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China has added forest the size of Texas since 1990

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Re: China has added forest the size of Texas since 1990

#641

Post by FooBarWidget »

dgfl wrote: post #578
cobbaut wrote: post #444

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I’ve lived in Europe my whole life. I’ve never been robbed or felt unsafe. Really, where? I have been robbed in Belgium and in France, have had a knife on my throat on a Sunday morning, and have had burglars twice (once in Antwerp, once in Leuven). About five of my bikes were stolen, and I've been conned by construction workers several times.

Southern Italy. We’ve had burglars once actually, but that’s about it. I’ve since then also lived in Switzerland and Sweden, which are obviously much safer. Perhaps I’m too optimistic, but I don’t see the point in worrying about this. I take my precautions like anyone else and that’s about it. Anyhow, sorry to hear about your experience. That’s how statistics work I guess. For any particularly unlucky person there’s…

I think you're severely underestimating how safe China has become. Nowadays people don't even lock their motorbikes, and can leave their laptops in coffeeshops unattended for half an hour. You definitely can't do either of that in Netherlands. Maybe in some small village where everybody knows everybody else it's still possible.

That is the baseline that Chinese are comparing to nowadays. That's why even many what we call safe places feel unsafe to them.

Also consider that just 15 years ago, China was definitely way unsafer than many European countries. China upgraded from a low public trust to high public trust society in front of people's living memories. This is what you have to consider when considering why Chinese people are happy with their government. All this voting stuff is just theoretical benefit. In Netherlands, our politics have been a mess for more than a decade. Voting certainly didn't solve the problems.

Re: China has added forest the size of Texas since 1990

#642

Post by FooBarWidget »

dgfl wrote: post #605
yanhangyhy wrote: post #443

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But the supposed “decay of the west” is mostly internal propaganda from our very own anti-migration right wingers. it's not propaganda, i am talking some thing like 'yelp', real people share real experience after travel to EU. sure there are many good ones, but lots of bad ones. > unable to acknowledge your sexual orientation you can. but not in the public media. people share LGBT content on the Internet all the ti…

Thank you for your clarifications. I don’t really know what to make of these experiences, I know for sure that it can’t be much more than a small percentage of tourists getting pickpocketed. Plausibly, the people with negative experiences are a loud minority. I also now realize that my original comment may seem harsher than I intended. I fully understand your point of view since I was also born in a comparatively poo…

I mean, the reasons for her shutdown are pretty clear: she walked into national security terroritory and attracted attention from paranoid security officials. The reasons came out of her own mouth, as reported by The Dailo Mao. See my other comment on this topic.

Re: China has added forest the size of Texas since 1990

#643

Post by tomhow »

TiredOfLife wrote: post #634
tomhow wrote: post #613

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The comment was downvoted and flagged by several other community members so I don't seem to be out of step with community sentiment on this. I can accept that you sincerely felt it was an important thing to write, but all we can go on is what it looks like on the page, and what it looks like is trying to activate reactions in people with out-of-context controversy.

Several other community members also think that Ukraine is not a real country. But stuff like that seems to be the consensus here on HN.

There's no such "consensus", and everything I've seen in HN discussions about it indicates the HN community is generally supportive of the Ukraine cause. The community members downvoting and flagging your comment are ones who generally do so for reasons of comment quality and guidelines observance, not anything to do with their opinion on this or other topics.

Re: China has added forest the size of Texas since 1990

#644

Post by ActorNightly »

refurb wrote: post #475
ActorNightly wrote: post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't need press for everyone to see that China is straight killing it in almost every sector. Manufacturing, compute, you name it. Sure, they aren't without problems. And as for free press, look at where freedom of press took United States. You have companies like Fox news that "aren't actually news, just entertainment", who blatantly lie about election fraud. You have podcasters like Joe Rogan who are at the sa…

This is a wild comment. It claims free speech is being taken away, then gets upset people use it (Fox News). Then it celebrates a law that actually curtails free speech.

>Then it celebrates a law that actually curtails free speech.

Yes. There are already laws that curtail free speech - i.e yelling fire in a crowded theater as the popular example. Its not hard to extend this to the act of lying about information on air.

The optimal solution is that the government should have the power to enforce a ban on certain individuals on social media, which should be done through a court procedure where facts are presented and if the person is deemed to be spreading misinformation, the ban applies.

And the famous right wing argument of "don't give government power because it will use it to oppress you" doesn't work anymore.

Re: China has added forest the size of Texas since 1990

#645

Post by trhway »

ivan_gammel wrote: post #622
trhway wrote: post #589

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>One article in propaganda outlet from 2016 doesn’t count as fact. It isn't article itself that counts here. The official statement of the Russian Minister of Agriculture is the fact here. Whereis you so far stated only your personal opinion. >there’s no such plans You contradict the above mentioned official statement of the Russian Minister of Agriculture.

Russian government officials said many bizarre things in the past which never materialized. This is one of them. This guy lost his government job in 2018 after drinking champagne on a private jet and making toast to agricultural lobby. If you still insist this thing is real, you should prove it with specific parameters of this project. Construction start, volume, length of pipe etc.

>Russian government officials said many bizarre things in the past which never materialized.

some materialized, some haven't.

