Greening of the Earth Mitigates Surface Warming (2020)
nasa.gov
nasa.gov
I don't think it makes sense to see human settlements as separate from nature. I think of nature as the fabric within which such configurations occur.
It isn't inevitable that human development must be a concrete jungle. You can include plants, permeable surfaces, etc in your plans so people can live more lightly and less intrusively on the land.
I also think America has a lot of room for adding back walkable mixed-use neighborhoods where at least some people can live, work and shop in the same neighborhood. Or at least live and shop if they are retirees, teens, or similar groups who aren't seeking a job or who already work at home or from home in some capacity.
Studies suggest this leads to greater wealth in such neighborhoods (such as more sales) and we know vehicle traffic is a significant burden wrt human-caused climate change. Making it possible to skip the long commute makes for a better quality of life and less pollution adding to this issue.
We currently frame this issue as a painful choice between short-term gratification and current high quality of life with a long-term cost of global disaster versus short-term sacrifice for slim hope of assuaging our guilt with no guarantee of real improvement in the future. I don't think that's necessary.
I've lived without a car in the US for more than a decade. I think you can live that way and live well. I think we can design and build a world that provides a high quality of life for people and doesn't destroy the environment in the process.
A regular bus on the two axis I use would allow me to totally get rig of a car. I am pretty sure we could automate such a bus given today's tech.
Not if you need to carry a lot of stuff like groceries for a whole family. Unless you decide to do a bus trip every single day, losing time while waiting for the next bus the arrive.
Groceries in the West take up so much space because they are all prepackaged. A couple boxes of cereal and a loaf of bread takes up as much space as a week worth of veg. Using dishclothes and a washlet instead of paper towels or (most) toilet paper and you've got another couple volumetrically huge items off your shopping list
America has an epidemic of obesity and I think for some people that fact makes it unimaginable to live without a car. But I think cause and effect run the other way: So many Americans are overweight and frustrated with their lives in part because we have made it so hard in this country to run errands on foot.
It has become a vicious cycle.
You reverse it by just starting. Let some people run errands on foot and by car. Target the low-hanging fruit, the people (like lv) who say "I could do that if I only had this small bit of help."
Let them take the leap. Take the gains you can access instead of quibbling about "But that doesn't work for everyone!"
Nothing works for everyone and ruining our planet is working for no one.
I currently live without a car in an area that gets 76 inches of rain annually. I typically describe it as biblical flood levels of rain. It's a lot of rain.
I routinely go outside in a t-shirt and sweatpants in all kinds of weather, including freezing temps and snow.
Weather is intimidating to people who spend almost all their time indoors and in a vehicle. If you actually spend time outside, you know how to stay warm enough, how to mitigate exposure to wind, rain, etc.
And I'm seriously handicapped by a condition that is known to negatively impact my ability to effectively modulate my body temperature. So I'm not especially impressed by such arguments. I don't think they have much, if any, merit.
Though I would like to see more awnings in the downtown area where I live. I would appreciate that as a means to limit my exposure to rain and I think it's very doable.
As you said, you just learn to handle the weather. Walking to the super market is a very everyday thing for us.
I'm wondering because was born and raised in Israel (similar climate to Greece) and even at the mountain tops -20c would be very rare (and there are generally no settlements of significant size at the peak of the tallest mountains, most people live in the valleys or coasts).
Even in Germany where we live now (1000s of kilometers further north) -20c is very rare.
AFAIK Israel is quite a bit warmer than Greece, since you guys are much closer to Cyprus (and Cyprus has a noticeably warmer climate than us), no?
In Germany in comparison you can go almost 1000km from south to north and the only difference in climate would be if you're on a mountain or the coast (two German cities at the same altitude will have more or less the same climate even if they are 100s of kilometers apart on the south-north axis).
Also, you have been downvoted, no idea why though. I counter-upvoted.
Don't get me wrong: I believe your case, and I believe it's roughly on the path to reducing the effect we have on the planet. But you are missing few practical considerations.
The immediate case that you are obviously ignoring is parents with babies. Babies are known not to regulate their body temperature well, nor to have strong immune systems, nor can they walk long distances on their own. So what do parents do? Move between places with temperate climate and clean(er) air (home with AC/heating, cars, malls...). How do they do that? Driving cars (you've also got your mobile "locker" where you can put a stroller or any other necessities in).
At the same time, parents with small children (as a category) probably spend the most time outdoors walking in our society today, but that's usually walking "without a purpose." When they live in non-walkable areas, they'll drive to a walkable area first.
(Sure, we could subject our babies to all the extremes, but we'll have a higher infant/child mortality rate. We've long stopped subscribing to the "only the fittest survive" mantra.)
Since having a baby is a big investment today, if you are at the same time investing in a house, you'll look for (slightly) cheaper housing options. So, walkable neighbourhoods — I can't imagine anyone not wanting to live in one — are usually priced out of their range.
You are right that this is a loop: parents can't tell when they can stop being so vigilant, especially as children (and parents) are now unused to extreme climates, so they easily fall sick (parents included). And if they've invested in a home outside a walkable area, it's costly to move.
While you say breaking that loop is easy, I don't think it is. Moving places is hard and expensive (and harder and more expensive with children). Accepting higher sickness rates while your kids and you develop your immune and cardiovascular (to better manage body heat) systems is costly too (leave from work, paid help...). You should consider yourself privileged to have been able to do so!
