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Indonesia's palm oil fires emitted more greenhouse gases in a day than the U.S.
- gsibble 11y agoThis 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).
- Afforess 11y agoYes, it would be terrible if we did all that work to improve the atmosphere for nothing. http://i.imgur.com/kUCPeBo.jpg http://i.imgur.com/kUCPeBo.jpg
- deepvibrations 11y agoAmazing- I've been looking for this image for years, sums it up perfectly!
- unethical_ban 11y ago"for nothing" At huge cost to the economy and freedom from government regulations and bureaucracy. Plus, a lot of "green" solutions aren't utopic or practical. It's not all or nothing, and I support being ecologically conscious. But I don't think it's wise to dismiss all criticism of the climate change cult.
- mikeash 11y agoI'm sure there are reasonable criticisms to be had, but until people actually start making them, it's hard not to dismiss all criticism when it's all so terrible. For example, people who refer to it as a "cult."
- unethical_ban 11y agoWell, CAFE standards are a twisted joke, and we're still promoting wind and solar above nuclear. Existing federal regulations for inspection of safety and environmental conditions at oil wells is nonexistent. The DoE can't get their crap together regarding the care of superfund sites. So color me jaded about Dems shouting about tax credits for GM Volts or implementing cap and trade.
- planfaster 11y agoHere's some criticism for you: if this is not a cult, why did they lie about the "97% of scientists" consensus? http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052702303480304579578462813553136 http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB100014240527023034803045795784... "Yet the assertion that 97% of scientists believe that climate change is a man-made, urgent problem is a fiction. The so-called consensus comes from a handful of surveys and abstract-counting exercises that have been contradicted by more reliable research." If it's Science, why the lies? And why the push for government intervention? I thought Science was about reality, not policy.
- mikeash 11y agoHow am I supposed to take seriously an article which believes a survey of meteorologists is in any way relevant to a claim about the opinions of climate scientists? If climate "skeptics" aren't completely full of it, why do they constantly mix up climate and weather and otherwise constantly demonstrate fundamental misunderstandings of the topic?
- dang 11y agoPlease stop taking HN threads on generic ideological tangents. You've been doing this a ton, and it's not what this site is for. In fact, there's little that's worse for HN. Such tangents are predictable, which makes them tedious, and tendentious, which makes them prolific. Tedious plus prolific equals sludge. Moreover, such discussions only get worse as they proceed, never better.
- claar 11y agoThis is a weak argument. No one is saying that smog in cities is desirable. But rather that there is insufficient evidence to show certain interventions are necessary/economical/effective.
- karl_gluck 11y agoCome on, that's incredibly disingenuous. Of course it's not terrible to improve the atmosphere. But you're making it sound like all methods are equivalent; when there are limited resources to address the problem, they need to be allocated accordingly. It's a similar situation to water in California -- yes, everyone should cut down on consumption. But the single-family mega-mansions using as much as 90 normal residences [1] cutting 10% of their water usage has a much bigger impact than an average residence cutting 10%. Edited: If a billion dollars spent in the US reduces US emissions by 5%, and US emissions and emissions from these fires are equivalent, and it costs less to incentivize Indonesian / Malaysian palm oil producers to stop burning peat forest and reduce emissions by 5%, we should be doing that instead. [1] https://www.revealnews.org/article/the-wet-prince-of-bel-air-who-is-californias-biggest-water-guzzler/ https://www.revealnews.org/article/the-wet-prince-of-bel-air... Original before edit: If the US could spend a billion dollars to reduce our carbon emissions by 5%, or could spend a billion dollars paying Indonesia & Malaysia to stop setting palm oil on fire and reduce THEIR emissions, the results are not equivalent. The latter is 200x more effective. [the 200x was from a misreading of the article]
- mikeash 11y agoHow is it 200x more effective to reduce the emissions of Indonesia and Malaysia by 5%? These fires exceeded the emissions of the US for 26 days and otherwise the US far outweighs these countries when it comes to emissions. If the choice is 5% of ours or 5% of theirs, surely 5% of ours produces a far greater effect.
- karl_gluck 11y agoYou're right, I must have misread the original article while composing my response. This is what I was remembering: "Taken together, the impact of peat fires on global warming can be more than 200 times greater than fires on other lands."
- mikeash 11y agoIt sounds like the original article may have greatly overstated the emissions from these fires. I came in after it got fixed so I don't know.
- oberstein 11y agoCrocodile humor.
- planfaster 11y agoCartoons 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".
- mikeash 11y agoWe already saw what happens when the government doesn't take control and lets industry do what they will. The result is massive pollution, widespread health problems, and global climate change. And in fact we already saw what happens when government does take control. The result is vastly improved pollution, and without wrecking the economy.
