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The Earth is getting greener

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Re: The Earth is getting greener

#171

Post by oceanplexian »

varelaseb wrote: post #143
tastyfreeze wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Optimizing for "green" is not what we're trying to achieve here. Mountains get greener when the tree line climbs as a sign of it's ecological decline. Stable forest and weather systems, biodiversity, bioavailability of nutrients in the ground are things closer to the interest of ecological causes.

Before is was physically possible for humans to change the climate most of the northern hemisphere was covered in a 4km thick sheet of ice. Then it melted and now there are forests. This melting also happened completely naturally and wasn’t because the cave men were putting out too much CO2.

This was done by the natural processes of the Earth, so recently even humans were alive during the Ice Age. Some scientists even say that we are due for another ice age, that we may be otherwise avoiding due to climate change.

Re: The Earth is getting greener

#172

Post by silverquiet »

oceanplexian wrote: post #171
varelaseb wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Optimizing for "green" is not what we're trying to achieve here. Mountains get greener when the tree line climbs as a sign of it's ecological decline. Stable forest and weather systems, biodiversity, bioavailability of nutrients in the ground are things closer to the interest of ecological causes.

Before is was physically possible for humans to change the climate most of the northern hemisphere was covered in a 4km thick sheet of ice. Then it melted and now there are forests. This melting also happened completely naturally and wasn’t because the cave men were putting out too much CO2. This was done by the natural processes of the Earth, so recently even humans were alive during the Ice Age. Some scientists eve…

Humans were around for the ice age, but not any of the humans I know. That was about 4 degrees Celsius, right? Over thousands of years. Meanwhile, my mom has lived through about 1.5 already and will probably see 2 in her life. Hell, depending on the breaks, I might live to see 3. Compressing a geological age into a human lifetime is bound to have some wacky effects. I can’t imagine being a kid today and thinking how much they’ll live to see.

Re: The Earth is getting greener

#175

Post by konschubert »

nostrademons wrote: post #157
konschubert wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the ability to run a complex environment-destroying civilization disappears well before all the individual humans do There are self-reinforcing loops of climate change that can cause runaway warming.

Sure. The ones actually likely to happen on earth top out at about 5-10C warming above present. At that point negative feedback cycles (like the CO2 greening effect mentioned in the article) dominate positive feedback cycles (like release of methane from the arctic tundra, or lowered albedo from ice melting), and the Earth enters a new equilibrium. The IPCC maintains that a runaway greenhouse effect which turns the e…

That is comforting, thank you.

Re: The Earth is getting greener

#176

Post by d0gsg0w00f »

fnordian_slip wrote: post #168
d0gsg0w00f wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Everything I've read shows that we're so far behind on correction and anything that will change it will completely upend our economy and society and would have to have happened 100 years ago. Basically hopeless. Might as well be the band playing on the sinking ship.

Alternatively and hopefully, we're wrong in our predictions and the earth will do something we don't expect.

Re: The Earth is getting greener

#177

Post by credit_guy »

The IPCC FAQ [1] states that this was known for decades:

  > For decades, about half of the carbon dioxide (CO2) that human activities have emitted to the atmosphere has been taken up by natural carbon sinks in vegetation, soils and oceans. [...] On land, it is mainly the vegetation that captures CO2 from the atmosphere through plant photosynthesis, which ultimately accumulates both in vegetation and soils. As more CO2 accumulates in the atmosphere, plant carbon capture increases through the CO2 fertilization effect in regions where plant growth is not limited by, for instance, nutrient availability. Climate change affects the processes responsible for the uptake and release of CO2 on land in multiple ways. Land CO2 uptake is generally increased by longer growing seasons due to global warming in cold regions and by nitrogen deposition in nitrogen-limited regions.
Bottom line: the Earth is getting greener, but not fast enough to keep up with our increased emissions.

[1] https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg1/downloads/faqs/IPCC_AR6_W...

Re: The Earth is getting greener

#178

Post by pacomerh »

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.

Yup getting tired of people trying hard not to look like the everyone else

Re: The Earth is getting greener

#179

Post by throwuwu »

Scarblac wrote: post #45
api wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The whole environmental movement made a mistake framing things as a moralistic struggle to “save the Earth.” Like George Carlin famously said on this subject: “the Earth will be fine. We’re fucked. The Earth has been far warmer with higher CO2 concentrations in its past and it was fine, but there were no humans then. It’s also been in an ice age fairly recently, but there was little civilization as far as we know and…

> Environmental concerns are selfish. That's overstating it. Yes, life will go on. But it's not only us that will die - as you say, much of the marine ecosystem will die off, we're not the only animal that has problems with wet bulb temperature (most don't even sweat), and humanity isn't going to die of starvation before we make everything remotely edible out there extinct first. Life is going to look extremely diffe…

That’s still a shortsighted view, regardless of human activity or presence other species will continuously go extinct including mass extinctions. That’s the entire history of life, evolution and extinction. The only way to intentionally prevent extinctions is with human intervention but humanity has to be around and technologically advanced and rich enough to do such things. It’s one of those put your own oxygen mask on first situations.

Re: The Earth is getting greener

#180

Post by logicprog »

nuancebydefault wrote: post #141
logicprog wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I guess that sort of response begs the question of if there is even anything greater to which humans owe some moral obligation; it sounds like you don't thing there is (though I apologize if this is reading more into your response than is actually there). No worries, you did in fact read me correctly. I don't really think moral obligations exist at all, and I don't think anything has moral "authority" over anything…

> .......at least be truthful. At least a tiny glimpse of morality, or would you name it differently?

I just like people better when they're truthful. :D I wouldn't claim they have any sort of obligation to be, moral or otherwise. I was just describing my stance toward various positions in that sentence if you look at the context
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