4 ms·

The article is a bit all over the place. > So, yes, greening is complicated. It’s not inherently good. Sometimes it’s very bad. Context, it turns out, matters

The article is a bit all over the place. > So, yes, greening is complicated. It’s not inherently good. Sometimes it’s very bad. Context, it turns out, matters a lot. The tone suggests they're afraid of the change, but the article can't articulate why since the reason for the change and result are both possibly good and bad, but we don't really know yet. The NASA MODIS project is ongoing and produces data that people are using to measure "greenness" (which the article indirectly cites) and has been going for 20 years https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moderate_Resolution_Imaging_Spectroradiometer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moderate_Resolution_Imaging_Sp... - it's definitely an interesting dataset. Didan seems to be leading the vegetation research for MODIS and the data set has been cited thousands of times (https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=TxQK6U8AAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=TxQK6U8AAAAJ&hl=en...)

platz 3y ago
> The article is a bit all over the place. Must an observation have an easily digestible value judgement and tell you how you should think about it, or can it just be allowed to present the facts and list the pros and cons. which one do you think leads to a healthier media environment Did you yourself not also include a portion of your comment to respond to article based on its data with your own "it depends" based on other data? > The tone suggests they're afraid of the change What do you think they lay person would immediately think about 'the earth is greening' and would it be appropriate to address those initial perceptions.
- paulsutter 3y ago
  The issue is just the opposite: the article is making a value judgment in the absence of objective data. I interpret the comment saying more info and less judgement please
  - platz 3y ago
    The objective data is the greenness of the earth measured by satellites. the article offers multiple possible explanations for this and what their effects might be. it acknowledges those derivative outcomes are speculative.
    - tastyfreeze 3y ago
      All of the offered explanations still paint humans as the perpetrators of a crime against the environment. Not once is a greening planet painted in a positive light in this article. Its as if the writer is afraid to say something positive about CO2 emissions.
      - satvikpendem 3y ago
        They do so because, just because something is greener does not make it better for humanity. For example, we can have "greener" algae blooms that nevertheless eat up the oxygen in a lake or ocean and then we have no fish to eat.
      - varelaseb 3y ago
        Optimizing for "green" is not what we're trying to achieve here. Mountains get greener when the tree line climbs as a sign of it's ecological decline. Stable forest and weather systems, biodiversity, bioavailability of nutrients in the ground are things closer to the interest of ecological causes.
        oceanplexian 3y ago
        Before is was physically possible for humans to change the climate most of the northern hemisphere was covered in a 4km thick sheet of ice. Then it melted and now there are forests. This melting also happened completely naturally and wasn’t because the cave men were putting out too much CO2. This was done by the natural processes of the Earth, so recently even humans were alive during the Ice Age. Some scientists even say that we are due for another ice age, that we may be otherwise avoiding due to climate change.
        silverquiet 3y ago
        Humans were around for the ice age, but not any of the humans I know. That was about 4 degrees Celsius, right? Over thousands of years. Meanwhile, my mom has lived through about 1.5 already and will probably see 2 in her life. Hell, depending on the breaks, I might live to see 3. Compressing a geological age into a human lifetime is bound to have some wacky effects. I can’t imagine being a kid today and thinking how much they’ll live to see.
- graycat 3y ago
  > which one do you think leads to a healthier media environment Hmm, apparently the answer depends!!! What I believe is "healthier", e.g., for (1) my being informed or (2) click-bait headlines, eyeballs, ad revenue???? But, now, for > the facts and list the pros and cons. there is a possibility, that is, from some changes from the Internet: First, the basic ideas of click-bait, etc. go way back in the history of many decades of journalism publishers. They needed a lot of revenue: Printing plants, trucks to deliver literally tons of news print or magazines, ..., radio and TV studios, etc. were expensive. The number of publishers was constrained: Each major city had just two main newspapers, morning and evening. There were a few national magazines. Then, the number of large radio stations, TV stations, were similarly limited. Un, click-bait that works in one major city stands to work everywhere which creates the constraints on the number of national click-bait publishers. > easily digestible value judgment and tell you how you should think Well put. For