Indonesia's palm oil fires emitted more greenhouse gases in a day than the U.S. • Hacker News Board

Re: Indonesia's palm oil fires emitted more greenhouse gases in a day than the U.S.

#31

Post by thrownaway2424 » Thu, Oct 22, 2015, 5:54 PM UTC

cubano wrote: post #17

krisroadruck wrote: post #12

Burning trees doesn't actually change the atmospheric balance at all. Every tree releases its carbon, either by being burned or when it dies by rotting. It's effectively a non-trapped part of the atmospheres circulatory system. Remember trees breath the stuff in and eventually they exhale. The problems only crop up when you extract trapped hydrocarbons from underground and burn those. Oil and Coal bad, Tree's not so…

So the fact that it's releasing as much in one day as the entire US does in a year means nothing? Wow...that's strange...it's going to take a bit to get my head around the logic of that. I'm not saying your wrong but I have to ponder it a bit... [EDIT] So the article edited its conclusion after I posted this...please consider this before you ding me. It originally said the fires were releasing that much. Thank you.

That is not what the article says. The article claims that for a single day these fires emitted more than the US did on that day.

Re: Indonesia's palm oil fires emitted more greenhouse gases in a day than the U.S.

#32

Post by oberstein » Thu, Oct 22, 2015, 5:54 PM UTC

Afforess wrote: post #4

gsibble wrote: post #2

This is why I don't buy into cap and trade and other expensive systems for the US to reduce its emissions. Compared to emerging economies, our emissions are already dramatically lower. It's the 2nd and 3rd world that needs to get in line (China most of all).

Yes, it would be terrible if we did all that work to improve the atmosphere for nothing. http://i.imgur.com/kUCPeBo.jpg

Crocodile humor.

Re: Indonesia's palm oil fires emitted more greenhouse gases in a day than the U.S.

#33

Post by mikeash » Thu, Oct 22, 2015, 5:55 PM UTC

cubano wrote: post #17

krisroadruck wrote: post #12

Burning trees doesn't actually change the atmospheric balance at all. Every tree releases its carbon, either by being burned or when it dies by rotting. It's effectively a non-trapped part of the atmospheres circulatory system. Remember trees breath the stuff in and eventually they exhale. The problems only crop up when you extract trapped hydrocarbons from underground and burn those. Oil and Coal bad, Tree's not so…

So the fact that it's releasing as much in one day as the entire US does in a year means nothing? Wow...that's strange...it's going to take a bit to get my head around the logic of that. I'm not saying your wrong but I have to ponder it a bit... [EDIT] So the article edited its conclusion after I posted this...please consider this before you ding me. It originally said the fires were releasing that much. Thank you.

It's not as much in one day as the entire US does in a year. It's as much in one day as the entire US does in one day.

Re: Indonesia's palm oil fires emitted more greenhouse gases in a day than the U.S.

#34

Post by duskwuff » Thu, Oct 22, 2015, 5:55 PM UTC

[deleted] wrote: post #23

[deleted]

Much of what's burning here isn't forest; it's peat. Peat is an extremely dense carbon sink that builds up very slowly (about 1mm per year!), so burning it releases carbon that's built up over a period of thousands of years.

Re: Indonesia's palm oil fires emitted more greenhouse gases in a day than the U.S.

#35

Post by briholt » Thu, Oct 22, 2015, 5:55 PM UTC

dymk wrote: post #15

krisroadruck wrote: post #12

Burning trees doesn't actually change the atmospheric balance at all. Every tree releases its carbon, either by being burned or when it dies by rotting. It's effectively a non-trapped part of the atmospheres circulatory system. Remember trees breath the stuff in and eventually they exhale. The problems only crop up when you extract trapped hydrocarbons from underground and burn those. Oil and Coal bad, Tree's not so…

Sort of. It would be nice if we could sequester the carbon already in the air in trees. The benefit is two fold: More trees, and removal of carbon that is already in the air from burning fossil fuels.

To add on - the goal is to preserve more forest space. If we do that, we can effectively sequester that carbon for long periods of time.

Re: Indonesia's palm oil fires emitted more greenhouse gases in a day than the U.S.

