4 ms·
This is good news. You wouldn't know it from reading this article. The orthodoxy on environmental research and reporting is that everything must be bad news.
by beloch 8y ago
This is good news.
You wouldn't know it from reading this article. The orthodoxy on environmental research and reporting is that everything must be bad news. Humans are destroying the planet and we're all doomed. The rotten thing is about this orthodox attitude is that it has created tremendous apathy. If nothing we humans do can possibly be good and doom is inevitable, why even try?
Here we have a great example of nature's self-rectifying mechanisms in action. Raise global temperatures and CO2 levels and trees grow bigger in more places than before, lowering CO2 levels. It is a fundamentally good thing to see this in action and we really ought to recognize it as such. It means there's hope. If we change a little nature may pitch in too. i.e. If we can cut down on deforestation in the places where it's the worst we'll be in a situation where a significant number of new trees are growing and soaking up CO2 for several decades.
Good environmental news is possible, and it doesn't have to be interpreted as meaning everything is okay and we need not do anything, as many clearly fear. The "everything is bad" orthodoxy has proven far more crippling.
- clumsysmurf 8y agoSeems more like a mix of good and bad news. If trees are growing where there should be snow, the suns rays are absorbed and not reflected back out to space https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/shift-northern-forests-increase-global-warming/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/shift-northern-fo...
- southern_cross 8y agoOK, how about this idea then? "Global warming over the recent past [reference favorite timeline here] may be largely due to the extensive regrowth of previously deforested areas."
- mirimir 8y agoNo, it's not good news. At best, it's clueless. At worst, it's propaganda. Trees are not interchangeable objects to count. What matters is not trees, but ecosystems.
- specialist 8y agoThe value of the good news is to keep hope alive. I'll give an example of an unexpected improvement: I volunteered at Audubon for a group that was trying to save wetlands, and by extension the wild salmon. At the time, we didn't have the science to actually mitigate wetlands. So all of our efforts were on conservation. (That didn't go very well.) Now we have more options. So we could, if we wanted to, increase habitat. That's kinda cool. Another example is a guy claiming that he has a way to restore grasslands (reverse desertification) by using ranching to simulate migratory herds. https://www.ted.com/talks/allan_savory_how_to_green_the_world_s_deserts_and_reverse_climate_change https://www.ted.com/talks/allan_savory_how_to_green_the_worl... If true, that's also kinda awesome. Generally, the trends are pretty bleak, and awareness is a curse. So people like me need good news just to get out of bed every day.
- southern_cross 8y agoAre you aware of the research which suggests that much of what we consider wetlands today may only exist because of prior deforestation in those areas? And that reforestation may naturally then lead to these wetlands shrinking dramatically in size?
- specialist 8y agoI hadn't. If you have links handy, I'd be much obliged.
- southern_cross 8y agoWhat I saw was from years ago, but here's an example of what a quick Google search turns up about it: http://www.lakescientist.com/research-summary-effect-deforestation-global-wetland-hydrology/ http://www.lakescientist.com/research-summary-effect-defores...
- thereare5lights 8y agoThe confirmation bias here is astounding.
- southern_cross 8y agoCare to expound on that?
- southern_cross 8y agoAgree with your sentiment here. And it's amazing to me the number of people who will make a statement like that ("Humans are destroying the planet and we're all doomed."), or at least agree with it, without realizing that it potentially represents a form of psychosis!
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- fucking_tragedy 8y agoWhile it might be good news, the amount of trees is still nowhere near the amount that existed before the Industrial Revolution.
- IkmoIkmo 8y agoIf a tree was fungible, it'd be great news. In reality, we're replacing trees that you could let 5 people wrap their arms around with 'trees' that you can wrap a size z pants' belt around, replacing biodiversity with monoculture palm trees. That having been said, I agree with the sentiment. There is actually a lot of great news that we don't report on, like child mortality or severe poverty dropping very sharply. Ourworldindata.org is a great place to start. But in terms of this story, it's not part of the set of good news stories.
- marcus_holmes 8y agoI find the negative reaction to good environmental news indicative of the same mindset we talked about a couple of weeks ago on HN. That there seems to be some kind of deathwish around environmental catastrophe. Any sign that the environment might be able to adapt, or that we're not all doomed, is met with fierce, angry resistance instead of gratitude and relief. If the article had said that there are less trees now than there were 35 years ago, that would be bad news. So the fact that there are more trees is indisputably good news. It's not the best news. There is undoubtedly better news that could be announced. But it is good news. It is better than the assumption that I think most of us had, that global tree cover is declining. Can't we just be a little bit happy that it's not all utterly terrible?
- birksherty 8y agoNobody is wishing death. People just want pure truth, not sugar coating like this headline implies. The biodiversity has been lost, rainforest lost. One tree contains a whole environment. Various insects, birds, animals depend on it. So all of that is lost when the tree is cut. Now some people planted industrial timber plantations, because of money. None of that is same as what was before. The trees that are planted are not even the same type. Suppose a bank takes away a family's home with all objects in it. After that the bank gives them a plastic chair. There is some positivity in it because they gained one chair. People are asking why they are not happy about the chair. Why they bring the home into discussion every time we talk about the chair? They probably just want to hear sad things and hate the good news.
- marcus_holmes 8y agobut that's not the situation. Biodiversity loss is measured in loss of habitat. More trees = more habitat.
- 3x 8y agoBiodiversity loss would be measured in loss of biodiversity, I would think.