't thing there is (though
| I apologize if this is reading more into your response than
| is actually there).
|
| But I suppose it really depends on what you mean by the
| Earth being "fine" in the end. Obviously, as a large chunk
| of iron, silicates, oxygen, carbon, et al, the Earth will
| continue its journey through space for a long time to come.
| Some forms of life will certainly persist for a few hundred
| million years until such time as it becomes uninhabitable
| due to stellar evolution. But if we humans are to wreak our
| own destruction, we will be far from the first species we
| remove from this Earth; we've already set about a mass
| extinction that will register in the geographic record.
| logicprog wrote:
| > I guess that sort of response begs the question of if
| there is even anything greater to which humans owe some
| moral obligation; it sounds like you don't thing there is
| (though I apologize if this is reading more into your
| response than is actually there).
|
| No worries, you did in fact read me correctly. I don't
| really think moral obligations exist at all, and I don't
| think anything has moral "authority" over anything else
| either. In my opinion we are all just acting on our own
| desires regarding ourselves and the state of the world in
| general, and any appeals to sacred ideas or abstract
| concepts or moral authorities or moral obligations is
| just an attempt to project our own desires out onto the
| world so we can pretend they are objective, to hide from
| ourselves the fact that everything we do and want is
| ultimately equally arbitrary and without justification or
| legitimation. E.g., I'm a moral nihilist, not even a
| moral relativist. So for me, it would be fine for
| environmentalists to say that they _want_ to fight for
| environmental causes because they _want_ to preserve
| humanity 's standard of living and well-being, or because
| they _want_ the environment to look and be treated a
| certain way because that 's simply _how they desire it_
| and it makes them happy -- and many environmentalists do
| phrase things in that way in which case I don 't have a
| problem with them -- but it annoys me when they try to
| project their desires outwards and pretend like they are
| objective.
|
| > But I suppose it really depends on what you mean by the
| Earth being "fine" in the end. Obviously, as a large
| chunk of iron, silicates, oxygen, carbon, et al, the
| Earth will continue its journey through space for a long
| time to come. Some forms of life will certainly persist
| for a few hundred million years until such time as it
| becomes uninhabitable due to stellar evolution. But if we
| humans are to wreak our own destruction, we will be far
| from the first species we remove from this Earth; we've
| already set about a mass extinction that will register in
| the geographic record.
|
| This is certainly a very fair point, and a good response
| to what I was saying! However, I think the thing we have
| to remember is that mass extinctions have happened
| before, so if humanity wipes itself out and takes a huge
| amount of species with it, that's still well within the
| range of things the Earth has experienced before, even if
| it is happening faster than it would usually have done.
| After all, the actions of humans themselves are actions
| that are part of nature, and so we can consider ourselves
| fucking up the environment and extincting ourselves and a
| bunch of other animals as part of a natural cycle of
| adaptation just like any other species over hunting and
| starving itself to extinction or something. We just
| weren't fit to survive, in that case. Furthermore,
| independent of how we define earth being fine, I do think
| my point about moral obligations still stands from my
| perspective. I don't want people to stop caring about the
| environment, and I'll support that care, and honestly if
| some people even really want to enforce their Christian
| ideas of purity and virginity onto the environment then
| very well -- they can continue fighting for that, and
| I'll just simply ignore them, but at least be truthful!
| nuancebydefault wrote:
| > .......at least be truthful.
|
| At least a tiny glimpse of morality, or would you name it
| differently?
| goatlover wrote:
| > I guess that sort of response begs the question of if
| there is even anything greater to which humans owe some
| moral obligation
|
| Nobody can prove that there is. Lots of people have faith
| in a higher power of some kind, or objective morality.
| Nobody can provide scientific evidence for it. Far as a I
| can tell, natural is amoral and doesn't care. And humans
| have never agreed as a whole on what that something
| greater is.
| silverquiet wrote:
| I basically realized there was no god/religion was just
| wishful thinking at a very young age, but I sort of held
| onto the idea that we could all agree that keeping the
| Earth habitable for humans was a worthwhile endeavor (I
| mean, most people seem to want to have kids, right?). But
| in the last decade or so I've even lost that belief.
| goatlover wrote:
| It's not so much people disagreeing about keeping the
| Earth habitable and more so disagreeing about what that
| means or entails. I don't see any realistic scenario
| where the planet is inhabitable for humans, but certainly
| things can make it less habitable for what will be 10
| billion people and many other life forms.
| itishappy wrote:
| I don't really understand this attitude either. "You're
| only _pretending_ to care about the Earth, but you
| _actually_ care about humans and society as we know it! "
| Right. Duh. So?