This points at a number of problems: financial incentives for home builders are misplaced, missing regulatory requirements... and sure, insufficiently motivated people. And this is only when constrained with one thing (having a baby): there are plenty other constraints people might have (job availability, care availability, friends proximity...). Basically, people might have to compromise a lot.
If you only focus on insufficient motivation, I don't think you'll get many to "sign up".
It looks like you are responding to someone saying "ban all cars, anyone living somewhere unwalkable just has to suck it up, regardless of any extenuating circumstances"
What was actually said was "LET people run errands by foot and by car", and "I'd like more awnings"
Basically - make places more walkable. "Low hanging fruit" meaning focus on making nearly walkable places into very walkable places.
I am a parent with small children. We walk to school. With a baby, I would walk to the supermarket, no one got ill any more than the occasional sniffle. Combining a pram and a backpack meant I could easily bring home the weekly shop, much easier than I can now that I have to carry everything.
It's also about places that are wantonly and deliberately hostile to pedestrians. Don't make people drive between adjacent destinations, don't force people to walk 2 miles to get somewhere half a mile away.
If you live in a village with a baby and an elderly parent and your nearest city is Timbuktu or Nuuk, this is not about you.
The comment I replied to had this in response to someone's question about walking in "sweltering heat":
> (talks a lot about personal experiences and hardships and then concludes with...) So I'm not especially impressed by such arguments. I don't think they have much, if any, merit.
The entire tone of the comment is "if I can do it, anyone can". While it's not as strong as "anyone living somewhere unwalkable just has to suck it up", there is definitely an implication of something along those lines.
> Take the gains you can access instead of quibbling about "But that doesn't work for everyone!"
The tone of that you describe as "if I can do it, anyone can", I read as "yes I did think of that, because this is my relevant experience, and people living somewhere hot isn't the massive 'gotcha' you think it is"
But the point still stands, this is about reducing car use by making places more walkable, and your reaction read as a response to reducing car use by banning cars.
Many places in North America are actively and unnaturally hostile to pedestrians, so that even those who want to walk end up driving. This is what needs to change first.
Moaning that Oklahoma gets so hot so you can't possibly install pedestrian facilities in suburban Philadelphia, or that some people need to drive along this road, so you can't possibly provide a way for pedestrians to get across it is ridiculous.
Improving walkability also improves drivability, because it reduces traffic and parking demand.
Quibbling about not working for everyone is precisely what you and the "sweltering heat" comment are doing. Take the easy steps and the harder ones can follow.
Moreover, I don't think you are really considering the reality of getting around with small children, just trying to win another gotcha. My kids hated getting into the car as babies. A pram ride along a nice tree-shaded, low-traffic Street would be far more preferable in all but the most ridiculous summertime-midday-in-the-outback heat.
As with everyone else here saying they've got kids and no cars, it's obvious you are already living in walkable areas.
You are instead taking my comment in bad faith: nowhere did I mention banning of cars. It seems it's fine to consider individual cases in support of your view as proof of it, whereas counter examples are "edge cases".
I've got small kids, and my baby hates both the car and a pram. If I want to get somewhere nice, it's faster with a car.
This thread was talking (in part) about the weather in Japan. Atlanta would be a similar climate to Fukuoka or Kagoshima - even Tokyo isn't too far off, it routinely gets into the high 30s with 75% humidity, yet somehow everyone still manages to get around just fine without a car.
The only thing that makes a car seem so mandatory in north america is because we've built whole cities around the assumption that everyone has one and it's the only way to get around - this damage will take decades to fix.
Yes you do need some winter clothing.
Do you imagine that folks living in the tropics always go and get their food by car?
But: why would a loaf of bread take up much space? The "packaging" there is just a bit of paper, and it has much higher density than most vegetables, I think?
I.e. a loaf is enough bread for 4 people for a couple days, the equivalent amount of "non-compressed" vegetables like fennel/lettuce/zucchini would be much larger. Only some crucifers or large pumpkins would be comparable, and potatoes/yams.
Maybe it's a US thing about packaged bread? I live in the EU, so I might be thinkinf of something else.
I dont think vegetables are an accurate comparison. By listing bread and cereal, I was thinking specifically of common north american breakfast/lunch foods which are largely starch-based, and quite low density. As comparators I was thinking of dried rice and pasta, which are quite dense when transporting home from the grocery store.
> I.e. a loaf is enough bread for 4 people for a couple days,
I clearly eat a lot more bread than you :) I eat two or three (smallish) loaves a week for just me (often toast+peanut butter for breakfast, sandwich of some variety for lunch, and maybe another slice at some point for a snack)
But when rarely it's cool, stores along heavy foot-trafficked routes are extremely hostile to carrying bags, which makes it inefficient to bother.
Still, I can get most, if not all, shopping for one done with a backpack and two feet. I don’t think it would be that different with a small family, and you can reasonably recruit family members to help. Growing up, my mom would take me shopping and I was always desperate to help (or “help” in the case of wanting to push the carriage). I think most kids at least start out this way and would be happy to carry a few bags assuming the journey isn’t too arduous, and it will make them healthier than spending that time with the PlayStation.
