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Denmark will plant 1B trees and convert 10% of farmland into forest

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Re: Denmark will plant 1B trees and convert 10% of farmland into forest

#301

Post by ZeroGravitas »

roenxi wrote: post #219
rob74 wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, what are you proposing? Just do nothing about climate change, as we have done before, and have worse social consequences in the near future rather than now? Denmark is more at risk from rising sea levels than other countries ( https://cphpost.dk/2023-02-17/news/rising-sea-levels-threate... ), so they want to do something about it.

How will converting farmland to forests help with climate change? It seems like it would have no particular impact or make the situation worse w.r.t. climate change for Denmark. If it is a good idea I'd imagine it would also be a good idea if the climate was not changing. Denmark has no ability to impact global CO2 emissions at all. In fact nobody does except ironically the Chinese and their industrial-growth-at-any-…

Land use is one of the big topics covered by the IPCC:

https://www.ipcc.ch/srccl/

Re: Denmark will plant 1B trees and convert 10% of farmland into forest

#302

Post by JacobJeppesen »

chgs wrote: post #275
jdenning wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the point of a carbon tax if it's balanced by a government subsidy? Edit: Genuinely curious what I'm missing..

If I can make 1 unit of food for €50 and use 50 tons of carbon, or make it for €60 and use 10 tons of carbon, a carbon tax and food subsidy would allow me to sell that €60 low carbon food for €50 and force me to sell the high carbon food for €60 This gives an economic incentive to use the lower carbon method, funded by those who use more carbon, while not changing the end price or output.

Just to provide the numbers: in 2030, a tax will be introduced of 120 DKK (~16€) / ton CO2e, which linearly increases each year until it reaches 300 DKK (~40€) / ton CO2e in 2035. However, the farmers can get subsidies for changing their practices and adopting new technologies, in order to reduce their emissions. I.e., the government will give you money to change your production, so you can minimize the carbon taxes you have to pay. There are more technicalities to how it works, but that's the gist of it. The important part is that the goal is to transition to new technologies and production methods, which reduces emissions per unit food produced.

There will be no food subsidy, however, and a rough estimate of the increase of food cost is something like 1.5%, with beef having the highest increase. Take this estimate with a grain of salt though, as it's difficult to estimate. An increase in food cost is expected though.

Re: Denmark will plant 1B trees and convert 10% of farmland into forest

#303

Post by ZeroGravitas »

roenxi wrote: post #297
addcommitpush wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Note that China has no ability to impact global CO2 emissions either. Let’s split China population in k Denmark-sized groups, plus one smaller-than-Denmark reminder. None of the k groups has any ability to impact global CO2 emissions (same as Denmark). We can reasonably assume that a smaller group has even less ability to impact global CO2 emissions than a bigger group. Hence the smaller-than-Denmark reminder has no…

Your logic is wrong - a Denmark sized group of Chinese people is probably all it takes to operate their solar panel producing factories. The reason Denmark can't do anything isn't because there are few of them, it is because Denmark isn't a significant industrial cluster for energy technology and innovation. For example, India has more people than China and they aren't in a position to do much unless there is some so…

Denmark basically invented modern wind power and still makes a big chunk of it (though China has caught up in that area recently).

Re: Denmark will plant 1B trees and convert 10% of farmland into forest

#304

Post by addcommitpush »

RayVR wrote: post #230
thinkingtoilet wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Before anyone jumps into this book I would caution against it. This book had many very cool ideas and moments. The way it played out felt very "real". However, in the end there was very little actual story and was very boring at times. I actively dislike Neal Stephenson but if you want a near-future climate story I would recommend Termination Shock over Ministry For The Future. Just a random internet person's two cen…

I also read KSR's book. It was interesting at times. However, the research on the financial topics, including the central banks and "global financiers" was quite bad. I don't recall the glaring errors right now, however, given this is an area where I (at least once upon a time) was an expert, it was quite bad to read this and realize there are likely other serious errors in topics with which I am not at all familiar.…

The main thing that irked me is that the book focuses on technical solutions as if that's what we're missing (carbon coin! pumping water from under ice sheets! etc.) but completly glosses over the actual consequences.

To piggyback on the rest of this thread, people like meat and don't want to stop eating lots of meat. People are not going to like things that make them stop eating meats, whether it's governement buying out producers, a carbon tax, a carbon quota, whatever.

"Ministry of the Future" is full of stuff like "and the central bankers could reshape the economy, so they did by doing XYZ" as if "XYZ" was important but barely discusses the fact that "reshaping the economy" might upset lots of people. How were they convinced to give up air travel, cars, etc?

