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Nasa Happily Reports the Earth Is Greener

424 points by ph0rque 8y ago

cjohansson 8y ago
Thanks for the good newss, didn’t know about that. News tend to be biased towards the bad and the good is left it. Bookmarking that site
- dbtqgoat 8y ago
  I wouldn’t bookmark this site. The writers of this article did not do their due diligence in their research or in their presentation of this article. Check our the other comments here, which do a good job of explaining the nuances of the “greening”.
  - emiliobumachar 8y ago
    Skepticism is always good, but so is a modicum of good news bias, especially if announced, to counter the predominance of bad news bias. If the world was in fact getting less green, and this was presented as bad news, would you hold the reporters to the same high standard of including all relevant silver linings?
- rcMgD2BwE72F 8y ago
  It's greener because the vegetation is capturing some of our massive CO2 emissions, but the planet (or the biosphere, more precisely) is increasingly suffering from the Anthropocene: the ocean is slowly being killed, the soil is getting ravaged, insects are disappearing, birds too, the biodiversity is collapsing, etc. A greener Earth is not a good sign. It's a swan song :'(
  - ThomPete 8y ago
    So when it has hotter previously in history it wasn't a good sign either? Not sure I understand why it's bad this time around and wasn't bad last time around?
    - sethammons 8y ago
      Rate of change is the super scary part.
      - ThomPete 8y ago
        The rate of change of emission is not the same as rate of change of temperature so not sure what it is you are worried about exactly. Keep in mind the models aren't actual predictions they are models which give us a range from no problem at all to really scary. But none of them are actual scientific predictions and there is plenty of argument for why it's not going to be a big issue and certainly not something we can't deal with.
b_tterc_p 8y ago
The title says trees but I think it really means “greenness” from a satillite view. Reading around the bottom, while India and China have done substantial tree planting programs, it sounds like a large chunk of this may be driven by unsustainable use of farm land. I’m not clear on how their increased farm usage corresponds to greenness and whether that matters. Would be curious if anyone can chime in.
- raws 8y ago
  All plants do contribute to carbon sequestration but yes it does not mean that they are polluting less with unregulated farming practices.
  - ehnto 8y ago
    Regulations rarely target sustainability anyway. The only thing typically regulated is water rights and chemicals used.
- em3rgent0rdr 8y ago
  There is a lot of potential to sequester carbon in soil in farms: https://cgspace.cgiar.org/handle/10568/89405 https://cgspace.cgiar.org/handle/10568/89405
- wyattpeak 8y ago
  From the abstract of the study[1]: > 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%). I can't comment on the sequestration effects of farms, though, beyond my ken. [1] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41893-019-0220-7 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41893-019-0220-7
  - tejtm 8y ago
    To sequester, the carbon has to stay put, Crops are typically harvested annually fields are tilled and rotated so amortized, they will buffer a much smaller amount of carbon that cycles rapidly.
skilled 8y ago
I don't see how this addresses the issue of deforestation in places like the Amazon. The effect that this "practice" has had on the environment is irreversible at this point. But to each his own. Any positive news regarding the environment are always welcome.
- aaronbrethorst 8y ago
  Especially with Brazil's fascist[1] new president, Jair Bolsonaro, making moves to destroy the amazon: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the_americas/brazils-bolsonaro-hands-farming-interests-greater-sway-over-amazon-lands/2019/01/02/be536c36-0ea2-11e9-8f0c-6f878a26288a_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the_americas/brazils-bo... [1] Not an exaggeration. https://www.thenation.com/article/a-genuine-fascist-is-on-the-verge-of-power-in-brazil/ https://www.thenation.com/article/a-genuine-fascist-is-on-th...
  - jewelry 8y ago
    technically, we have no stand to blame them on developing their economy...
    - blotter_paper 8y ago
      Here's a fun thought: they could hold the rainforest hostage. Hey world that relies on our land to absorb carbon, we're gonna start deforesting and developing x acres per year unless you pay us y dollars not to. Nice biosphere you've got here, it'd be a shame if somebody threw a brick through the equilibrium...
      - icebraining 8y ago
        Equador tried that [1]. The world didn't care. [1] https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2013/09/02/216878935/ecuador-to-world-pay-up-to-save-the-rainforest-world-to-ecuador-meh https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2013/09/02/216878935/ecua...
keiferski 8y ago
Serious question from a non-climate scientist: would an increase in global temperatures due to climate change ultimately cause more greenery, due to new growth in previously too-cold areas?
- Pxtl 8y ago
  Well, I don't know about temperature, but we do know that plants grow faster in the presence of excessive CO2. But that's a double-edged sword, because their nutritional value per unit mass goes down, in terms of trace nutrients - with abundant CO2, they can use more air to build more empty carbs, but that means the critical nutrients they pull from the soil are present in lower concentrations.
  - ioulian 8y ago
    You can easily see this effect on Highways (in Europe where trees are planted just at the edge of the road). The trees there are the first ones that turn green (and get greener much faster) while the trees in the farmland are still without leaves.
    - mattkrause 8y ago
      I wonder if that’s due to CO2 levels, warmer temperatures (asphault captures a lot of heat) or human selection for “pretty” trees along the highway.
- vages 8y ago
  Most climate models take that into account, from what I've heard. It's not enough to mitigate the rising temperatures, though.
- pjc50 8y ago