#36

Post by TheSpiceIsLife » Thu, Oct 22, 2015, 5:55 PM UTC

codecamper wrote: post #13

gambiting wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, US just burns off some crazy amount of natural gas that is released as the byproduct of oil drilling/fracking. It's not captured because it's too cheap to be worth it. 10 billion cubic feet in a month[1], just because it's "not worth it". So maybe,actually, US needs more caps and expensive systems to curb such behaviour? [1] http://www.wsj.com/articles/north-dakotas-latest-fracking-pr...

Agreed. Methane is way worse than CO2 as well. It is really shocking that companies inside the US borders are allowed to do this.

It's worth noting the natural gas (mostly methane) is burned as it's vented to atmosphere, so it's mostly CO2 and water.

Re: Indonesia's palm oil fires emitted more greenhouse gases in a day than the U.S.

#37

Post by mikeash » Thu, Oct 22, 2015, 5:56 PM UTC

siilats wrote: post #14

The 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.

How is it misleading? The title seems to be saying exactly that. Or was it edited?

Re: Indonesia's palm oil fires emitted more greenhouse gases in a day than the U.S.

#38

Post by planfaster » Thu, Oct 22, 2015, 5:56 PM UTC

Afforess wrote: post #4

gsibble wrote: post #2

This is why I don't buy into cap and trade and other expensive systems for the US to reduce its emissions. Compared to emerging economies, our emissions are already dramatically lower. It's the 2nd and 3rd world that needs to get in line (China most of all).

Yes, it would be terrible if we did all that work to improve the atmosphere for nothing. http://i.imgur.com/kUCPeBo.jpg

Cartoons use a myriad of figures of speech in order to build a setup-punchline structure that is actually funny.

One of the tricks of the trade is to use logical fallacies, as they are mechanisms for hiding premises or faulty logic, which is ideal to build assumptions in the viewer's mind that are then shattered by the punchline.

The figure of speech employed here is a fallacy called Begging the Question. When the character says "what if we create a better world for nothing" he is implicitly accepting the premise that the changes proposed by the presenter would create a better world even though he might not agree with the presenter's conclusions.

So the "funny" comes from pretending that we all agree that the list of things the presenter is talking about actually describe "a better world".

As for real life, I would say the cartoon, while funny, does not "sum up perfectly" the issue in real life, because in real life what is under dispute is whether governments taking more control for themselves, in order to carry out those things in the presenter's slide, is actually a better world than all of the alternatives, including taking care of the planet without giving more power to government institutions which have proven themselves incapable of seeing to completion endeavors several orders of magnitude simpler than "saving the world".

Re: Indonesia's palm oil fires emitted more greenhouse gases in a day than the U.S.

#39

Post by ThomPete » Thu, Oct 22, 2015, 5:56 PM UTC

krisroadruck wrote: post #12

Burning trees doesn't actually change the atmospheric balance at all. Every tree releases its carbon, either by being burned or when it dies by rotting. It's effectively a non-trapped part of the atmospheres circulatory system. Remember trees breath the stuff in and eventually they exhale. The problems only crop up when you extract trapped hydrocarbons from underground and burn those. Oil and Coal bad, Tree's not so…

Are you sure about that?

Burning the tress is not part of the natural process that I can only imagine have been built over millions of years to find some sort of balance.

Just like any other system if you overload it beyond what it's built to handle it has consequences.

Genuinely interested.

Re: Indonesia's palm oil fires emitted more greenhouse gases in a day than the U.S.

#40

Post by thrownaway2424 » Thu, Oct 22, 2015, 5:56 PM UTC

gsibble wrote: post #2

This is why I don't buy into cap and trade and other expensive systems for the US to reduce its emissions. Compared to emerging economies, our emissions are already dramatically lower. It's the 2nd and 3rd world that needs to get in line (China most of all).

Your statement does not square with reality, or the facts as stated in this article. Indonesia is a country close in population to the US, but the US releases dramatically more carbon, both in aggregate and per capita. For the Indonesians to even draw even with the US, they have to literally set their entire nation on fire.