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Nasa Happily Reports the Earth Is Greener

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101–110 of 189 posts

Re: Nasa Happily Reports the Earth Is Greener

#101
post #79

Would it be possible to turn a desert region into a rain forest? For example if Nevada decided to plant trees in the dessert is it possible with enough irrigation or would all the trees just die?

Even if you did that, unless you bury the trees after they grow, they'll just rot and release the co2 back in the atmosphere. Trees aren't supposed to be a buffer for increasing co2 levels. They just use co2 as a reusable resource.

Normally if you get a forest going, it would replenish itself, not just grow old and then vanish - thus being a buffer.

Re: Nasa Happily Reports the Earth Is Greener

#102
post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> plants love CO2 In artifical conditions in laboratory there is a significant effect, up to 20% when doubling pre-industrial CO2 concentration. But, in practice for wild plants nitrogen quickly becomes the bottleneck, so the real gains are much smaller. And even for farming plants (which have fertilizer providing additional nitrogen) the real gains diminish, and are more in 5-10% range. For some crops CO2 has very l…

If the bottleneck changes from CO2 to Nitrogen, maybe plants will start adapting to get better at fixation, pushing that limit higher than the CO2 limit.

That kind of evolution takes a while.

Re: Nasa Happily Reports the Earth Is Greener

#103
post #68

From what I understand, the increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide will have a massive greening effect on the Earth (plants love CO2). But it seems this fact is usually omitted so as not to complicate the intended message. I always found it ironic that the "eco" mode button in many cars is a leaf icon.

> plants love CO2 In artifical conditions in laboratory there is a significant effect, up to 20% when doubling pre-industrial CO2 concentration. But, in practice for wild plants nitrogen quickly becomes the bottleneck, so the real gains are much smaller. And even for farming plants (which have fertilizer providing additional nitrogen) the real gains diminish, and are more in 5-10% range. For some crops CO2 has very l…

I believe in global warming with all my heart but just to be balanced the heat also gives you a longer growing season and let’s plants thrive in higher latitudes.

Edit funny the downvotes. I’m on your team guys! Just think we can’t ignore counter facts.

Re: Nasa Happily Reports the Earth Is Greener

#105
post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> plants love CO2 In artifical conditions in laboratory there is a significant effect, up to 20% when doubling pre-industrial CO2 concentration. But, in practice for wild plants nitrogen quickly becomes the bottleneck, so the real gains are much smaller. And even for farming plants (which have fertilizer providing additional nitrogen) the real gains diminish, and are more in 5-10% range. For some crops CO2 has very l…

I believe in global warming with all my heart but just to be balanced the heat also gives you a longer growing season and let’s plants thrive in higher latitudes. Edit funny the downvotes. I’m on your team guys! Just think we can’t ignore counter facts.

The length of the growing season is affected by many things, like rain, days below freezing, days above threshold temperatures, etc. It's not clear at all that warmer global temperatures means a longer growing season.

Re: Nasa Happily Reports the Earth Is Greener

#106
post #93

> It’s called the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer, or MODIS, and its high-resolution data provides very accurate information So is the resolution high or moderate?

It's moderate, or even "low" according to Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moderate_Resolution_Imaging_Sp... But it scans the whole earth every day or two.

Re: Nasa Happily Reports the Earth Is Greener

#107
post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> plants love CO2 In artifical conditions in laboratory there is a significant effect, up to 20% when doubling pre-industrial CO2 concentration. But, in practice for wild plants nitrogen quickly becomes the bottleneck, so the real gains are much smaller. And even for farming plants (which have fertilizer providing additional nitrogen) the real gains diminish, and are more in 5-10% range. For some crops CO2 has very l…

I believe in global warming with all my heart but just to be balanced the heat also gives you a longer growing season and let’s plants thrive in higher latitudes. Edit funny the downvotes. I’m on your team guys! Just think we can’t ignore counter facts.

For crops that tolerate the extra heat. Those which don't will need to be grown further toward the poles, which will reduce the length of growing season.

Re: Nasa Happily Reports the Earth Is Greener

#108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't the map show the trend? So it's not about how green it is but how mucher greener it's become over the last decade.

Yup. It shows the increase. But I think the way its portrayed is kind of misleading. Most people looking at the map who is not aware of Indian geography is going to think places like Rajastan now has a lot of greenery due to significance increase in greenary which is far from reality. Would love to know what all factors where taken into consideration for deciding the greenery increase.

Yes this color choice is misleading. It would have been better to have chosen blue to represent this increase.

Re: Nasa Happily Reports the Earth Is Greener

#109

Thanks for the good newss, didn’t know about that. News tend to be biased towards the bad and the good is left it. Bookmarking that site

I wouldn’t bookmark this site. The writers of this article did not do their due diligence in their research or in their presentation of this article. Check our the other comments here, which do a good job of explaining the nuances of the “greening”.

Skepticism is always good, but so is a modicum of good news bias, especially if announced, to counter the predominance of bad news bias.

If the world was in fact getting less green, and this was presented as bad news, would you hold the reporters to the same high standard of including all relevant silver linings?

Re: Nasa Happily Reports the Earth Is Greener

#110
post #50

Would it be possible to turn a desert region into a rain forest? For example if Nevada decided to plant trees in the dessert is it possible with enough irrigation or would all the trees just die?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vpTHi7O66pI I watched this talk a while back, TL;DW Yes, you can.

Those are quite impressive results
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