have a measure

unpakwon · Aug 24, 2012

I'm not sure of "have a measure" in the following.

We have a measure for the amount of plant mass-produced each year: it's called primary productivity. As every animal on Earth eats plants or animals that eat plants, this number is a good metric for examining the impact that human food consumption is having on the planet.

Does this mean "we have a way to measure the amount of plant..."?

Thank you.

bhaisahab · Aug 24, 2012

unpakwon said:
I'm not sure of "have a measure" in the following.

We have a measure for the amount of plant mass-produced each year: it's called primary productivity. As every animal on Earth eats plants or animals that eat plants, this number is a good metric for examining the impact that human food consumption is having on the planet.

Does this mean "we have a way to measure the amount of plant..."?

Thank you.

Where does this text come from? It's not very clearly written.

abaka · Aug 24, 2012

Does this mean "we have a way to measure the amount of plant..."?

Yes. In this context clearly so, because the measure we have is called "primary productivity".

But be careful. The phrase "have a measure of X" can also mean "we have some X, a certain not very large amount of X", as in "We begin with loving ourselves, for unless we have a measure of this unconditional love and acceptance for ourselves, it is difficult to extend it to others."

bhaisahab · Aug 24, 2012

"We have a measure for the amount of plant mass-produced each year:"

What, in your opinion, is the meaning of the part in red?

SoothingDave · Aug 24, 2012

My opinion is that the hyphen is mis-located. It's the amount of plant-mass produced each year.

abaka · Aug 24, 2012

It seems clear there's a misplaced hyphen: "the amount of plant-mass produced each year".

PS, Oops, SoothingDave beat me to it.

bhaisahab · Aug 24, 2012

I had rather hoped that unpakwon would answer.;-)

unpakwon · Aug 25, 2012

bhaisahab said:
Where does this text come from? It's not very clearly written.

It's from the book <Abundance>>.

unpakwon · Aug 25, 2012

bhaisahab said:
"We have a measure for the amount of plant mass-produced each year:"

What, in your opinion, is the meaning of the part in red?

I thought I understood it because it was easily translated at least literally, "the amount of plant that is produced on a large scale each year."
But was it actually plant-mass? What does this mean? "A very large amount of plant" or "the whole amount of plant"?

abaka · Aug 25, 2012

I think you should focus your attention on the re-punctuated sentence

We have a measure for the amount of plant-mass produced each year: it's called primary productivity.

(There's a consensus the original sentence had a misprint. No big deal, such things happen.)

1. What are we trying to measure? What is the period of time we are measuring it in?

2. What is primary productivity?

3. How does primary productivity relate to what we are trying to measure?

have a measure

unpakwon

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abaka

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SoothingDave

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abaka

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unpakwon

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unpakwon

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abaka

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