|
| Some people are definitely weird about it. Others just
| enjoy fish, or snow, or living without paying for AC. I'd
| argue it's pretty illogical to equate these, and outright
| dishonest to dismiss the latter due to the former.
|
| The statements: "we're hurting Mother Earth" and "hot rocks
| are still rocks" are both true and both useless, and
| dogmatic adherence to either can be shortsighted.
| logicprog wrote:
| I'm not dismissing the latter due to the former at all,
| or saying they're the same -- I point out in my original
| comment not all environmentalists do this. My goals
| actually align very much with most environmentalist so
| I'm not trying to say that because some people use weird
| rhetoric or justifications that we should just ignore the
| entire movement and the issues at stake. I'm just talking
| about a particular rhetorical move that I see
| occasionally that I find a bit annoying. It isn't very
| common here on hacker news, but in the circles I tend to
| run in, which are very leftist, you see it a lot more
| often.
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| > The "Earth mother" or whatever the fuck will be fine, we
| are doing all of this for ourselves and our own standards
| of living and aesthetic values and nothing more, so why
| pretend otherwise?
|
| I consider myself very much on the side of "environmental
| protection", but it's always been clear to me that our goal
| is protect humanity, and secondarily, other animal species
| (and that means protecting the plant species). Why else
| would we be doing this? I don't think anyone is pretending
| otherwise other than a few fringe people (there are always
| some fringe people no matter which way you look).
| gonzo41 wrote:
| If you submerge yourself in water, like elephants do in the
| hot of the day. you can survive really high wetbulb temps.
| It's the days of continuous hot nights that's the issue.
| tasty_freeze wrote:
| Really, that is the worry, that "We are destroying the earth"
| as a metaphor? People are confused by this? If I said, "Be
| careful how you lift that heavy sack or you will destroy your
| back" would you complain that while you might suffer a
| debilitating injury, your back will not literally be
| destroyed?
|
| Of course what people mean when they warn about the
| destruction of the earth is that it is going to have profound
| and unpleasant effects on the climate system, which in turn
| affects which parts of the world are favorable to human and
| animal life. Those changes will cause large scale economic
| changes, population dislocations, and thus political
| stability.
| macNchz wrote:
| I do think a lot of people have a concept of "the
| environment" not so much as it being our singular shared
| home, but as some sort of vague notion of National Parks
| and sea turtles, that are nice to protect but not
| especially relevant to day-to-day life. Given the way many
| people treat their own private homes, however, I'm not
| entirely convinced that the distinction is relevant to
| behavior, though.
| Scarblac wrote:
| > Environmental concerns are selfish.
|
| That's overstating it.
|
| Yes, life will go on. But it's not only us that will die - as
| you say, much of the marine ecosystem will die off, we're not
| the only animal that has problems with wet bulb temperature
| (most don't even sweat), and humanity isn't going to die of
| starvation before we make everything remotely edible out
| there extinct first.
|
| Life is going to look extremely different, it's not just us.
| nuancebydefault wrote:
| I'm pretty sure they meant 'selfish' in a positive way, to
| emphasize that we are not aiming to 'save the planet', we
| should save ourselves. If we all die, the planet and its
| ecosystems will be fine eventually anyways, they still have
| about 4 billion years to restore itself.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| "The Earth is fine": of course, it's a giant ball of rock. A
| few degrees isn't going to affect it.
|
| "~90% of species are fucked": it's not the magnitude of the
| change, it's the speed. The climate is changing on a decades-
| long time scale, and that's too fast for most species and
| ecosystems to adapt.
|
| The corollary there is that ~10% of species will be fine, and
| thrive. Like every mass extinction event the world will look
| a lot different pre and post-extinction but it will
| "survive".
|
| Humans aren't fucked. We had pre-industrial humans living in
| both the Arctic and the Sahara. We adapt the environment to
| us, and we migrate quickly. If we destroy the environment we
| can grow food in greenhouses. It'll be crazy expensive, but
| we'll survive. The speed at which India is currently adopting
| A/C shows how all but the bottom billion of humans are
| already adapting to climate change. The bottom billion is
| fucked, unless the top billion stops whining and starts doing
| something.
|
| The status quo is fucked. We're a bunch of spoiled brats that
| think 10% inflation and the end of the world are calamities
| of similar magnitude. If you want to get a good handle on
| what true hardship is like, talk to a refugee or a member of
| the greatest generation. (Do it quick, that means somebody
| ~100 years old).
|
| Is civilization fucked? It depends on how well it adapts, and
| what your definition of "fucked" is. (see above).
| lebean wrote:
| As long as the top billion lets the bottom billion develop
| like they have and use cheap energy, humans will continue
| to be fine. Good, even.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| The bottom billion lives on $2 a day. It doesn't matter
| how cheap energy is, they can't afford it.
