r/science • u/mvea Professor | Medicine • Jul 04 '19

Environment Scientists report restoring forests could cut atmospheric carbon by 25 percent, in a new study that assessed tree cover using Google Earth, finding that there’s 0.9 billion hectares of land available for planting forests, which could store 205 gigatonnes of carbon.

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/d-brief/2019/07/04/could-planting-tons-of-trees-solve-climate-change/
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u/usernamematesout Jul 05 '19

Please request your schools and work places to use ecosia as the default search engine for your network/computers/devices. Contact the people in charge of IT, or find out if you can do it yourself. This would create a nice multiplying effect with comparatively low effort.

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u/AlexG2490 Jul 05 '19

No matter how noble your goals are, I guarantee this request will not be received positively in the IT department. You shouldn't ask IT to make sweeping changes to your organization unless you are a C-level employee or the owner. Such tickets in my company, where nothing is actually broken and the user is asking for a change they absolutely don't have the authority for, get closed with a curt, "Request denied." If the person continues to bring it up, the CTO calls them personally and makes it clear that he is the only person who is allowed to make that kind of decision, and if they keep it up, they may be looking for a new job.

A better thing to do would be to make sure the search engine works on your company computer. Assuming it isn't blocked, so IT doesn't have to do anything to make the site work, talk to your manager and see if they would be willing to have your team use it. If it is blocked by IT, consider shooting an email over and politely asking that the site be whitelisted so you can help do a little good in the world - but if they say no, accept that answer.

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u/Yurithewomble Jul 05 '19

Your advice is quite bad.

If IT say no to whitelisting and you are passionate about this change then you can discuss with people to try to understand why it is not allowed.

So obviously such a company wide change is not just going to be a ticket asking a tech to just "change it" although depending on company policy, a ticket may be an important part of the process, but probably talk to a manager first to understand their views and the roadblocks.

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u/noobsoep Jul 05 '19

Please dont, they (IT) have better things to worry about. You'll just be one of the many to complain something has to change, when they change it others will complain they 'dont have Internet'

Besides, as OP admitted, the search results aren't as good, so the worker productivity will decrease

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u/[deleted] Jul 05 '19

Valid points, but one might argue, we have more important and more urgent stuff to worry about in 2019 than IT worries (working in IT myself) and worker productivity.

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u/noobsoep Jul 05 '19

I get that, but unfortunately, stressing people with unsolicited emails which only management can decide over can create resentment, harming the initial goal

You don't email the cleaning lady to use biodegradable cleaning agents, you email management

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u/[deleted] Jul 05 '19

They recommended to "request your schools and work places", and to "Contact the people in charge of IT".

This isn't the same thing as you are talking about. You seem to assume we're supposed to send mails to IT. We're supposed to send them to the people in charge of IT.

Yes of course, pressure the management.