You make bus trips to get to work or do stuff anyway so it’s just a stop on your way home, not a big deal.
https://c8.alamy.com/comp/PXXDEM/elderly-woman-walking-while...
I cannot drive but am about to move from Tokyo to Nagano. It's close to a local station, so I may be able to manage. Until I try though I won't know.
Sounds like heidegger and marx! I agree
Our current housing crisis is rooted in building housing designed for our standard nuclear family with a breadwinner father, homemaker mother and 2.5 minor kids. This became our standard post-WW2 with the birth of the suburbs and was avidly embraced because it worked to solve our housing crisis at that time.
That was never the majority of the US population but it was a larger percentage of the population than it is currently and there were other housing options available if you were single. We have torn down a million SROs and largely eliminated the practice of boarding houses. Now we see such things as aimed at homeless people who can't make their lives work. At one time, that was normal housing for normal people.
We have a higher percentage of households with one to three people and we mostly don't build housing for such households. This has driven an interest in alternatives like Tiny Homes, RV living and trailer courts.
We really need to focus on building Missing Middle Housing and SROs. That would include duplexes which are a potential sensible option for living with extended family in some cases.
Suburbs are, imho, the anti-city environment.
Suburbs got thrown up at breathtaking speed in part because it was greenfield development, which lowered some barriers to development. There is some saying about "Good. Cheap. Fast. Pick two."
At the time that they were carpeting the US at high speed, they were seen as good, cheap and fast. We are now seeing what the myriad hidden costs were, from cutting out lower income people to forcing people to be dependent on cars to cutting out people of color and also having environmental costs that were not factored in at the time.
The birth of the suburb predates the environmental movement.
The birth of the suburb is generally traced to Levittown in the late 1940s-early 1950s. The environmental movement is generally traced to the publication of a book called Silent Spring in 1962.
[0]https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/us-history/the-gilded...
[1]https://ourworldindata.org/urbanization#share-of-populations...
granted this only goes back to 1960
Whatthewhat? Such a privilege postion to be able to say that. Owning a car is a luxury that not all can afford. The fact that you think living without a car is a privilege shows how backwards we've gotten.
I'm from a smaller American city with abysmal public transportation. Cars are how you get to work, end of sentence. They are required for life.
Yes, the city should be doing more to make that better. Yes, the system is backwards. But the woman driving to work in a beat-up 2009 Civic that she bought for $1500 certainly doesn't feel luxurious or privileged.
In many places in America, the ability to live without a car implies 1) the ability to work from home 2) a greater amount of time to devote to travel 3) the ability to have someone else take care of "car-required" things 4) the ability to get access to a car if you really need one.
You can see where I'm going with this. Privilege is a factor of the system, and that system is a car-based one for most people.
These are not necessarily true. 1)There are plenty of people that have low paying jobs that barely allows for food/rent, so a car+insurance is just out of the question. 2)I don't know what not having a car has to do with devoting to travel. If you can't afford a car, how are they going to afford traveling? 3) again, just not true for a large number of people. 4)Not sure what you are implying here. Stealing a car?
It really sounds like you're not appreciating the situation of very low income situations.
There are low income folks in both cities and the countryside. Mass transit will mostly serve the ones in the city. I gave France as an example because their situation is likely what will happen here with similarly proposed taxes. It's not really a revolutionary thought to try to provide for the poor. What we end up having to deal with is people who only want to solve problems for themselves. Finding a solution that works for both people in the city and people in the countryside is imperative.
wow, that's a hyper negative view of cities. am I spoiled by knowing that there are large "parks" around me, ranging from 200 acres to 1300+ acres that are within walking or bus distance? hardly the dogshit and cigarette butt filled parks that some others are describing.
Personally I think that Americans just don't realize that it's not cities that suck, it's American cities that suck. Plenty of pleasant cities to live in in the world.
The YouTube channel "Not just bikes" talks about this. In the USA, it is commonly seen that there are only two possible configurations for human settlements: sprawling suburbs, or Manhattan-style high-density towers. The medium-density style of city common across a lot of Europe and Asia is not very well known in the USA and Canada outside of a select few older cities which developed to a large enough size before the automobile took over.
Access to nature and preserving nature are opposed goals. Access to nature is destruction facilitating further destruction.
e.g. https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/nov/14/tourists-car...
They don't, in general. compared to suburban or even heavily utilized rural areas. Neither farms nor manicured suburban parks are any more nature than cities are.
And cities can be as proximate to natural preserves as anything else can be.
If you don't mean actual nature, just green outdoor spaces, cities often incorporate and provide access to them.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polder
From what I gather, protecting the polder so everyone survives is so important that it has, at times, required people at war to cooperate in keeping the water out.
Today, globally, everyone knows we need solutions here or we are all doomed. We can stop quibbling about what various factions want for personal gain and start seeking answers that help some group live lighter on the land so we all benefit.
Rinse and repeat.
Start with low-hanging fruit. As that gets done, other things will become more reachable.
In many small villages/towns there is only a bus service during peak hours now. When I visit it's really a royal pain (and taxies are unaffordable as an alternative). And when you work in the Netherlands you're usually required to work nationwide which means countless hours in the car visiting clients. Public transport takes several times as long as car travel.
