Damn, fact checks involving trivial mathematics seems hard.

[tml@mementomori.social]

Damn, fact checks involving trivial mathematics seems hard. Even for journalists.

I bet you have all seen the alarmist and very viral-worthy claims that "Brazil cuts down tens of thousands of acres of rainforest to build a four-lane road for COP30".

Now, some articles also mention that the road is "more than 13 km" long. Let's be generous and say that it is 15 km. And let's say "tens of thousands" is actually just 15,000.

15,000 acres is 61 square kilometres.

For a 15 km long road to cover 61 square kilometres, how wide does it have to be? Four kilometres.

I rest my case.

(Note: Of course this doesn't mean that I would approve of large-scale destruction of the rain forest in general. But building 13 km of road, in a city with 1.4 million inhabitants, is not significant in the large scale of things.)

[tml@mementomori.social]

In fact, this claim has been used by Donald Trump to belittle and ridicule environmentalists and the fight against anthropogenic climate change, which he doesn't believe in. He wrote: "They ripped the hell out of the Rainforest of Brazil to build a four lane highway for Environmentalists to travel. It's become a big scandal!"

[oblomov@sociale.network]

@tml OTOH, COP *is* largely performative greenwashing …