the big publishers, that is what dominated. For a good review and explanation going way back, see the ~1941 movie Meet John Doe. Second, now the decades, 100+ years, of such journalism is also being attempted on the Web sites of the Internet -- thus, your well put objection. BUT ...!!!! For an audience and a publisher for > the facts and list the pros and cons. they no longer need be so expensive. A single tower case computer can send, what, 100+ Web pages a second? Sooo, now the mass audience can have subsets. Some simple arithmetic: Assume 1 ad per Web page sent, revenue of $1 per 1000 ads displayed, sending a 24 x 7 average of 50 Web pages a second. Assume pre-tax earnings are 50% of revenue. Then annual earnings would be 50 * 3600 * 24 * 265 / ( 1000 * 2 ) = 572,400 dollars. Assume the business is worth 100 times annual earnings, and get 100 * 50 * 3600 * 24 * 265 / ( 1000 * 2 ) = 57,240,000 dollars. A possibility for > the facts and list the pros and cons. is the economy: A lot of data is available. Could present it in largely some simple X-Y graphs can do routinely with, say, Excel in Microsoft's Office. Another possibility: For COVID, start with the crucial data in the report of the Phase III trials in https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/nejmoa2035389 https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/nejmoa2035389 COVID and medicine more generally are good subjects for > the facts and list the pros and cons. Follow, say, common high school standards for term papers, e.g., careful references, hopefully to credible primary sources. Get an audience that values credibility. Then get a brand, a growing audience, and a successful business. Hmm, yup, I have a related startup -- Web site code running as intended. Should go live this year.
moosey 3y ago
This winter in my neck of the woods I hear a lot of people saying "oh, what great weather this year", because it's warm and without snow. If they had taken enough math to understand chaotic dynamic systems, they would need be as anxious as I am. It's less that I can tell you exactly what's going to happen, although there are definitely things that we are certain of, like riskier hurricanes. What keeps me up at night is that farmers have no idea what the next season will look like because we have altered the conditions of the function of climate, and therefore will enter a new state. We do not know where it will land and what it will look like getting there, and that very likely means reduction in food production. Sometimes fear is justified.
- throwawaymaths 3y ago
  Last few years hurricane seasons in the US have been less bad, because most really bad hurricanes have turned north further east than normal, avoiding coastal cities.
- d0gsg0w00f 3y ago
  What are people supposed to do? Just live in guilt and fear? People arent idiots simply because they're trying to make the best of a bad situation
  - _kulang 3y ago
    I think guilt and fear might be warranted as people have had a history of willingly being idiots regarding climate change. Best of a bad situation is one thing. Best of a bad situation which you are party to is another
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
  - silverquiet 3y ago
    > What are people supposed to do? I tried drinking copiously but eventually my insides started hurting. So I don't know either.
tmnvix 3y ago
> the change and result are both possibly good and bad, but we don't really know yet. I'm no scientist, but I believe the current ecological disaster effecting the UK's largest lake may be an example of the type of bad outcome we could expect to see more of. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/feb/19/like-the-flip-of-a-switch-its-gone-has-the-ecosystem-of-the-uk-largest-lake-collapsed-aoe https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/feb/19/like-the... It appears that a large algal bloom might be the immediate cause. Apparently algal blooms benefit from higher CO2 levels. https://www.epa.gov/nutrientpollution/climate-change-and-harmful-algal-blooms https://www.epa.gov/nutrientpollution/climate-change-and-har... I can't find it now, but I do remember reading some theory that previous extinction events on earth were driven by large amounts of organic matter breaking down anaerobically (i.e. underwater) which leads to a huge increase in some pretty nasty gases in the atmosphere. There have (apparently) even been times when some of the world's oceans were effectively large swamps. Edit: My mistake, I didn't read about what I mentioned in that last paragraph - I heard it on youtube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8eM1aakTzMw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8eM1aakTzMw To give the general gist of what's covered in the above video/interview with paleobiologist Peter Ward: 03:00 - We need a little bit of CO2, but it’s easy to have too much CO2 04:20 - Rare Earth: Why Complex Life is Uncommon in the Universe (co-written with Dan Brownlee) 04:40 - Excessive heat and mortality 05:12 - Volcanic activity responsible for past CO2 spikes 05:40 - Previous mass extinctions 05:57 - Non-animal mass extinctions 07:18 - Uneven atmospheric heating and much more... Well worth a listen if you have the time.

