China and India Lead the Way in Greening (nasa.gov) 115
hackingbear writes: The world is literally a greener place than it was twenty years ago, and data from NASA satellites has revealed a counterintuitive source for much of this new foliage. A new study shows that China and India -- the world's most populous countries -- are leading the increase in greening on land. The effect comes mostly from ambitious tree-planting programs in China and intensive agriculture in both countries. Ranga Myneni of Boston University and colleagues first detected the greening phenomenon in satellite data from the mid-1990s, but they did not know whether human activity was a chief cause. The research team found that global green leaf area has increased by 5 percent since the early 2000s, an area equivalent to all of the Amazon rainforests. At least 25 percent of that gain came in China. "China and India account for one-third of the greening, but contain only 9 percent of the planet's land area covered in vegetation," said lead author Chi Chen of Boston University. "That is a surprising finding, considering the general notion of land degradation in populous countries from overexploitation." China's outsized contribution to the global greening trend comes in large part from its programs to conserve and expand forests (about 42 percent of the greening contribution). These programs were developed in an effort to reduce the effects of soil erosion, air pollution, and climate change.
Meh, big deal... (Score:5, Funny)
USA leads in climate change denial. Take that, nature!
Re:Meh, big deal... (Score:5, Funny)
While green forests are cool, are there concerns for the previous non-forest ecosystems that were there?
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Won't someone think of the sand!
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USA leads in climate change denial.
Maybe instead of building a wall along the border with Mexico, we should be planting trees along it?
I mean, not normal trees, but Normandy-like hedgerows that were impassable by the US troops in WWII. They needed to mount tusk-like diggers on Sherman tanks to get through.
It would keep folks from sneaking across the border illegally, and be Green, as well.
. . . unless the border crashers get their hands on some Sherman tanks.
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USA leads in climate change denial.
No we don't We actually do most of the science that is proving it is a issue. If it wasn't for NASA research in Antarctica and from space we wouldn't never have known about the Ozone issue with CFC till it was to late. It is only small, but loud, minority that denies the issue.
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There are far more trees in NA today then there were in 1900.
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Trees get addicted to drugs and end up in Narcotics Anonymous? Well I guess you do learn something every day.
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Probably not too challenging when the native forests were clear cut by invading colonists in the few centuries before that.
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Like the invading Han Chinese? Or the invading Persians?
the history of humanity, up to early modern times (roughly 1500 CE), was one of conflict between semi-nomadic people and civilized peoples (those living in cities with agriculture) .
Our history books may focus on the conflict between settled peoples but the primary change was whenever agricultural peoples came across lands held by semi-nomadic people. The agricultural (civilized) peoples considered this to be unsettled, uncl
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Like how many of those were running around New Hampshire? You know, the state you were talking about.
A very Europcentric view of history. Most of the planet was just fine until Europeans invented
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Actually, if the climate supports it, that would be a good idea. Problems include growing a hedgerow being labour intensive as you have to partially cut the stems and weave them together, but you could hire illegals and taking a while to grow.
Besides the traditional Hawthorne, you could plant a Barberry or Pyracantha hedge. I knew someone with a Barberry one, it was impassible without a chainsaw and even with, those 2 inch needle sharp thorns were horrible, go right through most shoes.
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/Sarcasm This is "congress" we're talking about -- the "opposite" of progress. =P
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Oh - and little things such as the non-falsifiable claims.
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China's dependent on the US for their food supply (Score:2)
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I'll be kind and assume this is a genuine question and not sarcasm.
It is not a possessive apostrophe-s, it is a contraction of "China is".
In English you can use contractions to shorten a word by removing one letter or more and substituting an apostrophe in the same spot. For example, chop wi out of "I will", throw in an apostrophe, and you have I’ll. The resulting word is shorter and faster to say, with only one syllable (sound) instead of two. Similarly, she would becomes she’d and he is become
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Have you looked at our fish? It is not only mislabeled, but also loaded with all sorts of items that are not found in Alaska. That Salmon and 'Alaskan Cod'
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Little Seizures pizza is made from Chinese ingredients, too.
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If so, thanx. I will avoid them.
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Please link evidence that shows Chick-fil-a get's chicken from anywhere outside the U.S. I googled, and find nothing to support that.
The US is way behind .. (Score:4, Interesting)
It's like everywhere else has recognized that the cost of deploying renewables are now cheaper than their equivalent fossil fuels counterparts.
It makes more economic sense to be green than it does to be dirty...
The article is about literal greening of areas of course, but the underlying reason is similar.
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The Tesla battery is taking the top out of this market, but it's only one player where more are needed..
