Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

A global reforestation project is how we fix climate change

medium.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

171–180 of 180 posts

Re: A global reforestation project is how we fix climate change

#171

Post by fend »

adreamingsoul wrote: post #5

I'm burnt out or depressed with my current career (or something else), but at this moment I would happily pivot to spending the rest of my life trying to help nature. How could I create a business or venture that allowed people to make a livable wage while also working to create a balanced ecosystem between human and nature?

You could join me and help get the best idea for mainstream engagement with conservation up and running: https://fend.earth (hook people and give them what the want; a collective direct conservation movement at scale)

We could save a million+ acres of rainforest, grow to be a non profit of actual value and personally say goodbye to that "useless man" feeling and the waves of melancholy that go with it. Get in touch: infoatfenddotearth

Re: A global reforestation project is how we fix climate change

#172

Post by growlist »

fallingfrog wrote: post #169
growlist wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We need to solve the whole ecosystem issue. Which unless we come up with some pretty smart measures is inevitably going to involve poorer lifestyles for most in the developed world, in effect (and perhaps this explains the keeness on the left for environmental issues) moving us to a more socialist model, wherein hard work offers far less in terms of monetary reward than at present.

I’ve been thinking about this position today and I don’t see how it makes any sense. Look: would a 10 million dollar salary really induce you to work 10 times harder than a 1 million dollar salary? What about 100 million- would you be working 4000 hours a week instead of 40? You’re going to spend all that money on one person and expect to get your moneys worth? No. Upper executives get that kind of money because they…

I think you are in denial about human nature if you think that money is not a motivating factor for many (most?) capable professionals, and bringing the question of fairness into it and the fact that rewards at the higher levels are exponentially out of whack does not affect this initial point. To flip it around would be to say that things are so unfair and people are only taking the money because they can, not because that what really motivates them, so let's make all salaries the same because that won't affect peoples' choices. I have some knowledge of the dental profession through my partner. Her opinion is that money is the main motivating factor for entry into the profession in the UK, with altruistic concerns far behind. If one accepts this as having even some element of truth (and there's no small amount of evidence of rich, showy dentists on Instagram etc.) do you really still believe that altering the incentive will not affect behaviour? Qualifying as a dentist is hard. Becoming an expert on root canals is harder. People do not do it out of the goodness of their heart, or for social recognition of their career success alone. Material rewards are an essential component of the motivation.

Re: A global reforestation project is how we fix climate change

#173

Post by pvaldes »

pitay wrote: post #163
pvaldes wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a lot of marketing and some "scammy" practices put in selling Paulownia trees. Eucaliptus is faster and many coniphers also. You can find photos of trees regrowing light fast after being chopped, and from an old root but this is not how you measure accurately growth in a tree. The tree enters in emergency mode and is using all the reserves in the root to restore the lost canopy ASAP. It will slow down consid…

I'd avoid introducing Eucalypts to places they aren't already prevalent. Fires don't kill them, but do kill a lot of their competition, they drop very flammable leaf and branch litter, have oily explosive sap, so naturally they spread with fires. With more fires the more eucalypts spread, with more eucalypts there are more uncontrollable fires. A country where Eucalypts are completely dominant is Australia. In the US…

Agree with that, but must be noted that Eucalyptus has 700 species and not all make fireforests (I like that definition and we don't have any for that so I'll coined it).

> either they don't know what introducing or ...

Is a monoculture. They don't care. Is hard to claim ignorance still in the age of Google.

Re: A global reforestation project is how we fix climate change

#174

Post by fend »

ainiriand wrote: post #22
growlist wrote: post #3

Gets my vote. I love woodland and can't bear the empty, desolate green spaces that cover most of the UK, and which many British people consider to be 'nature'. And here's an idea: process the wood into a form that can be used for land reclamation without decomposing, cover said land with topsoil, grow trees on said land. Voila: a buffer against worsening coastal erosion due to sea level rise, that also locks in carbo…

I was in shock to discover how empty and barren Ireland is. According to Wikipedia it is one of the most heavily deforested countries in Europe...

Large scale deforestation of Ireland began in the bronze age but present day rural attitudes towards trees, the dynamics of EU farming welfare and a population of 3.7 miilion hill maggots (aka sheep) ensure that woodlands have almost no chance of re-establishing themselves in our time.

Its quite sad because much of the land is so wet and compacted now, yet when Ireland had higher tree coverage, as much as 80% of the extensive precipitation that the Atlantic throws at us never even penetrated the soil. Much of the elements that make life harsh today were at one time regulated by forest ecologies to people's benifit.

A possible solution would be a long term compensation of farmers in exchange for their grazing rights on the 1,050,000 acres of commonage. With the sheep off the uplands,20 years could be sufficient for natural woodland revival. Given that sheep farming is essentially a subsidised activity the financials could be feasible... But you try saying that in a pub in the west of Ireland and making it out the door with both your arms still attached to your torso.

Re: A global reforestation project is how we fix climate change

#175

Post by beerandt »

yishan wrote: post #158
ahartman00 wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>irrigating them for 20 years And there is an assumption that there is enough freshwater to do this. "A third of the world’s biggest groundwater systems are already in distress" "Water scarcity already affects every continent. Water use has been growing globally at more than twice the rate of population increase in the last century, and an increasing number of regions are reaching the limit at which water services ca…

Correct, water scarcity is in fact the PRIMARY bottleneck. The main "innovation" in this solution isn't "we must plant massive forests," it's that clean (solar-powered) desalination is now possible at very large scales, so we are able to provide the volumes of freshwater necessary for large-scale reforestation and conversion of deserts. Forestry people have known for decades that trees were the best solution to CO2 i…

Should also mention that water requirements are generally much higher than needed to sustain an existing equivalent forest, as most desert soils have a high salt content near the surface, due to evapotranspiration drawing salts up and concentrating them, and lack of precipitation to ever flush/dilute them.

