Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

China has added forest the size of Texas since 1990

e360.yale.edu

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 666 posts

Re: China has added forest the size of Texas since 1990

#101

Post by nitwit005 »

AuthAuth wrote: post #46

This sounds big but its less than the bare minimum required. Their coal emissions are insane. In my opinion its all anyone should be talking about when it comes to climate change.

The project wasn't started as a global warming fix. As the article notes, it was about preventing desertification:

> Over the last three and a half decades China has planted roughly 120 million acres of forest, according to U.N. figures, much of it added to contain the spread of deserts. Last year China completed a project, begun in 1978, to plant a 2,000-mile-long belt of trees around the Taklamakan Desert in the west. Work continues on a belt of trees around the massive Gobi Desert in the north.

Re: China has added forest the size of Texas since 1990

#102

Post by torginus »

aiauthoritydev wrote: post #6

India too has been adding more green cover than ever. Higher CO2 in atmosphere leads to faster growth of forests. But more important factor is urbanization for India. As people move to cities the need to cut down trees goes down.

One nice thing about these developing countries is due to the power infrastructure tends to be not very good - which prompts people to take things into their hands and install solar, not to save the planet but to stave off brownouts, and be able to run the AC around the clock to stave off the heat.

For residential, solar + batteries straight up beats legacy infra on cost, and with the upcoming cheap sodium batteries, things are only going to get better.

Re: China has added forest the size of Texas since 1990

#103

Post by hmm37 »

jacobolus wrote: post #86
lbrito wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you tell everyone what their per capita emission is? While you're at it, compare that with the US per capita emissions. Also let us know the accumulated emissions for China and US in the last 50 years. Thanks.

Chinese CO₂ emissions per capita are only about 60% as much as the USA, but in the past 25 years US per capita emissions have dropped by about a third and Chinese emissions per capita have almost tripled and are still rising rapidly. Considering that China is about 4 times as populous as the US, this is a huge problem for the world. (US emissions are also a huge problem; we all need for them to decrease very quickly.…

Is the per capita still rising rapidly? China's CO2 growth levels have already started leveling off, and actually showed a slight decline as of late.

https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-clean-energy-just-put-c...

Re: China has added forest the size of Texas since 1990

#104

Post by jillesvangurp »

seb1204 wrote: post #41
jillesvangurp wrote: post #36

I've been binging a lot of videos on things like rewilding and other approaches that can be used to restore landscapes. The Chinese have successfully executed a number of large scale projects over the decades. They started this early. Where other countries talked about doing things, the Chinese went ahead and did those things. One of their projects is allowing them to undertake infrastructure projects in the desert.…

Any YouTube playlist that you can share?

Just search for things like "green wall", "china straw landscape", etc.

A few good ones that I watched:

- Inside Africa's Food Forest Mega-Project https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xbBdIG--b58

- China Buried Tons of Dead Plants Under the Desert Sand https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ev8DsPH_82Y

- Green Gold: Regreening the Desert | John D. Liu https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E3nR3G9jboc

There are way more. One channel that I might call https://www.youtube.com/@MossyEarth. They basically use donations to take on projects to do smalls scale nature restoration. I am actually considering making a donation to them because I like what they do. There are more examples of such channels.

Not everything on this front is without controversy of course and I'm not blind to that. But I like the positive, constructive nature of these approaches. Just the simple notion that it's fixable with a bit of cleverness and lots of hard work. China is of course an autocracy that you can criticize for a lot of things. But they are doing a few things right as well. And it's worth calling that out and learning from them.

Re: China has added forest the size of Texas since 1990

#105

Post by mulmen »

navigate8310 wrote: post #32
roncesvalles wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cities tend to expand up. Almost all buildings in Mumbai that are under 5 stories are targeted for "redevelopment" i.e. a developer buying it out and building something taller in its place.

That is too costly for cities that have cheap and abandoned agricultural land waiting to be deforested and build upon.