|
| OTOH your comment does apply to the second billion.
| There's no energy cheaper than solar power, and solar
| powered air conditioning is a great supply/demand match.
| mp05 wrote:
| > unless the top billion stops whining and starts doing
| something.
|
| The most vocal whiners I know still drive a giant 4Runner
| and get new skis every year.
|
| > We're a bunch of spoiled brats that think 10% inflation
| and the end of the world are calamities of similar
| magnitude.
|
| What's the point of this statement? What solution are you
| suggesting that will directly lead to inflation? Reduced
| employment? Carbon taxes?
|
| > fucked. fucked. fucked?
|
| Lay off the John Oliver.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| > What's the point of this statement? What solution are
| you suggesting that will directly lead to inflation?
| Reduced employment? Carbon taxes?
|
| Carbon taxes, yes.
|
| > > fucked. fucked. fucked?
|
| > Lay off the John Oliver.
|
| Just echoing the tone of the comment I'm replying to. And
| they were going Carlin, not Oliver.
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| > Environmental concerns are selfish. They're about
| protecting our civilization and our quality of life. The
| Earth and its ecosystem will change and adapt as usual, but
| that doesn't mean we will.
|
| This is stating the obvious. Of course we're concerned with
| our own survival and being able to live comfortably in it. I
| don't see much of a problem them.
|
| As far as the ecosystem adapting, yeah, eventually, but at
| the cost of thousands/millions of species, as in the previous
| extinction events.
| arp242 wrote:
| > Environmental concerns are selfish.
|
| I don't see how this comment connects with what you're
| writing in your own comment. How is it selfish to want to
| avoid needlessly suffering, as you're describing yourself
| ("heat waves where people without A/C die")?
|
| Obviously the earth as a habitable planet will be fine in the
| long run, and some people have said some exaggerated, even
| hysterical, things about this. But that doesn't mean the
| concerns aren't valid. And everything will be fine "in the
| long run", so it's also one of those discussion-stopper
| arguments you can apply to almost everything.
| nostrademons wrote:
| The point is that the environmental argument has been "Save
| the planet!", when the actual motive is "Save our
| civilization!" The planet will be fine, because as apex
| predators, humanity is going to be one of the first species
| to go extinct with a major environmental change, and then
| the rest of the biosphere will adapt to our disappearance.
| Hell, many individual humans will probably be fine, because
| the ability to run a complex environment-destroying
| civilization disappears well before all the individual
| humans do. However, that's cold comfort to people who
| depend on modern societal conveniences, or the many people
| who _will_ die.
|
| GP's point is more about intellectual honesty, but there's
| also a pragmatic bent to it. Many of the people who most
| reject climate change interventionism might be swayed by a
| line of argumentation that goes "You care more about the
| economy than the environment? You won't _have_ an economy
| if the environment is disturbed enough. "
| konschubert wrote:
| > the ability to run a complex environment-destroying
| civilization disappears well before all the individual
| humans do
|
| There are self-reinforcing loops of climate change that
| can cause runaway warming.
| dkasper wrote:
| It basically comes down to long term pain vs short term pain.
| I don't think many people would have a problem with improving
| our civilization's quality of life in the long run if it
| didn't cause any lifestyle changes in the present. That's a
| reason why Tesla's marketing has worked; you can not only be
| "green" but also drive one of the fastest cars on the planet.
| logtempo wrote:
| > The whole environmental movement made a mistake framing
| things as a moralistic struggle to "save the Earth, pandas
| and pinguins." Like George Carlin famously said on this
| subject: "the Earth will be fine. We're fucked.
|
| I think the whole environmental movement have/had no power
| against the whole industry movement, and the "save the earth"
| call was the only accepted by the dominant class (aka
| industry and its leaders). Also Mr. Nobody don't wanted to
| give up his car, his investments, and his overall lifestyle
| for some pessimist hippies that love trees or scientist that
| don't know the real world.
|
| Things are changing because of a single reason: industry and
| economy is affected a little bit by the climate change.
| jijijijij wrote:
| I heard, the climate related "CO2 fertilization" leads to
| increased growth in trees. However, especially on mountain
| slopes, these trees have a lower strength and tend to break
| more easily in storms. The breakage in softer woods in turn
| promotes things like wind erosion and fires.
|
| I think this is somewhat plausible, since the "winter side" of
| a wood ring is the harder bit and the ratio of hard to soft
| wood may change due to increased summer growth.
|
| Iceland is the prime example of a place, which lost its trees a
| bit - and then lost its trees for real, as a consequence. That
| is, because of wind erosion after humans started cutting down
| most of the island's forests for lumber.
