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Show HN: Make continuous reforestation part of your daily workflow

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Re: Show HN: Make continuous reforestation part of your daily workflow

#11

Post by parhamn »

IgorPartola wrote: post #8
parhamn wrote: post #7

This is really really cool. Congrats on the launch! We're working on something similar as our non-profit project [1] built on the integration system for our browser. It will be a free service that lets you connect a few SaaS providers to start (Jira, Github, Gitlab, etc) and automatically plant trees (with some multiple). Stripe is also doing something similar at the payments level. [2] Two things: 1. These threads a…

Ok but your two arguments over how this isn’t just a feel good thing come down to (1) is ok that it’s a feel good thing and (2) it can be a popular feel good thing. How many net acres of forest can we gain and how much CO2 can we remove with this per year, based on your best projections? I am not saying it’s bad to do this. I would be happy to be a customer. But how do we know this does anything meaningful?

Key points are: this mechanism of collection can be much more effective for non-profits. And importantly once the automated passive payments are in place, it is easy to give users other options for what to do with the money (it doesn't have to be trees but its probably the most marketable start outside the HN community).

The napkin math on trees has been done quite a bit here already. I'm on mobile but I would look at the Stripe Climate thread for some references.

Re: Show HN: Make continuous reforestation part of your daily workflow

#13

Post by protontypes »

fireattack wrote: post #9

It looks a lot of overheads for something that is supposed to be helpful for the environment. Why not just donate the equivalent of 1-year amount of your [whatever event-triggered actions] directly to one of these Reforestation projects? It saves your time, the cost of running server (albeit not much) while doing the same amount of help.

It depends on how you implement the measure. In the future, we want to determine reforestation based on the carbon emissions of products. With the help of projects like https://gitter.im/hubblo-org/scaphandre or https://www.electricitymap.org/map, this would be easy to do for energy consumption. In this way, digital services can be transparently and recurrently compensated for emissions in the long term.

Re: Show HN: Make continuous reforestation part of your daily workflow

#14

Post by lstodd »

IgorPartola wrote: post #5

Before I sign up for this feel good thing, does anyone know whether it makes any meaningful difference/is enough to make any kind of impact? From looking at CO2 levels, we will be reaching 1000 ug/m^3 in my lifetime (threshold for headaches and other health problems). At 2000 it becomes a serious health hazard. Would money be better spent lobbying for abolishing coal burning power plants and making agriculture more c…

No. It's just lining up the pockets of some shady "reforestation" orgs that has zero to do with actual reforestation except maybe the name.

Plant and ocean response to rising CO2 is unknown at this time. The only mostly certain thing is that it is highly non-linear.

Any world-ending projections of CO2 content in thousands of ppm are wild guesses and scaremongering.

Re: Show HN: Make continuous reforestation part of your daily workflow

#16

Post by dangoor »

IgorPartola wrote: post #5

Before I sign up for this feel good thing, does anyone know whether it makes any meaningful difference/is enough to make any kind of impact? From looking at CO2 levels, we will be reaching 1000 ug/m^3 in my lifetime (threshold for headaches and other health problems). At 2000 it becomes a serious health hazard. Would money be better spent lobbying for abolishing coal burning power plants and making agriculture more c…

I recently listened to the audiobook of How to Avoid a Climate Disaster by Bill Gates. It was a fine tour of the landscape of solutions. My main takeaway is that we're going to need to do a wide variety of things in a wide variety of sectors. He gets into stuff like concrete, which is very important in growth but also big on emissions.

With respect to reforestation: Gates says it would help, but possibly not as much as you'd think and he's a bigger proponent of stopping the deforestation.

Yishan Wong thinks that growing forests (as opposed to just planting trees) is an important tool for carbon sequestration: https://www.terraformation.com/about

Re: Show HN: Make continuous reforestation part of your daily workflow

#17

Post by sooheon »

IgorPartola wrote: post #5

Before I sign up for this feel good thing, does anyone know whether it makes any meaningful difference/is enough to make any kind of impact? From looking at CO2 levels, we will be reaching 1000 ug/m^3 in my lifetime (threshold for headaches and other health problems). At 2000 it becomes a serious health hazard. Would money be better spent lobbying for abolishing coal burning power plants and making agriculture more c…

> From looking at CO2 levels, we will be reaching 1000 ug/m^3 in my lifetime

How did you arrive at this number? climate.gov article from last year estimates 900ppm by the end of the century if energy demand continues to increase at same rate and it is all met by fossil fuels.

https://www.climate.gov/news-features/understanding-climate/...

Re: Show HN: Make continuous reforestation part of your daily workflow

#18

Post by Robotbeat »

IgorPartola wrote: post #5

Before I sign up for this feel good thing, does anyone know whether it makes any meaningful difference/is enough to make any kind of impact? From looking at CO2 levels, we will be reaching 1000 ug/m^3 in my lifetime (threshold for headaches and other health problems). At 2000 it becomes a serious health hazard. Would money be better spent lobbying for abolishing coal burning power plants and making agriculture more c…

I think there’s been some misleading discussion of agriculture’s contributions to global emission. For a while, agriculture was ignored, but now that has been over-compensated for, and many people have the mistaken impression it’s most of the problem. Agriculture and forestry is still just 18.2% of emissions.

Energy is still 73.2%.

If you want to change the course of emissions, you need to change Energy. Luckily, we have the technology and understanding to decarbonize all energy. (The challenge is just to do it quickly and cost-effectively.)

You’re right about coal being the biggest emitter for energy. But... Energy is not just coal but oil and natural gas.

https://ourworldindata.org/uploads/2020/09/Emissions-by-sect...

https://ourworldindata.org/emissions-by-sector

Oil is nearly as big of an emitter as coal, and gas plus oil is now bigger than coal itself. https://ourworldindata.org/exports/CO2-by-source_v16_850x600...

Based on that data, oil is a much higher emitter than agriculture and gas emissions are about the same as agriculture emissions (but will soon be higher).

So as of 2021 it’s likely primarily coal and then oil that are the biggest emitter, followed by gas and then agriculture.

Re: Show HN: Make continuous reforestation part of your daily workflow

#19

Post by Robotbeat »

sooheon wrote: post #17
IgorPartola wrote: post #5

Before I sign up for this feel good thing, does anyone know whether it makes any meaningful difference/is enough to make any kind of impact? From looking at CO2 levels, we will be reaching 1000 ug/m^3 in my lifetime (threshold for headaches and other health problems). At 2000 it becomes a serious health hazard. Would money be better spent lobbying for abolishing coal burning power plants and making agriculture more c…

> From looking at CO2 levels, we will be reaching 1000 ug/m^3 in my lifetime How did you arrive at this number? climate.gov article from last year estimates 900ppm by the end of the century if energy demand continues to increase at same rate and it is all met by fossil fuels. https://www.climate.gov/news-features/understanding-climate/...

900ppm by volume is about 1000micrograms per cubic meter. The density of air at sea level is 1.2 kilograms/m^3.

Re: Show HN: Make continuous reforestation part of your daily workflow

#20

Post by underdeserver »

fireattack wrote: post #9

It looks a lot of overheads for something that is supposed to be helpful for the environment. Why not just donate the equivalent of 1-year amount of your [whatever event-triggered actions] directly to one of these Reforestation projects? It saves your time, the cost of running server (albeit not much) while doing the same amount of help.

It is less overhead.

Sign up once, then just add a single REST call to your billing flow.

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