  Also need to factor in the too-warm, too-dry and on-fire areas.
- badgley 8y ago
  it's a bit of a double edged sword. warmer springs are definitely a good thing for plants in terms of growth. but in the united states, at least, there is evidence that the positive effect of warmer springs will be offset by drier, hotter summers that are not ideal for growth. here is a discussion of a neat study in 2016 that showed this effect: https://www.pnas.org/content/113/21/5768 https://www.pnas.org/content/113/21/5768 the already warm tropics are expected to get even warmer, which likely isn't great for the forests there.
wakenmeng 8y ago
The China government has been working on tree planting project for decades, which contributes 42% forest greening.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
FriedPickles 8y ago
From what I understand, the increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide will have a massive greening effect on the Earth (plants love CO2). But it seems this fact is usually omitted so as not to complicate the intended message. I always found it ironic that the "eco" mode button in many cars is a leaf icon.
- abraae 8y ago
  It's not a slam dunk that more CO2 == good for plants. As per https://www.politico.com/agenda/story/2017/09/13/food-nutrients-carbon-dioxide-000511 https://www.politico.com/agenda/story/2017/09/13/food-nutrie... > As best scientists can tell, this is what happens: Rising CO2 revs up photosynthesis, the process that helps plants transform sunlight to food. This makes plants grow, but it also leads them to pack in more carbohydrates like glucose at the expense of other nutrients that we depend on, like protein, iron and zinc.
  - avar 8y ago
    The GP is talking about a "greening effect" on the Earth due to CO^2, but the article you've linked to and this quote is talking about how the nutritional content of plants for human consumption might suffer with more CO^2. Unless you think that the only thing that's "good for plants" is their suitability for being eaten by humans this seems like an unrelated issue. The vast majority of the Earth's plant biomass isn't going to be eaten by humans. You're not going to nibble on the oak tree in your back yard, but increased CO^2 in the air will make it more efficient at sequestering carbon. It's not going to be some amazing increase in perceived growth rate. The CO^2 level indoors is often 2-3x what it is outside, and people already grow plants in those conditions.
- ordu 8y ago
  Green mass of the leafs is the captured carbon dioxide that doesn't contribute to a greenhouse effect. Even if all leafs will be oxidized in a year, it doesn't matter because new leafs will emerge. Though I'm not sure about actual green mass on the Earth and cannot compare it with mass of CO2 in athmosphere, maybe it is too small to have any effect.
kimusan 8y ago
It was actually identified that most of the green areas are now farming land/cropland and NOT forests.
lota-putty 8y ago
LPG/LNG have made their impact on cooking fuel sources in these two massively populated countries; this was a positive consequence?
adventist 8y ago
I like how America didn't spend billions of dollars for them to do this. Kudos.
andy_ppp 8y ago
Would it be possible to turn a desert region into a rain forest? For example if Nevada decided to plant trees in the dessert is it possible with enough irrigation or would all the trees just die?
- keithnz 8y ago
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vpTHi7O66pI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vpTHi7O66pI I watched this talk a while back, TL;DW Yes, you can.
  - novalis78 8y ago
    Those are quite impressive results
  - onefuncman 8y ago
    it was a little mystifying that he answered the question about how they bootstrap the process with "we've never had to supplement feed" alongside "no grass in sight for 100 miles"... does anyone have a longer answer?
- bottled_poe 8y ago
  > enough irrigation Pretty big if.
- FrozenVoid 8y ago
  Some problems: 1.Forest fires within a dry climate(vs humid jungle). 2.If the water table is too deep, trees will need artificial irrigation, forever. 3.It seems easy to create a single-point of failure : monoculture of "best-performing" tree species which would succumb easily to specialized insects or fungus.
  - marcus_holmes 8y ago
    1. Forest fires need base fuel load to propagate. This is the organic matter at ground level, formed from the dead stuff that trees drop (leaves, branches, whole dead trees, etc). In other words, forest fires only happen in mature forests that are left alone to accumulate base fuel load. 2. Tree raise the water table under them, by providing shade (so water on the ground doesn't evaporate as quickly and gets a chance to soak into the ground). They also prevent water tables from surfacing (by drawing the water up from their root systems). In other words, a mature forest will manage the water table, rather than being managed by the water table. You get water table problems if you cut down too many trees. Growing more will solve that. 3. this is true. There are lots of ways around it, though, if your goal is to green the desert rather than creating lots of cheap timber quickly.
ic4l 8y ago
Or maybe just the resolution of the satellite images have just improved resulting in what appears to be a more greener earth.
acqq 8y ago
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/30/science/climate-change-plants-global-greening.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/30/science/climate-change-pl... "Despite global greening, carbon dioxide levels have climbed over the past two centuries to levels not seen on Earth for millions of years. And the carbon dioxide we’ve injected into the atmosphere is already having major impacts across the planet." The "global greening" effect, to the amount it can manifest itself, existed since the CO2 started to increase but we still see that the problems from higher CO2 increase and will get always bigger. It won't save us from any problems made by global warming.
- marcus_holmes 8y ago
  I kinda find it weird, though. Because we only know what prehistoric climate conditions were because of tree rings (and ice cores, but they're measuring different things). So predicting future tree ring growth based on climate changes, when we estimate the historical climate based on tree ring growth, means we can make up any relationship we want.
