61

Mass tree planting in China is turning one of the world's largest and driest deserts into a carbon sink, meaning it absorbs more carbon from the atmosphere than it emits, new research reveals.

"We found, for the first time, that human-led intervention can effectively enhance carbon sequestration in even the most extreme arid landscapes, demonstrating the potential to transform a desert into a carbon sink and halt desertification," study co-author Yuk Yung, a professor of planetary science at Caltech and a senior research scientist in NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, told Live Science in an email.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[-] Sepia@mander.xyz 7 points 2 days ago

To provide and example: You will easily find stories about Ford CEO Jim Farley saying that Chinese EVs are ahead of those by Western manufacturers - this story has been appearing in various (and also Western) outlets for some time now. The framing is always a bit different, but the story is always the same.

Here we have the same pattern - one story, published with a slightly different framing (and often with a misleading title, as it is the case also here, because the survival rate of these trees might be too low in the long run as several of these article also say - see here -, but it's a bold headline).

Another recent propaganda push is probably the (false) narrative that China has banned all investments in Israel over Gaza. I read headlines here on Lemmy and on many outlets, including Western media. But it is complete fantasy. It's a completely fabricated story as China-Israel ties are stronger than ever, with both investment and trade at record levels.

Don't get me wrong, I don't say planting trees is a bad thing. It's good. But such headlines and the endless stream of always the same news don't aim at informing on climate policy, but rather to distort reality and serve authoritarian propaganda while creating narratives that are outright false. The only goal here is to promote "the West bad, only China good" stance, which is, of course, complete rubbish.

[-] prettybunnys@piefed.social 3 points 2 days ago

The “with a different framing” bit is what I was missing.

That makes perfect sense.

this post was submitted on 11 Feb 2026
61 points (89.6% liked)

Climate

8295 readers
385 users here now

Discussion of climate, how it is changing, activism around that, the politics, and the energy systems change we need in order to stabilize things.

As a starting point, the burning of fossil fuels, and to a lesser extent deforestation and release of methane are responsible for the warming in recent decades: Graph of temperature as observed with significant warming, and simulated without added greenhouse gases and other anthropogentic changes, which shows no significant warming

How much each change to the atmosphere has warmed the world: IPCC AR6 Figure 2 - Thee bar charts: first chart: how much each gas has warmed the world.  About 1C of total warming.  Second chart:  about 1.5C of total warming from well-mixed greenhouse gases, offset by 0.4C of cooling from aerosols and negligible influence from changes to solar output, volcanoes, and internal variability.  Third chart: about 1.25C of warming from CO2, 0.5C from methane, and a bunch more in small quantities from other gases.  About 0.5C of cooling with large error bars from SO2.

Recommended actions to cut greenhouse gas emissions in the near future:

Anti-science, inactivism, and unsupported conspiracy theories are not ok here.

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS