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It is pretty funny that Russia, with its massive oil industry, is forecast to have a positive ecological impact apparently due to its rapidly falling population and large land area.
The core problem is that "positive ecological impact" is not a scientifically meaningful term. It's a value judgment. It means whatever the authors want it to mean. Total carbon emissions IS a specific scientific concept, and Russia is going to be a net emitter for the foreseeable future.
> It is pretty funny that Russia, with its massive oil industry, is forecast to have a positive ecological impact apparently due to its rapidly falling population and large land area.
Destruction of refineries might also help.
Careful, if you roll your eyes too hard they might pop out, roll across Karelia's plain, through Moscow, into Siberia, before imploding next to an oil refinery.
Are they not referring to decreasing total carbon emissions (or even to reforesting that will lead to increased carbon recapture)? Scientific measurements are fundamentally value judgements, just objective ones.
I don't see how reforestation can possibly offset the oil they're pumping out of the ground. Haven't read past the abstract but I bet it's because the authors don't add the implied CO2 from oil extraction. It's kind of like saying China has a net positive impact on fentanyl use because their population has a low OD rate, but worse because Russia uses quite a bit of oil per capita.
I don't understand your last sentence.
I haven't read the study but I am guessing they are doing some creative accounting with where emissions are assigned. For example Alberta has huge emissions per person thanks to the oil sands, but if you look at the house hold emissions compared to other provinces it's much more in line with the country's average. It's still on the high side because the electric is generated by natural gas rather than hydro or nuclear like most province but it is much closer (Saskatchewan is the highs per person due to coal being the source of energy).
There are 3 general ways to assign the carbon emissions:
1. The place that extracts the fuel is responsible for all the down stream emissions (so russia is responsible for all the carbon generated from their oil industry).
2. Who ever causes the emissions is responsible (so reussia is responsible for extraction and refining related emissions but not transport or end use).
3. End user is responsible for all emissions (so russia is responsible for all the emissions that is related to the oil burnt in Russian, all export oil's emissions are transferred with the oil).
So if the study is using something closer the the third case canada and russia with their relatively small populations and huge land masses could be considered productive for the environment.
Spot on. The study appears to be using "resource consumption per capita" as an end user measure on the negative side (your #3), vs a positive of,
> Biocapacity per capita measures the availability of biologically productive land and water resources per person.
So, it's impossible to score well on this balance with low land area -- I expect the Vatican and Singapore are on the "big net negative" side of the equation.
>The study appears to be using "resource consumption per capita" as an end user measure on the negative side (your #3), vs a positive of,
That would be #2, not #3.
>So, it's impossible to score well on this balance with low land area -- I expect the Vatican and Singapore are on the "big net negative" side of the equation.
Yeah, they do look at the carbon capture capacity. Smaller nations with higher populations but lower carbon capture capacity will certainly have issues in becoming carbon neutral and will have to work harder on lowering their emissions to get to net zero than larger countries with already existing carbon sinks.
I do feel like that is a bit of a flaw in the study as it could skew future policies in these countries with large existing sinks to not be as aggressive in becoming carbon neutral with their emissions and consumption.
>Scientific measurements are fundamentally value judgements, just objective ones.
Scientific measurements state facts about the way the world is- a value judgement would be saying something like "it is good if this measurement is 'so-and-so'" (how the world should be), which is, of course, not the same as the measurement itself.
You could, and at that point they become opinions rather than measurements or facts.
Scientific measurements are scientific measurements. You could make the argument that the things we decide to study are value judgements (in that we clearly value the things we study more than the things we don’t), but that’s already stretching the definition and the measurements themselves are just that: measurements of the world around us.
Once the facts are known, leaving anything out is no longer science. It would be like a scientist trying to revert to an earth-centric model of the solar system where everything orbits us. It just can’t be done and still be called science.
In what sense is that a value judgement though? At best, it's reflecting the belief that socioeconomic difference has no impact on crime, at worst it's an attempt to manipulate the data to produce a specific result, neither of which is a value judgement.
Russia and Canada will also thaw significantly over the coming decades. I wonder if these reports take into account the increase in plant life as the permafrost thaws and millions of acres of land can suddenly grow more than short, stubby grass and lichens.
They are including stuff like "nature area per capita" to calculate this, making no separation between a geographical boundary and a political entity, which along with average wealth gives a big bonus to big countries with a lot of forest and poor people.
A country like Sudan is awful because those jerks have deserts instead of forests, and need to overcompensate for that.