  - acqq 8y ago
    That shows lack of understanding in purpose and use of the tree rings and it is not relevant to the topic. What I read from your statements is just that you don't understand how the past climates are scientifically reconstructed, and want to express the doubt in the results of all the work of all the scientist that agree (which is effectively all of them, minus the ones directly or indirectly funded by fossil fuel companies or motivated by political relations, if you have other impression, it's distorted by the intentional activity of said companies and political groups). But we don't configure the current modeling systems at all using the "prehistoric" reconstructions, the models and the currently measured values are much more precise. The "prehistoric" reconstructions only give you something to compare the orders of magnitudes. And comparing that, the warming is unprecedented. Which is not surprising giving that the humanity managed to extract and burn more then the half of all readily available oil from the Earth's crust in just 100 years. That very oil in the crust is however a result of more than 4 billion of years of the Earth's existence. If you’re reading this in some country like US, given that the average US car weights around 2 tonnes, your existence alone is probably responsible for the CO2 mass equivalent to the weight of 7–10 cars every year, and to the volume of CO2 which corresponds to the volume of more than 3000 cars. And the CO2, even if it's invisible for us, is actually "black" for something important: it's blocking the part of the spectrum that would allow the Earth surface to cool off. That's how small concentrations of it, compared to some other stuff in the air, produce such a big effect. The physics is simple and undeniable, and it's known that there will be always more problems caused by the growth of CO2 in the atmosphere which increases the surface temperature of the Earth.
justanegg 8y ago
CO2 feeds plants
aaron695 8y ago
I wish there was an auto-downvote button for the tiresome garbarage of having to relate everything to climate change. This has nothing to do with climate change as it states. This is humans planting trees and forests which is normally thought of as good by normal people. And efficient use of land to grow plants which should be thought of as good by intelligent people since it means we can cut down less trees to grow food. People always seem to have to bring it back to their me me me religious climate change when it's humans who directly burn the world, or in this case have directly repaired the world.
blocked_again 8y ago
The map is kind of misleading. It shows Kerala one of the greenest States in India as as the least green while states like Rajastan where you can find hardly any greenary is marked as most green. Edit: I know it shows the % increase in greenary. What I meant is the "greenary" shown in the map actually has almost no correlation with the greenery in the real world. Looking the map and expecting Rajastan to be a green area would be a bad idea.
- eskimobloood 8y ago
  Doesn't the map show the trend? So it's not about how green it is but how mucher greener it's become over the last decade.
  - blocked_again 8y ago
    Yup. It shows the increase. But I think the way its portrayed is kind of misleading. Most people looking at the map who is not aware of Indian geography is going to think places like Rajastan now has a lot of greenery due to significance increase in greenary which is far from reality. Would love to know what all factors where taken into consideration for deciding the greenery increase.
    - jessaustin 8y ago
      Yes this color choice is misleading. It would have been better to have chosen blue to represent this increase.
yzh 8y ago
Nothing brings me more joy than seeing a greener Earth, especially the greener part is taking place in China!
jkroso 8y ago
Apparently the earth was super green when the atmosphere had double the current CO2 content https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gdfWFDcXut4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gdfWFDcXut4
- manmal 8y ago
  And why not, photosynthesis requires CO2.
twic 8y ago
> It’s called the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer, or MODIS, and its high-resolution data provides very accurate information So is the resolution high or moderate?
- tokai 8y ago
  I would guess that the moderate relates to the wavelengths that the spectrometer measures, and not image resolution.
- matt4077 8y ago
  MODIS is trying to be MODEST.
- sp332 8y ago
  It's moderate, or even "low" according to Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moderate_Resolution_Imaging_Spectroradiometer#Applications https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moderate_Resolution_Imaging_Sp... But it scans the whole earth every day or two.
- mturmon 8y ago
  This is a fun question, and as an occasional user of MODIS products, I've asked it (to myself) also. Although I've never asked anyone on the MODIS team, who I see from time to time. I have always supposed that they wanted to leave the door open for actual high (spatial) resolution observations in the future. The driving design requirement was for global coverage every two days, so this meant a wide field of view of the downward-looking optics (2200 km wide FOV) which in turn meant "moderate" spatial resolution. It was designed in the early 1990s. If you look at the original MODIS design papers (e.g., The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectrometer (MODIS) Science and Data System Requirements, IEEE TGARS, Jan. 1991), you read the design was inspired by instruments like AVHRR and HIRS. The "VHR" in AVHRR stands for "Very High Resolution" and it was 1km! And the H in HIRS stands for High-resolution and it was > 1km, as much as 10km (!!). So calling it "Moderate" seems like a corrective message to the community. Why would you need more? Many of the MODIS products are 1000m X 1000m, which is too coarse for many "field-scale" applications, where you want to get down to the health of individual fields of crops, or mixed suburban/rural areas, or biomes where vegetation types are mixed at local scales. For instance, transpiration from broad-leafed trees is very different from grasses, and "mixed pixels" of these two types can confuse models. Or scattered parking lots at the fringe of suburban areas impinging on vegetation.
