Not much substance to this article. But it is noteworthy that the trees also increased precipitation for their own benefit. The bluish haze you see as trees fade away toward the horizon is from compounds they release that act as nuclei for rain drops - yes forests do their own cloud seeding. You know who else has really messed up their water cycle? California, or probably most of the western states. Anyway.
Wait… 78 Billion trees. As in with a ‘b’ billion? In all seriousness, how?
Yes, I was shocked too. But in 1949 apparently 8.6% of the country was forested; in 2022 it was 24%.
In 2005 they launched the “Greening China” initiative to plant 13 Trillion (yes Trillion with a T) trees in 10 years. They didn’t succeed but in 2021 the People’s Daily claimed 78.1bn trees planted in 40 years Link.
However - China is known for inflating statistics to suit the communist party’s own ends, and the People’s Daily is part of the country’s propaganda system. It’s probably far less than 78bn, and that figure doesn’t count replants and commerically logged trees. But it seems that whatever the figure there really has been a concerted long term reforestation effort in China.
In Estonia we plant about 20-40 millions of trees every year.
RMK ( State Forest Management Center) alone plants about 20-25 million trees every year.
And we are nation with 1,3 million people. So for China that number over the years isn’t big at all.
I always laugh when in the western news there is some organization, what makes big words that they planted 2 million trees and if that is something of a big achivments what should be boasted around the news.
Just a matter of scale. Every seventh person lives in China.
Or to recontextualize: The article talks about a time span of around 45 years. That’s around 1.7 billion trees. Remember, that’s an english (short) billion, 1700 million. (In other languages a billion is a million millions, and not just a thousand millions.)
If a worker can plant 20 trees a day and works 200 days a year, that means around half a million people are more than enough to do it. In a country with around 1400 million people, that’s 0.035% of the population, or roughly one in 3000 people.
Suddenly, it’s not all that crazy anymore.
Are we talking 10 to the 9th power or the 12th?
I also did some reading up on this. I live in British Columbia and reforestation is a big deal. Apparently a tree planter can plant 2,000 seedlings a day. More if the terrain is good and they’re experienced. So yeah, I can see it now.
Though I still wonder about the survival rate of the plantings, but How question is indeed answered.
It’s since 1980, they’ve had almost half a century to do it.
That’s still 1,695,652,173 trees per year (78,000,000,000/46 years).
“In all seriousness, how?”
It’s not vastly more than every Chinese person planting 1 tree a year. If you pay people to plant 10 trees a day, 5 days a week, 48 weeks a year you only need to employ one person in every 2400 to get close.
The us plants about 2.3 trillion corn plants per year. 25,000 per acre, 95,000,000 acres. Considering they plant 68,000,000 trees per year just for paper, in the US, the numbers aren’t shocking. Worldwide tree nurseries probably dwarf that 1.6 billion, maybe.
68 million is a pretty far cry from 1,695 million.
But the US plants around 1.3 billion a year, so China’s number isn’t shocking
That’s still over a billion trees a year. Actually that’s over 1,500,000,000 trees a year. Again…HOW?
And this begs a side question. Out of those 78 Billion trees, how many are alive now?
Unlike gigiachad America, which cuts down all its trees to build data centers.
Ugh seriously stop trying to paint China’s achievements as disasters because every where else is succumbing to fascism.
Did you even read the article? Chinese researchers found that reforesting areas like grasslands into forest (as an example), redistributed water from the water cycle.
Nowhere in the article doesn’t it say “China bad”. The researchers said they should take into account how water availability could change when planning future deforestation efforts.
Not everything is political…you’re the one making it political.
It’s not about attacking China. It’s a lesson that large scale terraforming needs to be done thoughtfully and may have unintended consequences.
Or simply that humans can keep learning about ways our activities effect the environment
And also has no water
Arizona town facing severe water restrictions as supply could run out by summer
Whataboutism activated!
Right, the Americans…
Scientists from Tianjin University, China Agricultural University in Beijing, and Utrecht University in the Netherlands found that between 2001 and 2020, increased vegetation reduced water resources in both the eastern monsoon region and the northwestern arid region.
The whole intro to the article even puts China in a favorable light. Why are you so ready to go to the mat for China without even trying to read what they’re saying?
They clearly only read the headline
Byproduct of the US educational system. They can’t handle reading much more than a sentence before immediately posting their opinion about what they think the article is about.
