101–110 of 171 posts
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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.
> Except that cows are pretty environmentally-unfriendly too. Well, you can milk anything with nipples.
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…
The article says the fires are especially bad because they're burning peatland this year, which is releasing trapped hydrocarbons into the atmosphere.
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.
Having studied environmental and social science for 11 years, published and achieved multiple "degrees of knowledge" for a solid career base; it was so very sad and frustrating that everyone seemingly persisted to "talk" around the elephant.
It drove me bonkers and was labelled a pessimist by my peers. I left academia 3 years ago and now travel the world, programming and documenting tropical flora and fauna. Best decision I ever made, pity it cost me £20,000 to arrive at it though.
The article title is misleading though. It was for 1 day that they emitted more. So overall about 1% of us emissions if you average for the year or 100 times less.
Sliiightly misleading headline, although not incorrect in some ways. For about a quarter of the year there are virtually no fires, another quarter (we're there now), there are a lot. Further, in most years the fires are much fewer than they are now, and we're now in a record year. So the headline is true, but only for the worst part of a record breaking year. You can't extrapolate it. In general, say per year or per…
Sorry, it's a vastly misleading headline, US wildfires release a lot of CO2, but it's counted as ~zero because that carbon started out in the atmosphere. So, the net effect (ed: of all forests) over the US is ~zero in the average year.
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"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."
So color me jaded about Dems shouting about tax credits for GM Volts or implementing cap and trade.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
"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."
http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB100014240527023034803045795784...
"Yet the assertion that 97% of scientists believe that climate change is a man-made, urgent problem is a fiction. The so-called consensus comes from a handful of surveys and abstract-counting exercises that have been contradicted by more reliable research."
If it's Science, why the lies? And why the push for government intervention? I thought Science was about reality, not policy.
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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.
I hate this sort of regressive thinking. We can just come up with more reliable ways of producing food. I expect food production to see a huge revolution in 10-20 years - think something like genetically modified simple organisms that are designed to produce specific nutrients - like specific protein or sugar or fat. If you can design them to be energy efficient and work in low amount of space in a controlled environ…
There are physical limits and laws of thermodynamics that no amount of innovation will be able to fix.
What is the point of continued population explosion? Satisfying some people's belief that reproduction is an inherent right?
Sliiightly misleading headline, although not incorrect in some ways. For about a quarter of the year there are virtually no fires, another quarter (we're there now), there are a lot. Further, in most years the fires are much fewer than they are now, and we're now in a record year. So the headline is true, but only for the worst part of a record breaking year. You can't extrapolate it. In general, say per year or per…
> Further, the comparison itself is misleading as the CO2 figures for the US (and all other countries, for that matter), only count burning fossil fuel (and producing cement). Some of the things you note that aren't counted should be counted. But burning trees should not. Those trees removed the same amount of CO2 from the atmosphere while they were growing that is given off when they are burned; it will eventually b…
The greenhouse effect is 'incidental and temporary' in the same way as a pandemic or nuclear war: if you're thinking in geological timescales and have no particular interest in the wellbeing of human beings.
Trees that are cut down (and their predecessors) may have been storing carbon for a long time, and whatever comes next may not store anything like as much carbon (or may be continually harvested and used).
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and after these advances have been outpaced by population growth what happens then?
You have even more people to deal with the new problems ? In general this entire mindset that there is "limited resources that we can't go beyond" is completely bogus and proven false over and over again - resources are just things that our knowledge/technology allows us to use to solve particular problems as we create new technology we grow potential resources. Oil was used as a folk remedy until we learned how to r…
Look at any satellite images of the amount of land that is being used by farming in the world. Those places used to be natural ecosystems that no longer exist.
We have already started a mass extinction event from which the level of biodiversity we used to have is essentially unrecoverable.