Fact: Singaporeans own and operate the burning palm oil plantations via Indonesian shell companies and labor. (Source: Horse's mouth)
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.
#152I was just looking at http://epic.gsfc.nasa.gov/epic-archive/png/epic_1b_201510210... and wondering what all that smoke was.
Re: Indonesia's palm oil fires emitted more greenhouse gases in a day than the U.S.
#153Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Further, the comparison itself is misleading as the CO2 figures for the US (and all other countries, for that matter), only count burning fossil fuel (and producing cement). Some of the things you note that aren't counted should be counted. But burning trees should not. Those trees removed the same amount of CO2 from the atmosphere while they were growing that is given off when they are burned; it will eventually b…
I call 'denier' on this. The greenhouse effect is 'incidental and temporary' in the same way as a pandemic or nuclear war: if you're thinking in geological timescales and have no particular interest in the wellbeing of human beings. Trees that are cut down (and their predecessors) may have been storing carbon for a long time, and whatever comes next may not store anything like as much carbon (or may be continually ha…
I'm not denying the greenhouse effect, nor that most if not all of its modern increase is anthropogenic.
You need to go back and actually read what I wrote. The greenhouse effect, if any, induced by burning non-fossil plant matter is incidental and temporary. In other words, on those geological time scales you cherish, as well as a human time scale, the net change in CO2 from burning such material is zero. The only way to make it not-zero is to render that land permanently unusable by any type of plant. Which is certainly possible, but not a side effect of slash-and-burn "farming". There's also the very strong possibility that whatever replaces that vegetation is actually going to grow faster, and thereby remove more carbon from the atmosphere than what was there before. Mature trees, in particular, don't grow very quickly.
This is simply a fact. One of us is in denial, all right, but it's not me. You need to get over your excessive fear-mongering; it's not helpful to the cause. Stick to the facts if you want people to believe you.
Re: Indonesia's palm oil fires emitted more greenhouse gases in a day than the U.S.
#154Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Except that cows are pretty environmentally-unfriendly too. Well, you can milk anything with nipples.
I am by no means a mod or a anything, but what exactly do you think you were contributing to this conversation with this comment? I am genuinely curious. Was it an attempt at humor? Did you think it would be well received in a forum where conversation tends to be more serious and informative? Are you aware of the rules and just don't care? Or did you think this comment was especially funny and warranted an exception?…
> Did you think it would be well received in a forum where conversation tends to be more serious and informative?
Yes, I guess I thought my light-hearted comment might be received the way it was intended. Even in a serious/informative setting it's OK to inject a little humor here or there. I really don't think HN is on the brink of devolving into pun threads if that's your concern. If people think a comment is an unwelcome addition to the conversation, downvotes will certainly get that point across.
> Are you aware of the rules and just don't care?
Yes, I'm familiar with the comment guidelines (which certainly don't ban humor) and I'm aware of the "unwritten" rule that HN will usually tolerate only a small amount of levity in comments.
Re: Indonesia's palm oil fires emitted more greenhouse gases in a day than the U.S.
#155Earlier quoted context omitted.
Peat contains hydrocarbons? Are you sure?
Well, trapped carbon is what actually matters. But yes, there are hydrocarbons of various forms in just about everything that is or was once alive.
Hydrocarbons are molecules that contain nothing but hydrogen and carbon. That includes things like gasoline.
Most living organisms contain no hydrocarbons at all. They might contain carbohydrates or proteins or fats, but not hydrocarbons.
Re: Indonesia's palm oil fires emitted more greenhouse gases in a day than the U.S.
#156The article title is misleading though. It was for 1 day that they emitted more. So overall about 1% of us emissions if you average for the year or 100 times less.
"On 26 days from the period of Sept. 1 to Oct. 14, their daily emissions surpassed those of the entire US" It seems they claim 26 days not 1, but you are correct the initial assumption readers will come to is that every day they exceed US emissions.
Even though the article claims this, 26 days would be 7% and I cannot see this being true. They must use some creative measurement that measures 10% of us emissions or something like this. There is no way that the emissions are more than the weight of the burning material plus oxygen and there is no way an island can burn thru so many tones every year
Re: Indonesia's palm oil fires emitted more greenhouse gases in a day than the U.S.
#157Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Sooner or later sun will burn out Yes, in about 5 billion years. > we won't reach those limits within our lifetime Between "our lifetime" and 5 billion years there is still a very broad range of possibilities. Maybe you don't care what happens to the next N generations, but I do.
> Maybe you don't care what happens to the next N generations, but I do It's not about not caring - it's about not knowing what will and will not be relevant. As I've said before - people have been talking about population explosion since forever - we should be starving from 80s. All these people consistently ignore progress in their predictions. You don't know what the dominant method for food production will be in…
> people have been talking about population explosion since forever
No, that's not true. Thomas Malthus wrote his famous essay less than 200 years ago. The oldest human writings are only a few thousand years old. That's the blink of an eye in the grand scheme of things.
> How can you predict what will be relevant in 100 years?
