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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.

#81

Post by moonchrome »

lisper wrote: post #62
nostromo wrote: post #45

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?

Except that cows are pretty environmentally-unfriendly too. Sigh. There is no getting around the elephant in the living room: population. Either we control it, or the laws of physics will do it for us.

I hate this sort of regressive thinking. We can just come up with more reliable ways of producing food.

I expect food production to see a huge revolution in 10-20 years - think something like genetically modified simple organisms that are designed to produce specific nutrients - like specific protein or sugar or fat.

If you can design them to be energy efficient and work in low amount of space in a controlled environment (say a shallow pool of water + UV lamps or something like that) you can have huge factories that stack these "ponds" on top of each other working 24/7 pumping out nutrients.

Then it's just a matter of combining them in to food.

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

#82

Post by alexggordon »

bostonpete wrote: post #75
lisper wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except that cows are pretty environmentally-unfriendly too. Sigh. There is no getting around the elephant in the living room: population. Either we control it, or the laws of physics will do it for us.

> Except that cows are pretty environmentally-unfriendly too. Well, you can milk anything with nipples.

I'd love to have an anatomy lesson on Almonds.

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

#83

Post by IkmoIkmo »

Sliiightly misleading headline, although not incorrect in some ways.

For about a quarter of the year there are virtually no fires, another quarter (we're there now), there are a lot. Further, in most years the fires are much fewer than they are now, and we're now in a record year.

So the headline is true, but only for the worst part of a record breaking year. You can't extrapolate it. In general, say per year or per decade, the headline is false, and CO2 emissions are a topic that is spoken about in the context of such timeframes, not 'who emitted the most in a 30 day period in one particular year'.

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). Not capturing emissions when fracking? Not counted. Millions of cows farting all over the place? Not counted. Agriculture? Not counted etc. That's why if you compare Indonesia to the US, Indonesians emit about 6 times less CO2 per capita. That's why it's a bit of a weird comparison. You're comparing one country's emissions within limited parameters, to another country's emissions from phenomena that fall outside of those parameters.

Anyway obviously it's a big concern nonetheless and a better comparison would probably be that this single industry approximately doubles Indonesia's fossil fuel burning CO2 output on average every year. That's quite excessive for just one industry (last I checked ~8% of exports, with exports at $200b on a GDP of $870b) and it doesn't have to be that way, palm oil can be grown (slightly more expensively) by simply clearing a forest rather than burning it and all the peat underneath. (the peat is really the issue, forest burning itself is often in large part compensated by regrowth)

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

#84

Post by newman314 »

oberstein wrote: post #65
Alkim wrote: post #5

I was just in Singapore for the past few days, after living there for several years. It really is awful this year. The haze did make the laser show from the top of the Marina Sands really spectacular. ;-)

Are there any engineering efforts[1] being proposed or actively worked on by Singapore to solve this issue? Every now and again I hear about the hazes forcing everyone in Singapore to wear masks and stay indoors as much as possible until the hazes dissipate. That state should be unacceptable for a first world city. [1] Like, a giant sci-fi ocean-fan... Or a military solution of invading their neighbors and running th…

Do you understand how small Singapore is? (Not trying to be snarky)

But yeah, they are not invading anyone anytime soon.

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

#85

Post by arandomJohn »

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…

If by burning the trees you are also permanently changing the use of that land from forest to agricultural then you are changing how much carbon is held by that area. This leaves aside the problems with burning peat.

This does change both the short term and long term atmospheric balance. If the land were left to eventually recover then the long term balance would be restored. That isn't going to happen.

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

#86

Post by gxs »

bostonpete wrote: post #75
lisper wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except that cows are pretty environmentally-unfriendly too. Sigh. There is no getting around the elephant in the living room: population. Either we control it, or the laws of physics will do it for us.

> 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?

Not trying to troll, and I know I'm putting you on the spot so to speak, but figured if it would be worth it if you answered the question seriously.

And yes, I am aware of the irony that my post isn't especially contributing either.

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

#87

Post by sosuke »

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 one tree burnt is the same as one tree sure, but when you're killing year old trees that usually live for 30 years then it seems you would be adding more carbon than you would have otherwise. 30 1 year trees or 1 30 year tree. Is it still equivalent?

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

#88

Post by mathiasben »

moonchrome wrote: post #81
lisper wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except that cows are pretty environmentally-unfriendly too. Sigh. There is no getting around the elephant in the living room: population. Either we control it, or the laws of physics will do it for us.

I hate this sort of regressive thinking. We can just come up with more reliable ways of producing food. I expect food production to see a huge revolution in 10-20 years - think something like genetically modified simple organisms that are designed to produce specific nutrients - like specific protein or sugar or fat. If you can design them to be energy efficient and work in low amount of space in a controlled environ…

and after these advances have been outpaced by population growth what happens then?

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

#89

Post by aidenn0 »

guelo wrote: post #76
nostromo wrote: post #45

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?

Wrong. The biggest consumers of Palm Oil are China and India, and the main driving factor is price. Palm oil is cheap. It has nothing to do with the FDA's position on trans fat.

Is it cheaper than rapeseed or soy? I know corn oil in the US is cheap, but it's also heavily subsidized.

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

#90

Post by seunosewa »

dougmany wrote: post #71
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.

It is also misleading in that burning trees and burning fossil fuels is very different in terms of global warming. The carbon trees are made of was extracted from the air as the tree grew so the net added to at atmosphere is zero. The carbon from fossil fuels was nicely sequestered before it was dug up an burnt, adding to total carbon concentration in the air. Edit: OK I read the second half about peat and yes, the p…

Also, methane. It's worse than CO2 for 2 reasons: (1) It contributes far more to global warming, pound for pound. (2) Once you emit it, you can't take it back by planting trees, etc.
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