denisvlr 8y ago
On a related note, here is a discussion about how many trees it would take to solve climate change: https://earthscience.stackexchange.com/questions/2639/how-many-trees-would-i-have-to-plant-to-solve-global-warming https://earthscience.stackexchange.com/questions/2639/how-ma...
- ph0rque 8y ago
  Here's an up-to-date study and discussion of that question: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19248716 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19248716 The number of trees needed (1.2T) is pretty close to the estimation of the accepted answer in your link (1.5T). The difference is, the up-to-date study has found that there is enough space for the trees. Now we just need to plant them :)
setgree 8y ago
> “When the greening of the Earth was first observed, we thought it was due to a warmer, wetter climate and fertilization from the added carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, leading to more leaf growth in northern forests, for instance. Now, with the MODIS data that lets us understand the phenomenon at really small scales, we see that humans are also contributing.” That global warming may induce more agriculture, and forest growth, in the global North is something I'd like to learn more about. Anyone have any further reading to recommend?
- hirundo 8y ago
  What Rising CO2 Means for Global Food Security: http://co2coalition.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/Rising_CO2__Food-Security-2-21-19-1.pdf http://co2coalition.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/Rising_CO...
  - hannob 8y ago
    The CO2 Coalition is a pseudoscientific climate denial organization.
    - maratd 8y ago
      Perhaps rather than an ad-hominem you can instead argue the point being made?
      - throwaway29319 8y ago
        No. Disproving bullshit takes 100x times more than producing it. This idea that we should argue ad infinitum is bad. It allows https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sealioning https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sealioning Reputable sources are worth arguing. Other should be ignored.
      - hannob 8y ago
        Okay, here's the thing: If you have plants with more or less CO2 under otherwise the same conditions you'll have more growth in the plants. However that's not how the planet works. If you put more CO2 in the atmosphere you'll have for example rising sealevels and larger deserts (and probably more effects that diminish food production). You can't just pick a single effect of increased CO2 in isolation. (Except of course that's what the CO2 coalition does, because they chose to believe fairytales instead of science on climate change.) This is just the obvious flaw in that argument. If you want the details and all the science there's a chapter on food security in the IPCC report: https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2018/02/WGIIAR5-Chap7_FINAL.pdf https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2018/02/WGIIAR5-Chap... It discusses potential yields as well.
lazyjones 8y ago
The USA, EU and Mexico apparently also managed to increase leaf area significantly without any extensive greening initiatives. The larger version of the global map shows this clearly, even though it doesn't look noteworthy in the (somewhat ambiguously labeled "... Greening Due To Human Activity") bar chart: https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/thumbnails/image/global_tamo_2017_full.png https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/thumbnails/image/gl...
RIMR 8y ago
Don't let anyone twist this news into an excuse for climate-apathy. First, making the Earth greener will require human cooperation, specifically towards the goal of reversing human-created changes as much as possible. And second, the Earth might get greener as a result of climate change, and that those changes might not necessarily be what is best for Humanity.
exegete 8y ago
>The researchers point out that the gain in greenness seen around the world, which is dominated by India and China, does not offset the damage from loss of natural vegetation in tropical regions, such as Brazil and Indonesia. So is it a net gain or not?
- badosu 8y ago
  It is, although replacing forests with pastures should not be indicative of CO2 sequestration, but the opposite. In Brazil there's a biome called cerrado[0], characterized by low trees and shrubs, from the sky might seem brown but there's a lot of biodiversity and flora. Replacing it with soy fields should not be a net gain in my book. 0 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cerrado https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cerrado
noetic_techy 8y ago
The dirty secret is that plant growth is most optimal around 1200 - 1500 ppm CO2. Likely because plants evolved in in epochs of much higher level. If levels were to drop below 120 ppm, I believe we would see mass plant die off. Pre-industrial levels were already around 180 to 200 ppm I believe (All these numbers are off the top of my head). So even if we can stabilize around 400 ppm now with renewable, AND start to sequester back to pre-industrial levels, we would need to also make sure we can turn that sequestration OFF at some point. It bugs me to see future nascent industrial applications that want to pull CO2 out of the air for products. We could very well get into a situation in the future where we are begging industry to STOP pulling CO2 out of the atmosphere for fear or crop failure, instead of pumping it out. It may take 1000 years, but levels will come down a bit naturally if we can stabilize. That stability will only come from technological advances like electric cars, planes, trucks and lab grown meats. No amount tax or cap and trade is going to make any sense unless India and China are also on-board.
- ph0rque 8y ago
  We could always go back to burning wood to increase the CO2, if your scenario were to happen.
HAck4Lifes 8y ago
I need help learning this stuff, i am new to this, and i want to help the community