- planfaster 11y ago> We already saw what happens when the government doesn't take control and lets industry do what they will. Where? What's that place where the industry (short for "all private companies") can do what they will (your words), meaning, government cannot curb their will? I've never heard of such place in all my readings of History and Economics. I'm ready for you to blow my mind!
- 11y ago
- gambiting 11y agoWell, 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-problem-1404170442 http://www.wsj.com/articles/north-dakotas-latest-fracking-pr...
- codecamper 11y agoAgreed. Methane is way worse than CO2 as well. It is really shocking that companies inside the US borders are allowed to do this.
- mschuster91 11y agoThe methane burns off so it's "just" CO2.
- TheSpiceIsLife 11y agoIt's worth noting the natural gas (mostly methane) is burned as it's vented to atmosphere, so it's mostly CO2 and water.
- Avalaxy 11y agoThe fact that other people are messing up doesn't mean that you should as well. Everyone should take responsibility for their own actions.
- planfaster 11y agoThe Tragedy of the Commons illustrates precisely the opposite: that if other people are messing up a common good (the world, or the atmosphere, in this case), that means you should mess up as well, or you lose (in every sense: productivity, sustainability, etc).
- _nedR 11y agoYep. Like the WWII Japanese General said : "Just went we learn to play poker they change the game to bridge."
- codecamper 11y agoWouldn't raising the cost of energy around the world mean that goods made in China become more expensive. Meaning... we'd maybe move some jobs back to the US. Maybe a carbon tax would actually boost the US economy?
- thrownaway2424 11y agoYour 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.
- mikeash 11y agoI 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!
- masklinn 11y agoAs the article notes Indonesia exceeded US greenhouse productions for 26 days. Out of 300. Don't worry love, the US are still solid #2 emitters of grenhouse gases (China being #1)
- noobermin 11y agoMy SO is in Singapore, and she complains almost everyday about the smog. While we in the US and other 1st worlders could do much to stem our pollution especially given our ability, the fight against climate change has to be a global fight, and not just the acts of a few willing nations.
- swagswag 11y agotrudat brotha
- Alkim 11y agoI 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. ;-)
- oberstein 11y agoAre 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 things better.
- whatgoodisaroad 11y ago> That state should be unacceptable for a first world city. Happens in Los Angeles.
- newman314 11y agoDo you understand how small Singapore is? (Not trying to be snarky) But yeah, they are not invading anyone anytime soon.
- oberstein 11y agoYeah, but Israel is also tiny and can still kick the ass of everyone else in the Middle East. Similar to Israel, Singapore has a lot going for it with respect to modern warfare that makes up for its population and landmass deficit. I agree that total invasion is probably very unlikely in the foreseeable immediate future.
- newman314 11y agoIsrael - 8522 sq miles Singapore - 278 sq miles You are off by quite a bit there. Besides, whether you are willing to admit it or not, a LARGE part of the Israeli swagger is the understanding that they have the full might of the US army behind them (be it right or not). Singapore does not have an equivalent relationship.
- codecamper 11y agopalm oil is a terrible, terrible thing. If you have travelled at all to central america or asia, you know what i mean. (ok yes, you got me... traveling to asia isn't so hot for the environment either) Wherever you think a jungle should be, you see palm trees. As far as the eye can see. If you care about this. And you probably should. Then have a look at the ingredient list & don't buy products with palm oil.
- flycaliguy 11y agoDon't forget that palm oil is sometimes used in animal feed and will not be found on packaging. A family member recently switched from buying margarine to butter after reading about the environmental effects of palm oil. Our dairy farming uncle then reminded us that they use palm oil in the feed for the animals to aid in managing digestion and fat levels.
- GordonS 11y agoIMO, it also tastes bloody horrible!
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- krisroadruck 11y agoBurning 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 much.
- dymk 11y agoSort 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.
- thrownaway2424 11y agoYou cannot just infinitely accumulate trees. In a steady state, forests neither sequester nor release carbon.
- sliverstorm 11y agoNo, but you can still increase the amount of sequestered carbon by expanding forestland, as forest is a carbon sink. We can control atmospheric carbon by reducing emissions, but we can also control it by sequestering more carbon, which more forestland can help do.
- masklinn 11y ago> In a steady state, forests neither sequester nor release carbon. In a steady state, forests are carbon stores, same as coal veins, oil reservoirs or methane clathrate.
- briholt 11y agoTo 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.
- 11y ago
- siilats 11y agoThe 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.