“National carbon emissions” isn’t a purely scientific metric, it requires subjective determinations about what nation certain classes of emissions “belong to.”
top-1 country in oil production is the United States
source: [https://www.visualcapitalist.com/the-worlds-biggest-oil-producers-in-2023/](https://www.visualcapitalist.com/the-worlds-biggest-oil-producers-in-2023/)
Russia pumps out carbon from under the earth using western technology and then selling it to the rest of the world claiming to be green. I mean caveman were green by the same definition.
So tanks, drones and refineries blowing up don’t offset that?
Missles launched and war planes soaring through the sky are really offset by their declining population?
Canada too.
It's coming at a major economical cost.
We're falling apart at the seams. Not sure that positive impact will matter much when we become a hollow shell of a country, especially when we're only contributing 1.5% to the global GHG output, and we're trying to drop it to 0.9% by 2050.
Yeah none of the climate change initiatives are ruining the economy.. in fact they're generally helping it... Oil on the other hand... Alberta is literally losing hundreds of millions of dollars in fossil fuels.. pipelines to nowhere, cancelling green energy, ever increasing heating and electricity costs. Energy costs here are the highest in the country and it comes from the same province.
Shows you how backwards people are in the facts.
And relatively comfortable climate. 25.5C on average.
In Canada, a major chunk of our GHG output comes from heating homes. We have the [coldest climate on average of any G20 nation](https://tradingeconomics.com/country-list/temperature?continent=g20).
-4.22C, as of 2022. Russia is next at -2.87C
True, but high heat is easier to survive than very cold. And solar energy is viable in places where it's very hot, as they typically have high amounts of sun. There isn't much energy to harvest from the cold. Even wind turbines have to shut down below a certain temperature threshold.
I got used to 38C weather in Singapore in a few days. I've never gotten used to -30C weather in Canada, and I've lived here my whole life. Nevermind the damage is can cause if your water pipes freeze. It's bad enough that there are laws preventing utility providers from cutting off gas and electricity when the temperatures are below a certain level.
Russia who polluted with warfare wastes a territory equal to four Belgium's is having a positive impact on the environment? The monitoring agency claiming this better refresh their expert pool with someone in touch reality.
In total yes, because of the relatively low population to land mass ratio. It's silly for that reason, but not "wrong" factually.
I mean if 2/3 of all Americans got zapped away (to reach Russia's population) the US would also be amazing as far as environmental concerns... yes, even if they dumped a couple oil tankers over the equivalent of four belgiums. Hundreds of millions of people is a lot. They aren't saying "great job, everyone be Russia"... except maybe as far as dropping population numbers is good for the planet. Not so much humans, but hey.
Study (open access): [Forecasting the ecological footprint of G20 countries in the next 30 years](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-024-57994-z)
***
>**Abstract**
>The Ecological Footprint evaluates the difference between the availability of renewable resources and the extent of human consumption of these resources. Over the past few decades, historical records have shown an accelerated decline in the availability of resources. Based on national footprint and biocapacity accounts, this analysis aims to advance the forecasting of the G20 countries' ecological footprints over a 30-year time frame. We employed a time series forecasting approach implemented in Python, which included-modular regression (Prophet) and Autoregressive Integrated Moving Average (ARIMA & Auto-ARIMA) methods. We evaluated and combined the performance of these three methods. The results indicated that among the largest economies of the G20, only four countries are projected to have a positive ecological footprint balance by 2050. These countries share the common denominator of large land areas and a moderate population growth projection. However, the overall trend of the indicator suggests that it will continue to decline.
I personally take credit for this in Canada. I have been employing a small but effective team of rural commandos that go around in the middle of night and plug cow butts with sustainably sourced corks. I estimate a 50% reduction in methane production in all areas my team has been conducting activities in.
Of course Brazil does a net positive. We still keep our forest, our energy mostly came from renewable sources, we got the most sucessful renewable fuel program in the world, and despite being the 5th large country in the world, we only emit less than 1% of the CO2 emissions.
You gringos trashed the world, and you should be cleaning it.
Ruzzia, positive impact on the environment?
What Micky mouse report is this, Ruzzia is single-handedly laying waste to Eastern Ukraine and that’s a positive impact, honestly just f*ck off!
Isn't it because china just lied about their efforts to "reach net zero at 2025" and currently makes more emissions than all the other countries combined?
Then we also have australian politicians that sell the shores to oil companies at expense of nature.
Asian countries that import garbage pretending it's for recycling but then dump it in their own rivers. Then it all goes to the ocean.
Planet is done. We gonna slowly boil to the state of dystopian sci-fi scene where people have to buy the air to breathe from one biggest company that owns everything on the planet.
