Recent comments in /f/science

SocialMediaDystopian t1_j6upxmm wrote

Reply to Trees could reduce mortality from urban heat waves by a third by YoanB

This is so depressing ie that fact that in 2023 itxs "news" that trees are important to mocroclimates/human survival/life on the planet.

Like f-ken "DER".

Yes I get that it needs to be laid out in a paper to get anything done.

Yes I get that it's "good" to officially "know".

But...fuuuuuuuc.

We've known for decades that it would not lead to good things to not pay attention to this.

Now we're here frantucaly trying to patch things up from the wrong end of history and we have to watch the scientific equivalent of toddler level concepts being floated as "surprising and/or important".

Just....f-k.

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machstem t1_j6upmpo wrote

Reply to comment by sweetplantveal in Planting more trees could axe summer deaths by a third. Modelling of 93 European cities finds that increasing tree cover up to 30% can help lower the temperature of urban environments by an average of 0.4°C and prevent one in three heat deaths as a result. by MistWeaver80

I moved to a house with a green square for a backyard back in 2014.

It now has a 14 year old birch, a 2yr tulip tree, another 5yr tulip tree and a 7 year red oak tree.

All are native to the area and they started casting enough shade this summer, that my kids could actively play without being burned by the sun.

I'm the only neighbor for 100M who has native trees and most everyone else plants Norway maples which are good, fast growing trees though a little too big for my liking..

I will most likely be dead and buried by the time the oak and tulip trees canopy at over 50ft high and should shade most of the yard without being too low to kill the grass.

I also have been seeding my lawn with an eco friendly variety of grasses and white flower clover

We also naturalized the yard with native shrubbery as people forget that trees are good but shrubs and bushes help for things like soil saturation and animal/insect habitat

It takes a community for this sort of thing so I try and encourage people to do similar with their properties.

I call then butterfly alleys because they attract butterfly

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SnooPuppers1978 t1_j6up359 wrote

Reply to comment by Killemojoy in Scientists have shown for the first time that briefly tuning into a person's individual brainwave cycle before they perform a learning task dramatically boosts the speed at which cognitive skills improve. by Wagamaga

From the study if I understood correctly, all you need is a white box flickering on a dark background for 1.5s at your natural frequency before performing the task.

I wonder whether I should try to to feel it out before ordering the devices above. I could try different frequencies in the common range and perform some cognitive task to then feel how I'm performing.

Then after ordering the headset I could see if it matches

It should be in the range of 8hz - 12hz. I wonder if I can do it on my usual monitor and how accurate does it have to be in terms of timing?

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SebRLuck t1_j6ulza1 wrote

Reply to Trees could reduce mortality from urban heat waves by a third by YoanB

The NYTimes just published an article on Baghdad losing a lot of green space due to a building boom, which is driving up temperatures in the city.

>Baghdad Loses Green Space to Real Estate Boom

>The problem is driving up temperatures in what is already one of the hottest cities in the world, where air-conditioning is a luxury only the rich can afford.

(The link I posted is without pay wall.)

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Ignorant_Ismail t1_j6ulq5m wrote

Reply to Scientists have shown for the first time that briefly tuning into a person's individual brainwave cycle before they perform a learning task dramatically boosts the speed at which cognitive skills improve. by Wagamaga

Seems like a miracle:

“Participants who received entrainment pulses matching the trough of their brainwaves had a learning rate that was at least three times faster than those who received other rhythms”

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Fearlessleader85 t1_j6ukfnf wrote

Reply to comment by randomusername8472 in Planting more trees could axe summer deaths by a third. Modelling of 93 European cities finds that increasing tree cover up to 30% can help lower the temperature of urban environments by an average of 0.4°C and prevent one in three heat deaths as a result. by MistWeaver80

If you're coming from europe, i can understand how it's hard to wrap your head around the type of land in the western US, because there's isn't really the same type of thing anywhere in Europe to my knowledge.

Just the Bureau of Land Management handles around the area of one tenth of all of Europe (around 1 million km²). That's public land, no one lives on it. Almost all of it is used as grazing land to some extent. It's not really used otherwise except for recreation. That doesn't include national parks and national forests which are also commonly grazed in part. It doesn't include huge ranches that aren't factory farms. It doesn't include small farms and landowners that rent out fallow fields to cattle ranchers.

And the yield of that land is extremely variable. My 3.4 acres are listed among the highest potential yield crop land I've seen at well over 100 bushels per acre of most common crops. 10 miles north of me there's rolling hills of pasture land that probably could yield 25-40 bushels per acre if you could farm it. 100 miles southwest of me, your crops are probably just going to fail, but cows can scratch together enough food to gain weight for 11 months of the year.

So, factory farms put feed lots on land like that to the southwest of me and then buy feed from my neighbors here in the extremely fertile area. They can actually have 100 cows per acre. The ranchers to the north of me are probably running 1 cow per acre. Any ranchers to the southwest doing grazing are probably more like 5 acres per cow.

The factory farm needs crop land, and i can't find the actual calories per acre for just grass hay, but wheat is significantly more calorically dense and that's around 6.4 million Calories per acre. Corn is 12+ million, and that's for human consumption, but cows eat the stalks, too. So, i think a reasonable estimate would say a feed crop produces perhaps 3x the calories per acre of grassland on the low end and upwards of 10x at the top end.

So, ranching cows on pretty decent grassland is 1 acre per cow. Factory farming requires 0.11-0.31 acres per cow (0.1-0.3 acres for feed, 0.01 acres for pen space, plus a tiny bit for waste control). And the worse the land yield is the more acres you need. Factory farms exist for a reason: they're cheap and efficient.

But ALL that land is weighted the same in your narrative. It isn't the same at all. Factory farms and cropland is essentially worthless to wild animals. Rangeland is some animals primary habitat.

Monoculture crops can actually be much more damaging to the environment than rangeland raised meat, even when you account for the area required per calorie.

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Reply to Trees could reduce mortality from urban heat waves by a third by YoanB

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