424 points by ph0rque 8y ago

Thanks for the good newss, didn’t know about that. News tend to be biased towards the bad and the good is left it. Bookmarking that site

dbtqgoat 8y ago
I wouldn’t bookmark this site. The writers of this article did not do their due diligence in their research or in their presentation of this article. Check our the other comments here, which do a good job of explaining the nuances of the “greening”.
- emiliobumachar 8y ago
  Skepticism is always good, but so is a modicum of good news bias, especially if announced, to counter the predominance of bad news bias. If the world was in fact getting less green, and this was presented as bad news, would you hold the reporters to the same high standard of including all relevant silver linings?
rcMgD2BwE72F 8y ago
It's greener because the vegetation is capturing some of our massive CO2 emissions, but the planet (or the biosphere, more precisely) is increasingly suffering from the Anthropocene: the ocean is slowly being killed, the soil is getting ravaged, insects are disappearing, birds too, the biodiversity is collapsing, etc. A greener Earth is not a good sign. It's a swan song :'(
- ThomPete 8y ago
  So when it has hotter previously in history it wasn't a good sign either? Not sure I understand why it's bad this time around and wasn't bad last time around?
  - sethammons 8y ago
    Rate of change is the super scary part.
    - ThomPete 8y ago
      The rate of change of emission is not the same as rate of change of temperature so not sure what it is you are worried about exactly. Keep in mind the models aren't actual predictions they are models which give us a range from no problem at all to really scary. But none of them are actual scientific predictions and there is plenty of argument for why it's not going to be a big issue and certainly not something we can't deal with.

b_tterc_p 8y ago

The title says trees but I think it really means “greenness” from a satillite view. Reading around the bottom, while India and China have done substantial tree planting programs, it sounds like a large chunk of this may be driven by unsustainable use of farm land. I’m not clear on how their increased farm usage corresponds to greenness and whether that matters. Would be curious if anyone can chime in.

raws 8y ago
All plants do contribute to carbon sequestration but yes it does not mean that they are polluting less with unregulated farming practices.
- ehnto 8y ago
  Regulations rarely target sustainability anyway. The only thing typically regulated is water rights and chemicals used.
em3rgent0rdr 8y ago
There is a lot of potential to sequester carbon in soil in farms: https://cgspace.cgiar.org/handle/10568/89405 https://cgspace.cgiar.org/handle/10568/89405
wyattpeak 8y ago
From the abstract of the study[1]: > 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%). I can't comment on the sequestration effects of farms, though, beyond my ken. [1] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41893-019-0220-7 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41893-019-0220-7
- tejtm 8y ago
  To sequester, the carbon has to stay put, Crops are typically harvested annually fields are tilled and rotated so amortized, they will buffer a much smaller amount of carbon that cycles rapidly.

skilled 8y ago

I don't see how this addresses the issue of deforestation in places like the Amazon. The effect that this "practice" has had on the environment is irreversible at this point. But to each his own. Any positive news regarding the environment are always welcome.

aaronbrethorst 8y ago
Especially with Brazil's fascist[1] new president, Jair Bolsonaro, making moves to destroy the amazon: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the_americas/brazils-bolsonaro-hands-farming-interests-greater-sway-over-amazon-lands/2019/01/02/be536c36-0ea2-11e9-8f0c-6f878a26288a_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the_americas/brazils-bo... [1] Not an exaggeration. https://www.thenation.com/article/a-genuine-fascist-is-on-the-verge-of-power-in-brazil/ https://www.thenation.com/article/a-genuine-fascist-is-on-th...
- jewelry 8y ago
  technically, we have no stand to blame them on developing their economy...
  - blotter_paper 8y ago
    Here's a fun thought: they could hold the rainforest hostage. Hey world that relies on our land to absorb carbon, we're gonna start deforesting and developing x acres per year unless you pay us y dollars not to. Nice biosphere you've got here, it'd be a shame if somebody threw a brick through the equilibrium...
    - icebraining 8y ago
      Equador tried that [1]. The world didn't care. [1] https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2013/09/02/216878935/ecuador-to-world-pay-up-to-save-the-rainforest-world-to-ecuador-meh https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2013/09/02/216878935/ecua...

keiferski 8y ago

Serious question from a non-climate scientist: would an increase in global temperatures due to climate change ultimately cause more greenery, due to new growth in previously too-cold areas?

