Carbon Releases in Asia

ninthwave writes "After previous discussions on global warning, I thought I would post some interesting research in the affects of forest fires and drought in Asia on carbon output. The Guardian has this article. More detailed information can be found in these articles from Leicester University and the BBC"

Comments

It takes Apple enough Time!!

[josh crawley]

Damn. I guess we Americans are lucky to have "Jobs" release Apple's Carbon API to us.....

(hyuk hyuk)

Re:It takes Apple enough Time!!

[spoons67]

Heh, too bad Cocoa wasn't released over Asia.

Well,

[Slashdotess]

I work on this type of stuff and I think it's to early to determine anything on the subject at the moment. I don't usually say this but it's true in this circumstance.

We have government officials (Bush) that think they know everything, that's the dangerous thing

Re:Well,

[mgs1000]

Wha?

Re:Well,

[Thag]

I work on this type of stuff and I think it's to early to determine anything on the subject at the moment. I don't usually say this but it's true in this circumstance.

Oh my GOD, an open and honest scientist! I wish more scientists had the honesty to say "we don't know yet."

You, ma'am, are a national treasure!

Jon Acheson

Re:Well,

[5KVGhost]

Actually Bush and company are saying pretty much the same thing you are, though perhaps not as forthrightly. It's some scientists who are being dogmatic, presumably because scaring people into doing what you want them to do is much easier than educating them and allowing them to have a part in making a rational decision.

Re:Well,

[ValiantButter]

Kind of reminds me of that old Christian canard known as Pascal's wager.

Sure, all this climate change stuff may be nonsense, but are you willing to bet the house on that assumption?

It's a good thing that this is being debated; the vast majority of scientists do follow scientific principle and will adjust their hypotheses based on empirical evidence.

But somehow, the idea that what happens in another country has nothing to do with us doesn't really strike me as legitimate. After all, the peat fires in Indonesia are the result of massive logging that, in part, goes toward filling our "need" for old-growth wood. And massive coal burning in China powers the factories that puts the goods on the shelves at Wal-Mart.

There's nothing wrong with questioning Conventianal Wisdom. There's everything wrong with ducking Responsibility.

Re:Well,

[elakazal]

The Bush administration's handling of science is pretty simple, and has absolutely nothing to do with scientific truth. It basically goes something like this:

1. Does the Christian Right oppose {insert issue X}?

If Yes, then research has demonstrated that {issue X} is dangerous, not to mention, morally repugnant.

If No, proceed to #2.

2. Does {issue X} imply the need for action which might result in any major corporation losing money?

If Yes, then there has not yet been sufficient research on the subject.

If No, proceed to #3.

3. Does any major corporation stand to make a great deal of money because of {issue X}?

If Yes, the research has indicated that it is vital that government give vast amounts of money to the development of {issue X}.

If No, then ignore and move on to next issue.

After running through the above process, observe public opinion. If it appears that opinion regarding {issue X} is sufficiently negative to possible cost you even a severely compromised election, immediately reverse your opinion, claim that's what you were saying all along, and that the research supports your current stance.

Re:Well,

[elakazal]

The problem has less to do with the scientists and more to do with the people asking the questions. The media isn't real fond of publishing stories which basically say "no one really has more than a very slight idea what's going on with any of this." So scientists are encouraged to speculate, and that speculation is repeated as fact. Scientists are happy to speculate...that's kind of what the job IS, as long as you then attempt to back that speculation up with fact.

Not to say that there aren't scientists whose minds will never be swayed by any amount of evidence on certain subjects, but those people are rarer than it might seem.

Re:Well,

[elakazal]

And, if at any point you get tired of muddling your way through such a complex system, bomb Iraq.

Re:Well,

[PEdelman]

Bush is saying something like "Gee, you scientists can't prove something is going to happen, so let's do nothing", which in my opinion is equivalent to saying something along the lines of "Gee, I can't prove that this plant is poisonous (or for that matter that some dog urinated on it), so it's save to eat it".

Not another Apple article on /.

[Dog and Pony]

Haven't we heard enough about carbon and why it is released upon the public yet?

nothing a little nuclear winter can't help

[krel]

all these weapons of mass destruction, and the un insists on dismanteling them... a cryin' shame

Responsibility

[crumbz]

I think it is about time that the dominant species on this planet (i.e. you and me) start taking some responsibility for climate change.

I believe that the greatest threat to the environment is over-population. While many do not agree with this, I believe that this may be the key to living in a sustainable and habitable planet for the next 10,000 ro 100,000,000 years.

What do Slashdotters think?

Re:Responsibility

[clickety6]

I believe that the greatest threat to the environment is over-population.

I believs the greates threat to the environment is over-consumption fueled by greed and selfishness and the refusla by certain developed nations to face the consequences of their own actions. Let's face it, if we go on the way we are, this planet will be wasted long before over-population becomes a problem...

Re:Responsibility

[Anonymous Coward]

Once again, Linux comes to the rescue. Linux is being used to help reduce the population growth. It is a well known fact that Linux users *don't* get laid (this is pretty much by definition) and for every new Linux user there is one less person breeding.

Re:Responsibility

[spicyjeff]

While the environment might be threatened by over-population, it is only our environment, the one that allows humans to survive. The Earth will continue on its cycle of renewal long after the last human has passed, or before.

So while "Saving the Planet" is a noble cause...maybe people would be more responsive if they realized they are saving themselves, their loved ones, their children and their grandchildren.

Re:Responsibility

[monadicIO]

Overpopulation is just a part of the problem. The real problem is an inappropriate amount of resource usage by developed countries, in particular the US. If you compare the per-person pollution caused by the US, it is about 20 times that for India/China. Even after normalising for population (India/China have 4-5 times the population) that still gives a much higher pollution caused by US (as also Europe). The developing/underdeveloped countries (which contribute maximum to the total global population) will take years (even with the projected population growth trends) to match the pollution caused by the developed nations. I think the key to reduced population is a changing approach to consumption (giving public transport a priority, reduced paper/electricty use drives, etc)

Re:Responsibility

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, and a good place to start is to turn off your damn computer and go out and plant a tree.

Re:Responsibility

[scruggs_style]

So, over the course of the past 2 billion years, the temperature of the earth has not changed a few ( less than 10) degrees over a few thousand years?. Did humans cause the Ice Ages (hint: we weren't driving SUV's then, that's for sure.).

People don't like to admit that have only a fraction of data to base the concept of Global warming on, and the effects are even arguable. Our climate has self corrected before, and will again. What about the theories that there will be more vapor in the ozone b/c of warmer temperatures, and less light from the sun will get in, and the tempratures will fall back off?

One could make the argument that stopping global warming would more interrupt the natural cycle.

Re:Responsibility

[mgs1000]

The article was talking about forest fires in Indonesia.

The fires might have been started by humans, but we were not the cause. The drought and resulting dried vegetation led to the fires. If no man had ever set foot in Indonesia, those forest fires would probably have happened anyway.

How can we take responsibilty for that? What could we have done differently?

Re:Responsibility

[elmegil]

So let's have a war with Iraq and kill off some of that overpopulation.

Might try some other countries while we're at it....

