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China has added forest the size of Texas since 1990

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

#161

Post by PeaceTed »

profsummergig wrote: post #145
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.

India doesn't do it in an organized way though. You'll read about some 70 year old woman/man in an obscure village who's reforested thousands of acres on their own, or resuscitated a lake (e.g. the lake guy in Bengaluru). But there's little effort to harness their knowledge in a systematic way, add knowledge from others into the knowledge bank, do peer review, and then systematically dispense the knowledge in the for…

Yeah another example of the saying "India is a disappointment to both optimists and pessimists".

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

#162

Post by palata »

supportengineer wrote: post #23
Freedom2 wrote: post #8

Does this mean that you can drive in the forest for an entire day and still be in the forest?

You can do that in Virginia if you drive slowly enough, stay off the Interstate. For example if you go from Cumberland Gap to Virginia Beach, a distance of 499 miles, it will take you 10 hours and 25 minutes.

Well if you drive slowly enough, you can do that in my backyard :D

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

#163

Post by cpursley »

trhway wrote: post #90
olalonde wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What "war support"? China trades with Russia, as it does with Ukraine. It doesn't support a side in particular.

There are a lot of thing which are clearly "war support", yet it would be a long and frankly pointless discussion, so i'll just refer to China's own words: https://www.cnn.com/2025/07/04/europe/china-ukraine-eu-war-i... "Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi told the European Union’s top diplomat that Beijing can’t accept Russia losing its war against Ukraine..."

Him or some other pointed out to some important EU person that if they (China, an industrial powerhouse) were actually supporting Russian war efforts, the war would already be over.

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

#164

Post by hooverd »

9dev wrote: post #144
marricks wrote: post #77

This and Bill Gates saying... > “the doomsday outlook [on climate change] is causing much of the climate community to focus too much on near-term emissions goals, and it’s diverting resources from the most effective things we should be doing to improve life in a warming world.” I guess it's cool there's something to be hopeful about, westerner's just seemed excited to make money off of melting ice in Greenland.

Bill Gates is fundamentally anthrophilic, so his concern is above all human suffering. I think that’s a valid viewpoint, but also shortsighted; keeping this planet habitable will require tough decisions and sacrifices, and should stay the utmost priority, out of sheer necessity.

ah, the classic "you are a sacrifice I'm willing to make"

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

#165

Post by AuthAuth »

lbrito wrote: post #78
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.

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.

I couldnt care less what their per captia emissions are they have 1.5b people. Accumulated is about the same as the EU and will very soon overtake the US.

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

#166

Post by cpursley »

trhway wrote: post #108
cpursley wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 sovere…

Well, they aren’t. Never have been and never will be. Geopolitics is a ruthless game and those in the middle sometimes get crushed. Which is why you generally want natural borders (mountains, coast, etc).

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

#167

Post by rtpg »

votepaunchy wrote: post #155
munk-a wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US was positioned to leverage technological and economic advantages to embrace and profit massively off of next gen energy infrastructure. It is a tragedy of our era that anti-conservationalism was able to gain such a strong foothold in the body politic.

> embrace and profit massively off of next gen energy infrastructure Our children’s generation will never forgive us for abandoning nuclear energy abundance. Truly a crime against humanity.

There was still a perfectly nice window of opportunity even scratching nuclear from the list.

My other glib thing about nuclear is that France, a much denser nation than the US (though of course density is a local property...), has a bunch of nuclear, but even with "full" buy-in it's hard to make the whole thing profitable, and a lot of the nuclear reactors are running at like 80% capacity.

Electricity is pretty fungible at smaller scales but when you start building reactors you need water and you need consumers of a lot of electricity to be close by, and that does cause its own sets of constraints.

Would still be better if the US had built a bunch more nuclear reactors, but my assumption has often been that there are limits to how much it could be expanded in the US given those constraints.

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

#168

Post by AuthAuth »

vanviegen wrote: post #116
mulmen wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Per capita emissions aren’t relevant to climate impact. Neither are relative emissions between countries. This is a global issue.

No, but if some people are outputting way more CO2 than others, these are the ones we should be focussing on first.

Yes China is outputting way more C02 than the next 6 biggest pollutors combined. Lets focus on them first. They are the only ones not reducing their emission growth.

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

#169

Post by IAmGraydon »

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.

It's funny this myth persists, primarily in conservative circles, it seems. We are far worse per capita than China. In 2023, the US emitted 13.83 tons of carbon per capita. In that same year, China emitted 9.24 tons per capita. There are few countries that are worse than us - that list includes Russia and Saudi Arabia.

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

#170

Post by rtpg »

mdeeks wrote: post #154
Hikikomori wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

US is far higher per capita and doing nothing about it.

This is one of the places where per capita doesn't matter as much as total emissions. We have one planet. The yearly total and cumulative matters the most. China is by far the leading emitter. Over double of the US as of 2023 (latest available data I can find). China's emissions also aren't falling, they are skyrocketing. The US emissions ARE falling. The US dominates in cumulative, which is essentially the measure o…

In the "we only have one planet" angle, I think it's worth considering that China is not just burning coal for domestic purposes for fun. The fossil fuel consumption is an input to some output, a lot of that going abroad.

If China is the factory for all of these products sold in the US (and elsewhere of course), then isn't China just accounting for even more US emissions?

In that sense, some sort of eco-Trump could put all the tariff money into green tech or something, to balance out the exporting of emissions.

Though to be fair, I gotta imagine that... a lot of chinese emissions are purely for domestic purposes.

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