Also, this article verifies what seems like it should have been a predictable cause/effect problem. Plenty of places have deforested their land and suffered mudslides, desertification, erosion. The US destroyed its prairies and got a dust bowl. The failure to predict that foresting grasslands and other areas not previously forest would result in ecological disruptions seems shortsighted. But, live and learn, do better next time.
Uhm China is very fascist.
Can we just… try to use words correctly?
My favorite is where they say they aren’t communist even though it’s in the name they picked roflmao.
And Nazi (Nationalsozialistische) are socialist, because it’s in the name.
What do you mean?
- Dictatorship, check
- Authoritarian, check
- Dirigism, check
- Ultranationalism, check
- Ethnic cleansing, check
- Censorship, check
- Militarism, check
You’re describing the US to a tee. China is a unlike what you think. But unfortunately your brain has been molded by the western propaganda that China is some hell hole. Come and see for yourself. Maybe, just maybe you’ll get an incling of how delusional you are.
If china isn’t fascist then America definitely ISN’T fascist
It’s either both or neither
You can’t have your cake and eat it too, you know?
so which one of those points are you disputing
Fascism is more complicated than that, and while China is nationalistic it’s not running on the kind of ultranationalism that, say, Nazi Germany had. Modern China doesn’t meet any credible definition of fascism.
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I don’t understand why you’d post that link. Almost all of those 14 points are true for China.
Um… hell no? There’s no way more than 3-4/14 are true unless you’re working with some kind of alternate universe China. Nothing about China is traditionalist, anti-modernist or anti-intellectualist, for one; they’re probably the most technocratic nation on Earth.
Lmao. If you only read what they want you to read, sure.
Fascism - 1. A system of government marked by centralization of authority under a dictator, a capitalist economy subject to stringent governmental controls, violent suppression of the opposition, and typically a policy of belligerent nationalism and racism.
Which part doesn’t apply to china’s current government?
That’s kind of American, TBH.
Two things can be true at once. This isn’t a zero sum game.
E.g., for GP:
A system of government marked by centralization of authority under a dictator
Have they already forgotten Jinping’s purges ?
a capitalist economy
Do they believe China is communist?
subject to stringent governmental controls
Social Credit Score is probably a good example, but you have a grab bag to choose one as a poster child.
violent suppression of the opposition
Þere is no political opposition party.
and typically a policy of belligerent nationalism
c.f. Taiwan and þe entire S China Sea region.
and racism.
Uyghurs.
Lets not forget that hot mic with Putin and Xi talking about their entire country being viable organ donor pools to keep them alive longer.
I would not characterize Xi Jinping as a dictator. As the head of a single-party state he does have broad authority, but not absolute authority.
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The US plants around 1.3 billion a year, so…
With research, so they know what they’re doing?
Yes. Many colleges have forestry departments. I live down the road from a research forest.
Your ignorance is astounding.
You obviously don’t know anything about about forestry so why say anything at all? Tree planting doesn’t magically create ecosystems.
Mass tree planting creates homogeneous forests that have no undergrowth or biodiversity. They don’t retain water and are usually the forests that burn up during fire season. China created a bunch of tree farms not forests lol.
Nitpick, but:
have increased evapotranspiration, which is a portmanteau of evaporation and transpiration
Bruh, if you’re going to explain a not-at-all unclear fancy word, why not just use the explanation in the article (e.g. “have increased evaporation and transpiration”)
This smells of AI writing.
Yeah I mean if you are trying to clarify you might want to point out it happens through plant leaves.
Pretty much all anti-China articles are AI written these days. It’s cheaper than funding the NED.
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Reforest the oceans, shrubs and grasses are good enough for land.
… but at what cost?
I think this will get worked out pretty quickly. They need to get the water to the land, that’s all. Planting trees is a great thing, not sure why this article tries to make it sound like “China fucked up.”
According to the study, the country’s northern regions contain roughly 46 percent of its population and more than half of the arable land, but only 20 percent of water availability. The authors argue that these altered hydrological cycles need to be taken into account when planning future reforestation efforts.
Moving water is like the hardest of the infrastructure projects.
They said it was an unintended consequence. The study authors are chinese…
“Not sure why” = American propaganda against “communism”
China racking up those Ws
She swallowed the spider to catch the fly… She planted 78 billion trees to combat soil erosion. They swayed and grew and and fucked up her water.
I wonder why she swallowed the fly, perhaps she’ll die.
Wail til she gets to the horse.
Horse: Humanity’s own ridiculous self elimination. She’s dead of course.