Re:Responsibility

[saider]

I agree with you, although I think that we have reached the point where it will be very difficult for the Earth to get rid of us. We are already surviving in hostile environments where we do not belong. Any climate changes that the earth can dish out will be unlikely to kill us off. It might reduce the population by 99%, but there will probably always be some small communities somewhere eeking out a living in a niche environment.

Re:Responsibility

[Anonymous Coward]

Jesus will come back way before then. I suspect His return will occur well befor global warming has any significant effect.

Re:Responsibility

[mfulk]

How about normalising for production?

Re:Responsibility

[Jeremy Erwin]

The Indonesian fires were started for land clearance purposes (slash and burn agriculture). Because of the heat, (El nino), the fires spread out of control. Much of the fire was fueled not by forests, but by peat. The natural state of peat bog forests is rather swampy-- but humans drained these swamps.

The carbon release estimates, btw, vary from 0.81 to 2.57 billion (I'm not sure if that's a british billion) tonnes. The low estimate corresponds to 13 percent of annual fossil fuel consumption, the high to 40%.

Re:Responsibility

[mr_z_beeblebrox]

I believe that the greatest threat to the environment is over-population. While many do not agree with this, I believe that this may be the key to living in a sustainable and habitable planet for the next 10,000 ro 100,000,000 years.
What do Slashdotters think? This is a problem without solution. China has had legislation regarding population growth for a long time and look at their population as an example. Yes, overpopulation is a problem. However, the symptoms of the problem must be dealt with in a way that does not affect the problem. We will continue to grow rapidly (probably exponentially) as a population. So something else must be done.

Re:Responsibility

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem is that conservation isn't economicaly desirable from a corporate standpoint. A company which makes styrofoam plates certainly has an interest in more people using its (wastefull) product.

Re:Responsibility

[Anonymous Coward]

Its just like us humans to assume that we are the center of the universe and that we are the determinant that effects climate the most. Guess what we are bugs. Solar flares, forrest fires, volcanoes and the 3 trillion real bugs that call this planet home effect the planets climate more than us humans do.

Re:Responsibility

[Anonymous Coward]

What about other planets? NASA has observed global warming on Mars (really). Should we take responsibility for that too?

Re:Responsibility

[stinky wizzleteats]

That would be a brilliant comment except that the third world has cornered the market on the problems of pollution and overbreeding.

Or do you believe that Nebraska farmers are clearing the rainforest to make Big Macs?

Re:Responsibility

[Anonymous Coward]

It is a well known fact that Linux users *don't* get laid

Errm... Actually....

Perhaps I better go uninstall Linux before she realizes I've been cheating on her all these years...

Re:Responsibility

[stinky wizzleteats]

This slashdotter thinks that disease and global war are going to obviate the population problem.

Re:Responsibility

[Anonymous Coward]

NO kidding.

There are too many people out there that don't realize that while we consume a lot of energy and resources, but we do make the most with them.

DUH....

the bumblers

Re:Responsibility

[Anonymous Coward]

The Earth's temperature *has* changed, due to various fairly well-understood factors (orbital dynamics, natural CO2 and methane releases, changes in albedo and mean elevation, etc.) These are well-understood and can be corrected for.

When you do so, you're left with the fact that we've increased the Earth's atmospehric CO2 concentration more than 30% (admittedly, over the course of about 100 years,) and that has been having a predictable and very statistically robust effect on our climate.

Among those who know (and yes, professional climatologists and atmospheric physicists do know more about this than Slashdotters,) there isn't really any question about this anymore. The media slavishly pursues "balance" in reporting this, and therefore used to dig up coal company hacks with horrible bar-napkin math and seemingly intuitive one-factor-cures-all BS like our "water vapor" hypothesis.

Now they just say that there's disagreement, without even trying to report on just how little there is. The lobbying power of the conventional fuel industries is truly awe-inspiring. Don't be their tool; go get your own facts.

Re:Responsibility

[roofingfelt]

actually, I think the latest news on population growth is that it's slowing, and we may see stability or even decline. It's only a projection, but it's interesting to see something more sophisticated than the usual

constant-fertility + geometric-progression = OMG!

http://www.chem.brown.edu/chem12/un%20population/u nPopulation.html

Re:Responsibility

[Anonymous Coward]

for every new Linux user there is one less person breeding.

But linux users are overwhelmingly male. Reducing the number of males breeding does not necessarily reduce population growth.

Gen. Turgidson:
Doctor, you mentioned the ratio of ten women to each man. Now, wouldn't that necessitate the abandonment of the so called monogamous sexual relationship, I mean, as far as men were concerned?

Strangelove:
Regrettably, yes. But it is, you know, a sacrifice required for the future of the human race. I hasten to add that since each man will be required to do prodigious... service along these lines, the women will have to be selected for their sexual characteristics which will have to be of a highly stimulating nature.

Re:Responsibility

[scruggs_style]

Your ignorance is exceeded only by your enthusiasm.

Here are a few examples, not all of which you can blame on politics. There are actually a large number of scientists that do truly believe that global warming is not the threat that people like you, who just parrot the trendy environmentalist jargon of the day, would like to think.
http://www.globalwarming.org/sciup/sci11-1-99.html

Patrick Michaels -- Copyright 1999 Washington Times -- April 13, 1999

Ten years ago the Alps endured a virtually snowless winter. Environmentalists blamed global warming. A Swiss lobbying group, Alp Action, wrote in 1991 that global warming would put an end to winter sports in the Alps by 2025.

This year the Alps have had their greatest snowfall in 40 years, according to very preliminary data. Greenpeace has blamed global warming.

How in the world can that be? Is it possible to blame global warming for every weather anomaly, even if two consecutive events are of opposite sign?

http://www.globalwarming.org/science/chimera.htm

About cloud cover:

Improved satellite data shows that a general trend of increasing cloud amount over both land and ocean since the early 1980s, seems to have reversed in the early 1990s, and total cloud amount of land and ocean now appears to be decreasing. However, there are several studies that suggest regional cloudiness, perhaps especially in the thick precipitating clouds has increased over the 20th century.
From: http://lwf.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/globalwarming. html#Q5

Re:Responsibility

[Anonymous Coward]

I believe that the greatest threat to the environment is over-population.

Well a simply equation, such as TotalImpact = Population * AveImpactPerPerson would suggest that there are two equally important variables: population and average impact per person. Obviously, our impact on the planet is a very complex issue and such simple equations fail to underscore the myriad of important subissues which must be addressed if we are ever to achieve some degree of balance/sustainability. However, that equation would seem to be asking an important, practical question.

A lower population would allow higher consumption rates and impact per person. A higher population would require lower consumption rates and impact per person. Which would you choose?

Personally, I'd vote for a lower population and higher quality of life. Not that the level of consumption/impact is in everyone's opinion directly proportional to quality of life. But for example I'd rather see state of the art medical, educational, and recreational facilities in every community and less people vrs more people and lesser facilities. I'd rather see large homes packed with the latest and greatest technology and less people vrs more people and lesser homes. Etc.

So if you are curious... yes, I would like to see a concerted effort to reduce the earth's human population. I'd also like to see a concerted effort to more evenly distribute that population. As part of a larger movement towards sustainability and higher quality of life for all.

However, sadly, I don't expect to see this in my lifetime. We as a race, at least at this point in time, are far too selfish and shortsighted, distracted and disorganized, to dedicate ourselves to such a massive restructuring of our civilization. I think the next two centuries might be pretty interesting though, in terms of wake up calls that simply can't be ignored.

