Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sure it is. Harvested lumber doesn't release its CO2 back into the atmosphere unless you burn it.
or it decomposes
OK sure, but that isn't happening to most harvested lumber either.
Ethiopia Plants 350M Trees in One Day to Combat Drought and Climate Change
201–210 of 258 posts
Re: Ethiopia Plants 350M Trees in One Day to Combat Drought and Climate Change
#202Did anyone else find the 350M number implausible? They claim it happened in 12 hours. Unless they're talking about planting seeds, I find it hard to believe and take this story just as a political stunt. Ethiopia's population is 100M. Did 10% participate in this somehow, and each person plant 35 trees across the country? How would you even get that many trees to plant?
The first thing that came to mind was seed bombing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seed_ball#Seed_bombing
Edit: This doesn't account for all the volunteers that they say participated in the effort, so they probably didn't use this method.
Re: Ethiopia Plants 350M Trees in One Day to Combat Drought and Climate Change
#203Earlier quoted context omitted.
No it wasn't. It doesn't even pass the sniff test. Why do you think the slave-free north was much richer than the south, before the civil war? If slavery makes a country rich, why isn't Africa rich? Why wasn't Brazil, which imported ~4 million slaves (compare to ~200k for USA) significantly richer than the USA? Native Americans had slaves: > "An exhaustive search of some 725 late 18th/early 19th century ethnohistoric…
> Why do you think the slave-free north was much richer than the south, before the civil war? Because the North had a diversified, industrialized economy, while the South specialized in cotton production. But the North never could have diversified in this way if it weren't for the South. First because slave-grown cotton was a major source of capital for the overall US economy - it provided over half of all US export…
I think you're going off of old/bad data. Olmstead's paper in 2016 writes:
> Other findings of the NHC, such as the assertion that the Cotton South was the primary force driving national expansion in the antebellum period, are neither original nor correct.
As you say:
> it provided over half of all US export earnings.
This is not true. It may(?) have been over half of US exports, by some measure, but cotton was definitely not over half of earnings. Per Olmstead 2016:
> North’s fellow new economic historians promptly assaulted his thesis. It was widely recognized that cotton was leading U.S. export in the antebellum period. But exports represented less than one-tenth of total income (Kravis 1972). Figure 2 graphs the values of cotton exports as a share the value of U.S. merchandise exports, and then both U.S. cotton and merchandise export values as shares of GDP.30 As the bottom line makes clear, cotton exports were a very small share of national product—less than 5 percent over much of the of the antebellum period (Engerman and Gallman 1983, p. 28).
Emphasis mine. It goes on:
> Perhaps more surprising, given the NHC narrative, is that in 1839 and 1849 corn, not cotton, was even the South’s leading crop in terms of value! Some familiarity with historical data might have moderated the sensational claims of the NHC literature.
If you're interested in the topic, I suggest you read it, especially the section "The Economic History Slavery Debates". You should also read the sections relating about diversification if you have a strong belief in the over-specialized south.
https://www.law.columbia.edu/sites/default/files/microsites/...
Re: Ethiopia Plants 350M Trees in One Day to Combat Drought and Climate Change
#204Earlier quoted context omitted.
>geopolitically yes of course Currently your international relations with most countries are in shambles. You've got a nearly 20 year war going with Afganistan over a terrorist attack that wasn't sponsored by the country, and it doesn't look like the Taliban is going to actually disapear. Your other misadventure into Iraq completely destabilized the area, and resulted in creation of ISIS. >culturally yes of course Go…
Speaking as an American who has lived in other countries, the idea of "American Exceptionalism" is rampant in the USA and you will not undo it with any appeal or facts. It's built into the identity of so many people here. Seeing that as a group Americans are a majority on most English speaking websites, criticism, however correct, is always met with egoistic backlash. I hope you haven't taken it personally, nor belie…
duly noted.
