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Humanity Has Flipped the Amazon Forest from Carbon Sink to Source

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Re: Humanity Has Flipped the Amazon Forest from Carbon Sink to Source

#81

Post by travisjungroth »

odopodo wrote: post #68
travisjungroth wrote: post #6

I spent the last 10 days in a hut on the edge of the Amazon and am in a hotel in Lima, waiting for my flight out of Peru. Seeing this story, I thought I'd add one brief first hand account. The jungle was noticeably cut down since I had last been there 7 months ago. What had been just a hiking trail to our camp had been widened to the size of a road by all the tree clearing. The trees are pretty thin and not the best…

Except the bulk of deforestation is not caused by locals needing space to live, but by big entrepreneurs investing in wood trafficking, soy plantations and livestock production. Things like this: https://twitter.com/Diogotapuio/status/1395723721369919488

After setting up a space to live, the invasion kept cutting down more jungle to sell the wood and turn it into farmland. This is when they lost their support. I'm not a journalist, though. I saw the clearings and town myself. The rest is stories I heard by the fire.

Re: Humanity Has Flipped the Amazon Forest from Carbon Sink to Source

#82

Post by bromuro »

odopodo wrote: post #68
travisjungroth wrote: post #6

I spent the last 10 days in a hut on the edge of the Amazon and am in a hotel in Lima, waiting for my flight out of Peru. Seeing this story, I thought I'd add one brief first hand account. The jungle was noticeably cut down since I had last been there 7 months ago. What had been just a hiking trail to our camp had been widened to the size of a road by all the tree clearing. The trees are pretty thin and not the best…

Except the bulk of deforestation is not caused by locals needing space to live, but by big entrepreneurs investing in wood trafficking, soy plantations and livestock production. Things like this: https://twitter.com/Diogotapuio/status/1395723721369919488

It varies from the region. In Peru deforestation is happening also at smaller, familiar scale.

Re: Humanity Has Flipped the Amazon Forest from Carbon Sink to Source

#83

Post by AnIdiotOnTheNet »

melling wrote: post #50
MikusR wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why are you wasting Earths resources by flying? And for a 10 day vacation at that.

Do people still think the solution is for everyone to reduce their individual carbon emissions? “If we all just conserve enough…” Flying, for example, emits 2% of global emissions. That’s 100,000 flights a day, every day. We’ve just spent over 2 decades generating at least 40% of our electricity with coal. The carbon footprint of that was incredible. While we’ve been waiting for solar and wind to replace it…

> Do people still think the solution is for everyone to reduce their individual carbon emissions?

It couldn't hurt. If people put more effort into reducing their carbon footprint and being mindful of the carbon externalities of their lifestyle they'd also probably vote for people and pay money to companies who seek to reduce the carbon footprint of industry and government too.

We have to care before anything will get done.

Re: Humanity Has Flipped the Amazon Forest from Carbon Sink to Source

#84

Post by throwaway803453 »

travisjungroth wrote: post #6

I spent the last 10 days in a hut on the edge of the Amazon and am in a hotel in Lima, waiting for my flight out of Peru. Seeing this story, I thought I'd add one brief first hand account. The jungle was noticeably cut down since I had last been there 7 months ago. What had been just a hiking trail to our camp had been widened to the size of a road by all the tree clearing. The trees are pretty thin and not the best…

"The boards that make our hut were cut from somewhere". I had hoped that consumption of wood for construction is one of the best things we can do assuming the tree is mature and no longer growing and a new tree is planted in its place.

Unfortunately there is data that shows old trees are better carbon consumers than young trees which is surprising. I expected the carbon required for physical growth would be much higher than needed what is needed for its basal(?) metabolic rate once it is mature. But I missed the fact that most older trees are still growing.

https://www.pacificforest.org/ee-old-trees-store-more-carbon...

Re: Humanity Has Flipped the Amazon Forest from Carbon Sink to Source

#86

Post by Dumblydorr »

saiya-jin wrote: post #59
ricardobeat wrote: post #48

You can thank the current right-wing government for letting deforestation get completely out of control, just after the country had finally got it down to okay-ish levels around 2012-2016. They’ve been systematically reducing funding, relaxing laws and enforcement, and pushing international preservation fund backers away. The rate at which things have degraded is insane. https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2020/12…

I wouldn't claim Bolsonaro is right wing, he is just an arrogant corrupt scumbag who got to power. Unfortunately the world has seen quite a few of those recently, and the results are dire to say at least.