Re:Responsibility

[error0x100]

The Earth will continue on its cycle of renewal long after the last human has passed, or before

Everyone always says this, as if its indisputable fact that somehow doesn't need to be proved, but I'm going to call you on it: PROVE IT. Whats your reference?

Which aspect of the physics of planet Earth ensures that the Earth will always just have a "cycle of renewal"? Which aspect of physics will prevent the "balance" from running away in any particular direction? Is there some "magical force" in the Universe that always rebalances the Earth's climate? "Mother nature"? "Gaia"? (Hint: neither of these exist. These are pseudo-religuous inventions of our culture, self-re-assuring inventions to make us feel better. "Mother nature" is a fictional concept).

All the evidence we have suggests that the Earth is just a pile of rock and lava and various assorted chemicals and other forms of energy. There is no "magical intelligent deity" behind it. When the shit hits the fan, there will be no magical giant hand that reaches down and starts the "cycle of renewal" over. If this planet gets screwed, chances are, its screwed FOR GOOD.

Just because it hasn't happened yet, doesn't mean it can't. In fact, we have no evidence at all to suggest that it isn't purely by chance that it hasn't happened yet. Show me the scientific paper that proves, for example, that the greenhouse effect CANNOT runaway on Earth, causing our atmosphere to boil away, like Mars. What magical force prevents it from happening? None whatsoever - to our knowledge, our planet is subject to all the same laws of physics that every other planet is. No exception. If the laws of physics allow it, it can happen.

Your statements are pure conjecture. A made-up fallacy to comfort ourselves. We've all heard these arguments repeated so many times we just assume its true, but I've yet to see any proof of it.

And there is no proof of it, because man does NOT understand the Earth's climate well enough yet. We simply do not know if the Earth can "re-balance" itself. Not one human on the planet can claim to 'know' this, mankind does not have this sort of knowledge. Any such claims are tantamount to religion.

Yes, "Saving the Planet" is a noble cause, but if you want to "preserve the environment", you're ultimately doomed to fail - there is unlikely to be room on this planet for both humans AND an "environment" during the next few hundred years. Rather, we have to be practical about it. We have focus on making life on this planet sustainable FOR US over long periods. We must accept the unfortunate that the natural world will have to be almost entirely destroyed to make room for us. BUT, we need to also accept the fact that we will need to do things like replace (for example) the atmosphere-cleaning "machine" that the rainforests are now, with some suitable large-scale replacement technology. We (humans) are ultimately in control of our own destiny. We CAN determine our future, and our ongoing success, but we have work at it, and we have to start accepting responsibility, not just sit around and wait for "mother nature" to come make everything OK.

Re:Responsibility

[aminorex]

Anthropogenic CO2 emissions are a tiny fraction of
the total CO2 emissions due to animal respiration,
natural fires and decomposition, and volcanic
emissions.

I agree that it would be useful to reduce the amount
of greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere, but the
way to do it is not by reducing anthropogenic
emissions, which are not the problem. Instead we
should focus on abatement.

It's not an issue of responsibility, as in a tort.
It's an issue of responsibility as in stewardship
and the consequences of inaction.

Re:Responsibility

[niko9]

I think you should be the first to help us humans out. I can sign you up right here.

Re:Responsibility

[Anonymous Coward]

You quote The Washington Times? You bring the MOONIES into this as an authoritative source?? DUDE!

Re:Responsibility

[Anonymous Coward]

You missed the original posters point then go on to make the same point with just more words.

Re:Responsibility

[ibi]

No doubt you were one of the guys on IRC getting a kick out of blaming New Yorkers for 911.

Apart from disasters such as the Indonesian fires the average "third world" person produces far far less C02 than folks like you do. And their reasons for producing waste tend to be somewhat more convincing than an "SUV just looks much cooler than a minivan" ;-)

Re:Responsibility

[stinky wizzleteats]

No doubt you were one of the guys on IRC getting a kick out of blaming New Yorkers for 911.

I don't understand that statement. Blaming (any) Americans for 9/11 is the direct ideological opposite to the point of view of my original post.

And their reasons for producing waste tend to be somewhat more convincing than an "SUV just looks much cooler than a minivan" ;-)

Interesting. You wish to establish a hierarchy of the nobility of various energy expenditures, which will be judged arbitrarily. Certainly the inequity of the Kyoto accords could be explained by this ideology. I suppose something like yak farts would be higher up the scale than, say, automobile pollution.

I doubt all the hordes of yaks in the world could account for this.

Re:Responsibility

[error0x100]

I know. I agreed with his conclusion but disagreed with the first part. Is that a difficult idea for you to grasp?

Re:Responsibility

[Anonymous Coward]

If you think over-population is a problem, consider how many people manage to live in China. Do you think that where you live is crowded or so stressed that no more people can live ther?

Also make sure you don't reproduce.

They have macintoshes in China?

[Anonymous Coward]

I must need more sleep. I thought the headline related to Apple releasing a version of the Carbon API to Asia. Now they can have a sluggish interface full of worthless eye candy... just like the West.

Re:They have macintoshes in China?

[Anonymous Coward]

Okay, this is a funny comment.

But just to clarify, the Carbon APIs really don't have anything to do with the, as you describe it, "sluggiush" Aqua UI; the interface layer is an abstraction, to wit: a Mac application written on top of the Carbon APIs will run on OS 9 with the Classic look and feel.

Carbon relased in Asia?

[Transient0]

My God! what were they thinking?

Don't they know that Carbon is the most sinister of the basic elements. Superficially less threatening than Plutonium, Carbon can change into diamond, graphite OR coal at will! Nothing can hope to compete with sucha a combination of hardness and combustibility. We are all doomed.

Mankind must vacate Asia at once and put all our resources into developing some Element Hero to combat this element villain so foolhardily released.

Rumor has it that Carbon bonds freely with Hydrogen... perhaps this can be a clue to it's weakness... we can only hope.

Re:Carbon relased in Asia?

[HL]

Mankind must vacate Asia at once and put all our resources into developing some Element Hero to combat this element villain so foolhardily released.

I saw in the latest New Scientist that we have developed Element Zero. Will that do?

Re:Carbon relased in Asia?

[Ark42]

Whats in that? zero protons with zero electrons orbiting? wouldnt that be NOTHING at all?

Re:Carbon relased in Asia?

[HL]

Well, according to the article, it's a nucleus with four neutrons and no protons (and hence no electrons either). It was supposed to be physically impossible, but there were some scientists who said they've seen one.

Re:Carbon relased in Asia?

[Russ Steffen]

Element 0 is also known as a tetraneutron (ie. 4 neutrons in a stable arrangement). It's made my firing a Beryllium-14 atom into a carbon target, producing Beryllium-10 and tetraneutron debris. If it's existance is confirmed, it would be the densest element known - similar to neutron star material.

Re:Carbon relased in Asia?

[robson]

Hehe... it does beg some sort of vague "War On..." status, doesn't it?

"We believe Iraq may be harboring vast deposits of carbon and carbon-based life-forms. We must act now in order to..."

Re:Carbon relased in Asia?

