Live data from Hacker News

Ecosia – the search engine that plants trees

ecosia.org

81–89 of 89 posts

Re: Ecosia – the search engine that plants trees

#81
Option A : see ads in your search every day, help plant one tree every 2 years.

Option B : block ads, be less tempted to buy crap you don't need. Save at least 7€ a month this way.

Option C : give 7€ a month to a charity you support

I choose B and C.

I don't understand why smart people think it's great to invest so much effort into redirecting such a tiny portion of ads commissions into planting trees. Just prove your point then ask for money. Please tell me what I'm missing here

Re: Ecosia – the search engine that plants trees

#82
post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Feel free to ask if you encounter a problem. Now is the best month to plant a tree in the northern hemisphere.

Also, what can I plant to hopefully enjoy a nice small forest to walk in in about 8-12 years? What fruit trees would work? (I already have some apple trees). Can I get away with planting seeds or do I need saplings? Will trees effectively stop large undergrowth to the point where I can walk around? I'm already in my mid-30's, will I be able to enjoy this for any reasonable portion of my life?

> what can I plant

What type of soil and climate? coastal area?

If you have apples you can have also plums and pears. Buy fruit trees grafted, from well and from a good source. Don't seed it. Reserve an area near your home to put it and also some open areas without trees.

> Will trees effectively stop large undergrowth to the point where I can walk around?

Some can do it (after some years), other can't. It depends on the trees, how they are packed, and the area. Beech definitely will kill anything under their canopy at long term and is a really beautiful tree, and many big conifers also, so must be placed carefully (and used sparsely).

Re: Ecosia – the search engine that plants trees

#83
post #9
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How much more than "a wrapper around Bing" would you say DuckDuckGo is?

They claim to be merging 'traditional' search results from multiple providers, explicitly calling out Oath (Yahoo) as well as Bing. So, hopefully, substantially. Realistically, somewhat. [0] https://duck.co/help/results/sources

Yahoo search is bing plus indexing of its own internal products (yahooo Sports/Finance/etc)

Re: Ecosia – the search engine that plants trees

#84

Option A : see ads in your search every day, help plant one tree every 2 years. Option B : block ads, be less tempted to buy crap you don't need. Save at least 7€ a month this way. Option C : give 7€ a month to a charity you support I choose B and C. I don't understand why smart people think it's great to invest so much effort into redirecting such a tiny portion of ads commissions into planting trees. Just prove you…

I actually do the same, it is much faster to simply give money to Ecosia partners. You can go as low as 0.10$ a tree with some of them.

Still, they do a great job at finding good and trustworthy planting charities https://ecosia.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/115002296049-Do... , so their work is really valuable for that.

Re: Ecosia – the search engine that plants trees

#85
post #59

I was investigating massive reforestation as a means of reducing greenhouse gases a few days ago. I stumbled upon this hyper-dense technique called the Miyawaki method [1]. Sounds like it's resource-intensive upfront but might be self-sustaining after that. The guy mentioned in [1] has open-sourced the methodology here [2]. [1]: https://fellowsblog.ted.com/how-to-grow-a-forest-really-real... [2]: https://www.afforest…

> To make soil analysis easy for remote clients, we are also developing a small, GPS-enabled soil probe that will test soil and upload the data onto our server. When the probe is integrated with our database, at the push of a button you’ll know the soil constituents and what nutrients it needs, and we’ll be able to immediately send a complete species list and a detailed procedure. This is pretty interesting, though I…

I'll say! Thanks so much for the link and for your hard work. I've been looking for a way to do continuous, multi-variable soil monitoring across my olive grove, and the Stenon probe looks like it could be perfect.

Do you have any information on pricing and availability?

P.S. I'm curious how you're able to accurately measure nitrate and carbon levels. Can you point me to any papers on the techniques you're using?

Re: Ecosia – the search engine that plants trees

#86
post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> To make soil analysis easy for remote clients, we are also developing a small, GPS-enabled soil probe that will test soil and upload the data onto our server. When the probe is integrated with our database, at the push of a button you’ll know the soil constituents and what nutrients it needs, and we’ll be able to immediately send a complete species list and a detailed procedure. This is pretty interesting, though I…

I'll say! Thanks so much for the link and for your hard work. I've been looking for a way to do continuous, multi-variable soil monitoring across my olive grove, and the Stenon probe looks like it could be perfect. Do you have any information on pricing and availability? P.S. I'm curious how you're able to accurately measure nitrate and carbon levels. Can you point me to any papers on the techniques you're using?

Availability is short, we are looking at general sales first quarter 2020 and I can't share pricing info at this time. However we have presold a bunch of devices already :)

As for accuracy we have patent pending ML models that provide nutrient predictions that are >= laboratory accuracy. If you are interested please sign up to the waitlist and someone will be in touch!

Re: Ecosia – the search engine that plants trees

#87
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a very shortsighted and unrealistic way of thinking. Consumerism is core to how our society functions and isn't going away - why should social good and environmentalism fly in contrast to it? This is the same backwards line of thinking that insists non-profit compensation be lower, leading to our best and brightest wasting away spying on people at Facebook instead of optimizing drug delivery out of Dakar. Unt…

>Until we get over the fact that there isn't anything inherently wrong with capitalism/consumerism There's loads wrong with it though. We only make it work because we patch it up with numerous environmental laws, social safety nets etc

Exactly. Unrestrained consumerism is exactly the cause of deforestation and many other ills.

Re: Ecosia – the search engine that plants trees

#88

I was investigating massive reforestation as a means of reducing greenhouse gases a few days ago. I stumbled upon this hyper-dense technique called the Miyawaki method [1]. Sounds like it's resource-intensive upfront but might be self-sustaining after that. The guy mentioned in [1] has open-sourced the methodology here [2]. [1]: https://fellowsblog.ted.com/how-to-grow-a-forest-really-real... [2]: https://www.afforest…

Reducing the amount of land we use is one of the best ways to restore our ecosystems and combat climate change. As we engineer better crops with higher yields we should use less land, and as we develop vertical farming we should use even less. I would like to see government buyback programs for farms and reforestation on those properties in the future. In the US states like Ohio, Indiana, and other midwestern states…

The best way to reduce the amount of land we use, is to stick to a plant based diet. Facts, see http://www.cowspiracy.com/facts

Re: Ecosia – the search engine that plants trees

#89
post #36

I love it. But, the first thing I clicked was the transparency report. > We publish ... with a delay of 6 weeks ... But the last report is from October 2018. Otherwise great stuff, truly inspirational.

For whatever reason the last two transparency reports were only published in their blog. This is the most recent one: https://blog.ecosia.org/december-ecosia-financial-report/

I should not have expected it to be with all the other financial reports. Totally my bad. Thank you!
Post reply on HN