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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.

#111

Post by posnet »

merah wrote: post #103
lisper wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This. 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. Be…

Neat, I bet you have some amazing photos.

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

#112

Post by vonmoltke »

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…

> Burning trees doesn't actually change the atmospheric balance at all.

This gets trotted out every time population, deforestation, and similar are discussed in relation to climate.

Yes, the cycle is roughly balanced. However, the magnitude of CO2 in the cycle increases. The cycle is not instantaneous; some of that CO2 in the cycle is always atmospheric. If you increase the volume of CO2 in the cycle you by definition and necessity increase the volume in the atmosphere at any given time.

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

#113

Post by masklinn »

gburt wrote: post #95
masklinn wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> All animal-produced carbon came from the air. All carbon comes from star fusion, what relevance does that have? > It's irrelevant in the long term view. It's irrelevant over geological term view, over "human" long-term view it's very relevant.

What he is saying is that it doesn't grow. It is a constant relationship. Cows sequester GHGs from the atmosphere (via the food they eat, mostly) and then release it. I don't have enough data to know if I agree with his point (especially since the GHG changes form), but his "long-term" refers to the life cycle of a single cow.

> What he is saying is that it doesn't grow. It is a constant relationship. Cows sequester GHGs from the atmosphere (via the food they eat, mostly) and then release it.

There's two issues with that:

1. cows really release the carbon stored in the food they eat, that carbon could otherwise stay locked (as it was before we cleared the field from which we grow feed).

2. cows also convert part of the carbon their release from their feed into comparatively worse greenhouse gases than just CO2

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

#114

Post by mikeash »

planfaster wrote: post #107
mikeash wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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."

Here's some criticism for you: if this is not a cult, why did they lie about the "97% of scientists" consensus? 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 reliab…

How am I supposed to take seriously an article which believes a survey of meteorologists is in any way relevant to a claim about the opinions of climate scientists?

If climate "skeptics" aren't completely full of it, why do they constantly mix up climate and weather and otherwise constantly demonstrate fundamental misunderstandings of the topic?

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

#115

Post by oneJob »

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?

Cowspiracy

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

#116

Post by mikeash »

planfaster wrote: post #97
mikeash wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was talking about pollution in particular, not every possible conceivable action. For times and places where pollution was not regulated, look at just about anywhere before 1900 or so.

> I was talking about pollution in particular, not every possible conceivable action. Can you point out in your original post ("We already saw what happens") the wording you used to constrain the actions you are talking about to just pollution? I missed that. I don't want to accuse you of poorly wording your arguments, or fixing them up as you go along. > For times and places where pollution was not regulated, look a…

The whole context of this discussion is "creat[ing] a better world for nothing" through government intervention on pollution. I didn't think I had to spell it out when it's part of the topic of the conversation.

I'm curious as to why you think completely unregulated industry would result in the most reduction in pollution, when industries with no pollution regulations (but with other regulations) have repeatedly shown to pollute enormously at every opportunity. What mechanism would cause industry to suddenly care about their pollution in that scenario?

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

#118

Post by mikeash »

paublyrne wrote: post #73
mikeash wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see it. Maybe because I already knew that the fires aren't a continuous thing?

Title says 'per' day, meaning each day, implying continuity.

I guess it depends on what the complaint is about it being misleading. I thought the complaint was that the headline somehow implied they're always emitting more, year-round. But maybe it's something else? Note that the original correction is also completely wrong, as it says the fires emitted more for one day, while it's actually for a total of 26 days so far and probably set to increase further.

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

#119

Post by moonchrome »

Daishiman wrote: post #108
moonchrome wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

What's regressive about admitting that it's literally impossible to maintain a developed country standard of living for 7 billion people? 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?

>There are physical limits and laws of thermodynamics that no amount of innovation will be able to fix.

People have been crying about overpopulation since forever - like the Pink Floyd song goes "And if you survive till two thousand and five I hope you're exceedingly thin" - we have the least poverty in history and the population is still growing. Sorry to burst your green bubble but we are nowhere near close to thermodynamical limits of sustainability on earth

>What is the point of continued population explosion? Satisfying some people's belief that reproduction is an inherent right?

Yes. This is the perverse reality that most of modern "environmentalist" arguments come down to "what I see as preserving nature is more valuable than people". Sorry buddy but if I had to chose between no more seals or not having children - well at least we have video footage of seals.

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

#120

Post by moonchrome »

Daishiman wrote: post #110
moonchrome wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Umm, no. I would like a planet that still has a semblance of uninhabited environments that are mostly unperturbed. 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.

So people should not have children because you want to have nice scenery ... well I guess everyone is entitled to their own opinion.
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