[jsse]

Rumor has it that Carbon bonds freely with Hydrogen... perhaps this can be a clue to it's weakness... we can only hope.

but if they released too much Carbon that each bond with less that 2 Hydrogen, the product would cause global laughing and thus end the civilization as we know it.

Nitpick

[henben]

affects of

effects of

Pass a law!

[99bottles]

As a typical knee jerk reaction to such findings, obviously organizations such as the EPA need to seek laws to outlaw these wildfires!

Re:Pass a law!

[tomstdenis]

Obvious snyde remark.... arson is illegal.

Re:Pass a law!

[Anonymous Coward]

they will reformulate them and make us all pay archer daniels midland a huge check. yay.

reformulated gas, biggest lie i have seen in years or maybe not, it produces less air pollution, just far more water polution.

Re:Pass a law!

[aardvarkjoe]

You think you're being funny.

http://www.msnbc.com/news/831482.asp

In particular, I liked this quote: "The scientists warned that more fires will lead to higher emissions of CO2 unless policies are changed to control land clearance by fire."

Never underestimate the stupidity of the rabid environmentalists. (Before you say that I'm singling them out, that statement applies to anyone who blindly follows any cause.)

How presumptious

[therealmoose]

How arrogant are we, to presume we can change the stability of this world, which has sustained massive volanic releases thousands of times as much carbon dioxide what we have released in a century, metorite impacts more powerful than the biggest nuclear warhead in existance, hurricanes with more force than all the power generated in the US, etc etc. We couldn't do anything to this planet if we wanted to short of using massive amounts of nuclear weapons, and even if we blew ourselves to hell with all the nukes we have it wouldn't mean jack shit it 10,000 years.

It amazes me how much people like to think they are all big and have to take care of the world all of the time.

Re:How presumptious

[Anonymous Coward]

We can't do anything to the planet.

We can destroy human civilisation!

If another ice age turns up then the planet doesn't care, its had them before and will have them again. However, agriculture as we know it and the industries that require a well fed population (i.e. all of them) will cease to work and civilisation will cease.

Sod the planet, we need to learn how to terraform nature for our own survival.

Re:How presumptious

[tomstdenis]

While I most certainly agree with the sentiment their *is* a certain level of restraint we should get used to using if we *humans* want to keep living here.

More notably stupid friggin US disposable products. Who the fuck thought up the "swiffer" or whatever its called. Ever heard of a fucking broom? Fuckin middle class idiots have probably killed more people than all of the worlds tyrants put together.

Similarly yuppies with cars, eight TVs, 6 million 40W lights, etc... [I'm guilty of some of these to an extent]. I still laugh at people with SUVs when I think of gas prices, hehehehehe

While we won't affect the existance of Earth *our* survival depends on us taking care of the place.

Tom

Re:How presumptious

[SirSlud]

Actually, we can change this planet enough to seriously affect people's health and welfare.

And thats all that matters. Not even the greenest-of-the-green is trying to say that we can destroy the planet. For that matter, what does destroying the planet mean, anyhow? I think if you stopped and tried to apply context to most people who talk about damaging the earth, you'd realize they're really talking about damaging the ecosystem and conditions _we_ need to live.

Everytime there's an environment article, someone has to go point out how we can't destroy the planet. Of course we can't, but we can and have adversely affected the environment _we_ have to live in.

Congratulations for scoring a +5 on a moot point.

Re:How presumptious

[Simon Field]

If the goal was simply to protect the earth, then you would be right.

But consider the effects on humans if we continue to change the world we evolved to live in. Our crops might survive, and we might not starve due to lack of enough food to feed billions. But as the heat expands the oceans like the liquid in a thermometer, our coastal cities become threatened. And whole island nations in the Pacific can be inundated.

The earth will survive. But I rather like it the way it is. I have an economic stake in preserving it.

So far, the change has been gradual enough that we can cope -- indeed we hardly notice. But there are positive feedback elements in global warming that cause the pace to accelerate. At some point, our abilities to cope will be overwhelmed.

Re:How presumptious

[geekoid]

"The World" will survice, one wau or another. The question is, can we control how we change it so it will continue to support us?

To say removing all the rain forests has no impact is contradictory to what we know.

It is a species responsibilty(to itself) that it figures out how to live within the confines of the enviroment that it was created in, or it will become extinct. We are different then most species in that we can figure out how to change are enviroment to suit us. Unfortunatly, what suits us may not be very forward thinking and self defeating, in the long term.

Yes, I know, in the long term we're all dead, however I would like my grandkids to go swimming in the ocean not have to fear biologic contamination. That is goin gon at some very popular beachs right now.

Re:How presumptious

[Annoyed Coward]

Who cares?

Re:How presumptious

[mr_z_beeblebrox]

We couldn't do anything to this planet if we wanted to short of using massive amounts of nuclear weapons, and even if we blew ourselves to hell with all the nukes we have it wouldn't mean jack shit it 10,000 years.

The point of environmental laws isn't that we think that we are going to 'destroy' earth it is that we think we will destroy our ecosystem. The ecosystem is actually very frail and many extinctions have been tied to minor changes in the ecosystem. Wether or not the planet is here in 10,000 years is an irrelevent point in terms of how we make environmental decisions.

Re:How presumptious

[Annoyed Coward]

Guess, earth has come through most desastrous phases including something where even a cocroach will fail to survive.

Does not mean that we have right to play with the eco system. But we need to keep our nerves down. Ok.

Re:How presumptious

[kfx]

The earth will be here until the sun goes nova, and short of a nuclear holocaust, earth will be livable for humans for just as long. Not everything on earth is quite so adaptable, however, and that is the point of some eco-laws.

The problem with most eco-laws, however, is that they seek to govern activities that are contributing very little to environmental changes. Certainly, dumping a few hundred gallons of sludge in your river is a bad thing, but when you look at large-scale things like global warming, there's a problem. There is a mountain of evidence that earth has been warming little by little ever since the last Ice Age, and nothing we do for good or bad will change that. Additionally, there is just as much evidence (saltiness levels in the oceans, changes in currents) that we are headed not for an overblown greenhouse effect, but another Ice Age.

To sum it all up, we can do little things to keep X species or X environment more or less intact, but global weather trends are way out of human control. Over-restrictive laws trying to slow earth's natural processes down do nothing but hurt our economies.

Re:How presumptious

[mr_z_beeblebrox]

Over-restrictive laws trying to slow earth's natural processes down do nothing but hurt our economies.

Thanks George! What school did you study ecology at?

Re:How presumptious

[ninthwave]

The thing is x species include human species.

I for one think that the idea here is as a species are we going to make it through the conditions we have to live in, with enough of society intact to carry forward the advances we have made or do we suffer a massive trama to the species and hve to wait another 100,000 years before we can look towards space travel or disease control, or any advance that is worthy to the species.

We are tied very closely to our ecosystem how far we can be removed from its working I for one would not like to test. But in this lifetime I believe it won't bother me much, I can keep my standard of living and probably do ok. Two three generations down the road who knows, but I would rather try to have some legacy other than problems to hand that generation.

Re:How presumptious

[fluffy666]

..which has sustained massive volanic releases thousands of times as much carbon dioxide what we have released in a century...

I keep hearing this. However, I've never seen anyone saying it bother to quantify it. Volcanic CO2 emissions are around 110 million tonnes anually; Human around 10 Billion. Please check your figures.

Going out on a limb !?!?