Not sure if any of these proposals plan to attempt to actively reduce soil (or aquifer) salt content, but for basins without sufficient excess water for an outflow, salt build up is a big problem. Managing the salinity requires more fresh water than what is needed to sustain the plane life.

Re: A global reforestation project is how we fix climate change

#176

Post by fallingfrog »

growlist wrote: post #172
fallingfrog wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve been thinking about this position today and I don’t see how it makes any sense. Look: would a 10 million dollar salary really induce you to work 10 times harder than a 1 million dollar salary? What about 100 million- would you be working 4000 hours a week instead of 40? You’re going to spend all that money on one person and expect to get your moneys worth? No. Upper executives get that kind of money because they…

I think you are in denial about human nature if you think that money is not a motivating factor for many (most?) capable professionals, and bringing the question of fairness into it and the fact that rewards at the higher levels are exponentially out of whack does not affect this initial point. To flip it around would be to say that things are so unfair and people are only taking the money because they can, not becau…

There are many things that motivate people, money being one of them. I never said it wasn't a motivation. But a 2 dollars an hour raise could motivate a lot of people and an extra million for some CEO makes a marginal if any difference. There's no logical line you can trace from "money motivates people to do hard things" straight to "therefore all the money should be in the hands of a tiny number of people". That doesn't logically follow. There has to be balance. You have to look at what brings the maximum benefit to the most people. My point is that currently the people in power don't care whether things are out of balance, so long as they are the ones who benefit. If we have to make sacrifices to safe the world, cutting pay for the top 1% will not affect their motivation to work by very much. They're still going to be making more than the rest of us.

Look: if you’re the ceo of a corporation you can basically set your own paycheck. To suggest that these guys are diligently going over data, studying the best pay structure to attract talent, and so forth is totally naive. For one thing, none of these guys are very good at math. At the end of the day, trying to set your pay structure to grow the company is really hard. Cutting everyone’s pay to give yourself a raise is really easy. These are people whose parents paid for them to get into Harvard, they played golf with the right people to get into upper management they’ve always thought of themselves as above and separate from the common people who they hold in utter contempt- you’re not going to see very ethical behavior from someone like that. No tears will be shed for them if we have to bring a little balance back to society in order to save it.

Re: A global reforestation project is how we fix climate change

#177

Post by dang »

noiv wrote: post #153
dang wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please don't post unsubstantive comments and/or flamebait to HN. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22064741 .

I'd like to know in which part of the planet my comment is unsubstantiated.

It was a shallow one-liner that repeated a platitude in a dismissive way. That makes it an unsubstantive post and we're trying to avoid those here. Would you mind reviewing the site guidelines and taking their spirit more to heart when posting? Your comment broke at least three of them:

"Please don't post shallow dismissals [...] A good critical comment teaches us something."

"Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize."

"Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive."

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: A global reforestation project is how we fix climate change

#178

Post by rexpop »

NeedMoreTea wrote: post #102
rexpop wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Thanks politicians! Strange that you would indict the State for failing to legislate Industry, as though the latter had no agency and were therefore uniquely blameless.

States can make regulations, introduce carbon taxes, ban unsafe or unsustainable activity. When was the first international industry emissions reduction summit? How are they doing in comparison to the politicians? Exxon, Shell and BP knew all about the harm they did in the mid 20th century. So they buried it, briefed against it, greenwash us with irrelevant and insignificant adverts. I indict the states, particularly…

> Companies are quite happy to drive everyone off a cliff for a little more gold.

Yet the denizens of this forum enthusiastically turn the crank while bemoaning the State's inability to stop us.

Re: A global reforestation project is how we fix climate change

#179

Post by pedalpete »

jacknews wrote: post #32
adreamingsoul wrote: post #5

I'm burnt out or depressed with my current career (or something else), but at this moment I would happily pivot to spending the rest of my life trying to help nature. How could I create a business or venture that allowed people to make a livable wage while also working to create a balanced ecosystem between human and nature?

Factory food. I realise that has icky connotations, and is anathema to some people, but we will need at least 50% more food over the coming decades, and we are already over-using the land (and especially the sea) by a lot. Organics, permacultures, symbiotic planting, etc, are all good things, but not nearly enough to meet our future needs. So we need to concentrate large parts of agriculture into a much smaller footp…

Why do we need 50% more food production when

1) Tons of food is wasted every year http://www.theworldcounts.com/counters/world_food_consumptio... (40% of food in the US is wasted) https://www.nrdc.org/issues/food-waste

2) Population is expected to peak at 8.5B https://www.cnbc.com/id/101018722 (only a 10% increase above current levels)

3) Obesity is a major issue in many developed and developing countries, so we can clearly cut down on the amount of food people are eating.

Re: A global reforestation project is how we fix climate change

#180

Post by drderidder »

pjkundert wrote: post #101
drderidder wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's basically, well, not true. When trees break down they contribute to soil organic matter. Approx 58% of SOM is carbon (SOC) making soil one of the largest carbon sinks on the planet. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soil_organic_matter

If soil continues to accumulate in a healthy form, as it did on the Great Plains over millennia of grazing by bison herds, then yes. Old growth forests often grow on rocky land, and have little long-term depth accumulation. Source: hiking old growth forests over decades, and being a farmer.

Lack of soil accumulation does not mean the soil evaporates into thin air; it is taken up by the watershed and redistributed downstream. The same carbon cycle is in effect; accumulation in any particular terrain has really nothing to do with it.
Post reply on HN