I really hated it when I worked there (I'm from there as you might have guessed). All these hours driving in frantic traffic were so stressful. I work in Barcelona now where public transport is much better (rural is still worse than inner-city but both are much better than the Netherlands' services). It's the first place I've lived where I genuinely don't need a car, it would only be a burden to me. Time between metros is counted in seconds and the network is so big. As well as that there's buses and trams and regional trains passing through that can be used to hop from one side of the city to the other.
The only thing that's genuinely better in the Netherlands is the bike lane network IMO :) That really is amazing. But I just don't see the feasibility of doing without a car completely there.
To which I say "So you're telling me if they can become the global poster child for doing this better, anyone can do this better -- even the US."
When I was there these numbers were much lower despite the A2 being a horrible ever-changing construction site. And it was already so frustrating I once broke my teeth just from grinding it :(
At the same time even the frequent train routes were apparently really overcrowded. Everything is different now with Corona of course but that's worldwide.
Barcelona is one of the most stressful, if not the most stressful city, to use public transport in in Europe. If anything it should serve as an example for other cities as to what to not do. Public transports are full of thieves and scammers. It is simply beyond belief. It is known that if you ever dare to retaliate when you catch people stealing you, it can quickly degenerate very badly... For you.
I don't want to hear the typical: "If you look like a local and know what not to do, you'll be fine". I want public transports to be very safe otherwise I won't use them.
Several people mentioned Tokyo already: I spent close to a year there. Now that is a city with working and safe public transports.
This is true in the overwhelming majority of public transport around the world.
> Several people mentioned Tokyo
Yes, Japan is one of the safest nations in this regard. That's cool, but definitely not achievable everywhere because it is due to a lot of environmental factors (like the culture and the incredible conviction rates).
Because of this there's gangs of professional pickpockets. But they're trained to avoid conflict. Because any violence will incur serious charges. I've grabbed one once and pushed him against a wall when I felt him reaching for my phone and he literally was passive and relaxed. Just dropped the phone and strolled off. No way someone behaves like that unless they have trained it.
So yes they're an absolute plague but the risk of violence is low. And the cause does not have much to do with public transport (it happens on the street too) but with ignorant lawmakers :)
I think this is a misconception for sure - the netherlands used to have much more car-oriented development but saw the issues with it and started retrofitting their built environments.
The same goes for the U.S in reverse, actually, with a lot of cities not having been designed with the car in mind and then subsequently having been demolished and retrofitted for the car. The transition is totally possible to do in both directions.
While not quite magic, a famously flat terrain and a mild climate surely had an impact?
The city has been working to undo it by providing financial incentives for removal, and partnering with an informal group of volunteers to make it cheap to do. They put out a call for public volunteers to have a sort of reverse-barn-raising. A big bunch of people show up and help rip apart and load up the concrete.
Jamaica Plain, a neighborhood in Boston, used to have a group of volunteers that worked with local nurseries to plant a tree and take care of the initial critical care (watering regularly) for free. All you had to do was email them, and then point when the crew showed up.
Elbow grease. Break the concrete and plant shit, pay people to maintain these things every once in a while. I mean most amenity planting is low maintenance and only needs looking after once or twice a year to avoid it growing wild.
The US has the solutions already - a lot of money, and a lot of people looking for a steady job. All it takes is for people to stop hoarding said money and Decide to solve the issue.
We cut people out of being productive members of society and turn them into a burden that has to be tended to and we actively interfere with them maintaining their physical mobility and ability to participate and contribute.
I'm handicapped. I live without a car because I can't drive. Walking has helped rehabilitate my defective body. America being so car-centric unnecessarily interferes with people like me making an adequate living and making their lives work and turns us into a burden on society when we don't have to be.
I'm not remotely the only one negatively impacted by our general lack of walkable mixed-use development, but I'm reluctant to start talking about other people I know who may not want their stories and their opinions being publicized.
Humanity has found a way to split atom, to defeat the plague, to send people to the Moon, and now we cheerfully celebrate turning ourselves into caged animals.
I just don't get it, really. We have the smarts and the technology to make comfortable living eco-friendly. We see the birth rates decline, implying that people's satisfaction with their life quality is not worth sharing it with the next generation. And we stubbornly do everything we can to lower it further.
For common sense's sake, please look at the big picture. Your guilt is someone else's profit margin. You are being taught to hate yourself because this way you will settle for a lower salary and won't have a family to distract you from your work. Please, don't get yourself manipulated.
But instead, we have a ruling class that owns the companies, lives in detached houses in gated communities, has multiple cars, flies first class to vacations. And we have the serfs working "jobs" in these companies, treated like shit by egomaniac bosses, and are constantly told to adopt the continuously lowering living standard in the name of rather abstract and unquantifiable goals. That also, coincidentally, prevents them from competing with the ruling class. Am I really the only one seeing massive hypocrisy here?
Euclid v Ambler was the wellspring of bad urban planning and a watershed of horrific outcomes. We need to return to people owning the property they own, and developing (and redeveloping) it in any way that doesn't hurt or endanger other people.
To minimize the size of the driveway at my house, but provide overflow parking, I decided to try "grasscrete". Grasscrete is essentially concrete blocks with holes in them so the grass can grow through. The concrete will support cars so they don't sink into the muck. After a while, enough grass grows through it to hide the whole thing and it looks like more lawn instead of more concrete.