Re: Ethiopia Plants 350M Trees in One Day to Combat Drought and Climate Change
#205Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Why do you think the slave-free north was much richer than the south, before the civil war? Because the North had a diversified, industrialized economy, while the South specialized in cotton production. But the North never could have diversified in this way if it weren't for the South. First because slave-grown cotton was a major source of capital for the overall US economy - it provided over half of all US export…
I think you're going off of old/bad data. Olmstead's paper in 2016 writes: > Other findings of the NHC, such as the assertion that the Cotton South was the primary force driving national expansion in the antebellum period, are neither original nor correct. As you say: > it provided over half of all US export earnings. This is not true. It may(?) have been over half of US exports, by some measure, but cotton was defin…
Are you arguing that slavery did not contribute significantly to the wealth of the North, first by using slaves directly, then by integrating advantageously with the South’s economy and the slave trade?
Re: Ethiopia Plants 350M Trees in One Day to Combat Drought and Climate Change
#206Earlier quoted context omitted.
Definitely a scattergun approach but that’s similar to how nature does it, I’ve heard the survival rate for seedlings in north American confirer forests to be about 1:1,000,000.
Is that for natural or manual (eg from helicopter) scattering?
Natural. Each year a forest may produce hundreds of millions of seeds but only a few thousand saplings survive.
Re: Ethiopia Plants 350M Trees in One Day to Combat Drought and Climate Change
#207Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think you're going off of old/bad data. Olmstead's paper in 2016 writes: > Other findings of the NHC, such as the assertion that the Cotton South was the primary force driving national expansion in the antebellum period, are neither original nor correct. As you say: > it provided over half of all US export earnings. This is not true. It may(?) have been over half of US exports, by some measure, but cotton was defin…
Are you arguing that slavery did not contribute significantly to the wealth of the North, first by using slaves directly, then by integrating advantageously with the South’s economy and the slave trade?
My condensed argument is that Slavery per se does not make countries rich. Rather I am only arguing that slavery, in many countries including the USA, Brazil, and others world-wide, did not contribute to the long term economic success of the nation nearly as much as many claim it does (or solely claim it does in the USA).
We don't have a counterfactual Twin Earth where those countries did not have slaves, but we know for sure slavery is not necessary for a country to be successful. And if we look at countries that had way more slaves, the advantage of simply having slave labor seems hugely insufficient for a country to be successful.
It is possible that the USA had slaves and was able to economically leverage them far greater than all the other countries that had slaves, but this seems unlikely, and such a scenario would also be the biggest gain for a counterfactual scenario that the USA would have been successful without them, too.
Re: Ethiopia Plants 350M Trees in One Day to Combat Drought and Climate Change
#208Earlier quoted context omitted.
The US already has the cleanest of water and air. No need to do anything when you are leading the others bigly.
Oh man, that just shot over a few heads..
Sadly we live in a post-ironic world.
There are two camps of people who either don’t believe in climate change entirely or see climate change as a means to achieve an ecofascist state.
Re: Ethiopia Plants 350M Trees in One Day to Combat Drought and Climate Change
#209Earlier quoted context omitted.
if we're talking geopolitically yes of course, if we're talking culturally yes of course. The other leaders at some point like Portugal, Netherlands, UK, Spain, all had their time in the sun. Now it is the U.S's, I'm not making the claim this will remain in perpetuity.
>geopolitically yes of course Currently your international relations with most countries are in shambles. You've got a nearly 20 year war going with Afganistan over a terrorist attack that wasn't sponsored by the country, and it doesn't look like the Taliban is going to actually disapear. Your other misadventure into Iraq completely destabilized the area, and resulted in creation of ISIS. >culturally yes of course Go…
[deleted]
Re: Ethiopia Plants 350M Trees in One Day to Combat Drought and Climate Change
#210Earlier quoted context omitted.
They only planted them in one day. I bet the distribution took a while...
The article gives no details but I'd look to see how many things are planted from seed in a nursery each day to at least get an indication of the number of things which can be "planted" in a given day. Many trees could be said to have been planted by someone scattering apple seeds out of their pockets.
The article says something about 40 trees planted by each citizen... so I'm guessing this 350 M batch was distributed equally to everyone they could reach.