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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.

#41

Post by scythe »

Basically all vegetable oils are the same; palm oil is actually more efficient than any other crop that grows in Indonesia. It would be clearer, in my opinion, to say that Indonesia's vegetable oil fires emit [...], which prevents the interpretation some people apparently take where they buy coconut oil instead. Coconut is only better because it's expensive but if everyone used coconut oil it would be way, way worse than palm oil, because it takes three times the land area of coconuts to produce the same amount of oil as oil palms! If they used soybeans, it would take six times as much land to produce the same amount of oil.

In other words, the only way to lower demand for palm oil is to lower the demand for all oil. In my opinion, the best way to do that is to kill the perception of biofuel as sustainable. Eating food is bad enough -- all agriculture is bad for the environment -- but burning it is ridiculous. With the exception of biofuel avgas (which is a tiny proportion of the market) electricity is superior in every way.

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

#42

Post by aidenn0 »

mikeash wrote: post #37
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?

If the fires only burn e.g. 1 day per year, then they emit far less per day on average than the US.

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

#43

Post by masklinn »

cjensen wrote: post #29
miles wrote: post #16

And, though environmental groups are loathe to discuss it[1], animal agriculture is responsible for 18 percent of greenhouse gas emissions, more than the combined exhaust from ALL transportation[2]. [1] http://www.cowspiracy.com/ [2] http://www.fao.org/docrep/010/a0701e/a0701e00.HTM

All animal-produced carbon came from the air. Converting CO2 into more interesting greenhouse gasses generates a constant offset from the "natural" state. It's irrelevant in the long term view.

> All animal-produced carbon came from the air.

All carbon comes from star fusion, what relevance does that have?

> It's irrelevant in the long term view.

It's irrelevant over geological term view, over "human" long-term view it's very relevant.

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

#44

Post by masklinn »

mikeash wrote: post #37
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?

The title implies continuous superiority of indonesian emissions, not that they out-produced the US emissions for a peak day (or 20, out of 365)

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

#45

Post by nostromo »

So interesting to follow the chain unintended consequences.

Trans fats make great muffins. But, oops, they happen to kill humans. So we ban them. Turns out palm oil also makes great muffins and doesn't kill humans. So, we burn down the ecosystem in Indonesia to make more of those delicious muffins and contribute to global warming.

Maybe we can just go back to using butter?

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

#46

Post by robotresearcher »

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…

> Burning trees doesn't actually change the atmospheric balance at all.

Of course it does. I have a tree. I can leave it alone for 100 years and it will reproduce itself several times over and then die and rot. Or I can burn it today.

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

#47

Post by mikeash »

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).

I don't follow. This is an unusually bad year for these fires and they surpassed US emissions for 26 days. US emissions are cranking year-round, year after year.

The US is the second largest emitter of CO2 in the world, and emits one seventh of the world total. China emits twice as much but has four times as many people. If you brought China into line with the US on a per-capita basis, you'd increase their total emissions by a factor of two!

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

#48

Post by mikeash »

masklinn wrote: post #44
mikeash wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

The title implies continuous superiority of indonesian emissions, not that they out-produced the US emissions for a peak day (or 20, out of 365)

I don't see it. Maybe because I already knew that the fires aren't a continuous thing?

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

#49

Post by scythe »

cjensen wrote: post #29
miles wrote: post #16

And, though environmental groups are loathe to discuss it[1], animal agriculture is responsible for 18 percent of greenhouse gas emissions, more than the combined exhaust from ALL transportation[2]. [1] http://www.cowspiracy.com/ [2] http://www.fao.org/docrep/010/a0701e/a0701e00.HTM

All animal-produced carbon came from the air. Converting CO2 into more interesting greenhouse gasses generates a constant offset from the "natural" state. It's irrelevant in the long term view.

Not all greenhouse gases are the same. One of the unfortunate things about agriculture is that it's a major source of nitrous oxide, via fertilizer decomposition, and methane, via mostly cattle. Both N2O and CH4 are drastically more potent GHG than CO2, essentially because the atmospheric concentration of those gases is already much lower, so the proportional impact of N2O/CH4 emissions is much greater.

CH4 emissions from agriculture could be potentially reduced by improving manure treatment on farms (because untreated manure releases CH4) and regulating feed quality. Both have the side-effect of higher meat prices. N2O emissions are harder: you'd have to stop using nitrate-containing fertilizer.

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

#50

Post by herge »

ThomPete wrote: post #39
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.

Trees, on average, have a life span of a couple of decades. If we could capture all that carbon back by just re-growing trees for 10-20 years, we'd be fine. It's releasing over a period of 200 years the carbon accumulated through millions of years of oil and coal formation that is uncontrollable and will have devastating effects on the environment.
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