The results are very good.
It does look much better and is feels much cooler than pavement though.
There is nothing particularly worrisome about them, except that it doesn't really grow much grass if frequently used.
I've been living in California (Sac) for five years, I'm 37, I've never learned to drive.
I've been in a car only twice in the past 500+ days (both times to bring my dog to the vet).
I feel good because of it. I evangalise.
The world will be better without private cars.
Is there a post/blog/thread/AMA about this? This sounds super interesting in itself!
I now live on a farm and life would be near impossible without a vehicle unless I went Armish style with horse and cart and buggy.
If this person lived NY vs back country Montana it would be 2 very different stores.
Yes, cities could be built with better/smarter public transport options, but even Londoners and New Yorkers (two cities with very good public transport) will say they need cars from time to time. And I suspect pre-COVID-level jam-packed public transport will find few takers in a post-COVID world.
Outside cities, even in suburban areas, the need for cars is a no-brainer.
But I'd still like to know how the parent poster manages.
For sure we are not. If we put a bubble(mars dome) around Toronto. Everyone dies in a very short period of time. Nature outside of Toronto is required for Toronto to survive. The more you push nature away by urban sprawl, the worse it becomes for the people living there.
>It isn't inevitable that human development must be a concrete jungle. You can include plants, permeable surfaces, etc in your plans so people can live more lightly and less intrusively on the land.
A requirement in the long run. I suppose my example of Toronto is a bad one because of the giant boreal forest to the north is mitigating the problem. Similarly oceanic cities like NYC are also mitigated.
>I also think America has a lot of room for adding back walkable mixed-use neighborhoods where at least some people can live, work and shop in the same neighborhood.
I understand but I doubt it'll happen.
>Studies suggest this leads to greater wealth in such neighborhoods (such as more sales) and we know vehicle traffic is a significant burden wrt human-caused climate change.
Let's not forget such a huge cost to society. We have how much debt and capital tied up in transportation which the majority of the time sits idle in a driveway? Let's not forget how transportation is one of our only high energy sinks. You can charge your phone off a wall outlet in 30 minutes but it takes days to charge a car off the same outlet.
The urban sprawl and death of small towns is because the cost of energy became so high and you cant compete. Naturally influencing why politicians then set policy to intentionally harm small towns.
The solution needed by politicians is highly technological, expensive, allows us to keep selling coal, and isn't understood by people so can be easily spun into ridiculous tales by politicians.
"Just plant trees" would be ridiculously expensive and is totally impractical, the politicians would say.
It's just a straight cynical political manipulation that aims to prevent any real action and keep selling coal. Australian government literally does not want to solve this.
lots of finger pointing about this, yet so many are guilty at once right?
Sure some of them do. They're just not willing to lift a finger to do anything about it.
However what that means is that at any point the MPs from the majority party can oust the PM and change them out with another MP.
This has become more common recently with several of our sitting PM's being 'knifed' aka backstabbed in recent years.
It high time that we realise that it never was a good faith discussion about facts. It's only about power. The rich people that have a lot invested in fossil fuels risk becoming less rich, and they are using all means necessary to not let that happen, or at least delay it as much as possible
Early coal was referred to as "sea-coal" in many places because the easiest way to get it was from veins close to the sea where it washed up. Deep mining of coal required the industrial revolution. There was a huge circular dependency between iron production, steam engines made from iron, and using the steam engines to pump out the iron and coal mines and draw up the mined resources.
Hopefully things will change a bit with the election early next year - the opposition party that actually did legislate an effective and workable price on carbon back in 2011 looks like they might get back in (the scheme was repealed by the conservatives as soon as they got back into Government in 2013).
Australian government has tree planting programs as part of its climate policy, doesn't it?
To answer your second question, I doubt it, and if it does, it's probably an insignificant joke.
Let's wait for OP to clarify what they meant.
There is a tendency for people who are knowledgeable in one thing to believe they have enough knowledge and discernment to answer on any other thing.
There is a 1 billion trees initiative currently in progress in Australia. I'm not sure of the details but I have talked to some of the people involved.
https://www.globalcitizen.org/en/content/australia-will-plan...
Which blows my mind. Australia has the opportunity to do very large outback scale energy capture projects that would effectively drop the cost of energy to 0 in the long run. Develop and bring the auto industry back as EVs. As a society you could effectively eliminate one of the highest costs to your people.
>The solution needed by politicians is highly technological, expensive, allows us to keep selling coal, and isn't understood by people so can be easily spun into ridiculous tales by politicians.
I'm not aussie and only vaguely follow their politics. Australia has to export. If they drop back down into a losing balance of trade it'll be very bad news.
>"Just plant trees" would be ridiculously expensive and is totally impractical, the politicians would say.
It also isnt a solution. Us Canadians have 10,000 trees per person. We ought to be considered carbon neutral but we dont because our boreal forest is considered a pollutor. So trees aren't a solution.
https://www.onegreenplanet.org/news/chart-shows-worlds-land-...
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/tree-range-c...
I think I once saw something similar about cattle but I cannot find any reference.
Though that might be true, and despite it working for a small community - the scale of meat production required to satisfy the world's demands today can't be achieved through forest-raised chickens or cattle.