|
| Thanks, for coming to my TED talk.
| BillFranklin wrote:
| The article is a bit all over the place.
|
| > So, yes, greening is complicated. It's not inherently good.
| Sometimes it's very bad. Context, it turns out, matters a lot.
|
| The tone suggests they're afraid of the change, but the article
| can't articulate why since the reason for the change and result
| are both possibly good and bad, but we don't really know yet.
|
| The NASA MODIS project is ongoing and produces data that people
| are using to measure "greenness" (which the article indirectly
| cites) and has been going for 20 years
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moderate_Resolution_Imaging_Sp... -
| it's definitely an interesting dataset.
|
| Didan seems to be leading the vegetation research for MODIS and
| the data set has been cited thousands of times
| (https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=TxQK6U8AAAAJ&hl=en...)
| platz wrote:
| > The article is a bit all over the place.
|
| Must an observation have an easily digestible value judgement
| and tell you how you should think about it, or can it just be
| allowed to present the facts and list the pros and cons.
|
| which one do you think leads to a healthier media environment
|
| Did you yourself not also include a portion of your comment to
| respond to article based on its data with your own "it depends"
| based on other data?
|
| > The tone suggests they're afraid of the change
|
| What do you think they lay person would immediately think about
| 'the earth is greening' and would it be appropriate to address
| those initial perceptions.
| paulsutter wrote:
| The issue is just the opposite: the article is making a value
| judgment in the absence of objective data. I interpret the
| comment saying more info and less judgement please
| platz wrote:
| The objective data is the greenness of the earth measured
| by satellites.
|
| the article offers multiple possible explanations for this
| and what their effects might be. it acknowledges those
| derivative outcomes are speculative.
| tastyfreeze wrote:
| All of the offered explanations still paint humans as the
| perpetrators of a crime against the environment.
|
| Not once is a greening planet painted in a positive light
| in this article. Its as if the writer is afraid to say
| something positive about CO2 emissions.
| satvikpendem wrote:
| They do so because, just because something is greener
| does not make it better for humanity. For example, we can
| have "greener" algae blooms that nevertheless eat up the
| oxygen in a lake or ocean and then we have no fish to
| eat.
| varelaseb wrote:
| Optimizing for "green" is not what we're trying to
| achieve here. Mountains get greener when the tree line
| climbs as a sign of it's ecological decline. Stable
| forest and weather systems, biodiversity, bioavailability
| of nutrients in the ground are things closer to the
| interest of ecological causes.
| throwawayqqq11 wrote:
| > The objective data is the greenness of the earth
|
| Which is a quantitative statement. Altered conditions
| will not benefit every local species equally.
|
| > Context matters
| graycat wrote:
| > which one do you think leads to a healthier media
| environment
|
| Hmm, apparently the answer _depends_!!!
|
| What I believe is "healthier", e.g., for (1) my being
| informed or (2) click-bait headlines, eyeballs, ad
| revenue????
|
| But, now, for
|
| > the facts and list the pros and cons.
|
| there is a possibility, that is, from some changes from the
| Internet:
|
| First, the basic ideas of click-bait, etc. go way back in the
| history of many decades of _journalism_ publishers. They
| needed a lot of revenue: Printing plants, trucks to deliver
| literally tons of news print or magazines, ..., radio and TV
| studios, etc. were expensive. The number of _publishers_ was
| _constrained_ : Each major city had just two main newspapers,
| morning and evening. There were a few national magazines.
| Then, the number of large radio stations, TV stations, were
| similarly limited. Un, click-bait that works in one major
| city stands to work everywhere which creates the constraints
| on the number of national click-bait publishers.
|
| > easily digestible value judgment and tell you how you
| should think
|
| Well put. For the big publishers, that is what dominated.
|
| For a good review and explanation going way back, see the
| ~1941 movie _Meet John Doe_.
|
| Second, now the decades, 100+ years, of such _journalism_ is
| also being attempted on the Web sites of the Internet --
| thus, your well put objection.
|
| BUT ...!!!! For an audience and a publisher for
|
| > the facts and list the pros and cons.
|
| they no longer need be so expensive. A single tower case
| computer can send, what, 100+ Web pages a second?
|
| Sooo, now the mass audience can have subsets.
|
| Some simple arithmetic:
|
| Assume 1 ad per Web page sent, revenue of $1 per 1000 ads
| displayed, sending a 24 x 7 average of 50 Web pages a second.
| Assume pre-tax earnings are 50% of revenue.
|
| Then annual earnings would be
|
| 50 * 3600 * 24 * 265 / ( 1000 * 2 ) = 572,400
|
| dollars.