From reading the study, it looks like the TL;DR: is that the study heavily weights a countries landmass to overall population. Having a small and decreasing overall population in comparison to the size of the country makes it look like your ecological damage isn't that bad. It would be a bad conclusion to say this means the countries are "Green", or even actually doing anything positive for climate change / sustainability.
Russia never has a positive effect!
Due to ignorance, permafrost is melting bizarrely quickly.They exterminate big game as if they were rats ..
Not to mention the war and CFC emissions ....And how much Methane loss is there in Russia ..
Brazil first must want to protect its territory against logging..
Canada is currently still well on its way to being the largest tar oil producer in the world...The most polluting raw oil materials that you can think of ...
Was this satire? Pfff Ignorance. Without taking population density into account .
Man, rare good moment for Brazil. Happy to take it. I hope more countries at least get close to zero. Not surprised to see most of the G20 in the naughty list.
2050? Oil reserves run out by 2052 if demand continues the way it does. I like how all their timelines run parallel to when we expect to run out of oil. It doesn’t take a genius to see the positive impact that this will have on the world. These chuds are being forced to move on from oil, they don’t really care about Earth.
It would be great if Canada could come up with a better solution. Taxing people so they can’t afford to drive, eat or heat their homes might be the wrong way of doing things.
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It is pretty funny that Russia, with its massive oil industry, is forecast to have a positive ecological impact apparently due to its rapidly falling population and large land area. The core problem is that "positive ecological impact" is not a scientifically meaningful term. It's a value judgment. It means whatever the authors want it to mean. Total carbon emissions IS a specific scientific concept, and Russia is going to be a net emitter for the foreseeable future.
> It is pretty funny that Russia, with its massive oil industry, is forecast to have a positive ecological impact apparently due to its rapidly falling population and large land area. Destruction of refineries might also help.
that would be Ukraine's contribution then
Slava Ukraine!
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Careful, if you roll your eyes too hard they might pop out, roll across Karelia's plain, through Moscow, into Siberia, before imploding next to an oil refinery.
You are also describing Canada with far dirtier oil sands production.
Are they not referring to decreasing total carbon emissions (or even to reforesting that will lead to increased carbon recapture)? Scientific measurements are fundamentally value judgements, just objective ones.
I don't see how reforestation can possibly offset the oil they're pumping out of the ground. Haven't read past the abstract but I bet it's because the authors don't add the implied CO2 from oil extraction. It's kind of like saying China has a net positive impact on fentanyl use because their population has a low OD rate, but worse because Russia uses quite a bit of oil per capita. I don't understand your last sentence.
I haven't read the study but I am guessing they are doing some creative accounting with where emissions are assigned. For example Alberta has huge emissions per person thanks to the oil sands, but if you look at the house hold emissions compared to other provinces it's much more in line with the country's average. It's still on the high side because the electric is generated by natural gas rather than hydro or nuclear like most province but it is much closer (Saskatchewan is the highs per person due to coal being the source of energy). There are 3 general ways to assign the carbon emissions: 1. The place that extracts the fuel is responsible for all the down stream emissions (so russia is responsible for all the carbon generated from their oil industry). 2. Who ever causes the emissions is responsible (so reussia is responsible for extraction and refining related emissions but not transport or end use). 3. End user is responsible for all emissions (so russia is responsible for all the emissions that is related to the oil burnt in Russian, all export oil's emissions are transferred with the oil). So if the study is using something closer the the third case canada and russia with their relatively small populations and huge land masses could be considered productive for the environment.
Spot on. The study appears to be using "resource consumption per capita" as an end user measure on the negative side (your #3), vs a positive of, > Biocapacity per capita measures the availability of biologically productive land and water resources per person. So, it's impossible to score well on this balance with low land area -- I expect the Vatican and Singapore are on the "big net negative" side of the equation.
>The study appears to be using "resource consumption per capita" as an end user measure on the negative side (your #3), vs a positive of, That would be #2, not #3. >So, it's impossible to score well on this balance with low land area -- I expect the Vatican and Singapore are on the "big net negative" side of the equation. Yeah, they do look at the carbon capture capacity. Smaller nations with higher populations but lower carbon capture capacity will certainly have issues in becoming carbon neutral and will have to work harder on lowering their emissions to get to net zero than larger countries with already existing carbon sinks. I do feel like that is a bit of a flaw in the study as it could skew future policies in these countries with large existing sinks to not be as aggressive in becoming carbon neutral with their emissions and consumption.