The price of meat would have to skyrocket and/or the consumption of it would have to dramatically decrease. Both of those would be progress from a climate change and environmental perspective, but from the perspective of global meat consumer expectations, it would be a serious regression. Few people want to go back to pre-industrial diet (mostly grains, greens, and a very small amount of meat).
That's why plant based meat substitutes are such a big deal - they might be one of the few ways we can thread this needle.
I’m very skeptical of this. Citation needed please.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_bison#Hunting [2] https://www.nass.usda.gov/Newsroom/2021/01-29-2021.php
[1] https://agriculture.canada.ca/en/canadas-agriculture-sectors...
And before that, the extinctions mammoths and mastadons (by humans) led to a lot of tree cover that was grassland when the grazers kept the forests in check.
the amazing, Amazon Basin, is far, far larger than any previous human terraculture eh?
Compare the DIAAS scores (see a short overview of DIAAS here — https://www.arlafoodsingredients.com/the-whey-and-protein-bl...). Plant-based sources of indispensable amino acids are lacking; that, combined with the sheer amount of water and energy necessary to produce & process them make them a very bad choice indeed, especially set against pastured ruminants, as (primary) protein sources. The suggestions for protein intake in the Mayo article cited by blacksmith_tb are minimal levels; more (and quality) protein is needed for better health, not merely for getting enough.
https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/44879/does-anim...
Regarding water and energy needed for plants vs animals, I'm flabbergasted that you are even making this argument, considering that the vast majority of crops goes into feeding animals for meat and dairy. It's far more inefficient to eat meat and dairy than it is to eat plants when it comes to water and energy usage.
And what do mean mean "more protein is needed for better health, not merely for getting enough". Are you saying that "getting enough" protein is not enough to maintain health? Sounds like a contradiction.
The argument is also not for feedlots, but for pastures — in a post below I argue for getting rid of the grains which we use to feed these animals (which isn't great for them to eat, either). There is good evidence (see Peter Ballerstedt's work for details on this) that pastured ruminants end up generating excellent soil that holds in water and is actually on the good end of things, methane emission-wise (though the problem of emissions from feedlots are greatly overblown as the pollution which comes from planting, harvesting, processing, and distributing plants rarely gets folded into the equation). Funny that.
And, finally, as for "getting enough" — getting enough to get by is not optimal for health. More & better protein is needed for that, and that comes from renewable animal sources which don't require vast expenditures of energy, processing, and which prevent the loss of topsoil while adding to the vitality of the soil. I want everyone to be healthy, and there's a path for that to happen, one which won't be taken if we go down the "plant based" path instead.
1: https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/what-should-you...
2" https://www.mayoclinichealthsystem.org/hometown-health/speak...
is there a citation for that claim?
Having been part of forest regeneration efforts across the UK - from southern heathlands to rocky Welsh and Scottish outcrops, good for "nothing but sheep" - I can say with all certainty that every part of the country except the most extreme alpine regions is suitable for reforestation or some form of plantation dense rewilding. People are completely ignorant to how the country looked before we levelled it for grazing, viewing the 70% ecologically barren agricultural land (of which 80% of that is used for grazing or feeding cattle) as the norm and the 2.5% old growth forest as a more novelty, and something strangely "unique to that area".
If you're from New Zealand, this video is especially poignant: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3VZSJKbzyMc
Beef is not an essential staple. It's probably the worst kind of meat in terms of environmental impact.
The obvious endgame there is that you reduce the amount of land required per person and then increase the persons, ending up with the same land requirement.
Then we look for the next thing to cut.
I'll just keep my current quality of life and outcompete others for resources, thanks. Carbon tax pls.
I can eat meat as much as I want provided another 7 billion people don't also do the same.
The issue is with the number of people, not the activity. Literally any use of land is a bad idea at that scale, we end up in rabbit hutches.
So you're saying eating meat is fine then?
It does to first order. Then we just end up with more mouths - like what happened after the Haber-Bosch process.
Other livestock land is completely different from its 'wild state'. Cattle ranching in what used to be the Amazon. Sheep herding in European uplands, also takes place on land that used to be forest and temperate rain forest.
Another feed in to the large percentage of land that goes towards livestock, is growing animal feed. The majority of cattle in the US is not just eating grass. It is eating crops that are grown specifically for feeding to cattle. So those fields of corn, that are then fed to cattle could also go back to their 'wild state'.
You have to be careful here. Livestock is generally carbon sinks. Those cow patties are taking co2 into grass and then depositing it into the ground.
Flipside, plant based diet has a deadline.
http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2015/ph240/verso2/
We are already 70% degraded and only slowly the process by spraying oil byproducts on the land. If we kill the oil industry, that erosion increases in speed.
A more recent publication was looking at the moulds vs fungus balance and it's even worse than the above proposes.
We have to get into regenerative farming to reverse this problem and that includes keeping livestock for those cow patties.
Walking into a forest, I notice the air is several degrees cooler than outside.
Even a house made of clay will be a few degrees cooler in certain weather than one made of concrete due to the increased surface area and evaporation causing cooling.
It isn’t rocket science. Greenery makes the earth a much better place.
https://www.nasa.gov/feature/ames/human-activity-in-china-an...
https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/144540/china-and-in...
https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2016/carbon-dioxide-fer....
https://www.noaa.gov/news/study-global-plant-growth-surging-...
https://www.nature.com/articles/nclimate3004
The massive increase in agricultural productivity due to this greening has not been a widely advertised observation. NASA has pointed out the pros and cons of this (i.e., the greening).