[Brigadier]

I know I'm going to get flamed for this. But we Human beings are part of the ecosystem. As opposed to watching over it. If we were to pollute the earth and kill ourself off. In a millennia or so the ecosystem would cylcle and bring forth a whole plethora of new species. I'm not saying we should do as we want. But I do think peopel should just admit we are protecting our own posterity and not "mother earth" As george carlin used to say all the earth has to do is shake us off like flees. Balancing our use of resources so that it doesn't affect the environment is more to protect us.

Re:Going out on a limb !?!?

[SirSlud]

When folks yell "Save the Planet" they really mean "Save the Planet enough such that we can stay alive."

We shouldn't care about the distinction. Of course our efforts are designed to save ourselves. Folks who think humans are arrogant because we talk like we can destroy the planet (ie, not just the habitable conditions we require as a species) are simply looking for an 'out' .. a semantical justification for not giving a shit.

Of course planet earth will go on just fine without us; who cares what the words we use are, I'd just like to ensure we (or my grandkids, for that matter) don't have to wear gas masks to go to the corner store at some point in the future.

So I agree with you, but it's always confused me why people feel the need to point it out. In the end, a person either believes that we're setting ourselves up for some _serious_ human-endangering problems or not.

Think about it. When people say, "Save my house!" (lets say its on fire), nobody points out that the house doesn't have feelings or that all the molecules in the house will just end up in other places (in the smoke or in the ashes). We recognize that what the person _means_ is "Save the house I have to live in!" Same logic applies to the environmentalist's warcry.

Re:Going out on a limb !?!?

[tiedyejeremy]

Why is it that logical thought and pragmatism are always thought of as "going out on a limb" and flamebait?

Have the *hands on face* "oh my god!" knee-jerk types really taken over?

Re:Going out on a limb !?!?

[dpilot]

Can't really argue about what you say, and I have no problem admitting that I wish to protect my own posterity. Not to be vain, but to me (probably not to you) the world would be a much more boring place without my family, friends and me in it.

As for watching over the ecosystem, it's really more a matter of watching over our own conduct and how it affects the ecosystem. Aren't we really talking about the behavior we try to teach our children, only apply it on a species/planetary scale?

On the other side of the coin, we can do some really bad damage to the Earth's ecosystem. There are short-term damages and long-term damages. Look at it this way, genetic diversity is the resource pool nature uses to recover from a disaster. In this light, our biggest "crime" is the rampant extinctions that are happening as we make room for more people. It'll take longer to fill all of the niches when there's less to start with. But then again, if it's nuclear war, the mutation rate will pick up and help solve that problem.

Re:Going out on a limb !?!?

[tedrlord]

I don't know if I agree. Gasmasks can be a stylish accessory to any ensemble. I'm sure we've seen those cyberpunk movies and such where gasmasks are de rigueur. They look pretty cool, don't they?

I mean, yeah, it's good to have an atmosphere that will support life and all, but keen fashion sense is pretty important too.

Re:Going out on a limb !?!?

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry to flame, but that is possibly the worst English i have ever seen on Slashdot. Your ideas aren'd bad, even though they are just rehashes, but please, take a spelling and grammar class.

Re:Going out on a limb !?!?

[Paradox !-)]

There really are TWO answers to the "spoiling the Earth for human habitation" question, aren't there?

One is fixing the Earth. The environment, etc.

The other is leaving.

Face it folks, mankind IS a parasite (or, as Agent Smith would say, a virus). We use up resources much faster than they can be replenished naturally. But we have the capacity to leave the planet.

And the thing is, it's a good idea, too. Overpopulation could be helped by lots of people moving off planet, the research and science involved in space programs with the stated objective of eventual human colonization of other planets would probably yield tremendous advances that would have beneficial side-effects for the environment (like the research on the bugs needed to consume waste products on a long voyage, which could probably be used to clean up landfills too).

Save the environment, colonize Mars!

Re:Going out on a limb !?!?

[error0x100]

In a millennia or so the ecosystem would cylcle and bring forth a whole plethora of new species

WHY? Why should it? What are your references for this information? Can you prove it, or are you just assuming its true because you've heard people say it so often? Which fundamental system of the planet will ensure that the balance is restored and that new species will be "spewed forth" if we were to trigger a catastrophic irreversible runaway climate change process that destroyed the atmosphere?

Can you prove your statement or is it really just a hopeful guess with nothing whatsoever to back it other than 'well it hasn't happened yet'?

Re:Going out on a limb !?!?

[error0x100]

As george carlin used to say all the earth has to do is shake us off like flees

The Earth is just a planet, you know. It doesn't have a will of its own. Its not a living thing. It can't make decisions. It has no desires. It isn't going to magically decide one day to "shake us off like fleas" when its "had enough of us" any more than my own house could throw me out if I threw rubbish everywhere in it. The "ecosystem" does NOT have limitless capabilities to "rebalance itself", because unfortunately it itself is also just subject to the laws of physics. And those laws of physics quite strongly suggest that every living thing on planet Earth CAN be wiped out permanently, for good. "Mother nature" will not come along and save the Earth, because "mother nature" is a fictional concept.

Re:Going out on a limb !?!?

[R.Caley]

if we were to trigger a catastrophic irreversible runaway climate change process that destroyed the atmosphere?

How are we going to destroy 5*10^18Kg of atmosphere? That would be SOME climatic change.

If you just mean change the composition, it is unlikely we will ever manage anything a fraction as dramatic as was done by whatever lifeform it was which first developed photosynthesys. Life survived that.

Remember that to eliminate life we would have to turn all of the earth into an environment worse than, for example, the cooling water of an operating nuclear reactor (since we know life can survive in such conditions).

The Upside to All This...

[PHAEDRU5]

Yesterday I read an article in the Seattle P-I about how global warming is making it possible to use the Northwest passage for commercial purposes during certain months of the year.

You know: shorter voyages, less diesel burned, less pollution, falling amounts of carbon in the air, colder climate, northwest passage not navigable, longer voyages, more diesel burned, more pollution, rising amounts....

Pat
--
"Turn, turn, turn..."

Re:The Upside to All This...

[Jeremy Erwin]

It's a beautiful cycle of change and renewal, only if you ignore the other environmental effects of large scale shipping through the northwest passage. oils spills, bilge water transfers, behavioral changes in the wildlife, etc.

Re:The Upside to All This...

[mr_z_beeblebrox]

You know: shorter voyages, less diesel burned, less pollution, falling amounts of carbon in the air, colder climate, northwest passage not navigable, longer voyages, more diesel burned, more pollution, rising amounts....

The other upside is that only the strong will survive....Come on listen to this "The upside to global warming" There is no upside that will balance out recklessly changing the climate. That study was probably personally financed by Dick Cheney, and now our president will use it to show why emissions controls are unconstitutional barriers of industry.

Save the Earth!

[wiredog]

Support Global Thermonuclear War!

Don't forget...

[Dri]

That no one has to know. I run folding@home nightly and during the weekend on a couple of linuxmachines. C'mon, what's the threat?!

Whats with slashdot?

[josh crawley]

I just got back to reading /. a bit... But I see a whole bunch of Enviro-spook articles. One's about the magnetic poles switching, andother's about ice melting around the Northwest (southeast?) passage. And now this...

