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Nasa Says Earth Is Greener Today Than 20 Years Ago Thanks to China, India
- api 7y agoWhile this isn't bad, these new trees have probably absorbed like 0.000001% of global CO2 emissions in the last 20 years.
- diveanon 7y agoprobably...like... If you want people to take your arguments seriously you should back it up with facts.
- Hextinium 7y agoThis 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.
- Wohlf 7y agoI don't know if it is a counterargument, you can fill your countryside with trees while also burning a mountain of coal.
- theandrewbailey 7y agoIt depends on how you're burning the mountain of coal. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mountaintop_removal_mining https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mountaintop_removal_mining
- jacobush 7y agoWhat now? I make of it a weak counter-argument at most. If you have say, more forests and toxic hell holes of cities, is that a counter-argument? And the cropland, if its desiccated and over fertilized?
- mrkeen 7y agoThat's nice, but also https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/stemming-the-plastic-tide-10-rivers-contribute-most-of-the-plastic-in-the-oceans https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/stemming-the-plas...
- Leary 7y agoGreenhouse 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_greenhouse_gas_emissions_per_capita https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_greenhous...
- Wowfunhappy 7y agoIs 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.
- harshalizee 7y agoyeah, and none of those are remotely anywhere the size of the above mentioned countries.
- Wowfunhappy 7y agoIsn't the purpose of looking at "per capita" numbers that it allows you to compare countries of different sizes?
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- swarnie_ 7y agoi think we'll see this more and more as China shifts its manufacturing over to Africa (currently huge investments going on). It doesn't really solve the problem, you just get to point at someone else who's now holding the ball instead of you when it all goes up in flames.
- whatshisface 7y agoIt's almost too bad, because instead of decimating one area and driving 50% extinction in one ecosystem, the global economy is doing a grand tour that will curbstomp every ecosystem in turn.
- pm90 7y agoUh..... 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.
- swarnie_ 7y agoAny 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.
- pm90 7y agoAnd 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.
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- ixtli 7y agoI think its very important to engage with the fact that this is something China can do because of what we in the west deem unacceptably "authoritarian" governance. This effect isn't entirely due to people's starry-eyed conservationism: the government arrests people and closes factories that violate these ecological goals. By way of example, this happened a few weeks ago and is very difficult to find coverage of in english speaking media: https://nationalpost.com/news/world/china-makes-arrests-shuts-down-rogue-chemical-factories-that-spewed-banned-ozone-depleting-gas?fbclid=IwAR2D_XkH2BtI20r1AeessWBVp8uMXyIWpe5L4wQ1FZAPaWUreQjuwoszVU4 https://nationalpost.com/news/world/china-makes-arrests-shut...
- whatshisface 7y agoIt 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.
- pm90 7y ago....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).
- basementcat 7y agoThat is one of the reasons why we have the Electoral College.
- Wowfunhappy 7y agoHow does the electoral college prevent this problem?
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- inapis 7y agoThese kind of article raises more questions than answers. Leaving aside politics on this, I need to know more. How does this "greening" help? Is it more due to agriculture or forests? If it's due to agriculture, what are the unintended consequences? While this article is positive in its tone (which I appreciate) I can't help but feel that it's shallow. It's green so yayy! But what comes next? Increased greenery due to agriculture can probably never have the same positive effects as a forest, at least for the surrounding ecology and biome.
- Aunche 7y agoChina has a lot of reforestation projects, the most notable of which is the "Green Great Wall," which is intended to hinder the growth of the Gobi dessert. The benefits of this project are questionable because the trees soak up a lot of groundwater in an already very arid area. Also, the forests rely on a few species of trees, so it's very vulnerable to disease. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-North_Shelter_Forest_Program https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-North_Shelter_Forest_Pro...
- ksaj 7y agoI had seen a video somewhere that the Green Great Wall was failing and in constant threat of collapse because of the arid wind and pretty much non-existent water table causing the trees to die off faster than they can be planted. The footage had interviews with a group that tries to keep it watered. EDIT: It might have been the initiative in Africa (Sahara). I tried finding the video and am met with similar initiatives on both continents.
- neves 7y agoHow much of these "reforested" areas are of eucalyptus plantations, used to fabricate paper? I don't think that we can point a big exogenous monoculture can be considered "greener".
- ixtli 7y agoFor 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 jumps on #2, yes, the CPC does not allow some types of political dissent that we are allowed in public in the west and that should be criticized. But we need to criticize it for the right reasons, as opposed to blindly asserting that nothing horrible has ever happened due to what I would call free speech fundamentalism.)