Re: Denmark will plant 1B trees and convert 10% of farmland into forest

#305

Post by addcommitpush »

0xy wrote: post #71
gklitz wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because it’s becoming increasingly obviously dumb to be paying farmers money to pretend like they are farming their land. What I mean is that if we removed the subsidies the farmers wouldn’t farm their land, the market just doesn’t work to support their production. So we are essentially saying “if you pretend to farm your land we’ll make sure you profit” but even at that they of cause need to try to keep the pretend…

Do you think food production has national security implications or do you think "the market" will be happy to sell you food during another global conflict while their own citizens are starving? Farming subsidies are a national security tool, not a handout. Anyway, it's clear that your position is political in nature otherwise you'd be just as outraged by green subsidies. Denmark set aside DKK 53.5 billion for green s…

This is often the justification but in many countries agriculture systems are not oriented towards food security: they produce a large share of export crops/products and thus also rely on imports. If they were an actual national security tool, they would be more focus on not relying on imports and not helping exports, right?

Re: Denmark will plant 1B trees and convert 10% of farmland into forest

#306

Post by JacobJeppesen »

SoftTalker wrote: post #168
JacobJeppesen wrote: post #162

I've seen a bit of confusion regarding this. First, it's 10% of Denmark's total land area, which is roughly equivalent to 15% of farmland area. Second, the conversion of farmland area into nature and forests is mainly for improving water quality, as excess nitrogen from agriculture has essentially killed the rivers and coastal waters through oxygen depletion from algae. Regarding global warming and CO2, the area conv…

> it's actually a CO2-equivalent (CO2e) tax, which includes a range of other gasses. E.g., 1kg of methane is 25kg CO2e Your pig farmers must be thrilled.

It comes with quite a lot of compensation and subsidies, so they're less angry than you might expect. Also, an important note here is that they were part of the negotiations, and as such were part of the agreement which was proposed to the parliament.

All that being said, you're right, they're not exactly thrilled with the government adding taxes and monitoring them more.

Re: Denmark will plant 1B trees and convert 10% of farmland into forest

#307

Post by jdenning »

addcommitpush wrote: post #263
jdenning wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the point of a carbon tax if it's balanced by a government subsidy? Edit: Genuinely curious what I'm missing..

Low carbon farms balance would be: "low carbon" profit + subsidy - small carbon tax High carbon farms balance would be: "high carbon" profit + subsidy - high carbon tax If ["low carbon" profit - small carbon tax] > ["high carbon" profit - high carbon tax] (e.g. if the carbon tax is high enough), farms have an incentive to lower their carbon emissions. The subsidy is here to make sure ["low carbon" profit + subsidy -…

That makes sense - thanks!

Re: Denmark will plant 1B trees and convert 10% of farmland into forest

#308

Post by geysersam »

addcommitpush wrote: post #299
oezi wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Certainly you are just demonstrating the opposite. Everyone has the ability to impact global CO2 emmissions. We certainly need international coordination or actors with a minimal set of morals to achieve it.

> Everyone has the ability to impact global CO2 emmissions. I'm afraid most people are smaller-than-Denmark groups, and thus unable whatsoever to impact global emissions. It's just math.

1e-10 is reeeallly close to zero, therefore 1e10 * 1e-10 is also close to zero.

That's what your math sounds like to me.

Re: Denmark will plant 1B trees and convert 10% of farmland into forest

#309

Post by blitzar »

shafyy wrote: post #294
valval wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cow farts being harmful for the environment is the silliest hoax I see repeated over and over. Spending two minutes reading about the biogenic carbon cycle destroys this misconception.

I read about the Biogenic Carbon Cycle on the UC Davis website: " As a by-product of consuming cellulose, cattle belch out methane, there-by returning that carbon sequestered by plants back into the atmosphere. After about ten years, that methane is broken down and converted back to CO2. Once converted to CO2, plants can again perform photosynthesis and fix that carbon back into cellulose. From here, cattle can eat t…

Unfortunately powerplants dont graze on a field of grass

Re: Denmark will plant 1B trees and convert 10% of farmland into forest

#310

Post by blitzar »

chgs wrote: post #281
Scoundreller wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It is going to sidle a cost to an industry of razor thin margins. Will it or will farmland value take a dump but remain unchanged in use? I always thought of farmland these days as a use of last resort and if it could be marketable for buildings, it’s already not economically worth it as a farm except speculatively

In the U.K. farmland has a rental value of about £100 an acre but a purchase price over £10k an acre. The value in the land isn’t in its use (which is getting 1% ROI), but in speculation it may be granted permission to be converted to housing, or because of tax loopholes.

The owner also get capital appreciation / depreciation of the land - ~5.7 per cent per annum over the last 100 years bring the total return to a 6.7% ROI.

Land at the edge of cities and towns where there is a reasonable chance of development happening costs orders of magnitude more than the average.

The person renting that land then farms it (presumably for a profit) for additional ROI.

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