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Indonesia's palm oil fires emitted more greenhouse gases in a day than the U.S.

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Re: Indonesia's palm oil fires emitted more greenhouse gases in a day than the U.S.

#61

Post by mikeash »

unethical_ban wrote: post #18
Afforess wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, it would be terrible if we did all that work to improve the atmosphere for nothing. http://i.imgur.com/kUCPeBo.jpg

"for nothing" At huge cost to the economy and freedom from government regulations and bureaucracy. Plus, a lot of "green" solutions aren't utopic or practical. It's not all or nothing, and I support being ecologically conscious. But I don't think it's wise to dismiss all criticism of the climate change cult.

I'm sure there are reasonable criticisms to be had, but until people actually start making them, it's hard not to dismiss all criticism when it's all so terrible. For example, people who refer to it as a "cult."

Re: Indonesia's palm oil fires emitted more greenhouse gases in a day than the U.S.

#62

Post by lisper »

nostromo wrote: post #45

So interesting to follow the chain unintended consequences. Trans fats make great muffins. But, oops, they happen to kill humans. So we ban them. Turns out palm oil also makes great muffins and doesn't kill humans. So, we burn down the ecosystem in Indonesia to make more of those delicious muffins and contribute to global warming. Maybe we can just go back to using butter?

Except that cows are pretty environmentally-unfriendly too.

Sigh. There is no getting around the elephant in the living room: population. Either we control it, or the laws of physics will do it for us.

Re: Indonesia's palm oil fires emitted more greenhouse gases in a day than the U.S.

#63

Post by cosarara97 »

nostromo wrote: post #45

So interesting to follow the chain unintended consequences. Trans fats make great muffins. But, oops, they happen to kill humans. So we ban them. Turns out palm oil also makes great muffins and doesn't kill humans. So, we burn down the ecosystem in Indonesia to make more of those delicious muffins and contribute to global warming. Maybe we can just go back to using butter?

Butter is more expensive than burning down Indonesia. (Using certain definitions of expensive)

Re: Indonesia's palm oil fires emitted more greenhouse gases in a day than the U.S.

#64

Post by tomphoolery »

nostromo wrote: post #45

So interesting to follow the chain unintended consequences. Trans fats make great muffins. But, oops, they happen to kill humans. So we ban them. Turns out palm oil also makes great muffins and doesn't kill humans. So, we burn down the ecosystem in Indonesia to make more of those delicious muffins and contribute to global warming. Maybe we can just go back to using butter?

How about we figure out a way to make palm oil somewhere else? Is it really that hard?

Re: Indonesia's palm oil fires emitted more greenhouse gases in a day than the U.S.

#65

Post by oberstein »

Alkim wrote: post #5

I was just in Singapore for the past few days, after living there for several years. It really is awful this year. The haze did make the laser show from the top of the Marina Sands really spectacular. ;-)

Are there any engineering efforts[1] being proposed or actively worked on by Singapore to solve this issue? Every now and again I hear about the hazes forcing everyone in Singapore to wear masks and stay indoors as much as possible until the hazes dissipate. That state should be unacceptable for a first world city.

[1] Like, a giant sci-fi ocean-fan... Or a military solution of invading their neighbors and running things better.

Re: Indonesia's palm oil fires emitted more greenhouse gases in a day than the U.S.

#66

Post by notahacker »

karl_gluck wrote: post #30
Afforess wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, it would be terrible if we did all that work to improve the atmosphere for nothing. http://i.imgur.com/kUCPeBo.jpg

Come on, that's incredibly disingenuous. Of course it's not terrible to improve the atmosphere. But you're making it sound like all methods are equivalent; when there are limited resources to address the problem, they need to be allocated accordingly. It's a similar situation to water in California -- yes, everyone should cut down on consumption. But the single-family mega-mansions using as much as 90 normal residenc…

I'm not sure where you've got the idea that it's 200x more efficient to achieve a 5% reduction in emissions in countries which produce lower emissions than the US for about 340 days per year....

And if you're looking at how the US could effectively use its financial clout to help the environment, funding investigations into who started illegal forest fires in upstream Kalimantan is probably going to be lower on the list than subsidising cleantech in California.