- DataWorker 7y ago“what we call authoritarian” is rolling over protestors with tanks. That’s for starters.
- pm90 7y agoHow about systemic criminalization of previously enslaved minority population so they’re unable to make any economic gains? Disenfranchisement so they’re unable to vote for leaders with their interests? That sounds pretty authoritarian to me. The difference is simply that it’s cleverly hidden from plain view.
- whatshisface 7y agoI see this argument a lot in China threads, "America has already used up the world's supply of crime, so everyone else is forced to remain innocent." Unfortunately, bad government is not finite, every country can manufacture their own.
- pm90 7y agoI think we're in agreement. Its ok to point out that the Chinese Government is authoritarian and does many things that Civilized people find reprehensible. Its ok to point out that the US Government is democratic, but with many authoritarian tendencies, which have targeted minorities, Women etc. for a very long time which Civilized people find reprehensible. Its not OK to use one incident of authoritarianism as a cudgel against another country like your own country hasn't done similar things. That is a recipe for jingoism, nationalism and other -isms.
- jnmandal 7y agoAnyone has a link to read the underlying study?
- dredmorbius 7y agohttps://www.nature.com/articles/s41893-019-0220-7 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41893-019-0220-7 via: https://www.nasa.gov/feature/ames/human-activity-in-china-and-india-dominates-the-greening-of-earth-nasa-study-shows https://www.nasa.gov/feature/ames/human-activity-in-china-an...
- vixen99 7y agoChina 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."
- mms1973 7y agoAnd the main food of green plants is... (drum roll) ... CO2. So CO2 is not a bad thing as the global warming hoax advocates say.
- bakul 7y agohttps://www.nasa.gov/feature/ames/human-activity-in-china-and-india-dominates-the-greening-of-earth-nasa-study-shows https://www.nasa.gov/feature/ames/human-activity-in-china-an... This NASA article points something out that is missing from the Forbes article based on the same research: 82% of increased greening in India and 32% in China is due to intense agricultural activity — harvesting multiple crops per year. This does not increase biomass as much as by reforestation. Forests support rich ecosystems and do not use up groundwater unlike intensive farming.
- wickedwiesel 7y agoYes, India and China may be "greener". But, as the referenced article [0] states: The greening in China is from forests (42%) and croplands (32%), but in India is mostly from croplands (82%) with minor contribution from forests (4.4%). Main driver for greening according to the authors is an increase in food production. It is not re-forestation as the Forbes' author wants readers to think: Both China and India went through phases of large scale deforestation in the 1970s and 80s, clearing old growth forests for urban development, farming and agriculture. However, it is clear that when presented with a problem, humans are incredibly adept at finding a solution. The hubris! This means we actually observe net deforestation, globally, but also in China [1] and India [2] if you look at tree coverage indicators from Global Forest Watch. Global Forest Watch also uses satellite images, from a very similar timeline, so it should be comparable and raise serious doubts on the positive message of the Forbes article. To preserve biodiversity and combat climate change, we need more forests, not just more "green" land. [0] Nature article: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41893-019-0220-7 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41893-019-0220-7 [1] China Forest Watch map: http://bit.ly/2HGOXtI http://bit.ly/2HGOXtI [2] India Forest Watch map: http://bit.ly/2qT4e0g http://bit.ly/2qT4e0g (edits to improve formatting)
- aaron695 7y ago> combat climate change, we need more forests, not just more "green" land. Could you cite this please? This is not common sense and seems along the normal lines of the normal climate change FUD of lying about climate change to push other agendas. Lots of articles talk about the importance of carbon sinks using grasslands and other non-forest areas.
- rainhacker 7y agoA valid critique of the article. Though, to get a well-rounded view on this matter, take into account the per capita carbon footprints[1] also - which tells a different story than mainstream media: Saudi Arabia: 16.85 United States: 15.53 Australia: 15.83 China: 6.59 India: 1.58 [1] https://www.ucsusa.org/global-warming/science-and-impacts/science/each-countrys-share-of-co2.html https://www.ucsusa.org/global-warming/science-and-impacts/sc...
- dfilppi 7y agoYeah, they are the chief sources of CO2, which plants are known to be quite fond of.
- Magical 7y agoGreening from croplands, that's really unimpressive. I'll take that too though, better than nothing.