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The Earth is getting greener

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Re: The Earth is getting greener

#161

Post by troupe »

sprocket wrote: post #131
moosey wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I dairy farmed for 14 years, and my wife and I got out in the winter of 2023. We've seen ever increasing scarcity of water in our region, because the surrounding mountains don't get enough snow pack whose melt feeds the streams through spring and summer, and we don't see the spring rains nearly as much anymore either. We used to be able to irrigate our hay fields all summer long with no issues, until fall rains retur…

So you live in a region that has significantly less snowfall than what can be expected based on the normal variation that occurred 25, 50, or 100 years ago?

Re: The Earth is getting greener

#162

Post by j-bos »

dsizzle wrote: post #124

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?

A cultural bias against change seems most salient to me. Most of the change makers in superhero movies are villains while the heroes are meant to bring back the status quo.

Re: The Earth is getting greener

#163

Post by friend_and_foe »

Wow,I just don't know what to say to a piece like this.

First, to frame carbon dioxide as "a pollutant but also a fertilizer" is, it's fucking incredulous. You are made of carbon dioxide and water. You can classify it as a pollutant when it has negative impacts, but that is what is secondary on this planet. Are they being disingenuous, or do they expect that their readership is naive to this fact?

Then, to frame the obvious consequence of increased carbon dioxide being a greener world as potentially bad, and those negatives are things like ecosystem destruction, lack of biodiversity, that the plants decompose eventually (not a consideration when you're talking about greening in aggregate), runoff... I thought the big giant problem we need to be solving is carbon dioxide in the atmosphere? Will they address the negative impact of ocean greening, a far more consequential increase in biomass with regard to climate that they mention but don't address? Is there one?

All I see is a good thing dressed up as a bad thing because can't have good things happen to the planet as a result of human beings, ever.

Re: The Earth is getting greener

#164

Post by d0gsg0w00f »

fnordian_slip wrote: post #151
d0gsg0w00f wrote: post #130

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.

I believe "the earth is compensating" to be a much stronger form of mental gymnastics than most other comments here. For example, the permafrost thawing leads to a lot more greenery, but it would require willful ignorance to see this as a positive thing. It's pretty much the same as the legion of people who say "the climate has always been changing", without looking at it in context (though a simplified graphic, whic…

Well, let's say they do melt, vegetation takes over and removes more CO2, eventually everything will cool down. Nature balances. The earth will take care of itself. What happens to us during that process is the big worry.

Re: The Earth is getting greener

#165

Post by quesera »

arp242 wrote: post #82
huqedato wrote: post #30

Finally, somebody is telling the truth about CO2. Not all is grim about climate. The things are in the middle, as always. Reality is neither black nor white. https://futurecrunch.com/goodnews2023/

> The things are in the middle, as always. Always? Really? Please, list all the advantages and nuance for leaded gasoline, paint, and other uses of lead. Or maybe all the nuanced advantageous effects that asbestos has on your lungs? And if we move beyond environmental issues things get even more ridiculous, but let's not get too side-tracked.

I won't take a position on your intended point, but these are not good examples.

Leaded paint was better than non-leaded paint. Leaded solder also. Asbestos was the wonder material.

Yes, the negatives outweighed the positives. But the truth was absolutely in the middle in these cases.

The materials were great. The unintended/unexpected side effects were bad.

Leaded gasoline, leaded paint, leaded solder, and asbestos are all still used today where the conditions are suitable, because the material is superior for the application.

Re: The Earth is getting greener

#166

Post by friend_and_foe »

jraph wrote: post #78
exoverito wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>But there's no way, all things considered, it's a net benefit overall. This seems like a very dogmatic statement to make. Especially when weighed with benefits of cheap energy and economic growth. A wealthier world can build the infrastructure to handle potentially negative effects of climate change. The more extreme environmentalists and marxists say we should be engaging in degrowth, which would just result in a k…

>> But there's no way, all things considered, it's a net benefit overall. > This seems like a very dogmatic statement to make Do you think climate change could have a net benefit? I don't think that thinking that's false is dogmatic. It's too late for "we'll manage". Time to go for "We need to manage now" because... > A wealthier world can build the infrastructure to handle potentially negative effects of climate cha…

I personally do think the net benefit is positive, for the biosphere, not necessarily for human beings, which is where our action comes in. We can benefit if we choose to benefit.