Re: Indonesia's palm oil fires emitted more greenhouse gases in a day than the U.S.

#67

Post by masklinn »

herge wrote: post #50
ThomPete wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you sure about that? Burning the tress is not part of the natural process that I can only imagine have been built over millions of years to find some sort of balance. Just like any other system if you overload it beyond what it's built to handle it has consequences. Genuinely interested.

Trees, on average, have a life span of a couple of decades. If we could capture all that carbon back by just re-growing trees for 10-20 years, we'd be fine. It's releasing over a period of 200 years the carbon accumulated through millions of years of oil and coal formation that is uncontrollable and will have devastating effects on the environment.

> Trees, on average, have a life span of a couple of decades.

This is not burning a tree it's burning forests, forests have lifespans of millennia. And that's not even considering these specific forests sit atop peat, you're not going to re-grow peat soils in 10 years.

> If we could capture all that carbon back by just re-growing trees for 10-20 years, we'd be fine.

Which is not what's happening, and fast-growers impoverish the soil and don't set up self-sustaining forests, we're mostly just setting the whole area up for erosion.

Re: Indonesia's palm oil fires emitted more greenhouse gases in a day than the U.S.

#68

Post by maxerickson »

ThomPete wrote: post #39
krisroadruck wrote: post #12

Burning trees doesn't actually change the atmospheric balance at all. Every tree releases its carbon, either by being burned or when it dies by rotting. It's effectively a non-trapped part of the atmospheres circulatory system. Remember trees breath the stuff in and eventually they exhale. The problems only crop up when you extract trapped hydrocarbons from underground and burn those. Oil and Coal bad, Tree's not so…

Are you sure about that? Burning the tress is not part of the natural process that I can only imagine have been built over millions of years to find some sort of balance. Just like any other system if you overload it beyond what it's built to handle it has consequences. Genuinely interested.

I don't know about the forests in Indonesia, but for the most part, it's natural for forests that will burn to burn. At the extreme, there are tree species that only really reproduce after a forest fire, Jack Pine and Sequoia come to mind. Google says they are pyrophytes:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyrophyte

Re: Indonesia's palm oil fires emitted more greenhouse gases in a day than the U.S.

#69

Post by planfaster »

mikeash wrote: post #54
planfaster wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cartoons use a myriad of figures of speech in order to build a setup-punchline structure that is actually funny. One of the tricks of the trade is to use logical fallacies, as they are mechanisms for hiding premises or faulty logic, which is ideal to build assumptions in the viewer's mind that are then shattered by the punchline. The figure of speech employed here is a fallacy called Begging the Question. When the ch…

We already saw what happens when the government doesn't take control and lets industry do what they will. The result is massive pollution, widespread health problems, and global climate change. And in fact we already saw what happens when government does take control. The result is vastly improved pollution, and without wrecking the economy.

> We already saw what happens when the government doesn't take control and lets industry do what they will.

Where? What's that place where the industry (short for "all private companies") can do what they will (your words), meaning, government cannot curb their will?

I've never heard of such place in all my readings of History and Economics. I'm ready for you to blow my mind!

Re: Indonesia's palm oil fires emitted more greenhouse gases in a day than the U.S.

#70

Post by karl_gluck »

mikeash wrote: post #51
karl_gluck wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Come on, that's incredibly disingenuous. Of course it's not terrible to improve the atmosphere. But you're making it sound like all methods are equivalent; when there are limited resources to address the problem, they need to be allocated accordingly. It's a similar situation to water in California -- yes, everyone should cut down on consumption. But the single-family mega-mansions using as much as 90 normal residenc…

How is it 200x more effective to reduce the emissions of Indonesia and Malaysia by 5%? These fires exceeded the emissions of the US for 26 days and otherwise the US far outweighs these countries when it comes to emissions. If the choice is 5% of ours or 5% of theirs, surely 5% of ours produces a far greater effect.

You're right, I must have misread the original article while composing my response. This is what I was remembering:

"Taken together, the impact of peat fires on global warming can be more than 200 times greater than fires on other lands."

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