Not so much profit as a particular failure of accounting. Focus on privatization of profit with socialization of costs allows making staggering and possibly fatal costs someone else’s problem.
Let's emulate world class leadership from the greatest country on earth, and immediately stop funding those alarmists doomsayers.
Anyway, I read on HN that AI was about to solve climate change any time now. I'm sure prompting LLMs the right way will harness the world knowledge to generatively hallucinate a way for trees to grow better.
Notably, politically the notion of forests as carbon sinks have been a very convenient fig leaf for politicians not wanting to reduce emissions in other parts of society.
That’s what people thought 20 years ago, careful accounting seems to show climax ecosystems of all kinds still capture carbon if undisturbed, I met someone who helped prove it by measuring trees with calipers year after year.
They measure/model aboveground biomass, and present the change in that measurement as being a source/sink in the carbon cycle, ie as coming from / going to the atmosphere.
But I also see multiple places they mention the changes as being at least partly due to logging or wood harvesting. Which seems like biomass being removed and yet not going into the atmosphere.
I don't even want to read these anymore. The whole climate crisis made me feel so powerless. I try to vote, I try to educate, I try to be vocal but it's all for nothing because ... I'm not even sure. I think it's stupid and greedy people.
It feels as if the more I go in one direction, the more the rest of the world goes in the other.
My in-laws are a lost cause. I can make immediate ground in most discussions, but give it a day and they're back to their same FUD arguments that I'd just taken down the day before.
The pitiable thing about their position is, I think, that they want the lifestyle they lived for their kids and grandkids, and think that this "green scam" will impoverish and threaten the viability of their extending family.
Unfortunately the future could be much worse than that, but for basically the opposite reason.
It's surreal watching human denial working in real-time.
Humanity being the first species to go extinct because it was more profitable than continued existence.
Not so much profit as a particular failure of accounting. Focus on privatization of profit with socialization of costs allows making staggering and possibly fatal costs someone else’s problem.
We've turned the tragedy of the commons into an economic practice.
AKA externalities.
Remind me of the fantastic line:
"The economy is a wholly owned subsidiary of the environment"
https://www.newyorker.com/cartoon/a16995
Let's emulate world class leadership from the greatest country on earth, and immediately stop funding those alarmists doomsayers.
Anyway, I read on HN that AI was about to solve climate change any time now. I'm sure prompting LLMs the right way will harness the world knowledge to generatively hallucinate a way for trees to grow better.
I think Elon is working towards colonizing Mars because once it's all worked out, that's what Earth's environment will be like.
Nope, it's Venus that we're racing towards.
See https://screenrant.com/far-side-gary-larson-dinosaur-extinct...
Humanity is not going extinct.
Happened in Finland too— forests becoming net carbon producers.
https://www.icos-cp.eu/news-and-events/news/finlands-forests...
Notably, politically the notion of forests as carbon sinks have been a very convenient fig leaf for politicians not wanting to reduce emissions in other parts of society.
The link you are replying to is explicit that forests are carbon sinks (which is just a scientific fact), and that the change here is due to logging.
Planting more trees than you cut down is an effective way of offsetting CO2 emissions.
And… “increased logging, rising emissions in peatland forests and declining carbon sink of mineral soils.”
And Austria
https://www.derstandard.at/story/3000000268965/vom-retter-zu...
Isn't there an age-of-tree related curve? Up until XX years they are net producers -afterwards they become sinks.
That’s what people thought 20 years ago, careful accounting seems to show climax ecosystems of all kinds still capture carbon if undisturbed, I met someone who helped prove it by measuring trees with calipers year after year.
At a certain zoom level we appear very similar to bacteria that undergoes a population explosion, destroys its host and ultimately dies out.
They measure/model aboveground biomass, and present the change in that measurement as being a source/sink in the carbon cycle, ie as coming from / going to the atmosphere.
But I also see multiple places they mention the changes as being at least partly due to logging or wood harvesting. Which seems like biomass being removed and yet not going into the atmosphere.
I don't even want to read these anymore. The whole climate crisis made me feel so powerless. I try to vote, I try to educate, I try to be vocal but it's all for nothing because ... I'm not even sure. I think it's stupid and greedy people.
It feels as if the more I go in one direction, the more the rest of the world goes in the other.
My in-laws are a lost cause. I can make immediate ground in most discussions, but give it a day and they're back to their same FUD arguments that I'd just taken down the day before.
The pitiable thing about their position is, I think, that they want the lifestyle they lived for their kids and grandkids, and think that this "green scam" will impoverish and threaten the viability of their extending family.
Unfortunately the future could be much worse than that, but for basically the opposite reason.
It's surreal watching human denial working in real-time.
This is really sad to read. Unfortunate that it will likely keep happening as forests disappear, seas acidify, and climate keeps warming. Very scary.
The change here is due to logging, not some inevitable climate feedback loop. Cut down fewer trees than you grow, and the situation reverses.
In fact, the natural feedback cycle of increasing CO2 in the atmosphere is for greenery to increase, not decrease.
Easy solution then, let's just cut down on logging.
...waits 50 years...
or plant more trees. immediate.