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The Earth is getting greener
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Re: The Earth is getting greener
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Re: The Earth is getting greener
#25> industrial cropland typically produces more carbon emissions than it absorbs over the long term Question about this: where does the extra carbon it emits come from? Is it already in the land beforehand?
I believe Vox slightly screwed this up but it's an understandable mistake: the article[1] refers to CO2 equivalent of emissions, not literal CO2. In particular methane from fertilizers seems to have a more negative impact on overall greenhouse gases than whatever CO2 the plants are absorbing. [1] https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/acd5e8
It has a much shorter atmospheric half life though, on the order of a decade vs thousands of years for CO2. If we cut methane emissions this will have a near term impact whereas cutting CO2 emissions just stops things from getting worse as fast. It reverses nothing.
Re: The Earth is getting greener
#26England is very green at the moment. At least the areas that aren't flooded are. The issue for humans isn't the "amount of green", it's high quality crop yields. Increasing CO2 increases plant growth, but also lowers nutritional value. https://cupblog.org/2023/04/06/the-truth-about-rising-co2-an...
We overproduce food for the human race by like 35% right now, we have a long ways to go before we hit a population issue. Regardless of all the hand-wringing certain rich people do about the birth rates in Africa. A much more pressing concern is our lack of any inclination to reasonably distribute it.
Just the inefficiencies in beef yields alone could probably feed half of Africa.
We've got a long, long, long way to go before half the world is starving to death.
Re: The Earth is getting greener
#27Earlier 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…
How should the environmental movement frame things?
Finding ways for humans to live well now without consuming their children’s ability to do the same in the future.
A good framing would also draw a link to fiscal responsibility. A renewable sustainable civilization is paying its bills fully. Fossil fuels and other non renewable processes are putting it on a credit card, and one with an unknown interest rate. Eventually you can’t do that anymore and the interest comes due. Right now humanity is still putting something like 75% of its primary energy use on credit.
The worst framing is the anti-human framing you see from radical greens or films like Avatar. If you really hate humans the logical thing would be to do nothing and let us crap where we eat until we render our environment inhospitable to us. If humans are the problem the activists should go home.
Re: The Earth is getting greener
#28[flagged]
You alright there champ?
Re: The Earth is getting greener
#29England is very green at the moment. At least the areas that aren't flooded are. The issue for humans isn't the "amount of green", it's high quality crop yields. Increasing CO2 increases plant growth, but also lowers nutritional value. https://cupblog.org/2023/04/06/the-truth-about-rising-co2-an...
We overproduce food for the human race by like 35% right now, we have a long ways to go before we hit a population issue. Regardless of all the hand-wringing certain rich people do about the birth rates in Africa. A much more pressing concern is our lack of any inclination to reasonably distribute it.
> we have a long ways to go before we hit a population issue.
I wish people who say that would actually live in the overpopulated regions of the world for just 1 month.
Re: The Earth is getting greener
#30Finally, 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.