- mikeash 11y agoHow is it misleading? The title seems to be saying exactly that. Or was it edited?
- aidenn0 11y agoIf the fires only burn e.g. 1 day per year, then they emit far less per day on average than the US.
- masklinn 11y agoThe title implies continuous superiority of indonesian emissions, not that they out-produced the US emissions for a peak day (or 20, out of 365)
- mikeash 11y agoI don't see it. Maybe because I already knew that the fires aren't a continuous thing?
- paublyrne 11y agoTitle says 'per' day, meaning each day, implying continuity.
- mikeash 11y agoI guess it depends on what the complaint is about it being misleading. I thought the complaint was that the headline somehow implied they're always emitting more, year-round. But maybe it's something else? Note that the original correction is also completely wrong, as it says the fires emitted more for one day, while it's actually for a total of 26 days so far and probably set to increase further.
- miles 11y agoAnd, 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/ http://www.cowspiracy.com/ [2] http://www.fao.org/docrep/010/a0701e/a0701e00.HTM http://www.fao.org/docrep/010/a0701e/a0701e00.HTM
- cjensen 11y agoAll 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.
- masklinn 11y ago> 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.
- gburt 11y agoWhat he is saying is that it doesn't grow. It is a constant relationship. Cows sequester GHGs from the atmosphere (via the food they eat, mostly) and then release it. I don't have enough data to know if I agree with his point (especially since the GHG changes form), but his "long-term" refers to the life cycle of a single cow.
- masklinn 11y ago> What he is saying is that it doesn't grow. It is a constant relationship. Cows sequester GHGs from the atmosphere (via the food they eat, mostly) and then release it. There's two issues with that: 1. cows really release the carbon stored in the food they eat, that carbon could otherwise stay locked (as it was before we cleared the field from which we grow feed). 2. cows also convert part of the carbon their release from their feed into comparatively worse greenhouse gases than just CO2
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- duskwuff 11y agoMuch 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.
- scythe 11y agoBasically 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.
- nostromo 11y agoSo 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?
- guelo 11y agoWrong. 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.
- aidenn0 11y agoIs it cheaper than rapeseed or soy? I know corn oil in the US is cheap, but it's also heavily subsidized.
- guelo 11y agoYes. http://www.indexmundi.com/commodities/?commodity=palm-oil&commodity=soybean-oil http://www.indexmundi.com/commodities/?commodity=palm-oil&co... http://www.indexmundi.com/commodities/?commodity=palm-oil&commodity=rapeseed-oil http://www.indexmundi.com/commodities/?commodity=palm-oil&co...
- nostromo 11y agoYou're reading an American-centricity into my comment that wasn't there. The fact remains that palm oil consumption is growing world-wide, in no small part as a replacement for trans-fats. http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v448/n7157/full/448993a.html http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v448/n7157/full/448993a... http://news.mongabay.com/2015/06/fda-bans-artificial-trans-fats-paving-way-for-more-u-s-palm-oil-consumption http://news.mongabay.com/2015/06/fda-bans-artificial-trans-f...
- mikeyouse 11y ago
- ck2 11y agoI find that hard to believe given that the way US farmers harvest sugar cane is to burn the entire field off. https://google.com/search?tbm=isch&q=sugar+cane+burn+field https://google.com/search?tbm=isch&q=sugar+cane+burn+field
- IkmoIkmo 11y agoSliiightly 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)
- fredkbloggs 11y ago> 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). Some of the things you note that aren't counted should be counted. But burning trees should not. Those trees removed the same amount of CO2 from the atmosphere while they were growing that is given off when they are burned; it will eventually be absorbed by whatever is then grown there afterward. The same thing goes for most (but not all) agricultural processes. The real problem is not the CO2 that's given off, but the CO, soot, and various other organic and nitrogen compounds. Better known as smoke, which fouls the air for critters, like humans, that breathe it. Any change in the greenhouse effect is incidental and temporary. That doesn't mean that Indonesia should not be required to compensate those whose air is fouled, if they wish to continue allowing this. My guess is that if they were forced to do so, they would suddenly find it much easier to enforce their existing law against this type of burning.
- oneJob 11y agoSomeone please come up with a butter that uses only algae produced inputs. You'll save the world.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- contingencies 11y agoFact: Singaporeans own and operate the burning palm oil plantations via Indonesian shell companies and labor. (Source: Horse's mouth)
- cozzyd 11y agoI was just looking at http://epic.gsfc.nasa.gov/epic-archive/png/epic_1b_20151021041711_00.png http://epic.gsfc.nasa.gov/epic-archive/png/epic_1b_201510210... and wondering what all that smoke was.