Why wouldn't you claim he is right wing? He has anti-environmental, anti-lgbtq, and fascistic stances worthy of Trump.

Re: Humanity Has Flipped the Amazon Forest from Carbon Sink to Source

#87

Post by chaps »

bjourne wrote: post #70
danparsonson wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So people who hire contract killers are not to blame? I don't understand this argument - saying "it's not our fault the cattle/hardwood logging/mining companies cut down the Amazon" is nonsense, that's been widely known about for decades and we (collectively) just bought more and more of this stuff. It's their fault and ours.

If buying makes you an accomplice, wouldn't buying, say, Chinese or Israeli goods make you an accomplice to those regimes' human rights abuses? How far do you think customer responsibility goes?

If you know that the product you're buying was built through human rights abuses, then absolutely that would make you an accomplice.

Re: Humanity Has Flipped the Amazon Forest from Carbon Sink to Source

#88

Post by baron_harkonnen »

DoingIsLearning wrote: post #2

* Consumers eating JBS beef and consumers buying exotic wood and consumers buying gold from illegal mining have flipped the Amazon Forest from Carbon Sink to Source. This collective blamming becomes tiring when the actions are self-contained in a small group of people.

We all benefit from global economic activity. Do you earnestly not believe that part of the capital generated in Brazil (and of course all of other parts or resource extraction across the planet) eventually ends up as a dollar in an investment fund that a VC is going to use to fund the countless startups that employ HNers? Where do you think all the capital that drives our economy comes from?

On top of that destruction of environments around the globe is what allows us to have such wonderfully cheap products here in the US (and Europe). Those cheap solar panels that everyone is excited about are because they're being built with energy from burning coal in China (the biggest factor in the price drop was going from minimal solar pv production in China to 80% today).

One of the best methods of estimating CO2 emissions at an individual level is dollars spend. Highly paid technical workers getting paid from and buying goods from Amazon.com have an indirect but real relationship to the destruction of the actual Amazon.

It is also worth noting that the HN community has aggressively flagged and remove many of the climate change article that have made it do the front page. I used to immediately upvote any articles I found and just wait to see how many minutes they would last.

Not that placing blame does anything to solve these issues, but collective blame is appropriate if you really look at the systemic nature of all of these problems.

Re: Humanity Has Flipped the Amazon Forest from Carbon Sink to Source

#89

Post by delecti »

saiya-jin wrote: post #59
ricardobeat wrote: post #48

You can thank the current right-wing government for letting deforestation get completely out of control, just after the country had finally got it down to okay-ish levels around 2012-2016. They’ve been systematically reducing funding, relaxing laws and enforcement, and pushing international preservation fund backers away. The rate at which things have degraded is insane. https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2020/12…

I wouldn't claim Bolsonaro is right wing, he is just an arrogant corrupt scumbag who got to power. Unfortunately the world has seen quite a few of those recently, and the results are dire to say at least.

> I wouldn't claim Bolsonaro is right wing, he is just an arrogant corrupt scumbag who got to power

If it walks like a duck and implements duck policies.

Re: Humanity Has Flipped the Amazon Forest from Carbon Sink to Source

#90

Post by ArnoVW »

melling wrote: post #50
MikusR wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why are you wasting Earths resources by flying? And for a 10 day vacation at that.

Do people still think the solution is for everyone to reduce their individual carbon emissions? “If we all just conserve enough…” Flying, for example, emits 2% of global emissions. That’s 100,000 flights a day, every day. We’ve just spent over 2 decades generating at least 40% of our electricity with coal. The carbon footprint of that was incredible. While we’ve been waiting for solar and wind to replace it…

I don't know anyone that thinks that reducing is the solution. But, as our technology is, for now, it is part of the solution.

The hierarchy of the three R's is 1) reduce 2) re-use 3) recycle. That's for a reason. No need to manage consumption that never took place. Like the agile mantra, maximise the work not done.

There are several reasons why people focus on flying:

    - 2% globally, but distributed very unequally over population
    - much of flying can be prevented, most of it is elected (you can video conf that meeting or go on holiday locally, you can't not heat your house) 
    - flights are trending up, when we should be trending down (and are managing in other areas)
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