|
| Assume the business is worth 100 times annual earnings, and
| get
|
| 100 * 50 * 3600 * 24 * 265 / ( 1000 * 2 ) = 57,240,000
|
| dollars.
|
| A possibility for
|
| > the facts and list the pros and cons.
|
| is the economy: A lot of data is available. Could present it
| in largely some simple X-Y graphs can do routinely with, say,
| Excel in Microsoft's Office.
|
| Another possibility: For COVID, start with the crucial data
| in the report of the Phase III trials in
|
| https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/nejmoa2035389
|
| COVID and medicine more generally are good subjects for
|
| > the facts and list the pros and cons.
|
| Follow, say, common high school standards for term papers,
| e.g., careful references, hopefully to credible primary
| sources.
|
| Get an audience that values credibility.
|
| Then get a brand, a growing audience, and a successful
| business.
|
| Hmm, yup, I have a related startup -- Web site code running
| as intended. Should go live this year.
| platz wrote:
| thanks, hope you're doing OK bud
| moosey wrote:
| This winter in my neck of the woods I hear a lot of people
| saying "oh, what great weather this year", because it's warm
| and without snow.
|
| If they had taken enough math to understand chaotic dynamic
| systems, they would need be as anxious as I am. It's less that
| I can tell you exactly what's going to happen, although there
| are definitely things that we are certain of, like riskier
| hurricanes.
|
| What keeps me up at night is that farmers have no idea what the
| next season will look like because we have altered the
| conditions of the function of climate, and therefore will enter
| a new state. We do not know where it will land and what it will
| look like getting there, and that very likely means reduction
| in food production.
|
| Sometimes fear is justified.
| throwawaymaths wrote:
| Last few years hurricane seasons in the US have been less
| bad, because most really bad hurricanes have turned north
| further east than normal, avoiding coastal cities.
| d0gsg0w00f wrote:
| What are people supposed to do? Just live in guilt and fear?
| People arent idiots simply because they're trying to make the
| best of a bad situation
| _kulang wrote:
| I think guilt and fear might be warranted as people have
| had a history of willingly being idiots regarding climate
| change. Best of a bad situation is one thing. Best of a bad
| situation which you are party to is another
| silverquiet wrote:
| > What are people supposed to do?
|
| I tried drinking copiously but eventually my insides
| started hurting. So I don't know either.
| sprocket wrote:
| I dairy farmed for 14 years, and my wife and I got out in the
| winter of 2023. We've seen ever increasing scarcity of water
| in our region, because the surrounding mountains don't get
| enough snow pack whose melt feeds the streams through spring
| and summer, and we don't see the spring rains nearly as much
| anymore either. We used to be able to irrigate our hay fields
| all summer long with no issues, until fall rains returned.
| Now the rains stop in April, we irrigate until the water runs
| out (which last year was in June), and then hope for the
| best. When we need to buy hay for our animals, prices have
| nearly tripled in the last 10 years.
| tmnvix wrote:
| > the change and result are both possibly good and bad, but we
| don't really know yet.
|
| I'm no scientist, but I believe the current ecological disaster
| effecting the UK's largest lake may be an example of the type
| of bad outcome we could expect to see more of.
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/feb/19/like-the...
|
| It appears that a large algal bloom might be the immediate
| cause. Apparently algal blooms benefit from higher CO2 levels.
|
| https://www.epa.gov/nutrientpollution/climate-change-and-har...
|
| I can't find it now, but I do remember reading some theory that
| previous extinction events on earth were driven by large
| amounts of organic matter breaking down anaerobically (i.e.
| underwater) which leads to a huge increase in some pretty nasty
| gases in the atmosphere. There have (apparently) even been
| times when some of the world's oceans were effectively large
| swamps.
|
| Edit: My mistake, I didn't read about what I mentioned in that
| last paragraph - I heard it on youtube.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8eM1aakTzMw
|
| To give the general gist of what's covered in the above
| video/interview with paleobiologist Peter Ward:
|
| 03:00 - We need a little bit of CO2, but it's easy to have too
| much CO2
|
| 04:20 - Rare Earth: Why Complex Life is Uncommon in the
| Universe (co-written with Dan Brownlee)
|
| 04:40 - Excessive heat and mortality
|
| 05:12 - Volcanic activity responsible for past CO2 spikes
|
| 05:40 - Previous mass extinctions
|
| 05:57 - Non-animal mass extinctions
|
| 07:18 - Uneven atmospheric heating
|
| and much more...
|
| Well worth a listen if you have the time.
| huqedato wrote:
| Finally, somebody is telling the truth about CO2. Not all is grim
| about climate. The things are in the middle, as always. Reality
| is neither black nor white.