Pxtl 8y ago
Well, I don't know about temperature, but we do know that plants grow faster in the presence of excessive CO2. But that's a double-edged sword, because their nutritional value per unit mass goes down, in terms of trace nutrients - with abundant CO2, they can use more air to build more empty carbs, but that means the critical nutrients they pull from the soil are present in lower concentrations.
- ioulian 8y ago
  You can easily see this effect on Highways (in Europe where trees are planted just at the edge of the road). The trees there are the first ones that turn green (and get greener much faster) while the trees in the farmland are still without leaves.
  - mattkrause 8y ago
    I wonder if that’s due to CO2 levels, warmer temperatures (asphault captures a lot of heat) or human selection for “pretty” trees along the highway.
vages 8y ago
Most climate models take that into account, from what I've heard. It's not enough to mitigate the rising temperatures, though.
pjc50 8y ago
Also need to factor in the too-warm, too-dry and on-fire areas.
badgley 8y ago
it's a bit of a double edged sword. warmer springs are definitely a good thing for plants in terms of growth. but in the united states, at least, there is evidence that the positive effect of warmer springs will be offset by drier, hotter summers that are not ideal for growth. here is a discussion of a neat study in 2016 that showed this effect: https://www.pnas.org/content/113/21/5768 https://www.pnas.org/content/113/21/5768 the already warm tropics are expected to get even warmer, which likely isn't great for the forests there.

wakenmeng 8y ago

The China government has been working on tree planting project for decades, which contributes 42% forest greening.

deleted 8y ago
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FriedPickles 8y ago

From what I understand, the increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide will have a massive greening effect on the Earth (plants love CO2). But it seems this fact is usually omitted so as not to complicate the intended message. I always found it ironic that the "eco" mode button in many cars is a leaf icon.

abraae 8y ago
It's not a slam dunk that more CO2 == good for plants. As per https://www.politico.com/agenda/story/2017/09/13/food-nutrients-carbon-dioxide-000511 https://www.politico.com/agenda/story/2017/09/13/food-nutrie... > As best scientists can tell, this is what happens: Rising CO2 revs up photosynthesis, the process that helps plants transform sunlight to food. This makes plants grow, but it also leads them to pack in more carbohydrates like glucose at the expense of other nutrients that we depend on, like protein, iron and zinc.
- avar 8y ago
  The GP is talking about a "greening effect" on the Earth due to CO^2, but the article you've linked to and this quote is talking about how the nutritional content of plants for human consumption might suffer with more CO^2. Unless you think that the only thing that's "good for plants" is their suitability for being eaten by humans this seems like an unrelated issue. The vast majority of the Earth's plant biomass isn't going to be eaten by humans. You're not going to nibble on the oak tree in your back yard, but increased CO^2 in the air will make it more efficient at sequestering carbon. It's not going to be some amazing increase in perceived growth rate. The CO^2 level indoors is often 2-3x what it is outside, and people already grow plants in those conditions.
ordu 8y ago
Green mass of the leafs is the captured carbon dioxide that doesn't contribute to a greenhouse effect. Even if all leafs will be oxidized in a year, it doesn't matter because new leafs will emerge. Though I'm not sure about actual green mass on the Earth and cannot compare it with mass of CO2 in athmosphere, maybe it is too small to have any effect.

kimusan 8y ago

It was actually identified that most of the green areas are now farming land/cropland and NOT forests.

lota-putty 8y ago

LPG/LNG have made their impact on cooking fuel sources in these two massively populated countries; this was a positive consequence?

adventist 8y ago

I like how America didn't spend billions of dollars for them to do this. Kudos.

andy_ppp 8y ago

Would it be possible to turn a desert region into a rain forest? For example if Nevada decided to plant trees in the dessert is it possible with enough irrigation or would all the trees just die?

keithnz 8y ago
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vpTHi7O66pI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vpTHi7O66pI I watched this talk a while back, TL;DW Yes, you can.
- novalis78 8y ago
  Those are quite impressive results
- onefuncman 8y ago
  it was a little mystifying that he answered the question about how they bootstrap the process with "we've never had to supplement feed" alongside "no grass in sight for 100 miles"... does anyone have a longer answer?
bottled_poe 8y ago
> enough irrigation Pretty big if.
FrozenVoid 8y ago
Some problems: 1.Forest fires within a dry climate(vs humid jungle). 2.If the water table is too deep, trees will need artificial irrigation, forever. 3.It seems easy to create a single-point of failure : monoculture of "best-performing" tree species which would succumb easily to specialized insects or fungus.
- marcus_holmes 8y ago
  1. Forest fires need base fuel load to propagate. This is the organic matter at ground level, formed from the dead stuff that trees drop (leaves, branches, whole dead trees, etc). In other words, forest fires only happen in mature forests that are left alone to accumulate base fuel load. 2. Tree raise the water table under them, by providing shade (so water on the ground doesn't evaporate as quickly and gets a chance to soak into the ground). They also prevent water tables from surfacing (by drawing the water up from their root systems). In other words, a mature forest will manage the water table, rather than being managed by the water table. You get water table problems if you cut down too many trees. Growing more will solve that. 3. this is true. There are lots of ways around it, though, if your goal is to green the desert rather than creating lots of cheap timber quickly.

ic4l 8y ago

Or maybe just the resolution of the satellite images have just improved resulting in what appears to be a more greener earth.

acqq 8y ago

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/30/science/climate-change-plants-global-greening.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/30/science/climate-change-pl... "Despite global greening, carbon dioxide levels have climbed over the past two centuries to levels not seen on Earth for millions of years. And the carbon dioxide we’ve injected into the atmosphere is already having major impacts across the planet." The "global greening" effect, to the amount it can manifest itself, existed since the CO2 started to increase but we still see that the problems from higher CO2 increase and will get always bigger. It won't save us from any problems made by global warming.