Also other sources of fuel other than wood for burning.
Wood hasn't been a popular choice for a long time, things like coal, peat, oil, petroleum and gas have been more prevalent for the hundreds of years before the current systems of gas or electric heating. Wood is more of a last resort, or something more idyllic.
I remember reading that CO2 levels have been dropping for the last 500 million years, and, during the last Ice age, CO2 level dropped as low as 180ppm. Had they reached 150ppm, all surface life would have died, and humans wouldn't have made it.
Rainforests cover 2 percent of the Earth's surface. https://quizlet.com/338369119/rainforest-quiz-flash-cards/
This link, https://www.factcheck.org/2019/09/amazon-doesnt-produce-20-o... , seems like it has more reasonable numbers. First, it's a bit misleading to talk about what produces "oxygen in the atmosphere", because that oxygen was generated over many millions of years. Better to discuss what current percentage of photosynthesis occurs from which sources.
The link I gave says a quarter to a third of photosynthesis on land comes from tropical forests, and land vs. marine photosynthesis is split about 50/50.
I wonder if tree cover decreases local surface temperature (as described in this article) while actually increasing global warming because less light is reflected back to space.
[0] https://www.climate-policy-watcher.org/vegetation/deforestat...
It's a very complex system, and working out the net effect is very difficult (as the paper says).
Everything helps, but in the end the solution to the problem is elsewhere. Not tackling the problem and only going to partial mitigations is almost as bad as doing nothing, because it is just a delay to avoid solving the problem until is too late or doesn't matter anymore for you in particular.
Turns out, that's not how human psychology works. If people are doing something, then other people feel like they can, too; if everybody's waiting for the big solution that will actually be worth doing (but won't ever happen, for political reasons)?
Meanwhile, please don't decry partial solutions for being partial. It's a very difficult problem and there will not be a silver bullet.
Many partials might provide some respite. There's no guarantee, but something is better than nothing.
I think the thing you miss is the shifting Overton Window. The more people get used to current partial solutions, the more they can accept the next more painful necessary changes. It's as if the effectiveness of braking is inversely proportional to speed. Those 20mph of deceleration are better than you imagine.
If you have an bad infection on one leg, taking an aspirin to lower your fever is a mitigation, but if you don't address the infection, you will lose your leg or your life. And taking an aspirin is fast, simple and painless, if it were complicated, and expensive and time consuming you should probably address the infection first, unless the fever was already life threatening.
It's more like falling into Jupiter, getting immersed in a thicker and thicker soup...
Thankfully it happens all by itself.
> The cooling effect from greening is less significant in tropical forests with high leaf areas.
Does this mean that cutting down the Amazon rainforest to use the land for farming is net-beneficial for slowing down climate change?
Even if it does, the effect would be temporary. Such land can rarely be farmed sustainably. In the medium termt becomes scrub and barely contributes to cooling
And anyway, the question is largely moot. Resisting climate change is only one of many important services rendered by these forests.
I have no idea of the order of magnitude we are talking about so I might be entirely delusional.
That said, trees do help stabilize the soil, mitigating the loss of arable soil in case of heavy rains and flooding or things like landslides.
Unfortunately, we would likely have to cover more land than there is on the entire surface of the earth to stave off even a meter of sea level rise. For reference, the sea to land-ratio on earth is around 70/30, and a tree of 15 meters at 60 cm diameter is approximately 5 cubic meters in volume, and a tree contains around 30-50% of its volume in water. The average forest density appears to be about 50-100k trees per square kilometer.
We should still plant trees en masse, but as a solution to sea level rise it's probably not viable.
The global ice sheets currently melt at a rate of 1.4 trillion tons per year. Biomass of all living things is about 500 billion tons C. Let's pretend all of that is plant mass on land (most if it isn't), and let's just say there's 5 times as much water as carbon in plants (an overestimation at least for trees), and we arrive at only 2.5 trillion tons of water bound.
So, if I my estimations aren't wildly off, increasing tree biomass even by a large factor won't help us significantly. Add to that that the rate of the ice melting is accelerating, and that the sea levels are also rising due to thermal expansion, and I don't think we can more or less discount the bound water in trees.
With forests, though, the depth of the roots means the water can sink more into the ground. It all still ends up in the river eventually, but over a much longer time period. Because the big pulse of water from the rainfall is attenuated, the river has more of a chance to drain away, so you get fewer, and less serious, floods.
The net effect is that while we'll lose land to rising sea levels, in some areas there's the opportunity to reclaim land currently too marginal to occupy. Nowhere near the same land area, but it's a worthwhile effect to be aware of where it applies.
But the dictionary is somewhat disappointing in only mentioning the gradual/partial reduction in harms. Here are the examples:
• make (something bad) less severe, serious, or painful: drainage schemes have helped to mitigate this problem.
• lessen the gravity of (an offence or mistake): there had been a provocation that mitigated the offence to a degree.
> What's interesting is that both examples seem to use the term in a way that suggests that it does mean full-and-complete mitigation
I think that is for extra clarity. Both definitions say that mitigation is a partial effect "less severe" or "lessen the gravity of".
