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The Earth is getting greener

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Re: The Earth is getting greener

#121

Post by drewcoo »

wredue wrote: post #103
slibhb wrote: post #94

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".

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…

> 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!

Re: The Earth is getting greener

#122

Post by tastyfreeze »

platz wrote: post #48
paulsutter wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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.

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.

Re: The Earth is getting greener

#123

Post by dsizzle »

zdragnar wrote: post #44
pmayrgundter wrote: post #11

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...

"assuming no other limiting factors" is doing a lot of the heavy lifting there.

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?

Re: The Earth is getting greener

#124

Post by dsizzle »

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?

Re: The Earth is getting greener

#125

Post by logicprog »

itishappy wrote: post #80
logicprog wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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…

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.

Re: The Earth is getting greener

#126

Post by api »

adastra22 wrote: post #114
arp242 wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The apocalyptic climate change visions where we end up like Venus are unscientific It is. It's also a fringe belief that's not held by anyone serious speaking on the subject.

Who do you listen to speaking on the subject? It is brought up constantly. You can have a documentary on TV about climate change without bringing up Venus as a cautionary tale, for example. People who concern themselves with climate change genuinely think it will lead to mass human die offs, in my experience.

It could lead to mass die offs but due to starvation, extreme weather events, and most of all war.

If we reacted with calm rationality we’d probably adapt pretty well but we’re not likely to do that. One refugee crisis to Europe has just about brought on the return of fascism, and that’s minor compared to what major climate change might cause.

Climate change will be like AIDS or anaphylactic shock. You won’t die of it. You’ll die of the stuff it causes.

Re: The Earth is getting greener

#127

Post by throwawayqqq11 »

platz wrote: post #48
paulsutter wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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.

> 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

Re: The Earth is getting greener

#129

Post by d0gsg0w00f »

moosey wrote: post #97
BillFranklin wrote: post #17

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…

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…

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

Re: The Earth is getting greener

#130

Post by d0gsg0w00f »

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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