China and India are making the planet greener, NASA says

[shadowmouse]

Between 2000 and 2017, a NASA sensor known as the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) gathered high-resolution data of the Earth's surface from aboard two satellites, the Terra and the Aqua.
Using the MODIS data, researchers discovered that China is the source of a quarter of the increase in green leaf area, despite possessing only 6.6% of the world's vegetated area. Forests account for 42% of that increase, while croplands make up a further 32%.
China's increase in forest area is the result of forest conservation and expansion programs, NASA said, established to combat the impacts of climate change, air pollution and soil erosion.

Source: https://edition.cnn.com/2019/02/13/w...ntl/index.html

I remember when I first came here. Dust storms were a growing problem in Beijing and there was a lot of talk at universities about deforestation and the environmental impact of disposable chopsticks in particular. It is good to see that those discussions and the resulting programs have had results.

China, it's a big place with a lot of people who are not actually the Borg collective. That tends to get overlooked, it takes something like a global warming story to get a positive story into the news but not everything is frozen in the 1980s or a scandal about tainted milk powder.

[Puupi]

High carbon dioxide emissions definitely make the world greener.

[Jshadowhunter]

China is still be biggest air polluter in the world so why are other nations have to pay for them?

[P for Pancetta]

China was (is) in between a rock and a hard place looking at their environment, it forces them to adapt in ways that many western nations don't (yet) have to. It's a good thing their efforts pay off.

[The Stormbringer]

Now if they could just work out their insane levels of CO2 emission and ridiculous amounts of plastic they throw into the ocean... but it's a good start.

[exochaft]

High carbon dioxide emissions definitely make the world greener.

What generally gets glossed over in CO2 discussions is that despite all the estimates of how much is released by various sources into the atmosphere, there's pretty much no measurable affect on CO2 levels in the atmosphere (which is why there's never measurements and only estimates, as there's nothing to measure directly). The reason is that almost all of it is absorbed as food for plants and trees on the surface. Most vegetation, especially those we use as food sources, evolved from when CO2 levels in the atmosphere were roughly 4-5 times higher than they are now. This is why large green houses actually elevate the levels of CO2 to such elevated levels, as the vegetation thrives and grows optimally at much higher CO2 levels than we currently have in the atmosphere.

[Najnaj]

CO2 is one of the bigger limiting factors of plant growth and the reason for global warming so even if it is good that vegetation is catching up a bit it isn't entirely a positive story. The Amazon for example is bigger and greener today than for a very long time (or ever) due to CO2 emissions.

[Sixnalia]

Wasn't there a story a while back about china briefly using fake wind turbines that ate up electricity to spin to show off "green energy"?
They'd break often and they were torn down.

[shadowmouse]

@Sixnalia I've no idea, but for reference: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_power_in_China

China is the world leader in wind power generation, with the largest installed capacity of any nation[1] and continued rapid growth in new wind facilities.[2] With its large land mass and long coastline, China has exceptional wind power resources:[3] it is estimated China has about 2,380 gigawatts (GW) of exploitable capacity on land and 200 GW on the sea.[4]

In 2016, China added 19.3 GW of wind power generation capacity[5] to reach a total capacity of 149 GW,[5] and generated 241 TWh of electricity, representing 4% of total national electricity consumption. Both China's installed capacity and new capacity in 2015 are the largest in the world by a wide margin, with the next largest market, the United States, adding 8.6 GW in 2015 and having an installed capacity of 74.4 GW.[6] Wind power in the United States has however a much higher capacity factor.

The problem I'm aware of is that the wind farms are less efficient than they should be because of power distribution, while also facing social interests that could basically be described as "the coal lobby" if it were in the US.

[Noomz]

Source: https://edition.cnn.com/2019/02/13/w...ntl/index.html

I remember when I first came here. Dust storms were a growing problem in Beijing and there was a lot of talk at universities about deforestation and the environmental impact of disposable chopsticks in particular. It is good to see that those discussions and the resulting programs have had results.

China, it's a big place with a lot of people who are not actually the Borg collective. That tends to get overlooked, it takes something like a global warming story to get a positive story into the news but not everything is frozen in the 1980s or a scandal about tainted milk powder.

Now if only they could stop polluting water so heavily that people shouldn't even touch it. Or having smog so thick that people die from it. The water problem is so grave that China is forcibly annexing other countries land to get access to more water. There's also that absolutely idiotic water diversion project China did, where a vast majority of all the water just evaporates because it has to flow for so long, in concrete canals.

[horbindr]

China is still be biggest air polluter in the world so why are other nations have to pay for them?

depends how you look at it. in absolute terms sure, but per capita they are on the same level as europe, while other big countries like US/canada/russia are a lot worse. India is suprisingly low per capita, i thought they were more industrialized but i guess not yet.

[Noomz]

@Sixnalia I've no idea, but for reference: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_power_in_China



The problem I'm aware of is that the wind farms are less efficient than they should be because of power distribution, while also facing social interests that could basically be described as "the coal lobby" if it were in the US.