True, it is quite scientific, but there's no good arguments being made. It's a Trollfuck for envirowackos.

Where is there level-headedness? Where is there impartial studies (as in NO funding to Greenpeace)? Where is the "Whole Story"? I'm sure Global warming has goods and bads.

Re:Whats with slashdot?

[jagapen]

Here's a classic example of "refutation by category." Here's how it works: Pay no attention to the thesis presented, just stick a label on it, say "Q.E.D." and refuse to discuss it further.
"Envirowacko" is a good category to use, along with perennial favorites socialist, communist, racist, PC, religious fundamentalist, liberal media and "What about the children?!"

Re:Whats with slashdot?

[Anonymous Coward]

The research behind this Slahdot item has been published in Nature so at least in this case is backed up by a prestigious peer reviewed academic journal.

Re:Whats with slashdot?

[Anonymous Coward]

Uh...Are you sane? Do you like being alive? There are reasons to be concerned with the environment we live in. It's not maintained by some godly force, it's cause and effect. If we are in danger of destabalizing the ecosystem such that we can't live here anymore, then I think there's reason enough to look into it, and try to fix it. As long as it works, that's all that matters. You come up with a plan for survival without the environment of the earth, and I'm sure that most people will forget about being concerned with the environment. In the meantime, there is no alternative. We are not going to settle some other planet in any solar system, at least not in the foreseeable future. I do feel, that a lot people in the environmental movement have succeeded in portraying themselves as crazy people, (i.e. sitting in giant redwood trees etc.), when it would be more beneficial to appeal to common desires (i.e. survival).

Forest Fires in Asia?

[twoslice]

Ya right, you can't fool me. I just know it's all those Hibatchi's that's causing it!

Re:Forest Fires in Asia?

[Anonymous Coward]

"it's all those Hibatchi's that's causing it!"

DUMBFUCK ALERT.

Nevermind the "THAT'S".
I'll make it even more simple for you.

When you take a SINGLE ITEM, i.e. a hibachi, and make it PLURAL, i.e. MANY HIBACHIS, you NEVER FUCKING EVER EVER EVER ADD AN APOSTROPHE!!!!!! NEVER, YOU SAD pathetic FUCK! NEVER!

We have a serious carbon problem

[Simon Field]

While some of that carbon was emitted as soot and other particles that will eventually come out of the air, that's still a lot of carbon dioxide added to the atmosphere.

That is in addition to what started the problem, which was using fire to clear land for farming.

It was recently noted that the planting of forests to be carbon sinks is actually detrimental for the first 10 years, as disturbing the soil to do the planting released 10 years worth of carbon dioxide into the air.

Add to this the push to use more coal in the U.S. as part of the national energy policy (coal is nearly pure carbon, and thus releases more greenhouse gas than, say, natural gas, which has hydrogen as a major energy contributor).

It seems like the problems are going to get worse before they get better. We need to put a lot of effort into clean and renewable energy -- make it affordable, instead of relying on the altruism of those who run their cars on biodiesel or solar electricity and install compact fluorescent lights. It's one thing to try to legislate a solution -- but using economics to solve the problems is more likely to work.

Re:We have a serious carbon problem

[shepd]

>It was recently noted that the planting of forests to be carbon sinks is actually detrimental for the first 10 years, as disturbing the soil to do the planting released 10 years worth of carbon dioxide into the air.

Not to mention pretty much useless in the long run, considering trees are known to represent far, far less than even 25% of the worlds CO2 to O2 conversion. Trees just don't give much "bang for the buck" when it comes to CO2 to O2 conversion. But they do look nice, and they certainly make a high-value ecological-bandwagon mascot.

Thermal emissions

[Bluesman]

I'm not conviced that our global warming trend has anything to do with the greenhouse effect.

Does anyone think that maybe, just MAYBE, that thermal emissions from our inefficient machines just might have an effect on the one-degree-over-a-century global change that the EPA has researched?

Perhaps that the effect of 6 billion humans breathing in 70 degree air and breathing it out at 98 degrees JUST MIGHT have a noticeable effect in populated areas?

That cars setting small portions of air on fire for extended periods of time perhaps could increase the air temperature just a little bit?

That factories, air-conditioners, heaters, and power plants, due to their less than 100% efficiency, might be emitting heat as a byproduct?

Could this possibly explain global warming? That we constantly find new ways to harness the suns energy to work for us, and the byproduct is always heat?

Maybe I'm just a wacko, but this seems a lot more reasonable than a minute change in atmospheric gases.

Re:Thermal emissions

[Viol8]

I'm afraid you need to go do Science 101. The amount of heat put out by machines and all living things put together is miniscule compared to amount of heat coming from the sun and being trapped by the atmosphere. If we didn't have any greenhouse effect the earth would be about 20C colder. So what exactly do you think doubling the CO2 content in the atmosphere is going to do to the global temperature? Quite.

Re:Thermal emissions

[Bluesman]

I'm sorry, but even though the greenhouse effect is covered in elementary school science doesn't make it true that it's the cause of global warming.

So the sun gives us a tremendous amount of energy, but that doesn't mean a tremendous amount of that energy is trapped by greenhouse gases. The energy trapped by greenhouse gases is relatively small compared to ALL of the sun's energy, so let's compare apples to oranges here.

How can it be that the heat output of our machines is completely insignificant yet the pollution output is? I could argue that the carbon output of our machines is insignificant compared to volcanic eruptions and forest fires that we now prevent from spreading.

Doing back of the envelope calculations, you can see that a single 2.0 liter engine in one minute will have a significant effect on the temperature of the air around the vehicle. That's 2 liters of air per cycle of the engine being heated from about 65 or 70 degrees to at least 200 degrees exhaust temperature. That's not significant over time?

Re:Thermal emissions

[Bluesman]

Typo- should have been, "let's NOT compare apples to oranges." Sorry.

Re:Thermal emissions

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a seemingly intuitive thing, and I actually brought it up once in one of my earlier atmospheric chemistry class. Horrific calculations ensued, but the upshot is that the Earth radiates / reflects a lot of energy. Just heating up the atmosphere by actually heating up the atmosphere just largely gets reradiated.

It really is a lost-in-the-noise kind of thing. I know that our energy use doesn't seem trivial, and it is direct heat, but consider this - take a 100 mile by 100 mile section of Nevada, cover it entirely with 12% (older tech) efficient photovoltaic panels, and that's the entire US' electricity consumption, taken care of.

(I'm not proposing that we do so, as the costs would be horrific, but it should help put some scale on our energy output vs. the sun's energy output. Think how small a 100x100 mi. area is on a map of the US.) The problem with global warming is that we've put a minor tweak on a very major effect - that ability to reradiate the sun's energy.

Re:Thermal emissions

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm guessing that maybe you haven't taken much Physics and math isn't your strong suit.

Wildfires not the problem.

[Hayzeus]

Actually, as it turns out, the problem is is an excess of methane gas release.

To be more specific, government researchers have incontrovertible proof that my penchant for bean burritos caused the last two El Ninos...

Re:Wildfires not the problem.

[Anonymous Coward]

While, this was modded off-topic he does have a point. There's a fairly significant faction of scientists who believe in global warming AND want the beef industry outlawed since due to their projections, the methane released by cow flatulence is a major contributor to the greenhouse effect.

Re:Wildfires not the problem.

