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The Earth is getting greener

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Re: The Earth is getting greener

#41

Post by starluz »

DinaCoder99 wrote: post #34
Razengan wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

> 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

Re: The Earth is getting greener

#42

Post by bsza »

hanniabu wrote: post #32
api wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Atmospheric methane converts to co2

Methane’s greenhouse effect is 80 times more powerful than that of CO2, so cutting methane right now would have near-immediate effects as it would convert to less potent CO2 in a matter of years. Whereas cutting CO2 would stop things from getting worse, but wouldn’t have an immediate reversal effect like methane would.

It’s a one-off trick that would buy us some time (assuming we can implement it).

Re: The Earth is getting greener

#43

Post by paulsutter »

platz wrote: post #40
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…

> The article is a bit all over the place. Must an observation have an easily digestible value judgement and tell you how you should think about it, or can it just be allowed to present the facts and list the pros and cons. which one do you think leads to a healthier media environment Did you yourself not also include a portion of your comment to respond to article based on its data with your own "it depends" based o…

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

Re: The Earth is getting greener

#44

Post by zdragnar »

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.

Re: The Earth is getting greener

#45

Post by Scarblac »

api wrote: post #16
TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #13

England 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...

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 different, it's not just us.

Re: The Earth is getting greener

#46

Post by macNchz »

tasty_freeze wrote: post #39
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…

Really, that is the worry, that "We are destroying the earth" as a metaphor? People are confused by this? If I said, "Be careful how you lift that heavy sack or you will destroy your back" would you complain that while you might suffer a debilitating injury, your back will not literally be destroyed? Of course what people mean when they warn about the destruction of the earth is that it is going to have profound and…

I do think a lot of people have a concept of “the environment” not so much as it being our singular shared home, but as some sort of vague notion of National Parks and sea turtles, that are nice to protect but not especially relevant to day-to-day life. Given the way many people treat their own private homes, however, I’m not entirely convinced that the distinction is relevant to behavior, though.

Re: The Earth is getting greener

#47

Post by tasty_freeze »

Potholer54 posts well notated videos on youtube where he explains (among other things) climate science and mostly debunks false information. He is a geologist by degree, but has spent his career in science communication. Videos are infrequent but well done, and he makes no money from them. He sites his sources and does a great job of tracking down primary sources, all of which are linked.

One of his oft repeated ideas is: "Why should you believe what some guy on youtube is saying about climate change? You shouldn't! But if an idiot like me (potholer54) can read and understand the source material, you can too." Not only does he provide sources, he is very good about following up when people point out mistakes in his videos.

Anyway, here is a two parter where he responds to the attitude that CO2 is good for plant growth and so it is good for us.

Part 1: https://youtu.be/ZqA4bDVmBB8?si=TjwFJFR4QzFCXfGR Part 2: https://youtu.be/VJoijPh2i-A?si=wUc0gfnQynZXWdHJ

One of the key points is that yes: if you hold everything else equal and increase CO2, it does increase plant growth -- but in the real world, climate change isn't just increasing CO2, it affects temperatures and rainfall too. Also, some plants use "C3" photosynthesis and benefit significantly from increasing CO2 while "C4" photosynthesis crops (like corn) don't. But there is a lot more in there.

Re: The Earth is getting greener

#48

Post by platz »

paulsutter wrote: post #43
platz wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The article is a bit all over the place. Must an observation have an easily digestible value judgement and tell you how you should think about it, or can it just be allowed to present the facts and list the pros and cons. which one do you think leads to a healthier media environment Did you yourself not also include a portion of your comment to respond to article based on its data with your own "it depends" based o…

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.

Re: The Earth is getting greener

#49

Post by bryanlarsen »

api wrote: post #16
TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #13

England 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...

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…

"The Earth is fine": of course, it's a giant ball of rock. A few degrees isn't going to affect it.

"~90% of species are fucked": it's not the magnitude of the change, it's the speed. The climate is changing on a decades-long time scale, and that's too fast for most species and ecosystems to adapt.

The corollary there is that ~10% of species will be fine, and thrive. Like every mass extinction event the world will look a lot different pre and post-extinction but it will "survive".

Humans aren't fucked. We had pre-industrial humans living in both the Arctic and the Sahara. We adapt the environment to us, and we migrate quickly. If we destroy the environment we can grow food in greenhouses. It'll be crazy expensive, but we'll survive. The speed at which India is currently adopting A/C shows how all but the bottom billion of humans are already adapting to climate change. The bottom billion is fucked, unless the top billion stops whining and starts doing something.

The status quo is fucked. We're a bunch of spoiled brats that think 10% inflation and the end of the world are calamities of similar magnitude. If you want to get a good handle on what true hardship is like, talk to a refugee or a member of the greatest generation. (Do it quick, that means somebody ~100 years old).

Is civilization fucked? It depends on how well it adapts, and what your definition of "fucked" is. (see above).

Re: The Earth is getting greener

#50

Post by Solvency »

mateo1 wrote: post #36
huqedato wrote: post #33

[flagged]

Thank you for posting this. I wanted to read a reasonable voice for a while, and I couldn't find anything. Search engines, traditional and LLM-based (ie ChatGPT) will actively censor all dissident voices, and it's just so tiring being unable to have a conversation with someone or read an article that's based on some common ground, some common assumptions between you and the writer.

Replace "climate change" with "vaccine safety", would you write that same response? Watch me get downvoted for even mentioning the word let alone express a dissenting opinion.
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