|
| https://futurecrunch.com/goodnews2023/
| jraph wrote:
| _The_ truth? Because everything else is lies?
|
| "'Everything is on fire, but at least this guy is not cold
| anymore!'; Cool, at least somebody is saying the truth, not
| everything is black".
|
| There's no middle. There are projections, and there are what we
| are already seeing.
|
| Of course reality is complex. Of course increasing CO2 levels
| might have some benefits. But there's no way, all things
| considered, it's a net benefit overall. Why would you need to
| point out that look, there are benefits? It doesn't matter. We
| still need to fix this and for that, we need _more_ concern
| about climate change, not less (and above all, the relevant
| people to be concerned).
|
| All this assuming that the planet going greener is a good thing
| at all. The second sentence of the linked article is literally
| "Scientists are worried".
| huqedato wrote:
| There is middle! The truth is always in the middle, my
| friend. Only the radicals do not see this.
|
| Thanks everybody for downvoting me. Keep it!
| jraph wrote:
| A prefers reading black on white.
|
| Z prefers reading white on black.
|
| M prefers the middle, reading grey on grey.
|
| No, there's no always a middle. In any case, you are not
| pointing at a middle. You are just focusing on a(n
| additional) fact in an ocean of known facts. A fact that
| you seem to think changes the perspective one should have
| on the topic.
|
| I didn't downvote, but I suspect you are downvoted because
| this is wrong and it doesn't help. We certainly don't need
| people to tame and water things down in this topic.
| exoverito wrote:
| >But there's no way, all things considered, it's a net
| benefit overall.
|
| This seems like a very dogmatic statement to make. Especially
| when weighed with benefits of cheap energy and economic
| growth. A wealthier world can build the infrastructure to
| handle potentially negative effects of climate change.
|
| The more extreme environmentalists and marxists say we should
| be engaging in degrowth, which would just result in a kind of
| feudal and static society, even more vulnerable to climate
| change. It should also be noted that the Little Ice Age in
| Europe was associated with scarcity and famine, while the
| Roman Warm Period was associated with golden ages of several
| civilizations across the world.
| jraph wrote:
| >> But there's no way, all things considered, it's a net
| benefit overall.
|
| > This seems like a very dogmatic statement to make
|
| Do you think climate change could have a net benefit? I
| don't think that thinking that's false is dogmatic.
|
| It's too late for "we'll manage". Time to go for "We need
| to manage now" because...
|
| > A wealthier world can build the infrastructure to handle
| potentially negative effects of climate change.
|
| ... has not happened. The wealthy civilization needs to
| want it and make it a priority now.
|
| Anyway, I'm replying to someone who speaks about
| _potentially_ negative effects of climate change. _Wake
| up!_ It 's not "potentially" anymore, it's already started!
|
| "Technology will save us" is a tired trope at this point.
| CatWChainsaw wrote:
| Exactly to your point about wealthy civilizations needing
| to want to use their excesses for good... we had an
| agricultural revolution in the 70s and rather than feed
| the starving we just continued same old. Now we're losing
| topsoil, fertilizers derived from fossil fuels, stable
| climates to grow crops, pest/weather resistance, and
| nutrition. And we 4Xed the global population in the
| meantime.
| arp242 wrote:
| > The things are in the middle, as always.
|
| Always? Really?
|
| Please, list all the advantages and nuance for leaded gasoline,
| paint, and other uses of lead. Or maybe all the nuanced
| advantageous effects that asbestos has on your lungs?
|
| And if we move beyond environmental issues things get even more
| ridiculous, but let's not get too side-tracked.
| mitthrowaway2 wrote:
| Oddly enough, optimization theory says that almost always the
| best policy is as far away from the middle as possible, right
| at the boundaries, where physical constraints intersect to
| hold you back from taking any more extreme action.
| tasty_freeze wrote:
| Potholer54 posts well notated videos on youtube where he explains
| (among other things) climate science and mostly debunks false
| information. He is a geologist by degree, but has spent his
| career in science communication. Videos are infrequent but well
| done, and he makes no money from them. He sites his sources and
| does a great job of tracking down primary sources, all of which
| are linked.
|
| One of his oft repeated ideas is: "Why should you believe what
| some guy on youtube is saying about climate change? You
| shouldn't! But if an idiot like me (potholer54) can read and
| understand the source material, you can too." Not only does he
| provide sources, he is very good about following up when people
| point out mistakes in his videos.
|
| Anyway, here is a two parter where he responds to the attitude
| that CO2 is good for plant growth and so it is good for us.
