NASA Says Earth Is Greener Today Than 20 Years Ago Thanks to China, India

The general approach changes at least here. The largest difference is relatively smaller density of dead wood in the forests, which is important and still not fully understood habitat.

They said it was freak accident that happens every few hundred years. Well there was another one few years after, and few other smaller ones since then.

Now its largely left on its own as being national park with highest protection level, but this has some (hopefully relatively short term) negative effects - population of bugs eating trees exploded and they are destroying remaining trees.

Monocultures sucks, we should know better.

The rule of 70 is useful; divide 70 by growth rate in percent tobget doubling time in years.

US carbon emissions have been roughly flat, and falling most years since 2005, likely from natgas substitution for coal in electricity generation, though total petroleum use has also fallen:

https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=34872

Too: total energy in the US as of the 1970s was doubling roughly every 20 years (3.5% annual growth), meaning that "all prior history" doesn't matter to much -- half of all emissions had occurred 1950-1970 (very roughly, from memory). Similarly, as coal use was rampling up in the 1860s, contemporary writers noted that a fraction of known reserves would satisfy US energy needs for a million years ... at then-current levels of consumption. What happened, of course, is that low-cost energy spurred growth and coal use exploded. Current reserves as estimated by BP's annual statistical review are closer to 300 years, a reduction in time of over 3,000-fold.

Henry Erni (1865): https://archive.org/details/coaloilpetroleum00erni/page/14

BP: https://www.bp.com/en/global/corporate/energy-economics/stat...

China's emissions were projected to rise 5% in 2018, by one source, a doubling in 15 years.

https://unearthed.greenpeace.org/2018/05/30/china-co2-carbon...

There's much more to the picture, including equity, offshoring pollution, and history. bBut a simple integration over past use alone is very incomplete.

I agree with the fact that China and India need to focus on their emissions, but it seems ridiculously convenient for someone from a western country to ask a couple billion people to reduce their emissions while they themselves will find every opportunity to reduce their own accountability.

FYI - A US per capita emission is almost 20 times more than that of India. https://www.nationmaster.com/country-info/stats/Environment/...

True, I did not run a probability study; however if one looks at the control that computers have on every facet of your existence and how often they fail--I'm pretty the odds would scare the fuck out of you.

> Not to mention there was nearly modern civilization before electronics were invented that we could fall back to.

You going down to the stream to fetch water when it no longer flows from your faucet?

> like every single piece of critical hardware in all major cities would somehow have to fail

Viruses could do it. People panic. Could you live a week without food or power? Please, I remember when Hurricane Sandy hit here in NY... it would not take much to turn society on its ear. Of course, I'm sure your right--after all Y2K never happened, and I mean who could foresee in 1983 that the future would actually be here in 17 LONG, LONG years.