La
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Oh, thanks for that wingnut piece that insulted the intelligence of anyone who read it. GND means massive investment in wind and solar, which will create a huge jobs boom, not just banning coal.
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So people with jobs other than hipster programmer cant be here? Sorry, I thought this site was for nerds.
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My grandmother had a saying..."If your so smart, why ain't you rich?"
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Until this year, America's emissions has gone down EACH YEAR. However, it did go up 3% this year. Yeah, China went up 4-7% (more likely 7-9, but whose counting).
The good news is that ours went up due to the economy, combined with our push for nat gas power plants unstead of nukes. We NEED to quit that and instead, push for SMRs like NuScale.
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China has grown every year ( or flattened for a couple of years ), for the last 30+ years.
And you think that planting a few trees is helping? Hmmm.
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Sure, we reached peak per capita CO2 production with nowhere to go but down while China and especially India are still relatively low per capita.
The real problem is how much CO2 we produce compared to the Vatican if we're going to compare countries without considering size or population.
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CHina is already above per capita that they need to be. Hell, they were above EU's average clear back in early 2010's, and continue to grow theirs. Yet, EU who is less than China, continues to work to drop theirs. Why? Because emissions are emissions. The ONLY time that CHina flat lined was when their economy had crashed and they were lying about it (2014-6). But, they have NOT dropped emissions.
Now, for 2-3 years in a row, it is not only growing, but ACCELERATING. It is kno
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Perhaps you have some more recent figures as the most up to date I find quickly are from 2014 which show the USA emitting over twice the carbon on a per capita basis as China, 16.5 tonnes per year vs 7.5 tonnes per person per year with India at 1.7.
The data I'm looking at doesn't lump the EU together, but has Poland at the same level as China, Germany and even Finland higher and the UK, Italy and the less developed parts of the EU lower.
The idea of someone bitching about someone else emitting half or close
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And as needed to be pointed out in return: China + India have about seven times the population of the United States. That means that they get to pollute seven times as much. As someone else pointed out, we don't say the Vatican is free to pollute just as much as the United States, becau
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And no, we need on-demand systems. Nuke is not only viable, but probably the only real choice. This BS about heavily
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Of course they do, when they have 7 times the population.
The only thing that matters is per-capita pollution - everything else is rationalization for western arrogance and entitlement. Moreso when most of the CO2 that has been pumped into the atmosphere over the past 150 years has come from western countries. And again, much of that pollution in China you're complaining about
high (Score:4)
high co2 content good for trees...
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/duck
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Yes it makes them grow fast, tall and spindly and fall over. Oh wait, maybe that's not good.
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high co2 content good for trees...
Only briefly [scientificamerican.com].
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I doubt that you have seen maps of America, let alone Europe. At one time, both areas were mostly forest. Even since I was born in 1959, the deforestation of America has been shocking.
Even now, pine beetles have destroyed our forests all through the west. BUT, rather than allow timber to be cut, and then re-start new plantings, the Dems have fought that. Horrible ideas.
We speak about the CO2 here, while at the same time, ignoring the vast quantities of forest that are dying. We need to re-p
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With that said, it is the Dems that are preventing the cutting of these trees. They say, it is not natural.
BIG mistake.
Trump is about to allow foresting through national forest, and Apparently, so is California. Apparently, this last fire that swept through dead pine and spruce killing ppl and destroying hollywood star's homes, has finally convinced dems to allow it. Sad.
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Trump is about to allow foresting through national forest, and Apparently, so is California. Apparently, this last fire that swept through dead pine and spruce killing ppl and destroying hollywood star's homes, has finally convinced dems to allow it. Sad.
Cutting the trees won't work to control fires, except in certain very limited situations. I'm sure it will work for the richie rich people above Los Angeles, but it's not going to work up North, because the area is too large to manage in that fashion. They're only going to take the trees they want, not the trees we'd need them to take. Only yearly fires really work. After the fires on Cobb Mountain, the contractors stole all kinds of trees they weren't supposed to cut...
Re: Headline inversion (Score:2)
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Actually, it is easy to get them to take of the dead ones.
Actually, it really isn't. California is chock-full of them. In many areas, every third tree standing is a dead pine. In some areas, it's much worse.
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Actually, it is easy to get them to take of the dead ones.
Actually, it really isn't. California is chock-full of them. In many areas, every third tree standing is a dead pine. In some areas, it's much worse.
that was because your gov have been opposed to allowing full clearing/replanting of that area.