|
| Part 1: https://youtu.be/ZqA4bDVmBB8?si=TjwFJFR4QzFCXfGR Part 2:
| https://youtu.be/VJoijPh2i-A?si=wUc0gfnQynZXWdHJ
|
| One of the key points is that yes: if you hold everything else
| equal and increase CO2, it does increase plant growth -- but in
| the real world, climate change isn't just increasing CO2, it
| affects temperatures and rainfall too. Also, some plants use "C3"
| photosynthesis and benefit significantly from increasing CO2
| while "C4" photosynthesis crops (like corn) don't. But there is a
| lot more in there.
| croisillon wrote:
| thanks for the links and for summarizing them!
| goatlover wrote:
| So it's good and bad, whereas we only hear the bad part of
| climate change. As in there's nothing good coming from climate
| change. Which is a bit misleading. It is a big problem, but
| some good does come from it in terms of plant growth.
| brookst wrote:
| Pop media doesn't really do nuance. If we have to frame
| climate change as good or bad, it's clearly bad.
|
| The fact that nuances make it good for some plants, for some
| people, is true and there for those who want details. The
| problem is that mitigating details are often used to rebut
| the first order problem. As the brilliant marketing people in
| Attack of the Killer Tomatoes put it, "giant tomatoes mean
| bigger pizzas!"
| tasty_freeze wrote:
| Another common refrain from Potholer54 is: don't listen to
| the media -- what are the climate scientists (the primary
| sources) saying?
|
| But overall the picture _is_ bad. There are regions where
| things will benefit, and climate research has said so for
| decades. But overall this rate of change is going to have
| bad long term consequences for the biosphere (including
| humans).
| _fizz_buzz_ wrote:
| The problem is that it is 5% good and 95% bad.
| thelastgallon wrote:
| Insightful video. CO2 coalition (funded by Exxon) says
| 140-million year trend of dangerously decreasing CO2, with the
| implication that more CO2 is good. Potholer54 talks about this
| paper. Two insights:
|
| a) CO2 levels have been below 200PPM for millions of years, and
| life on the planet was fine.
|
| b) Over 140 million years, CO2 has been dropping 0.00001
| ppm/year. We are adding 2 PPM/year now, 200,000x faster. This
| rate of change is unprecedented.
| gmuslera wrote:
| The Texas Sharpshooter fallacy is something we must be able to
| see. We get a lot of effects of a larger change, and pick the one
| that in a partial way, in a particular light, can be painted as
| positive.
|
| There are a lot of "greener" things, the article talks only about
| a few of them, and some particular consequences. For example,
| greening in northern regions because losing permafrost is not
| positive, and lowering albedo (compared with not so dark colours)
| also increases warming. It is not something even across the whole
| planet or land regions, it may or not lead to sustainable CO2
| level reductions, and when depleted water sources falls down, it
| could lead to more emissions.
|
| It should be part of a bigger and complex process that is
| happening, it might slow down some bad trends in some particular
| regions, but the whole picture matters, and the trends of the big
| problem seem to not be affected, or at least seem to keep going
| strong(er) in the same bad direction.
| throwawaymaths wrote:
| But actually people predicted this positive effect of warming
| long ago. I believe the specific prediction was that global
| food production would increase as warming + co2 enrichment
| increased production in politically and economically stable and
| responsible nations (at the expense of... Less stable, less
| responsible nations). You can argue if the aggregate measure of
| production is more or less important than the distribution, but
| that prediction was made nonetheless.
| varelaseb wrote:
| Could you share some more info on that prediction? I'd love
| to read up
| Lammy wrote:
| Probably not what you're looking for but it always makes me
| think of Jeffrey Jones' "Wholly Holy" (1972), the
| penultimate story in this 1983 collection:
| https://www.zipcomic.com/ravens-and-rainbows-issue-full
| (not sure how to deep link to the exact page)
|
| Also check out "Explored" and "Spirit of '76" before it,
| just because they're cool :)
| photochemsyn wrote:
| It's difficult to get good estimates of biosphere uptake and
| release of atmospheric carbon by looking at satellite color data
| - those numbers involve a lot of modeling. Rough estimates are
| that the biosphere cycles 100 gigatons of carbon a year through
| the atmosphere (plants taking up CO2 to form biomass,
| fungi/insects/animals breaking down plant matter to CO2), while
| human fossil fuel emissions are on the order of 9 gigatons C per
| year at present, perhaps half of which stays in the atmosphere
| long-term.
|
| There's little doubt that the planet is heading back to Pliocene
| conditions at a steady clip, and of course life was abundant back
| then - indeed without fossil fuels the planet would be on a
| steady cooling trend back to another ice age (it would take some
| 70,000 years though to reach another ice age maximum), so if you
| want to celebrate that achievement, go ahead - but note, you
| don't want to overshoot the target so immediate elimination of
| fossil fuel combustion as an energy source is the only rational
| conclusion.
