Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Nasa Says Earth Is Greener Today Than 20 Years Ago Thanks to China, India

forbes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 99 posts

Re: Nasa Says Earth Is Greener Today Than 20 Years Ago Thanks to China, India

#41

Post by vixen99 »

China and India's commendable efforts aside, the whole earth has been affected by global environmental change: Nature Climate Change volume 6, pages 791–795 (2016)

"We show a persistent and widespread increase of growing season integrated LAI (greening) over 25% to 50% of the global vegetated area, whereas less than 4% of the globe shows decreasing LAI (browning)."

"CO2 fertilization effects explain 70% of the observed greening trend, followed by nitrogen deposition (9%), climate change (8%) and land cover change (LCC) (4%). CO2 fertilization effects explain most of the greening trends in the tropics, whereas climate change resulted in greening of the high latitudes and the Tibetan Plateau. LCC contributed most to the regional greening observed in southeast China and the eastern United States."

Re: Nasa Says Earth Is Greener Today Than 20 Years Ago Thanks to China, India

#42

Post by Wowfunhappy »

Leary wrote: post #14
Hextinium wrote: post #3

This is a good counter-argument with some evidence that China and India are not the toxic hell hole that sometimes pops up in media. The thing that isn't mentioned in the article and is in the paper is that the majority >80% of the greening is due to cropland instead of the forests.

Greenhouse Gas Emissions Per Capita (Metric Tons of CO2e Per capita): China: 8.49 India: 2.28 United States: 19.9 Japan: 10.55 [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_greenhous...

Is your point that the US is worse?

Because, yes, the US absolutely needs to lower its carbon output immediately and drastically.

Note that there are lots of other democratic countries doing far better than the US and China.

Re: Nasa Says Earth Is Greener Today Than 20 Years Ago Thanks to China, India

#43

Post by pm90 »

swarnie_ wrote: post #30
pm90 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uh..... no. If China/India adopt and perfect green tech and export it to Africa, fucking awesome. America is sadly too busy with infighting on stupid issues (Abortion, Gun restrictions , Voting rights... all important, stupid in that there still isn’t general consensus that these are all good ideas that should be adopted widely ASAP) while the rest of the world moves on.

Any post critical of USA is universally panned on this site, careful now. The point of my post is their not pushing green tech to Africa, they're pushing all the dirty industries they no longer want/need to tolerate on-shore.

And so the cycle of the industrial revolution goes, wrecking every country in its wake ....

I agree that seems likely, but the cost effectiveness of solar tech, mass transit etc. make me hopeful that Africa will take a different path to economic development.

Re: Nasa Says Earth Is Greener Today Than 20 Years Ago Thanks to China, India

#44

Post by magnamerc »

baddox wrote: post #26
umadon wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"the government arrests people and seizes factories that violate these ecological goals" Why isn't this a good thing? Shouldn't people who ignore ecological laws be punished? And anyway, how do you propose to fix climate change without massive, centralized planning, including punishment of those who subvert such a fix for personal gain? Also, in your link, the plants are closed, not seized.

I don’t understand. Why would central planning be required to fix climate change? How about just charge greenhouse gas emitters so that there are no longer externalities? I don’t see any reason to turn to central planning, unless one just uses that term to refer to any regulations involving the economy.

I think a lot of right wingers in North America would say that regulations such as taxing carbon, or providing government incentives to solar or wind farms would be considered a socialist centrally planned catastrophe. I mean, that's what the 'Green New Deal' is all about, and apparently American right wing nuts think that's communism.

Re: Nasa Says Earth Is Greener Today Than 20 Years Ago Thanks to China, India

#45

Post by basementcat »

pm90 wrote: post #17
whatshisface wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It won't take a dictator to plant trees, just government spending. In fact the EPA has done a lot without eliminating democracy in the US.

....And it’s currently run by a fossil fuel lobbyist. While I’m not arguing for the US to not be a democracy, it’s important to accept that democracies are not perfect, have many flaws and require constant vigilance to ensure the knobs of State power don’t end up in the hands of incompetent idiots (as they are in the current administration).

That is one of the reasons why we have the Electoral College.

Re: Nasa Says Earth Is Greener Today Than 20 Years Ago Thanks to China, India

#46

Post by umadon »

aaronbrethorst wrote: post #27
pm90 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

....And it’s currently run by a fossil fuel lobbyist. While I’m not arguing for the US to not be a democracy, it’s important to accept that democracies are not perfect, have many flaws and require constant vigilance to ensure the knobs of State power don’t end up in the hands of incompetent idiots (as they are in the current administration).

require constant vigilance i.e., y’all need to vote.

People keep voting, meanwhile nothing's getting better.

Re: Nasa Says Earth Is Greener Today Than 20 Years Ago Thanks to China, India

#47

Post by theandrewbailey »

Wohlf wrote: post #6
Hextinium wrote: post #3

This is a good counter-argument with some evidence that China and India are not the toxic hell hole that sometimes pops up in media. The thing that isn't mentioned in the article and is in the paper is that the majority >80% of the greening is due to cropland instead of the forests.

I don't know if it is a counterargument, you can fill your countryside with trees while also burning a mountain of coal.

It depends on how you're burning the mountain of coal.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mountaintop_removal_mining

Re: Nasa Says Earth Is Greener Today Than 20 Years Ago Thanks to China, India

#48

Post by Wowfunhappy »

basementcat wrote: post #45
pm90 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

....And it’s currently run by a fossil fuel lobbyist. While I’m not arguing for the US to not be a democracy, it’s important to accept that democracies are not perfect, have many flaws and require constant vigilance to ensure the knobs of State power don’t end up in the hands of incompetent idiots (as they are in the current administration).

That is one of the reasons why we have the Electoral College.

How does the electoral college prevent this problem?

Re: Nasa Says Earth Is Greener Today Than 20 Years Ago Thanks to China, India

#49

Post by gamblor956 »

ixtli wrote: post #16

For sure! I'm not saying democracy should be abandoned. I'm saying that 1) china might not actually be quite like its depicted in the west 2) what we call authoritarian is often just counter to our ideology that people should be able to deploy capital however they see fit with little consequence. Anyway your point that it just takes correctly allocated capital to solve this problem is 100% salient. (And before anyone…

China has been disappearing students got the past several months for supporting labor rights...in a communist country..
Post reply on HN