6 ms·
I think it's a fair comparison if the point is to communicate to a lay audience. Most people have a reasonable mental model of how large a tree is, and the volu
by valarauko 4y ago
I think it's a fair comparison if the point is to communicate to a lay audience. Most people have a reasonable mental model of how large a tree is, and the volume it occupies. Comparing the device to something like "the average daily output of 3000 deciliters of equatorial surface seawater" (made up comparison) is a harder sell. We'd have to fall back to comparisons like "4 football fields" or "2 school buses" worth of seawater - though it'd be an interesting comparison.
- mc32 4y agoIt gives people a false sense of connection. How much oxygen does a small tree produce, over what period of time, what species of tree? It's like someone saying, "hey I knew your cousin Dan". Nice, I have no idea of their relationship but they're trying to "break the ice" so to speak with an irrelevant tidbit.
- CyanBird 4y agoWell, that's the natural give and take when you need to address a global audience with unknown levels of background level knowledge on the topic, a tree is relatable and conveys a workable metric despite the values being unknown
- valarauko 4y agoI feel the goal of the comparison is to give people a quick heuristic, rather than a detailed breakdown. The article does say the device produces 6 grams of oxygen per hour. In there any species of tree that would be intimately known to a global anglophone audience?
- HPsquared 4y agoBonsai or giant sequoia?
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- gouggoug 4y agoThe issue with the a "tree's worth of oxygen" is that in people's mind a tree is very big, so this comparison gives the impression of a very large amount of oxygen is being produced, when, in fact, barely any is produced at all. A better analogy would be anything that can be expressed in volumes. For this reason, "4 football stadiums" and "2 school buses" would actually be pretty good.
- TomVDB 4y agoHow many giraffes is that?
- withinboredom 4y agoI’m looking at a tree right now. It is not very big.
- revolvingocelot 4y agoOn the Internet, nobody knows you're 14 feet tall
- withinboredom 4y agoNope, just a baby tree.
- robofanatic 4y agoa banana maybe? I mean does a tree produce 1 banana worth of oxygen?
- throwaway09223 4y agoBy mass or by volume? Or by economic value?
- leokennis 4y agoNo I meant by itself
- irrational 4y agoThe trees in my backyard are 150+ feet tall and the trunks are 3+ feet in diameter. That is what I imagine when I imagine a tree.
- valarauko 4y agoThe article (not the headline) says "small tree" - how big do you imagine a "small tree"?
- irrational 4y agoThe smallest trees we have around here are about 40 feet tall with 1-1.5 foot trunks.
- gsk22 4y agoSurely there are trees smaller than that, unless they just pop out of the ground 40 feet tall?
- irrational 4y agoI assume a small tree means a mature small tree, not a sapling.
- DiggyJohnson 4y agoAre you seriously insisting that you can’t believe that “small” tree doesn’t refer to a 40+ ft tall tree? Like to what end are you making this ridiculous point?
- InCityDreams 4y agoDouble-negative confusion? Is the word 'like' required? Like maybe they aren't seriously insisting they can believe that "small" tree does refer to a 40+ft tree.
- NegativeLatency 4y agoFractions of what a human requires per day would be a more meaningful unit.
- tablespoon 4y ago> I think it's a fair comparison if the point is to communicate to a lay audience. It's not a very good comparison to communicate to a lay audience. A far, far better one would be in terms of "resting oxygen requirement of an average human."
- Insanity 4y agoNeither of those comparisons tell me how useful it is. I don’t know how many trees nor how many school buses I breathe in a day.
- jxramos 4y agothat's the bottom line, it's meaningless without additional context. Because how many of us are familiar with the volume of a tree or how much O2 a tree produces. It's not even clear what aspect/property of the tree they're trying to highlight as relatable.