[Anonymous Coward]

That is true if you replace scientists with radical environmentalists.

While some might be scientists, i'm sure almost none of them are meterologists or climatologists.

The Cost of Putting Carbon in the Air

[snarfer]

There is a COST to putting carbon into the air. This is the cost of either cleaning it up, or the cost of the consequences. Unfortunately there is no money being set aside to cover these costs, so the cost will build up and fall on people at a later date.

A carbon tax would help a lot. If we were taxed for the amount of carbon we put into the air we would have the cash to clean it up, or the incentive to begin conserving and/or using alternatives.

So why no carbon tax?

Re:The Cost of Putting Carbon in the Air

[cronus42]

Oh yes, let's have a carbon tax. But since I have no elected representatives in the UN. I don't have to pay it.

There is no way that the US is ever going to allow the UN to institute a national ANYTHING tax. You can do what you want, but I have enough problems with representative taxation, let alone unilateral taxation!

Re:The Cost of Putting Carbon in the Air

[stinky wizzleteats]

A carbon tax would help a lot.

Interesting. One wonders what would happen if this concept was applied to breathing.

It could result in a situation where you had to pay a tax for eating a cheeseburger because it's high in fat, and then pay a tax on the high carbon output when you exercise to burn it off. Could you get an exemption on the carbon tax if you already paid the fat tax to ingest it? It would hardly seem appropriate to tax overweight people for exercising.

I guess the question for us as a society is which is sillier - finding ways to do things without legislating them, or eating cheeseburgers exclusively as a tax shelter?

Re:The Cost of Putting Carbon in the Air

[seney]

isn't his what the kyoto protocal is?

and read "natural capitalism"

and for those who don't think kyoto will work, check out the similar protocal they've used w/ sulfur... it works.

Re:The Cost of Putting Carbon in the Air

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, this is what the Kyoto Protocol would cover. Alas, it won't work or be ratified without the support of the USA, and the current administration in the US couldn't really give a rat's ass about the environment. The people of the US have clearly said that America comes first.

On the face of it this doesn't seem to be all that controversial or wrong. After all, it is up to the rulers of a nation to do what's best for that nation. The American economy is in a slump. People are more concerned about jobs and feeding their kids than "some little insect" becoming extinct.

Of course, it's not the average steel worker that's doing the polluting. It's the factories and plants (and cars) that contribute most to the problem. Capping C02 or sulfur emissions could cost these plants lot of money in retro-fits, decreased productivity, per ton taxes, etc.. Of course we can't have American companies have dips in profits and lower shareholder returns now, can we? It's a lot easier to tell other countries that they shouldn't industrialize rather than fixing the holes in our glass house.

Doesn't matter that "green plants" can save a lot of money in the long run. Most people are more concerned about today's paychecks and dividend returns.

Unfortunately it's not as simple as writing a check to the Sierra club or Greenpeace. I have big moral questions about these US organizations that protest non-US environmental problems before fixing the huge problems in the US first. The other side, the oil companies and factories, don't care and generally do as little as they can in order to have the PR blurb and the support of some naive and idealistic college students and rich Californians.

Re:The Cost of Putting Carbon in the Air

[dsgrntlxmply]

Why no carbon tax? Because the revenues from this tax would go to national and international bureaucrats, murderous despots, and the deluded or pathologically lying socialists who espouse these taxes.

Carbon tax is just another thinly veiled attempt at forced redistribution of income.

Re:The Cost of Putting Carbon in the Air

[snarfer]

Aspen has a Carbon Release Mitigation Program. They tax new houses that use excess amounts of energy according to how much carbon they are expected to release, and use the money to pay for retrofitting existing buildings, or for alternative energy.

A great way to calculate the cost of the carbon is to use the cost to retrofit buildings so their energy use stops releasing that much carbon, or the cost of installing alternatives that mean that much less carbon is used.

This form of carbon trax tax would be an incentive to reduce the price of alternatives, to conserve, to use less, to retrofit buildings, etc.

So I say TAX ENERGY USE ACCORDING TO EQUIVALENT CARBON RELEASE using this cost formula!

Re:The Cost of Putting Carbon in the Air

[snarfer]

Carbon tax is just another thinly veiled attempt at forced redistribution of income.

Whoa! Looks like oil company propaganda hit home with at least ONE person!

what can we do ?

[vluther]

Instead of having a discussion on who or what is responsible why don't we drop the blame game and figure out what we're gonna do. Whether it's a the result of Industries polluting or just a change in the climate because of some things we aren't aware of.. what are we going to do to prevent it from killing us ?. I don't think anyone will argue that if this continues, people are going to die..

I understand the need for trying to find the reason behind the warming, so we can possibly try to slow it down.. but this really won't get us anywhere.. what if we aren't to blame ?..

we know what is bound to happen, part of the world gets really warm, and other parts fall into an iceage.. how are we gonna survive this ?.

Re:what can we do ?

[Melantha_Bacchae]

Well, if you live in the US, you would probably know that we had our own share of mammoth forest fires this summer. Some were started by arson, some by natural causes like lightning. Our fearless president has ordained the "trimming" of our forests by the logging industry to avoid such problems in the future. Now that he has a Congress dominated by his party, he is rubbing his hands thinking of all the lovely gifts he can give his friends in the logging and energy industries: gifts like the Alaskan Wildlife Refuge. He's using our problems with the Middle East as an excuse to loot an essential wildlife refuge that won't produce oil for at least ten years.

If you want something practical to do, save our national treasures from exploitation and ruin. Find a sane, intelligent group to join (personally I prefer the Natural Resources Defense Council - http://www.nrdc.org/), and get cracking.

The important thing to remember is that protecting the environment has to be wise and practical to do any good. Nobody is going to take measures that are outrageous, and doing harm in other areas, such as jobs, harms your fellow humans (who are also part of the environment and deserving of protection).

For example, if you like wood, but want to be environmentally sound about it, and want to help people, tree farms are the way to go. The trees as they grow provide shelter for animals and protect against erosion. Farming, rather than clear cutting, also provides jobs for the community that do not dry up and blow away.

"What do you think Mothra would do?"
Moll, "Mosura" 1996

North Am has cleanest air....Asia worst....

[gsfprez]

this is not opinion...

http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/Aeroso ls /

just look for yourself. Asia and the Euros take the cake for winter-time pollution because they have no effective way of running clean heating sources... they are the ones who are fscking up the environment, not the US.

If instead of implimenting the Kyoto Protocols they simply spent time cleaning up the air NEAR Kyoto, then they'd actually be doing something..

but, as usual, its news to everyone except for those that look at the facts that the US and Canada does more to ACTUALLY protect the environment than a whole room full of UN Anti-Americanists TALK about protecting it.

Just go look for yourself - and tell me where the dirty air is and is not and at what times of the year....

Re:North Am has cleanest air....Asia worst....