>This is one of them.

how would we know that? For example, nuclear powered cruise missile is beyond bizarre, yet they did it. Water transfer project is much more practical thing (and they already do have oil transfer pipelines, so why would they not do a water pipeline - if anything, unlike the oil, the water is a renewable resource), and there has been official interest on both sides, and adding your bizarrity indicator - we can conclude it is much probable thing to happen than the missile.

>If you still insist this thing is real, you should prove it with specific parameters of this project. Construction start, volume, length of pipe etc.

Where that info would come from? I pointed officially available facts. You have so far provided only blind statement "it wouldn't happen" and no facts to counter my facts.

As it happens simple Google has even more facts, including info you've been asking for:

https://www.rbc.ru/business/16/05/2019/5cdbde629a7947f8534b0...

"The government will consider $88B water transfer project to China.

Russian MP Alexey Chepa asked to approve construction of the largest in the world water pipeline.

...

Government sent the project down to various government agencies for working out further details of the project.

...

first stage by 2026 - 1200-1500km, 600-700 millions m3/year. second stage by 2040 - 1.8-2.4B m3/year.

"

Re: China has added forest the size of Texas since 1990

#646

Post by M95D »

wahnfrieden wrote: post #638
M95D wrote: post #624

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What caging? He didn't say anything about any caging. Did you reply to the correct comment?

> the government never officially acknowledges them and doesn’t allow public advocacy Do you think this is a polite suggestion from the government?

I wouldn't call any police action "polite", but the worst I remember reading about was a 24h detention of a crossdresser that was caught on security cameras by building administration while doing self-bondage videos. The security camera feeds were shared live with the other residents until the police arrived. That person described the policemen as "polite" in the uploaded video.

I trust it more than other internet posts, as it's a first-hand description. It also mostly matches what @yanhangyhy wrote here.

Re: China has added forest the size of Texas since 1990

#647

Post by switchbak »

lvturner wrote: post #210
switchbak wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ahem: "China consumes over half of the world’s coal and contributes more than 20% of global CO2 emissions from coal combustion." But trees are nice. Source: https://wires.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/wcc.918

Your point reads strangely, it's almost like saying "Why even bother when CO2 emissions are so high" - surely ANYTHING that they are doing to turn that around should be celebrated and encouraged rather than saying "Yeah but..." - Rome wasn't built in a day and all.

The Op said: "we're the baddies" when discussing an article about China, implying that we (whoever that is) are worse than China because they added lots of trees. That's a clear and obvious nod to the "are we the baddies" skit about a couple Nazi soldiers slowly realizing they're the bad guys. It's also very fashionable in this moment to self-flagellate beyond any reasonable level.

I'm saying: perhaps we shouldn't be giving that country such acclaims when in addition to adding lots of trees, they're also burning an absolutely colossal amount of carbon just with their coal use alone. Two things can be true at the same time, and we can be even handed in our appraisals.

Your take is uncharitable and inaccurate.

Re: China has added forest the size of Texas since 1990

#648

Post by switchbak »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #224
switchbak wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ahem: "China consumes over half of the world’s coal and contributes more than 20% of global CO2 emissions from coal combustion." But trees are nice. Source: https://wires.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/wcc.918

Are you trying to say something like perfect is the enemy of good?

See sibling comment. No.

If I helped an old lady across the street right after robbing a corner store, I probably shouldn't be given accolades.

Re: China has added forest the size of Texas since 1990

#649

Post by rat87 »

Unearned5161 wrote: post #410
zdragnar wrote: post #379

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The predictions of Ehrlich in "the population bomb" and the club of rome were undone within a few years with the "green revolution" which saw massive increases in food production. Ehrlich in particular was suggesting mass starvation by the 1980's. Conceivably, it is possible that too many people will cause problems, but nothing like what they actually predicted has come to pass.

I encourage you to revisit what you know about the club of rome and what was actually published in the Limits to Growth paper. We have been disturbingly on track for a lot of the variables that were of interest back then in the “business as usual” model. People tend to dismiss anything and everything around resource constraint thinking by doing the quick Ehrlich quip, and never really dig deeper into where people lik…

Why would we ever want to revisit people like Erlich and the Club of wrong who were famously extremely off in their predictions? And when some of the writings contributed to forced

The claims that theyll be proven right /on track any day now decades after their predictions failed is hard to take seriously.

It's not the business as usual people who made sure that their predictions fail its people working to either improve the world or sometimes to make money that actually changed things. In fact it was the people who pushed neo malthusian thinking that assumed things would continue as usual and therefore get worse

Re: China has added forest the size of Texas since 1990

#650

Post by rat87 »

jl6 wrote: post #392
samarthr1 wrote: post #377

Earlier quoted context omitted.

*logistics of food is not solved?

Neither production nor logistics is solved at all. We have bought ourselves time, largely by racking up environmental debt on our planetary credit card. Food is still massively dependent on fossil fuel consumption (machinery, transport, fertilizer). The good news is that the answer is to reduce the cost and carbon impact of energy production, and we’re making great progress here, but we cannot afford to take our foot…

The idea that he was off on the timing is wrong. He was wrong and continued to be wrong even as he insisted his predictions would come any day now
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