It doesn't mean to eliminate negative effects, just to lessen them.
E.g. "Desertification is a fancy word for land that is turning to desert," begins Allan Savory in this quietly powerful talk. And terrifyingly, it's happening to about two-thirds of the world's grasslands, accelerating climate change and causing traditional grazing societies to descend into social chaos." https://youtube.com/watch?v=vpTHi7O66pI
Back on planet Earth, a review of the current scientific literature firmly disproves this thesis. Nasa satellite images clearly show the deserts are retreating, and on average there is a strong trend to global greening...
Greening of the globe and its drivers - Nature 2016 https://www.nature.com/articles/nclimate3004 "Satellite records from 1982–2009 show a persistent and widespread increase of leaf area (greening) over 25% to 50% of the global vegetated area, whereas less than 4% of the globe shows decreasing leaf area (browning). Ecosystem models suggest that CO2 fertilisation effects explain 70% of the observed greening trend, followed by nitrogen deposition (9%), climate change (8%) and land cover change (4%)."
Elevated CO2 as a driver of global dryland greening - Nature 2016 https://www.nature.com/articles/srep20716 "Recent regional scale analyses using satellite based vegetation indices such as the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI), have found extensive areas of “greening” in dryland areas of the Mediterranean, the Sahel, the Middle East and Northern China, as well as greening trends in Mongolia and South America. More recently, a global synthesis from 1982-2007 showed an overall “greening-up” trend over the Sahel belt, Mediterranean basin, China-Mongolia region and the drylands of South America."
Global Greening Is Firm, Drivers Are Mixed - Harvard 2014 http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2015AGUFM.B31A0515K "Evidence for global greening is converging, asserting an increase in CO2 uptake and biomass of the terrestrial biosphere. Global greening refers to global net increases in the area of green canopy, stocks of carbon, and the duration of the growing season. The growing seasons in general have prolonged while the stock of biomass carbon has increased and the rate of deforestation has decelerated. Evidence for these trends comes from firm empirical data obtained through atmospheric CO2 observations, remote sensing, forest inventories and land use statistics."
Rise in CO2 has 'greened Planet Earth' http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-36130346 Prof Judith Curry, the former chair of Earth and atmospheric sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology, added: "It is inappropriate to dismiss the arguments of the so-called contrarians, since their disagreement with the consensus reflects conflicts of values and a preference for the empirical (i.e. what has been observed) versus the hypothetical (i.e. what is projected from climate models).
Canada is one of the few countries which pulled out of the United nations desertification action. For which Canada was penalized heavily. This is the same initiative that plans to plant trees across africa.
IPCC 2019 makes it quite clear that greenification is not happening and desertification is absolutely a huge problem.
You will also see on pages like: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_change
Greenification isn't even a consideration for climate change.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effects_of_climate_change
Greenification isn't a word you will find in the effects of climate change wiki page.
Why is it do you think that they exclude this?
I will give you a clue. It is an anagram of LAI.
edit https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/trump-touts-tree-...
https://www.mpi.govt.nz/forestry/funding-tree-planting-resea...
It was literally greenwashing his work to undo decades of environmental protection regulations and laws, while also forking over tons of public land to oil/gas/coal companies.
I don't remember the derision though
New trees only sequester within the new biomass.
The real solution is not to emit CO2 from mined fossil fuels.
I do wonder how much more lush land will become with higher CO2 levels.
Planting forests definitely is a carbon sink, but the carbon goes into the living biomass. Whether or not you get long term buildup of soil carbon just depends. In other words there’s a sizable one time bonus to planting forests and a conditional long term continuous sink.
People tend to simplify one way or the other.
A lot of peats in my country have been drained (and the drainage requires continual maintenance) for pasture, but well, it's rather hard to farm without harming the environment.[1]
But I'm assuming that healthy peat bogs are fixing carbon/ritual sacrifices in a net-negative manner until someone digs it up and burns it.
I just wonder if allowing peatlands to revert for carbon credits would offset the loss of the pasture.
[1]:https://www.ruralnewsgroup.co.nz/dairy-news/dairy-management...
As is the meat industry despite many citations of a retracted paper - the cows aren't emitting anything that wasn't already in the grass (at least not in the long term). Both however to act as temporary buffers/reservoirs and emitters that can affect things if they are kept around in perpetuity.
The same carbon was in the air, but not necessarily causing the same greenhouse effect
This is not true; fertilizer and farm machinery to fertilize and harvest the corn that creates 1/2 the mass of feedlot meat burns a lot of oil. And almost all of American beef goes through feedlots.
Oil isn't emitted from cows
Even industrial forests sequester some carbon in the soil as it seems from my experiences that there is easily 10% of the tree mass that never gets harvested before wind damage or other reasons.
A natural forest is constantly losing trees which turn into soil. Some forests have soil that you literally can sink feet into decomposing trees that you can't even see before falling into them. I might buy the argument that the termites etc recycle the fallen trees back into carbon, except for the fact, that it seems to accrete.
That is, we need to reduce energy consumption AND convert to renewable energy AND have more green everywhere AND a bunch of other things.
How long heat stays in one area
I get that more plants = good, for other reasons but surface temperature wasnt something we have been aiming to optimize for?