marcus_holmes 8y ago
I kinda find it weird, though. Because we only know what prehistoric climate conditions were because of tree rings (and ice cores, but they're measuring different things). So predicting future tree ring growth based on climate changes, when we estimate the historical climate based on tree ring growth, means we can make up any relationship we want.
- acqq 8y ago
  That shows lack of understanding in purpose and use of the tree rings and it is not relevant to the topic. What I read from your statements is just that you don't understand how the past climates are scientifically reconstructed, and want to express the doubt in the results of all the work of all the scientist that agree (which is effectively all of them, minus the ones directly or indirectly funded by fossil fuel companies or motivated by political relations, if you have other impression, it's distorted by the intentional activity of said companies and political groups). But we don't configure the current modeling systems at all using the "prehistoric" reconstructions, the models and the currently measured values are much more precise. The "prehistoric" reconstructions only give you something to compare the orders of magnitudes. And comparing that, the warming is unprecedented. Which is not surprising giving that the humanity managed to extract and burn more then the half of all readily available oil from the Earth's crust in just 100 years. That very oil in the crust is however a result of more than 4 billion of years of the Earth's existence. If you’re reading this in some country like US, given that the average US car weights around 2 tonnes, your existence alone is probably responsible for the CO2 mass equivalent to the weight of 7–10 cars every year, and to the volume of CO2 which corresponds to the volume of more than 3000 cars. And the CO2, even if it's invisible for us, is actually "black" for something important: it's blocking the part of the spectrum that would allow the Earth surface to cool off. That's how small concentrations of it, compared to some other stuff in the air, produce such a big effect. The physics is simple and undeniable, and it's known that there will be always more problems caused by the growth of CO2 in the atmosphere which increases the surface temperature of the Earth.

justanegg 8y ago

CO2 feeds plants

aaron695 8y ago

I wish there was an auto-downvote button for the tiresome garbarage of having to relate everything to climate change. This has nothing to do with climate change as it states. This is humans planting trees and forests which is normally thought of as good by normal people. And efficient use of land to grow plants which should be thought of as good by intelligent people since it means we can cut down less trees to grow food. People always seem to have to bring it back to their me me me religious climate change when it's humans who directly burn the world, or in this case have directly repaired the world.

blocked_again 8y ago

The map is kind of misleading. It shows Kerala one of the greenest States in India as as the least green while states like Rajastan where you can find hardly any greenary is marked as most green. Edit: I know it shows the % increase in greenary. What I meant is the "greenary" shown in the map actually has almost no correlation with the greenery in the real world. Looking the map and expecting Rajastan to be a green area would be a bad idea.

eskimobloood 8y ago
Doesn't the map show the trend? So it's not about how green it is but how mucher greener it's become over the last decade.
- blocked_again 8y ago
  Yup. It shows the increase. But I think the way its portrayed is kind of misleading. Most people looking at the map who is not aware of Indian geography is going to think places like Rajastan now has a lot of greenery due to significance increase in greenary which is far from reality. Would love to know what all factors where taken into consideration for deciding the greenery increase.
  - jessaustin 8y ago
    Yes this color choice is misleading. It would have been better to have chosen blue to represent this increase.

yzh 8y ago

Nothing brings me more joy than seeing a greener Earth, especially the greener part is taking place in China!

jkroso 8y ago

Apparently the earth was super green when the atmosphere had double the current CO2 content https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gdfWFDcXut4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gdfWFDcXut4

manmal 8y ago
And why not, photosynthesis requires CO2.

twic 8y ago

> It’s called the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer, or MODIS, and its high-resolution data provides very accurate information So is the resolution high or moderate?

tokai 8y ago
I would guess that the moderate relates to the wavelengths that the spectrometer measures, and not image resolution.
matt4077 8y ago
MODIS is trying to be MODEST.
sp332 8y ago
It's moderate, or even "low" according to Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moderate_Resolution_Imaging_Spectroradiometer#Applications https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moderate_Resolution_Imaging_Sp... But it scans the whole earth every day or two.
mturmon 8y ago
This is a fun question, and as an occasional user of MODIS products, I've asked it (to myself) also. Although I've never asked anyone on the MODIS team, who I see from time to time. I have always supposed that they wanted to leave the door open for actual high (spatial) resolution observations in the future. The driving design requirement was for global coverage every two days, so this meant a wide field of view of the downward-looking optics (2200 km wide FOV) which in turn meant "moderate" spatial resolution. It was designed in the early 1990s. If you look at the original MODIS design papers (e.g., The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectrometer (MODIS) Science and Data System Requirements, IEEE TGARS, Jan. 1991), you read the design was inspired by instruments like AVHRR and HIRS. The "VHR" in AVHRR stands for "Very High Resolution" and it was 1km! And the H in HIRS stands for High-resolution and it was > 1km, as much as 10km (!!). So calling it "Moderate" seems like a corrective message to the community. Why would you need more? Many of the MODIS products are 1000m X 1000m, which is too coarse for many "field-scale" applications, where you want to get down to the health of individual fields of crops, or mixed suburban/rural areas, or biomes where vegetation types are mixed at local scales. For instance, transpiration from broad-leafed trees is very different from grasses, and "mixed pixels" of these two types can confuse models. Or scattered parking lots at the fringe of suburban areas impinging on vegetation.