What does “deforested” mean? Isn’t agricultural land already deforested?

Re: China has added forest the size of Texas since 1990

#106

Post by mtmickush »

throwawaymaths wrote: post #88
lbrito wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you tell everyone what their per capita emission is? While you're at it, compare that with the US per capita emissions. Also let us know the accumulated emissions for China and US in the last 50 years. Thanks.

The earth doesn't give a shit about per capita, and us and eu are net reducing CO2 emissions since 2014 (even during trump I)

The earth isn't a person. I think it seems valid to consider the harm and or benefits being caused on a per person basis. Why should an individual in the US be allowed to release more CO2 emissions than an individual in China?

Re: China has added forest the size of Texas since 1990

#107

Post by whoevercares »

jacobolus wrote: post #86
lbrito wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you tell everyone what their per capita emission is? While you're at it, compare that with the US per capita emissions. Also let us know the accumulated emissions for China and US in the last 50 years. Thanks.

Chinese CO₂ emissions per capita are only about 60% as much as the USA, but in the past 25 years US per capita emissions have dropped by about a third and Chinese emissions per capita have almost tripled and are still rising rapidly. Considering that China is about 4 times as populous as the US, this is a huge problem for the world. (US emissions are also a huge problem; we all need for them to decrease very quickly.…

China has been a developing country for most the time of the past 25 years. It is indeed a huge problem if it is still rising rapidly. But it is also not fair to limit China’s per capita growth for most of the past two decades

Re: China has added forest the size of Texas since 1990

#108

Post by trhway »

cpursley wrote: post #98
trhway wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The same article says Russia is on 2nd place in reforestation. Reforestation alone doesn't matter. What matters is total result of deforestation and reforestation. Russia reforests only about 1Mha/year : https://www.statista.com/statistics/1059300/russia-reforeste... while the total resulting loss is https://www.globalforestwatch.org/dashboards/country/RUS/?ca... "In 2020, Russia had 748 Mha of natural forest, exten…

Kind reminder - this is not reddit.

>Are you from country 404 by any chance? Because that's how these posts read.

You may read it whatever way you like. If we look at the facts - statista and globalwatch is some Western sites/orgs, topwar is straight Russian and Guardian is Great Britain.

>Kind reminder - this is not reddit.

This is why you're using that offensive "404" notation (an expression of the Russian propaganda point that Ukraine isn't a sovereign independent state) when referring to Ukraine?

Re: China has added forest the size of Texas since 1990

#109

Post by 0cf8612b2e1e »

WorldPeas wrote: post #72
0cf8612b2e1e wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is it manual? If I had a mission to plant millions of trees, I am going to invest in a ditch witch.

assuming you're not joking, construction equipment is incredibly expensive for countries to whom profiting from importing it is not a "sure thing", doubly so if their roads are not developed. This is why a 2000s hummer in central America still costs as much as a nice modern car.

A basic trencher is little more than a push lawnmower frame with a chain saw attached. Not enormous industrial equipment, but still a large boost to productivity vs a shovel.

Re: China has added forest the size of Texas since 1990

#110

Post by tzs »

porknaut wrote: post #67
kulahan wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ecologically speaking, the US is an absolute monster of a nightmare. The American carbon footprint is incredible.

It doesn't even come close to China. So if we're a nightmarish monster, I would hate to think what that makes China.

China has 4 times the population. In any rational divvying up of the world's total emissions allowance by country China's share would be 4 times that of the US, but they are only emitting twice what the US is emitting.

Both are over their fair share, but the US is over by a larger factor so is farther behind on getting to where they need to be.

(This is not taking into account trade. Divvying up the world emissions budget by population gives the fair amount for each country if there is no trade. If there is trade the best way to handle it is probably to count the emissions for making things in country X that get consumed in country Y as being emissions in Y. With that correction China comes out even better).

Post reply on HN