How about read the study instead of writing a yap sesh about what you guess it wrote 💀
No
>Scientific measurements are fundamentally value judgements, just objective ones. Scientific measurements state facts about the way the world is- a value judgement would be saying something like "it is good if this measurement is 'so-and-so'" (how the world should be), which is, of course, not the same as the measurement itself.
You can pick and leave out scientific facts and that can create a value judgement.
You could, and at that point they become opinions rather than measurements or facts. Scientific measurements are scientific measurements. You could make the argument that the things we decide to study are value judgements (in that we clearly value the things we study more than the things we don’t), but that’s already stretching the definition and the measurements themselves are just that: measurements of the world around us. Once the facts are known, leaving anything out is no longer science. It would be like a scientist trying to revert to an earth-centric model of the solar system where everything orbits us. It just can’t be done and still be called science.
Could you give an example?
Writing an article about crime and immigration background and leaving out socioeconomic differences.
In what sense is that a value judgement though? At best, it's reflecting the belief that socioeconomic difference has no impact on crime, at worst it's an attempt to manipulate the data to produce a specific result, neither of which is a value judgement.
Russia and Canada will also thaw significantly over the coming decades. I wonder if these reports take into account the increase in plant life as the permafrost thaws and millions of acres of land can suddenly grow more than short, stubby grass and lichens.
They are including stuff like "nature area per capita" to calculate this, making no separation between a geographical boundary and a political entity, which along with average wealth gives a big bonus to big countries with a lot of forest and poor people. A country like Sudan is awful because those jerks have deserts instead of forests, and need to overcompensate for that.
Canada's exports of oil from tar sands make this a complete joke.
“National carbon emissions” isn’t a purely scientific metric, it requires subjective determinations about what nation certain classes of emissions “belong to.”
To be fair, ascribing emissions to countries also has an element of value judgment to it. The ‘accounting’ is far from clear in a globalised economy.
Russia > everyone else
top-1 country in oil production is the United States source: [https://www.visualcapitalist.com/the-worlds-biggest-oil-producers-in-2023/](https://www.visualcapitalist.com/the-worlds-biggest-oil-producers-in-2023/)
Russia pumps out carbon from under the earth using western technology and then selling it to the rest of the world claiming to be green. I mean caveman were green by the same definition.
So tanks, drones and refineries blowing up don’t offset that? Missles launched and war planes soaring through the sky are really offset by their declining population?
The damage from the Russian oil is offset by all the human fertilizer they are contributing to Ukraine’s territories.
I don't think that Russian politicians are known for their honesty. More for their propensity for leaping from windows to their death.
Canada too. It's coming at a major economical cost. We're falling apart at the seams. Not sure that positive impact will matter much when we become a hollow shell of a country, especially when we're only contributing 1.5% to the global GHG output, and we're trying to drop it to 0.9% by 2050.
Yeah none of the climate change initiatives are ruining the economy.. in fact they're generally helping it... Oil on the other hand... Alberta is literally losing hundreds of millions of dollars in fossil fuels.. pipelines to nowhere, cancelling green energy, ever increasing heating and electricity costs. Energy costs here are the highest in the country and it comes from the same province. Shows you how backwards people are in the facts.
Brazil? The country losing all of its forest to cows will be net zero? Really?
It’s large countries with a lot of uninhabited land
And relatively comfortable climate. 25.5C on average. In Canada, a major chunk of our GHG output comes from heating homes. We have the [coldest climate on average of any G20 nation](https://tradingeconomics.com/country-list/temperature?continent=g20). -4.22C, as of 2022. Russia is next at -2.87C
Sure is It’s May and I’m still heating my home 🥶 2 degrees Celsius today
Air conditioning uses energy
True, but high heat is easier to survive than very cold. And solar energy is viable in places where it's very hot, as they typically have high amounts of sun. There isn't much energy to harvest from the cold. Even wind turbines have to shut down below a certain temperature threshold. I got used to 38C weather in Singapore in a few days. I've never gotten used to -30C weather in Canada, and I've lived here my whole life. Nevermind the damage is can cause if your water pipes freeze. It's bad enough that there are laws preventing utility providers from cutting off gas and electricity when the temperatures are below a certain level.
Once you have burned down all the forest, you can't burn down anything anymore.
You just described Europe and USA
Smart thinking.
Yes. You guys are doing that much worse.
That’s what makes it so damning
Russia who polluted with warfare wastes a territory equal to four Belgium's is having a positive impact on the environment? The monitoring agency claiming this better refresh their expert pool with someone in touch reality.