It's fine, China will just steal more technology to make it better. Just like they stole the tech to make wind turbines for themselves.
https://www.npr.org/2018/07/06/62668...=1550098295537

[shadowmouse]

Yep, going exactly as I would have expected. Post something that doesn't fit the "China am Ebil and dey da Borg" and the usual crew skip right to the whataboutism. NASA said something was a positive change? Let's not address that, let's bring up our favorite horror stories which may are may not be accurate instead.
@Noomz Do you really understand how damned big, and populous, China is? Smog? Yep, been cleaning that up a bit at a time for years now and the trees (as noted in the article) are part of that.

Nemani said. "In the '70s and '80s in India and China, the situation around vegetation loss wasn't good. In the '90s, people realized it. And today things have improved. Humans are incredibly resilient. That's what we see in the satellite data."

Even so, there are places where the air was or still is horrible and other places where the air is good and skies are blue even on non APEC days. A friend just spent the last few months baiting me to come visit Hulun Buir with pictures like this:


The same goes for water. I recall living in Wuxi and Lake Taihu was appalling, I'd have felt safer swimming in the canals of Venice. On the other hand, I took a cruise down the Li Jiang river and it was beautiful. The water was so clear that one could look over the side of the boat and see water buffalo standing on the bottom of the river.


I don't drink tap water in Beijing, it isn't meant to be drunk straight out of the tap, but the middle of my sort of adoptive daughters bought me a Brita style pitcher noting that she used one in Germany too.

Nice stories you have there, but try to get a sense of scale. Geographically, the US and China are close in size. Go figure, there are places in the US where the air or water might be good or might be bad, then travel to another region and you can find the opposite. Being probably a bit older than you, I recall a time when the US was also trying to deal with pollution and environmental damage. Those were years that gave us emission standards on vehicles, removed phosphates from detergents, and took lead out of gasoline. Hell, we had a river catch fire! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuyahoga_River China being equally large, you'll see the same and I'm happy to see that we're starting to see similar improvements here.

[NED funded]

depends how you look at it. in absolute terms sure, but per capita they are on the same level as europe, while other big countries like US/canada/russia are a lot worse. India is suprisingly low per capita, i thought they were more industrialized but i guess not yet.

They are not on the same level of Europe. They've surpassed Europe a couple of months ago and considering that their economy is expected to grow 6% for a couple of years more, their CO2 per GDP numbers are much more relevant because it tells us how much more they'll pollute.

[Puupi]

Even so, there are places where the air was or still is horrible and other places where the air is good and skies are blue even on non APEC days. A friend just spent the last few months baiting me to come visit Hulun Buir with pictures like this:

Ooh Hulunbuir!

I would so love to visit Manchuria and Mongolia! You live in the Best China.

[Coolthulhu]

not everything is frozen in the 1980s or a scandal about tainted milk powder.

Really? I must've hallucinated that dorm full of people droning over the packaging of ludicrous amounts of baby formula before they went back for Chinese New Year's celebrations.
Aside from that, planting trees is good and all, but China isn't exactly the best nation to mention when it comes pollution and climate change. Though going by your example one would almost hope for dioxin storms over Beijing, if that's what it takes to solve environmental issues.

[Ivanstone]

depends how you look at it. in absolute terms sure, but per capita they are on the same level as europe, while other big countries like US/canada/russia are a lot worse. India is suprisingly low per capita, i thought they were more industrialized but i guess not yet.

Part of China's pollution stems from western nations moving production there. China exports far more than it imports. Pollution is a side effect of creating those exports.

[NED funded]

Part of China's pollution stems from western nations moving production there. China exports far more than it imports. Pollution is a side effect of creating those exports.

Nobody is forcing China to use coal as an energy source. And the massive rise in its steel and cement production is not the result of western nations using it as an industrial hub. This is a false narrative meant to shift blame from the government.

[Ivanstone]

Nobody is forcing China to use coal as an energy source. And the massive rise in its steel and cement production is not the result of western nations using it as an industrial hub. This is a false narrative meant to shift blame from the government.

China is creating energy as cheeply as possible. Corporations will almost always use the source that costs the least. If China raises the cost of production in its factories would those corporations want Chinese manufacturing?

[Zantos]

Yep, going exactly as I would have expected. Post something that doesn't fit the "China am Ebil and dey da Borg" and the usual crew skip right to the whataboutism. NASA said something was a positive change? Let's not address that, let's bring up our favorite horror stories which may are may not be accurate instead.

See, thats the problem with your story. You're looking at a singular part. For example, lets say someone is walking around and cleaning the roads. They pick up 100 garbage bags worth of trash in a year. Good news right? Well, then you have the other part. They threw 102 bags worth of trash into the same area they are cleaning up. "but they picked up 100 bags all by themselves! Thats good". Yes, but they put more garbage there then they removed. They aren't even zeroing out their damage.

That is what this is. They did some good that is offset by their habits. Its good that they are starting to look at ways to help, but they are looking in the wrong places. They need to reduce their pollution. Can't grow trees without clean water.

Big picture. You need to look at the whole. Not just the parts and decide since a 1 of the parts is good, it negates the entire thing being bad.