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Comment by fearai | Hacker News Reader

the people pushing the green new deal are doomsday Sayers predicting "crisis" in 12 years. they are more religious than some religious people about their science.

however their 6000 scientists don't appear to look at satellite imagery, or choose not to: "The world is literally a greener place than it was 20 years ago, and data from NASA satellites has revealed a counterintuitive source for much of this new foliage: China and India." source: https://www.nasa.gov/feature/ames/human-activity-in-china-an...

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Your second bit is a non-sequitur. Climate change is not a simple factor of how many trees there are, and no one claims that to be the case.

>the people pushing the green new deal are doomsday Sayers predicting "crisis" in 12 years.

They are saying we have 12 years to drastically reduce carbon emissions. If we don't the results of which will be seen in the following decades. I would expect NASA would agree with this just like every other reputable scientific organization.

[edit] Formatting

From the Article: The researchers point out that the gain in greenness seen around the world and dominated by India and China does not offset the damage from loss of natural vegetation in tropical regions, such as Brazil and Indonesia. The consequences for sustainability and biodiversity in those ecosystems remain.

> they are more religious than some religious people about their science.

There is no correlation between people concerned about high estimated damage using the current best effort science (warming of 3-4'C) and dogma without evidence.

If you have evidence to the contrary you will have definitely earned that Nobel prize and million bucks.

The "12 years" figure comes from here:

https://www.ipcc.ch/sr15/chapter/summary-for-policy-makers/

> C.1. In model pathways with no or limited overshoot of 1.5°C, global net anthropogenic CO2 emissions decline by about 45% from 2010 levels by 2030 (40–60% interquartile range), reaching net zero around 2050 (2045–2055 interquartile range).

This report came out in late 2018. As of the publishing of this report, in order to keep global average temperature increase under 1.5°C, CO2 emissions must fall to 45% of 2010 levels in 12 years.

There has been a predictable amount of misstating what this report actually says by environmentalists with poor reading comprehension, and a similar amount of bad-faith readings and intentional obfuscation by climate science deniers, but in any case, this is the source of the "12 years" figure that's been going around.

Nobody is "predicting doomsday in 12 years", but you can set your clock by the outpouring of bad faith "I Told You So"s that will occur in October of 2030 when the world has not ended.

My prediction: In 2030 the people denying climate change now will say "Of course everyone believed in anthropogenic climate change! It was only some flat-earthers that denied it was happening. Don't blame us! We tried to do something but the lefties wouldn't let us build nuclear power. Its actually all their fault"

In Germany this already started.

Of course, it's greener, plants are made from carbon. What you don't realize is that the biosphere puts as much carbon back in the atmosphere from respiration and fire as it puts in. In other words, it's greener but there are also bigger fires. Also, it's greener for now, but temperatures are changing so fast now that likely most plants won't keep up.

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