A wealthier world building the infrastructure to handle the negative effects does not look how you think it does. It doesn't look like a unified concerted effort to hold back the tide in a figurative sense. It looks like communities that live on shorelines building levees, to hold back the tide in a literal sense. What you want and what need to be done are not the same things. You can't say we have failed just because the solution isn't what you wish it were. The world is changing and people will manage.

Re: The Earth is getting greener

#167

Post by specialist »

d0gsg0w00f wrote: post #164
fnordian_slip wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe "the earth is compensating" to be a much stronger form of mental gymnastics than most other comments here. For example, the permafrost thawing leads to a lot more greenery, but it would require willful ignorance to see this as a positive thing. It's pretty much the same as the legion of people who say "the climate has always been changing", without looking at it in context (though a simplified graphic, whic…

Well, let's say they do melt, vegetation takes over and removes more CO2, eventually everything will cool down. Nature balances. The earth will take care of itself. What happens to us during that process is the big worry.

Nihilism doesn't help those of us who rather enjoy living and would very much like our future generations to thrive.

Re: The Earth is getting greener

#168

Post by fnordian_slip »

d0gsg0w00f wrote: post #164
fnordian_slip wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe "the earth is compensating" to be a much stronger form of mental gymnastics than most other comments here. For example, the permafrost thawing leads to a lot more greenery, but it would require willful ignorance to see this as a positive thing. It's pretty much the same as the legion of people who say "the climate has always been changing", without looking at it in context (though a simplified graphic, whic…

Well, let's say they do melt, vegetation takes over and removes more CO2, eventually everything will cool down. Nature balances. The earth will take care of itself. What happens to us during that process is the big worry.

Where do you get the confidence from that it will eventually cool down and self-correct, and everything will be all right? Surely you must be aware somewhere back in your mind, that this is merely wishful thinking?

Even if you ignore the https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tipping_points_in_the_climat..., you must realise that climate change has already led to the extinction of a huge number of animal species, and that less biodiversity can lead to lasting problems in ecosystems, that take millennial to stabilise to a new equilibrium.

Not to mention the fact that it's kind of insane to kill of an absurd number of species, destroy a shitload of habitats, and then say "don't worry, some day this will be balanced again". Even if it did, that does not make it okay. If you say to someone "don't worry, your nose will heal" that doesn't mean it's acceptable for you to hit that person in the face.

Re: The Earth is getting greener

#169

Post by ruszki »

troupe wrote: post #161
sprocket wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I dairy farmed for 14 years, and my wife and I got out in the winter of 2023. We've seen ever increasing scarcity of water in our region, because the surrounding mountains don't get enough snow pack whose melt feeds the streams through spring and summer, and we don't see the spring rains nearly as much anymore either. We used to be able to irrigate our hay fields all summer long with no issues, until fall rains retur…

So you live in a region that has significantly less snowfall than what can be expected based on the normal variation that occurred 25, 50, or 100 years ago?

I don’t know where parent commenter lives, but in Central Europe, this definitely happened in a radical way. There is basically no snow. A day, or if you’re lucky three days a year maximum. This is going on for the past 20-25 years continuously. This didn’t happen in the past millennia at all. In the mountain village where I lived is totally unimaginable the winter for kids nowadays, how was in the 90s for me. And that was normal for centuries.

Also 40 Celsius is the new 30 in the past 15 years. This didn’t happen since we measure temperature. And 10 degrees are a lot, and the change happened in a decade.

Also summer wind patterns completely changed in the past 5 years, due to the weakening currents in Atlantic Ocean. This is something which is also highly unusual the past millennia. We know this for sure, because all of our towns were built wind from West in mind. We have wind from that direction less and less.

This is way over normal variation.

But looking at other examples, for example Norway. Thawing permafrost bogs are not something which can be explained by normal variation.

Re: The Earth is getting greener

#170

Post by throwaway2037 »

starluz wrote: post #41
DinaCoder99 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I wish people who say that would actually live in the overpopulated regions of the world for just 1 month. People need to stop dragging 19th century nonsense into a globalized economy. Regional carrying capacity is certainly a thing, but the primary constraint in most areas today isn't food (which is, after all, rather easy to ship and process) but water. Anyway, you can apply the same reasoning to migration as I d…

I’ve heard this argument before and it is insane to me. Re comment above have you been to an overpopulated region? It is not just about food. Logically movement becomes more limited and difficult with people literally in each others way. Regions become incredibly inefficient. We are independent beings not meant to live like sardines

> Regions become incredibly inefficient.

Tokyo? Seoul? Manhattan? London? Paris? All very dense. Also very economically efficient. All have great metro systems, so it is easy to move around.

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