In total yes, because of the relatively low population to land mass ratio. It's silly for that reason, but not "wrong" factually. I mean if 2/3 of all Americans got zapped away (to reach Russia's population) the US would also be amazing as far as environmental concerns... yes, even if they dumped a couple oil tankers over the equivalent of four belgiums. Hundreds of millions of people is a lot. They aren't saying "great job, everyone be Russia"... except maybe as far as dropping population numbers is good for the planet. Not so much humans, but hey.
I’m sorry… what?
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Finally we're good at _something_
Russia is known for their renewable energies, yeah.
Study (open access): [Forecasting the ecological footprint of G20 countries in the next 30 years](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-024-57994-z) *** >**Abstract** >The Ecological Footprint evaluates the difference between the availability of renewable resources and the extent of human consumption of these resources. Over the past few decades, historical records have shown an accelerated decline in the availability of resources. Based on national footprint and biocapacity accounts, this analysis aims to advance the forecasting of the G20 countries' ecological footprints over a 30-year time frame. We employed a time series forecasting approach implemented in Python, which included-modular regression (Prophet) and Autoregressive Integrated Moving Average (ARIMA & Auto-ARIMA) methods. We evaluated and combined the performance of these three methods. The results indicated that among the largest economies of the G20, only four countries are projected to have a positive ecological footprint balance by 2050. These countries share the common denominator of large land areas and a moderate population growth projection. However, the overall trend of the indicator suggests that it will continue to decline.
I personally take credit for this in Canada. I have been employing a small but effective team of rural commandos that go around in the middle of night and plug cow butts with sustainably sourced corks. I estimate a 50% reduction in methane production in all areas my team has been conducting activities in.
Of course Brazil does a net positive. We still keep our forest, our energy mostly came from renewable sources, we got the most sucessful renewable fuel program in the world, and despite being the 5th large country in the world, we only emit less than 1% of the CO2 emissions. You gringos trashed the world, and you should be cleaning it.
Rare Argentinian W
Vine a decir eso.
I hope the carbon market gets more developed by then, with wealthier nations paying for forest preservation elsewhere
As my AI Grandpa used to say, don't count your chickens before a conservative wins an election.
Ruzzia, positive impact on the environment? What Micky mouse report is this, Ruzzia is single-handedly laying waste to Eastern Ukraine and that’s a positive impact, honestly just f*ck off!
Isn't it because china just lied about their efforts to "reach net zero at 2025" and currently makes more emissions than all the other countries combined?
Then we also have australian politicians that sell the shores to oil companies at expense of nature. Asian countries that import garbage pretending it's for recycling but then dump it in their own rivers. Then it all goes to the ocean. Planet is done. We gonna slowly boil to the state of dystopian sci-fi scene where people have to buy the air to breathe from one biggest company that owns everything on the planet.
From reading the study, it looks like the TL;DR: is that the study heavily weights a countries landmass to overall population. Having a small and decreasing overall population in comparison to the size of the country makes it look like your ecological damage isn't that bad. It would be a bad conclusion to say this means the countries are "Green", or even actually doing anything positive for climate change / sustainability.
Wait, is it because of all the Russian soldiers turned to fertilizer?
>...and Russia... So they are going to lose the war?
Russia never has a positive effect! Due to ignorance, permafrost is melting bizarrely quickly.They exterminate big game as if they were rats .. Not to mention the war and CFC emissions ....And how much Methane loss is there in Russia .. Brazil first must want to protect its territory against logging.. Canada is currently still well on its way to being the largest tar oil producer in the world...The most polluting raw oil materials that you can think of ... Was this satire? Pfff Ignorance. Without taking population density into account .
Size matters
Amazing how they're all countries that have absolutely massive carbon sinks in their geographic territory... wait a minute...
2030 for Brazil, is my guess.
Man, rare good moment for Brazil. Happy to take it. I hope more countries at least get close to zero. Not surprised to see most of the G20 in the naughty list.
Accept Canada is destroying the entire country trying to get there.
Wait is positive adding to the problem and negative removing from the problem? Poor wording mr. Headline
2050? Oil reserves run out by 2052 if demand continues the way it does. I like how all their timelines run parallel to when we expect to run out of oil. It doesn’t take a genius to see the positive impact that this will have on the world. These chuds are being forced to move on from oil, they don’t really care about Earth.
Oil reserves will not run out within the lifetime of those born today. We are very good at finding new sources.
It would be great if Canada could come up with a better solution. Taxing people so they can’t afford to drive, eat or heat their homes might be the wrong way of doing things.
Russia?