platz 3y ago

> The article is a bit all over the place. Must an observation have an easily digestible value judgement and tell you how you should think about it, or can it just be allowed to present the facts and list the pros and cons. which one do you think leads to a healthier media environment Did you yourself not also include a portion of your comment to respond to article based on its data with your own "it depends" based on other data? > The tone suggests they're afraid of the change What do you think they lay person would immediately think about 'the earth is greening' and would it be appropriate to address those initial perceptions.

paulsutter 3y ago
The issue is just the opposite: the article is making a value judgment in the absence of objective data. I interpret the comment saying more info and less judgement please
- platz 3y ago
  The objective data is the greenness of the earth measured by satellites. the article offers multiple possible explanations for this and what their effects might be. it acknowledges those derivative outcomes are speculative.
  - tastyfreeze 3y ago
    All of the offered explanations still paint humans as the perpetrators of a crime against the environment. Not once is a greening planet painted in a positive light in this article. Its as if the writer is afraid to say something positive about CO2 emissions.
    - satvikpendem 3y ago
      They do so because, just because something is greener does not make it better for humanity. For example, we can have "greener" algae blooms that nevertheless eat up the oxygen in a lake or ocean and then we have no fish to eat.
    - varelaseb 3y ago
      Optimizing for "green" is not what we're trying to achieve here. Mountains get greener when the tree line climbs as a sign of it's ecological decline. Stable forest and weather systems, biodiversity, bioavailability of nutrients in the ground are things closer to the interest of ecological causes.
      - oceanplexian 3y ago
        Before is was physically possible for humans to change the climate most of the northern hemisphere was covered in a 4km thick sheet of ice. Then it melted and now there are forests. This melting also happened completely naturally and wasn’t because the cave men were putting out too much CO2. This was done by the natural processes of the Earth, so recently even humans were alive during the Ice Age. Some scientists even say that we are due for another ice age, that we may be otherwise avoiding due to climate change.
        silverquiet 3y ago
        Humans were around for the ice age, but not any of the humans I know. That was about 4 degrees Celsius, right? Over thousands of years. Meanwhile, my mom has lived through about 1.5 already and will probably see 2 in her life. Hell, depending on the breaks, I might live to see 3. Compressing a geological age into a human lifetime is bound to have some wacky effects. I can’t imagine being a kid today and thinking how much they’ll live to see.
graycat 3y ago
> which one do you think leads to a healthier media environment Hmm, apparently the answer depends!!! What I believe is "healthier", e.g., for (1) my being informed or (2) click-bait headlines, eyeballs, ad revenue???? But, now, for > the facts and list the pros and cons. there is a possibility, that is, from some changes from the Internet: First, the basic ideas of click-bait, etc. go way back in the history of many decades of journalism publishers. They needed a lot of revenue: Printing plants, trucks to deliver literally tons of news print or magazines, ..., radio and TV studios, etc. were expensive. The number of publishers was constrained: Each major city had just two main newspapers, morning and evening. There were a few national magazines. Then, the number of large radio stations, TV stations, were similarly limited. Un, click-bait that works in one major city stands to work everywhere which creates the constraints on the number of national click-bait publishers. > easily digestible value judgment and tell you how you should think Well put. For the big publishers, that is what dominated. For a good review and explanation going way back, see the ~1941 movie Meet John Doe. Second, now the decades, 100+ years, of such journalism is also being attempted on the Web sites of the Internet -- thus, your well put objection. BUT ...!!!! For an audience and a publisher for > the facts and list the pros and cons. they no longer need be so expensive. A single tower case computer can send, what, 100+ Web pages a second? Sooo, now the mass audience can have subsets. Some simple arithmetic: Assume 1 ad per Web page sent, revenue of $1 per 1000 ads displayed, sending a 24 x 7 average of 50 Web pages a second. Assume pre-tax earnings are 50% of revenue. Then annual earnings would be 50 * 3600 * 24 * 265 / ( 1000 * 2 ) = 572,400 dollars. Assume the business is worth 100 times annual earnings, and get 100 * 50 * 3600 * 24 * 265 / ( 1000 * 2 ) = 57,240,000 dollars. A possibility for > the facts and list the pros and cons. is the economy: A lot of data is available. Could present it in largely some simple X-Y graphs can do routinely with, say, Excel in Microsoft's Office. Another possibility: For COVID, start with the crucial data in the report of the Phase III trials in https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/nejmoa2035389 https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/nejmoa2035389 COVID and medicine more generally are good subjects for > the facts and list the pros and cons. Follow, say, common high school standards for term papers, e.g., careful references, hopefully to credible primary sources. Get an audience that values credibility. Then get a brand, a growing audience, and a successful business. Hmm, yup, I have a related startup -- Web site code running as intended. Should go live this year.

moosey 3y ago

This winter in my neck of the woods I hear a lot of people saying "oh, what great weather this year", because it's warm and without snow. If they had taken enough math to understand chaotic dynamic systems, they would need be as anxious as I am. It's less that I can tell you exactly what's going to happen, although there are definitely things that we are certain of, like riskier hurricanes. What keeps me up at night is that farmers have no idea what the next season will look like because we have altered the conditions of the function of climate, and therefore will enter a new state. We do not know where it will land and what it will look like getting there, and that very likely means reduction in food production. Sometimes fear is justified.

throwawaymaths 3y ago
Last few years hurricane seasons in the US have been less bad, because most really bad hurricanes have turned north further east than normal, avoiding coastal cities.
d0gsg0w00f 3y ago
What are people supposed to do? Just live in guilt and fear? People arent idiots simply because they're trying to make the best of a bad situation
- _kulang 3y ago
  I think guilt and fear might be warranted as people have had a history of willingly being idiots regarding climate change. Best of a bad situation is one thing. Best of a bad situation which you are party to is another
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
- silverquiet 3y ago
  > What are people supposed to do? I tried drinking copiously but eventually my insides started hurting. So I don't know either.

tmnvix 3y ago

> the change and result are both possibly good and bad, but we don't really know yet. I'm no scientist, but I believe the current ecological disaster effecting the UK's largest lake may be an example of the type of bad outcome we could expect to see more of. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/feb/19/like-the-flip-of-a-switch-its-gone-has-the-ecosystem-of-the-uk-largest-lake-collapsed-aoe https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/feb/19/like-the... It appears that a large algal bloom might be the immediate cause. Apparently algal blooms benefit from higher CO2 levels. https://www.epa.gov/nutrientpollution/climate-change-and-harmful-algal-blooms https://www.epa.gov/nutrientpollution/climate-change-and-har... I can't find it now, but I do remember reading some theory that previous extinction events on earth were driven by large amounts of organic matter breaking down anaerobically (i.e. underwater) which leads to a huge increase in some pretty nasty gases in the atmosphere. There have (apparently) even been times when some of the world's oceans were effectively large swamps. Edit: My mistake, I didn't read about what I mentioned in that last paragraph - I heard it on youtube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8eM1aakTzMw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8eM1aakTzMw To give the general gist of what's covered in the above video/interview with paleobiologist Peter Ward: 03:00 - We need a little bit of CO2, but it’s easy to have too much CO2 04:20 - Rare Earth: Why Complex Life is Uncommon in the Universe (co-written with Dan Brownlee) 04:40 - Excessive heat and mortality 05:12 - Volcanic activity responsible for past CO2 spikes 05:40 - Previous mass extinctions 05:57 - Non-animal mass extinctions 07:18 - Uneven atmospheric heating and much more... Well worth a listen if you have the time.