So just to be clear, we can't have this partial clearing that you say is easy to get because we won't allow full clearing? Make up your mind. Full clearing depletes biomass, greened acres are irrelevant, biomass is what matters. Old growth forest fixes more carbon and slows wind down more than new forest. This is true for nearly every tree species.
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Lumber ppl will come in and use what they can. BUT, there is plenty of material that they can not, but the bio-mass ppl can. These are the ppl making pellets that go into heat stoves or are used at electrical plants. Your past 2 govs allowed SOME lumber work, but none of the bio-mass clearing. Keep in mind that there would still be plenty
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Nothing sad or bad about controlled burns
https://www.fs.usda.gov/detail... [usda.gov]
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China is reclaiming desert (Score:4, Insightful)
China is reclaiming desert with grid plantings.
My understanding is that the USA has at least as many forested acres as ever, but a lot less biomass, and a lot of dead trees. Old growth is taller so it slows wind down more, and it's also more massive so it fixes more carbon. (Trees only grow from a thin layer beneath the bark, and the rate of growth is limited by photosynthesis, with larger trees able to do more of it because they have more leaf area with which to receive insolation.)
Is there a biomass index?
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Is there a biomass index?
There's one for the US [fs.fed.us]. Presumably other governments have something similar.
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I thought they'd be against the sietch way of life, but since the government's doing it, it's obvious -- they're trying to corral, herd, and finally control Shai-Hulud. I guess when they think about extending lifespans via socialized medicine, they think *big*.
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https://education.seattlepi.co... [seattlepi.com]
"As of 2010, the United States had 304,022,000 hectares (751,255,000 acres) of forested lands, a number that represents one-third of the country. Of this area, 25 percent is old growth forest, 67 percent is secondary forest, and 8 percent is tree farms or plantations."
"It is estimated that prior to European settlement, the United States. was 46 percent forested. European settlers quickly harvested much of the available timber for housing, industry, the creation of railroads
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Look, you are correct to blast China for what they are doing to the air with coal.
BUT, by the same token, you have to give them credit for improving their forests.
These really will not help with CO2, but it WILL help absorb a lot of other pollution that CHina creates. For example, their SO2, lead, mercury, etc remains horrendous. This greening, if close to the cities, can help pull that out of the air and ground. And neither CHina's nor India's was natural. This was citizens planting.
OTOH,
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China improves their forests by deforestating other countries.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/837... [bbc.co.uk]
This is why change needn't be doom and gloom (Score:4, Insightful)
We have absolutely got to do something about climate change. Most of what we've got to do would also make the world a lot better in sundry other ways.
If we helped the landscape keep multiple stories of vegetation, and worked out ways to scale orchards designed the same way, it would make for great resistance to drought and a stable food supply, and over time, correct for this spike in greenhouse gasses.
Entire horticultural and early agriculture civilizations have been founded not on controlling the landscape's entire harvest, but on enriching it and reaping the surplus. In this way of life, economy and environment are not at all at odds. In fact, they are interdependent. You can look at terra preta and its history in the Amazon basin for an example of a long-term, large-scale win-win scenario. http://news.cornell.edu/storie... [cornell.edu]
If you want to see what is happening in China, watch this video, "The Lessons of the Loess Plateau": https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Even if you don't exactly agree with *how* they got it done, the results for the landscape and the prosperity of the people there speak for themselves. Start asking how your local economic and political systems can start to do right by the soil too.
Hari Seldon, where are you? (Score:5, Funny)
If we're serious about building Trantor, this is exactly the WRONG WAY to go.
that is good to see (Score:4, Insightful)
Then we have the west which has already done a number on our forest and are not replanting fast enough.
So, it is good to actually see both China and India showing the rest of the world what needs to happen.
It will not help that much with the CO2, but it will help absorb pollution, etc.
But subject to more storm damage (Score:2)
The problem is that China has basically destroyed large segments of it's barrier islands and wetlands that absorb storm damage, so expect to read in a few years about how much damage has dramatically increased in China from storms, that otherwise would have not caused major calamities.
This guy's doing his part. And so is India. (Score:4, Informative)
He has gone on to plant another 150 hectares of land nearby.
In 2016, India planted 50 million trees [nationalgeographic.com] (saplings of various types) as part of its deal with the Paris Climate Accord.
Doesn't China lead in dumping plastic in ocean? (Score:1)
I think there was an article on slashdot, not long ago, about 97% of ocean plastics coming from Africa and China?
China driving species into extinction (Score:2)
Is that "green?"
Some animals China is driving into extinction:
- vaquita
- pangolin
- elephants
- rhinoceros
Several others.
Ecomodernists like me rejoice (Score:1)