|
| Here's a paper on the issue of how to link satellite color data
| to photosynthetic production, see Figs 5 / 6/ 7 for estimates of
| very moderate increases from 1982-2017 (satellite collection only
| began c.1982) across the northern hemisphere (but steep declines
| in the Amazon):
|
| "Improved estimate of global gross primary production for
| reproducing its long-term variation, 1982-2017", Zheng et. al
| 2020
|
| Atmospheric CO2 accumulation increased from ~1.5 to ~2.5 ppm/year
| over that period, coinciding with a rough doubling in global
| fossil fuel consumption since 1980 (plus a lot of nitrogen
| fertilizers), along with a +0.2C per decade (5yr running avg)
| temperature increase.
| DataDaemon wrote:
| This is nothing new that more CO2 = greener Earth.
| slibhb wrote:
| The article reads like "yes the Earth is greening, yes this is
| probably mostly good, but it's not all good and besides we aren't
| allowed to say anything positive about the environment".
| wredue wrote:
| It's the same reason a demonstrably racist person can't make
| racists jokes, but a demonstrably not racist person can get
| away with racist jokes.
|
| Where the statements are coming from makes a huge difference in
| their reception.
|
| "The earth is greening" is a popular argument from climate
| change deniers as "proof" that we're not currently living in a
| catastrophic upset of species diversity (we measurably are).
|
| The problem with "the earth is greening" is that, while it is
| true that the earth is green for longer, and that the brown is
| around for less time, this is measurably not a good thing, and
| it also completely ignores that desertification is also
| measurably occurring at staggering rates.
|
| The green parts are more green than brown, but they're also
| shrinking. Extreme weather events are increasing in frequency.
| drewcoo wrote:
| > It's the same reason a demonstrably racist person can't
| make racists jokes, but a demonstrably not racist person can
| get away with racist jokes.
|
| So be a "good person" and you can tell any "jokes" you like.
| Happy Black History Month!
| wredue wrote:
| That's not what I said. I said they can get away with it.
|
| "Getting away with it" for bigoted jokes has a lot of
| nuance and context sensitivity.
|
| For comedians including bigoted jokes in their set, it's
| usually surrounded with self deprecation, self awareness,
| not the whole set, and is extremely careful about how they
| go about crossing the line, they know that they crossed a
| line and bring it back.
|
| This is contrary to bigoted people telling bigoted "jokes".
| It's usually their whole set. They keep the set over the
| line. There's no self reflection. It is bigotry coming from
| a place of bigotry.
|
| I know that you on the alt-right tend to lack the
| capability to process nuance, and that you're going to
| completely latch on to that single byte. So further
| explanation of why there's a difference means nothing to
| you, but hopefully others see that being able to get away
| with a bigoted joke now and again is absolutely not the
| same thing as it "being okay".
| bradley13 wrote:
| If the world were getting browner, they would panic. It's getting
| greener, so they have to try a bit harder, but they still manage
| to panic.
|
| Panic --> Clickbait --> Ads --> Money
| B1FF_PSUVM wrote:
| Someday our descendants (if any) will wonder how stupid we had
| to be to allow large scale psychological poisoning for profit.
| deadeye wrote:
| My 86-year-old grandmother noticed no change in the climate
| over the course of her life. Meanwhile, we now have 15-year-old
| kids absolutely panicking over how much the climate has changed
| in the last 100 years, convinced their grandparents generation
| has doomed them to a heat death. It's bazar.
| zer0tonin wrote:
| > My 86-year-old grandmother noticed no change in the climate
| over the course of her life.
|
| She should consider getting checked for dementia.
| throw310822 wrote:
| You will be downvoted to death, but whatever one thinks of
| climate change, the one you outlined is a very real effect and
| deserves to be considered seriously. Media sell what people get
| excited about; people get excited about bad news; media publish
| bad news; bad news become part of the society's worldview;
| society becomes focused on the issue and digs for more bad
| news.
| dsizzle wrote:
| I get that things are complicated, but I can't help but notice
| the inherent bias toward fear, present in the subtitile
| "scientists are worried." Or maybe it's a bias against change.
| What are the odds that the state without any human intervention
| is optimal?
| atoav wrote:
| Important to note is that there have been studies that ahow that
| the increase in growth due to CO2 in the atmosphere does _not_
| translate to an increase in nutritients.
| d0gsg0w00f wrote:
| This thread is full of people performing a lot of gymnastics to
| explain how this is a bad thing.
|
| I think it's rather beautiful that the earth is compensating and
| creating a reversing effect. It's like a scab over a wound to
| give us time to heal it.
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