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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

#31

Post by Robotbeat »

gdubs wrote: post #26
Robotbeat wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

While the separation can be helpful, it also minimizes the actual carbon footprint of our food system. Petrochemical production, for instance, is a different category according to the epa. But one of the biggest uses of petrochemicals is fertilizer production. Trucking and shipping is its own category. Guess what relies on a lot of trucking and shipping? And so on. Typically what counts as agricultural emissions are…

But I think this is worth considering from this perspective as it focuses us on the most broadest solutions. If we decarbonize all uses of fossil fuels, we’re 73% of the way to utterly decarbonizing.

Petrochemical production, nitrogen fertilizer production in particular, is simply energy. And, in fact, nitrogen fertilizer just needs hydrogen, not hydrocarbons (which is a sort of misconception... many think hydrocarbons as a fundamental component of fertilizers when the actual Haber Process uses straight hydrogen), so should be much easier than hydrogen cars. And transport is relatively easy to decarbonize. Road and rail transport, in particular.

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

#32

Post by tonyedgecombe »

exdsq wrote: post #25

I wonder if it’d be better to not try and prevent global warming, but instead spend money and research on preparing for it. Can someone tell me why this is a terrible idea?

An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

Benjamin Franklin

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

#33

Post by marcinzm »

exdsq wrote: post #25

I wonder if it’d be better to not try and prevent global warming, but instead spend money and research on preparing for it. Can someone tell me why this is a terrible idea?

Civilization is build around the existing climate and the cost of re-building around a new climate will be very very large. For example, most cities are near bodies of water and rising sea water will threaten them. So we have to either move a lot of cities (to now scarcer land) or build massive walls around them (that need to survive hurricanes in many areas). There's also thing we don't fully control like the ecosystem (fishing, pollinating insects, etc.) that would be very hard (read: expensive) to rebuild if it collapses and would probably have second order effects we'd also need to adjust for. Then there's any health issues from things like high CO2 which would probably require mass scale genetic engineering to really deal with.

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

#34

Post by a_humean »

exdsq wrote: post #25

I wonder if it’d be better to not try and prevent global warming, but instead spend money and research on preparing for it. Can someone tell me why this is a terrible idea?

Its too late to "prevent" global warming. We had our chance in the 80s and 90s. We are now at stage of mitigation and trying to curve the trend away from the worst case scenario ("just" 2C warming instead of 4C). If we don't change track then its projected by end of the century large parts of the world will be simply uninhabitable for human populations (wet bulb temperature too high, desertification, and flooding) leading to the displacement of billions of people.

The cost of fighting global warming is orders of magnitude less than letting to go completely out of control.

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

#35

Post by tdoering »

atleta wrote: post #27

I don't get the point. Why not just send monthly payments to a programme like Ecologi ( https://ecologi.com/ )? Of course, if you can convince people who you can't convince otherwise, this is helpful too.

Good point. I think for many a monthly payment is totally enough and maybe even less trouble.

With this workflow though, you can get an extra incentive to do something. Depending on how you implement it, your actions get the extra weight of a planted tree (with each push for example). For me personally, it gives me extra motivation to work on a project and remembers me that I can do something.

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

#37

Post by ubuwaits »

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…

Bill Gates wrote about the impact of planting trees recently:

> It sounds like a simple fix and it has obvious appeal for all of us who love trees, but its impact on climate change is overblown. Although trees absorb some carbon, they can never take in enough to offset the damage from our modern lifestyle. To absorb the lifetime emissions that will be produced by every American alive today — just 4 per cent of the global population — you’d need to plant and permanently maintain trees on more than 16bn acres, roughly half the landmass of the world.

From: https://www.ft.com/content/c11bb885-1274-4677-ba05-fcbac67dc...

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

#39

Post by hyko »

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…

in my lifetime

How long are you expecting to live? Just wondering as we’re not really expected to breach 950ppm by 2100: https://skepticalscience.com/rcp.php?t=3#concentrations

Edited to add: ignore me, looking at ppm and not ug/m^3

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

#40

Post by atleta »

tdoering wrote: post #35
atleta wrote: post #27

I don't get the point. Why not just send monthly payments to a programme like Ecologi ( https://ecologi.com/ )? Of course, if you can convince people who you can't convince otherwise, this is helpful too.

Good point. I think for many a monthly payment is totally enough and maybe even less trouble. With this workflow though, you can get an extra incentive to do something. Depending on how you implement it, your actions get the extra weight of a planted tree (with each push for example). For me personally, it gives me extra motivation to work on a project and remembers me that I can do something.

Interesting. So your interpretation is the reverse of what I thought: the goal is not to somehow make people spend on reforestation (who otherwise wouldn't) but make people do more work, provide those with extra motivation, who do think reforestation is important.
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