denisvlr 8y ago

On a related note, here is a discussion about how many trees it would take to solve climate change: https://earthscience.stackexchange.com/questions/2639/how-many-trees-would-i-have-to-plant-to-solve-global-warming https://earthscience.stackexchange.com/questions/2639/how-ma...

ph0rque 8y ago
Here's an up-to-date study and discussion of that question: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19248716 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19248716 The number of trees needed (1.2T) is pretty close to the estimation of the accepted answer in your link (1.5T). The difference is, the up-to-date study has found that there is enough space for the trees. Now we just need to plant them :)

setgree 8y ago

> “When the greening of the Earth was first observed, we thought it was due to a warmer, wetter climate and fertilization from the added carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, leading to more leaf growth in northern forests, for instance. Now, with the MODIS data that lets us understand the phenomenon at really small scales, we see that humans are also contributing.” That global warming may induce more agriculture, and forest growth, in the global North is something I'd like to learn more about. Anyone have any further reading to recommend?

hirundo 8y ago
What Rising CO2 Means for Global Food Security: http://co2coalition.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/Rising_CO2__Food-Security-2-21-19-1.pdf http://co2coalition.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/Rising_CO...
- hannob 8y ago
  The CO2 Coalition is a pseudoscientific climate denial organization.
  - maratd 8y ago
    Perhaps rather than an ad-hominem you can instead argue the point being made?
    - throwaway29319 8y ago
      No. Disproving bullshit takes 100x times more than producing it. This idea that we should argue ad infinitum is bad. It allows https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sealioning https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sealioning Reputable sources are worth arguing. Other should be ignored.
    - hannob 8y ago
      Okay, here's the thing: If you have plants with more or less CO2 under otherwise the same conditions you'll have more growth in the plants. However that's not how the planet works. If you put more CO2 in the atmosphere you'll have for example rising sealevels and larger deserts (and probably more effects that diminish food production). You can't just pick a single effect of increased CO2 in isolation. (Except of course that's what the CO2 coalition does, because they chose to believe fairytales instead of science on climate change.) This is just the obvious flaw in that argument. If you want the details and all the science there's a chapter on food security in the IPCC report: https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2018/02/WGIIAR5-Chap7_FINAL.pdf https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2018/02/WGIIAR5-Chap... It discusses potential yields as well.

lazyjones 8y ago

The USA, EU and Mexico apparently also managed to increase leaf area significantly without any extensive greening initiatives. The larger version of the global map shows this clearly, even though it doesn't look noteworthy in the (somewhat ambiguously labeled "... Greening Due To Human Activity") bar chart: https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/thumbnails/image/global_tamo_2017_full.png https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/thumbnails/image/gl...

RIMR 8y ago

Don't let anyone twist this news into an excuse for climate-apathy. First, making the Earth greener will require human cooperation, specifically towards the goal of reversing human-created changes as much as possible. And second, the Earth might get greener as a result of climate change, and that those changes might not necessarily be what is best for Humanity.

exegete 8y ago

>The researchers point out that the gain in greenness seen around the world, which is dominated by India and China, does not offset the damage from loss of natural vegetation in tropical regions, such as Brazil and Indonesia. So is it a net gain or not?

badosu 8y ago
It is, although replacing forests with pastures should not be indicative of CO2 sequestration, but the opposite. In Brazil there's a biome called cerrado[0], characterized by low trees and shrubs, from the sky might seem brown but there's a lot of biodiversity and flora. Replacing it with soy fields should not be a net gain in my book. 0 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cerrado https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cerrado

noetic_techy 8y ago

The dirty secret is that plant growth is most optimal around 1200 - 1500 ppm CO2. Likely because plants evolved in in epochs of much higher level. If levels were to drop below 120 ppm, I believe we would see mass plant die off. Pre-industrial levels were already around 180 to 200 ppm I believe (All these numbers are off the top of my head). So even if we can stabilize around 400 ppm now with renewable, AND start to sequester back to pre-industrial levels, we would need to also make sure we can turn that sequestration OFF at some point. It bugs me to see future nascent industrial applications that want to pull CO2 out of the air for products. We could very well get into a situation in the future where we are begging industry to STOP pulling CO2 out of the atmosphere for fear or crop failure, instead of pumping it out. It may take 1000 years, but levels will come down a bit naturally if we can stabilize. That stability will only come from technological advances like electric cars, planes, trucks and lab grown meats. No amount tax or cap and trade is going to make any sense unless India and China are also on-board.

ph0rque 8y ago
We could always go back to burning wood to increase the CO2, if your scenario were to happen.

HAck4Lifes 8y ago

I need help learning this stuff, i am new to this, and i want to help the community