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

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

#131

Post by randyrand » Thu, Oct 22, 2015, 7:23 PM UTC

dragonwriter wrote: post #129

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.

> There is no getting around the elephant in the living room: population. Either we control it Fine, lets not talk around it. Bluntly, experience has shown that "population control" boils down to one of two things: (1) Strong and effective social security networks, which shift incentives and produce declines (often to negative levels) in natural population increase, or (2) Brutal authoritarian repression, extending (…

What are you on about?

How does social security reduce population? Citation very needed. I think you mean to say first world countries empirically grow slower.

And why does population control need to be brutal? You don't need to kill living people, just don't birth unborn people. Have tax paid contraceptives, tax paid abortion for those that mess up, and tax/fine/jail people that have 3+ babies (having 2 babies per couple is sustainable). Maybe also have a baby making approval process. My home remodel needs to be approved, but I can make a new person without any approval whatsoever? That does't make sense.

If you ignore the law, you go to jail. Your child will be adopted or raised in a foster home. Not killed.

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

#132

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Oct 22, 2015, 7:29 PM UTC

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…

[deleted]

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

#133

Post by dang » Thu, Oct 22, 2015, 7:31 PM UTC

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…

Please stop taking HN threads on generic ideological tangents. You've been doing this a ton, and it's not what this site is for.

In fact, there's little that's worse for HN. Such tangents are predictable, which makes them tedious, and tendentious, which makes them prolific. Tedious plus prolific equals sludge. Moreover, such discussions only get worse as they proceed, never better.

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

#134

Post by mikeash » Thu, Oct 22, 2015, 7:40 PM UTC

karl_gluck wrote: post #70

mikeash wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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."

It sounds like the original article may have greatly overstated the emissions from these fires. I came in after it got fixed so I don't know.

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

#135

Post by guelo » Thu, Oct 22, 2015, 7:43 PM UTC

nostromo wrote: post #91

guelo wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wrong. The biggest consumers of Palm Oil are China and India, and the main driving factor is price. Palm oil is cheap. It has nothing to do with the FDA's position on trans fat.

You're reading an American-centricity into my comment that wasn't there. The fact remains that palm oil consumption is growing world-wide, in no small part as a replacement for trans-fats. http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v448/n7157/full/448993a... http://news.mongabay.com/2015/06/fda-bans-artificial-trans-f...

Your links do not support your assertion that palm oil consumption has anything to do with trans fat replacement. The graph on the Mongobay site shows US Palm oil imports growing years before trans fat concerns became widespread.

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

#136

Post by merah » Thu, Oct 22, 2015, 8:17 PM UTC

Skunkleton wrote: post #127

merah wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> travel the world, programming and documenting tropical flora and fauna. That is damned cool. Tell us more.

I stumbled into a niche that somehow combines both my passions: programming and nature. Started with a linux server I built in a jungle that ran off of an off-grid power source serving over wifi. Many, many months later (and after losing two laptops, two smartphones, two DSLRs and three GPS units to Zeus and a crocodile)... it's a platform that runs across three continents and some days I double-take what I've built (I have no CS qualifications).

I do have to remind myself that it is indeed cool, as some days I just want to pack it all in as I often feel out of my depth. A few months ago I was pulling 20-hour days to "get shit done". I'm not adverse to partnering with the right person to take the strain, in fact I'd welcome it now, alas I'm yet to find someone with similar passions who's also comfortable slumming it in tropics and is confident in high-risk foreign areas.

Waking up to a Tapir in a tropical monsoon is cool, gettin robbed at gun point by narcos whilst rebooting your VM, less so.

Tequila and some venezuelan narcos, those were some good times.

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

#137

Post by merah » Thu, Oct 22, 2015, 8:18 PM UTC

posnet wrote: post #111

merah wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I have a lot of really bad ones too :)

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

#138

Post by lisper » Thu, Oct 22, 2015, 8:26 PM UTC

moonchrome wrote: post #119

Daishiman wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ther…

OMG, you really don't get it. This isn't about seals.

There's a classic puzzle that goes like this: you have a jar full of growth medium and a single bacterium of a species which divides twice an hour. One week later the jar is full of bacteria. At what point was the jar half full?

The classical answer is: 30 minutes before the end of the week. But the real answer is that this situation is impossible, because after a week of doubling every 30 minutes the population would be about 10^232 bacterial cells, which is more than the number of sub-atomic particles in the universe.

It's not about thermodynamics, it's about math: exponential growth cannot be sustained in a finite universe (let alone a finite planet). Sooner or later we will hit a limit. The only question is whether that limit will be imposed by the laws of physics or whether we will choose to become the masters of our own fate and impose it on ourselves. Personally I prefer the latter option because the former will almost certainly be very, very unpleasant.

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

#139

Post by lisper » Thu, Oct 22, 2015, 8:31 PM UTC

dragonwriter wrote: post #129

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.

> There is no getting around the elephant in the living room: population. Either we control it Fine, lets not talk around it. Bluntly, experience has shown that "population control" boils down to one of two things: (1) Strong and effective social security networks, which shift incentives and produce declines (often to negative levels) in natural population increase, or (2) Brutal authoritarian repression, extending (…

Actually, making birth control readily available is extraordinarily effective. If people (particularly women) are given the means to control their reproduction they tend to take advantage of it.

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

#140

Post by moonchrome » Thu, Oct 22, 2015, 8:45 PM UTC

lisper wrote: post #138

moonchrome wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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 ther…

OMG, you really don't get it. This isn't about seals. There's a classic puzzle that goes like this: you have a jar full of growth medium and a single bacterium of a species which divides twice an hour. One week later the jar is full of bacteria. At what point was the jar half full? The classical answer is: 30 minutes before the end of the week. But the real answer is that this situation is impossible, because after a…

> Sooner or later we will hit a limit

Sooner or later sun will burn out, universe will expand in to nothingness, etc.

Those arguments are pointless - we won't reach those limits within our lifetime even with highest growth projections and who knows what happens after that.

But that's not what OP is arguing - baby seals - ie. "bio diversity" and "wildlife preservation" - is more important to the modern green movement than increasing the standard of living for a large part of human population and hence the enlightened ideas such as forbidding reproduction and limiting resource use.