Because I can do math. So I can understand that exponential growth cannot be sustained in a finite universe, let alone a finite planet. I can calculate how long we can continue at current (or historical) growth rates before we run into various limiting factors.
For example: the carbon biomass of earth is ~10^15 kg. The carbon mass of homo sapiens is about 10^11 kg. Our current doubling time is about 60 years. That works out to about 600 more years of growth at current rates before the biomass of earth consists entirely of homo sapiens. That's a hard upper bound on how long we have left if we don't slow our growth rate.
Re: Indonesia's palm oil fires emitted more greenhouse gases in a day than the U.S.
#158Earlier quoted context omitted.
So people should not have children because you want to have nice scenery ... well I guess everyone is entitled to their own opinion.
I want people to not have children so that we can preserve the accumulated genetic legacy of billions of years of evolution, which is what prevents our ecosystems from degrading by making it robust. We are not separate from said ecosystems. Also, what makes you think people's desire to have children trumps the health of the systems we depend on for survival?
So why do people have children? Why do they have more children in one country and less in another? Take Germany: We have a retirement system that people believe in (I am not saying it is working) and we have less than 2 children per couple on average. In other countries children are your retirement fund. So what if every country had a retirement fund system, that people believed in? Wouldn't that solve the growth problem? Wouldn't that be good for the world to have faith in retiring?
Re: Indonesia's palm oil fires emitted more greenhouse gases in a day than the U.S.
#159Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Maybe you don't care what happens to the next N generations, but I do It's not about not caring - it's about not knowing what will and will not be relevant. As I've said before - people have been talking about population explosion since forever - we should be starving from 80s. All these people consistently ignore progress in their predictions. You don't know what the dominant method for food production will be in…
> people have been talking about population explosion since forever No, that's not true. Thomas Malthus wrote his famous essay less than 200 years ago. The oldest human writings are only a few thousand years old. That's the blink of an eye in the grand scheme of things. > How can you predict what will be relevant in 100 years? Because I can do math. So I can understand that exponential growth cannot be sustained in a…
600 years to figure out space colonization with efforts under way already and likely to happen in a 100 years ... I see that you're trying to make a point it's just not making any sense.
Honestly we have no idea how society will look like in 50 years with the advent of AI and such nobody knows what close future holds let alone 100 years - this "we're doing it to save the future" is like people talking how there's going to be unsustainable urban problems in 100 years with horses before the cars were invented - you think that limits you think matter (like biomass, or planet size, or w/e) are somehow intrinsically relevant and unsolvable - sorry but as far as problems go those are fairly straightforward on such a long timescale.
Re: Indonesia's palm oil fires emitted more greenhouse gases in a day than the U.S.
#160Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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 show…
> 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?
How could those industries not pollute enormously, when they have to quickly adapt to any new government law or regulation (or they will die) in an unpredictable political and legislative scenario? Even if a company had plans to contain their pollution (and therefore funds allocated for this), they would quickly have to divert those funds as soon as a new regulation impeded on their business. When companies are run in unpredictable, ever-changing scenarios such as being regulated by a government, they can't look into the future with confidence to make financial decisions for it in the present (such is the nature of not being able to predict the next rule coming down the pike).
As for your question, it's simple, really. The mechanism that would cause industry to suddenly care about their pollution is called private property - which, don't kid yourself, is not the "private property" extant in the U.S. where there are still taxes for land that is owned, there's eminent domain, there's civil forfeiture, etc. Which is crazy, considering the constitution really only allows the government to own 10 square miles of land, but that's besides the point.
With private property, industries would be very careful not to pollute, say, a nearby river they don't own, because the owner might sue them for having damaged their property (just like you can sue for someone driving a wrecking ball through your house by accident or with intent to damage). If the company in question does own their nearby river, they will still have to make sure that they are only polluting the river they own, and not any downstream rivers that are not their property, or they might get sued by those downstream-river owners.
The government's job, in this scenario, is to enforce contract law and property rights (via tort law) through its justice courts. Since the river owners and the polluting company (in our example) don't have a contract with each other, only tort law applies. Clearly the company damaged these owners' rivers downstream (let's suppose) so the courts will decide the company must either cease and desist (destroying the property of river owners) and compensate them for the damage caused, or offer to buy them out, or offer to draw a contract that the river owners would agree to instead of winning the lawsuit.
If the company owns the nearby river and there are no downstream rivers, they can choose to pollute that river without consequences. If people aren't happy with that, they have many choices: they may bring awareness to the cause, stage a boycott, pool money to offer to buy the river (though the company isn't required to sell, its shareholders nevertheless like money and will be forced to weigh between 1. selling the river and finding some place else to store their waste and byproducts, and 2. continuing to pollute the river that causes them so much grief they have people offering them money to stop - the company will have to find a way to solve that impasse). Most probably this would be solved swiftly since the options outlined do not need the government.
I'm sure this will probably raise more questions for you than answer them, but having gone through that same path I can tell you all those questions have satisfying answers scattered all across many books by Rothbard, Nozick et alii but most of them have been compiled nicely by a very smart and helpful lady called Mary J. Ruwart.