[Izeickl]

Not your opinion, but your wrong assumption from the maps. If you compare the high res Aerosol Optical Depth map, you can plainly see large concentrations located directly over California and the rest of the Southern USA, with a seam extending accross the mid Atlantic ocean, yes Asia clearly has the heaviest amounts according to this map but Europe also has very little in comparison. LESS than the USA.
Do not forget also, that it is not just Aerosols that the Kyoto is set to fix, indeed they have been banned in most Western countries, but carbon emissions from OTHER sources. USA and, suprisngly Canada are the worst in the world for energy usage (Per Person!)

http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/cabs/canenv2.html

"Canada's 1999 per capita energy consumption, 410.7 million Btu per person, was the highest in North America, above the U.S. level of 355.9 million Btu per person. Relative to other OECD countries, Canada's per capita energy consumption is considerably higher than the United Kingdom (167.8 million Btu per person), France (173.6), Japan (171.6), Germany (170.4), and Italy (139.7)."

Re:North Am has cleanest air....Asia worst....

[gsfprez]

>USA and, suprisngly Canada are the worst in the world for energy usage (Per Person!)

how is this statistic assume that this is a "bad" thing?

Would it be better for everyone in the US to stop using all forms of power? If we went to sub-Ethiopian levels of power usage.. who, then would make drugs for AIDS patients, invent the internet, build spaceships to discover the wonders of space, or to send inordinate amounts of food to shit-hole piss poor countries like Ethiopia?

You never got a job from a poor person that could help you feed and clothe yourself.. and a person that shits in a hole, freezes in the winter, and tills the land with his own children didn't do much to help anyone else.

I am damn PROUD that we and the Canunks use the most enegery.. we do the most good for the world too.

If you don't believe it - then give back your polio shot, and start speaking German... unless you're a Jew.. then you can just go fuck yourself.

Re:North Am has cleanest air....Asia worst....

[Malc]

Talking of healthcare, I think you'll find many European nations have it better than those in N. America. The American healthcare system only works if you're rich. The Canadian one is very two tier, no matter what Jean Chretien claims. The UK NHS has it's problems, but I would prefer it thank you.

There's no way that you even equate these things to energy consumption, unless you're particularly stupid. Being proud of home much energy you consume is pretty sad and pathetic, don't you think? Nobody is asking Americans to stop using energy, they're just asking them to use it wisely and responsibly. And guess which country has the highest standard of living in the world? It's not the USA. It's not Canada. It's Norway.

Re:North Am has cleanest air....Asia worst....

[Gary]

...who, then would make drugs for AIDS patients, invent the internet, build spaceships to discover the wonders of space, or to send inordinate amounts of food to shit-hole piss poor countries like Ethiopia?

I know, I know... Al Gore could do it!!!

G.

Re:North Am has cleanest air....Asia worst....

[Izeickl]

I am damn PROUD that we and the Canunks use the most enegery.. we do the most good for the world too.

Does that include all those "freedom fighting incursions" that the US is so fond of? I think alot of the world would rather get on with it than to take the help the US offers. And this love afair Americans have that makes them think they single handedly won WW2 is just laughable.
Also your premis that your energy use directly relates to "good for the world" is just so...so....American....

Re:North Am has cleanest air....Asia worst....

[Anonymous Coward]

You dipshit... he's not talking about healthcare systems, i.e. politics. He's talking about the healthcare research that's being conducted at U.S. institutions. Europe's healthcare wouldn't be much to speak of if not the U.S.'s research. By the way, I'm British.

Oh, and the reason the United States dominates in research is that there are actually research dollars to go around! Its citizens and businesses aren't taxed to death to support socialist programs like universal healthcare.

Re:North Am has cleanest air....Asia worst....

[Markus Landgren]

I am damn PROUD that we and the Canunks use the most enegery.. we do the most good for the world too.

Yeah, if we did not have America, who would then supply Saddam Hussein with anthrax and other biological weapons?

I'm thankful for Americas help during WW2 and all but unless you come up with something more recent to be thankful for, I am going to cheer just as loud for America as I do for Stalin (another WW2 hero), i.e. not at all.

Re:North Am has cleanest air....Asia worst....

[Anonymous Coward]

It's nothing to do with socialism. The US uses the "sledgehammer to crack a nut approach" - they throw money at the problem. Other countries that aren't as rich and are more "socialist" work in a more intelligent manner. Canada is one of the highest taxed countries in the G7, yet they're constantly producing significant medical research results. On top of that, how many of those American researchers were foreign born, and were enticed to go and work there? As with many fields, America is benefitting significantly from the education systems and the tax payers of other countries.

Re:North Am has cleanest air....Asia worst....

[shepd]

>>I am damn PROUD that we and the Canunks use the most enegery.. we do the most good for the world too.

>Does that include all those "freedom fighting incursions" that the US is so fond of?

I wouldn't know as Canada, in general, is very pessimistic about America's shiny new wars; although our PM appears to reluctantly support America (over time) with the wars, our measly couple of thousand troops don't really count as freedom fighters in the sense you're thinking of.

>I think alot of the world would rather get on with it than to take the help the US offers.

Agreed -- as a Canadian I think Canada should strive not to depend on the US, but the fact is it's difficult to build an economy by ignoring your neighbours.

>And this love afair Americans have that makes them think they single handedly won WW2 is just laughable.

I know! Canada was fighting the war YEARS before the US joined in! Maybe it's better we don't go around mentioning that right now though...

>Also your premis that your energy use directly relates to "good for the world" is just so...so....American....

Well, if by American you mean North American, maybe...

Re:North Am has cleanest air....Asia worst....

[shepd]

>Talking of healthcare, I think you'll find many European nations have it better than those in N. America.
>And guess which country has the highest standard of living in the world? It's not the USA. It's not Canada. It's Norway.

Well, since you mentioned it, Canada has a higher living standard than _every single other_ european country.

And after being in smalltown UK, in my experience their healthcare system is just as poor as ours, sorry to say.

Re:North Am has cleanest air....Asia worst....

[Malc]

No, Norway has the highest standard of living in the world. It's been a few years since Canada even made it to number one in the UN's rankings (was that called human development?),

Re:North Am has cleanest air....Asia worst....

[shepd]

Hey, that's why I said every single other. As in, excepting Norway, Canada beats all european countries for quality of living.
IIRC, the last time I checked (could have been a couple of years ago) the charts went Norway, Japan, Canada. But that was a couple of years ago.

Sigh... Let's Have a Slashdot "Discussion!"

[nanojath]

C'mon, let's get those trolls and flames and armchair environmental scientist screeds going! Let's hear about how everybody who's anybody in science knows that global warming is totally for real and it's just the petro-electro-govermento-conspiracy that's propping up the idea there is any scientific doubt about it. Then let's hear about the doubters in the scientific field and how the Kyoto Protocol is a load of crap. Let's hear a hundred little snippets about computer models and volcanic eruptions and sequestration models that none of us are even remotely capable of really understanding, and gee, isn't it's cool, it's just like Congress, the discussion is almost completely partisan, as if our political leanings were guiding our our beliefs rather than the other way around.

And that guy that says hey, everyone, we may not know for sure but we should all start talking about the best way to deal with the whole big complex issue of energy and power consumption and pollution just in case, that kills me, it's like the twentyfirst century version of "can't we all just get along."

And when it's all over, opinions and attitudes will be changed! We will all be closer to the Truth because of the measured and well-reasoned discussion and debate! Conservatives and Liberals will share a cyber-hug, remarking that "we may have our little differences, but at heart we all want the very best for the Earth and all our brothers and sisters we share it with."

And the world will be a little bit better for it.

'Cause this is Slashdot, damnit!

Re:Sigh... Let's Have a Slashdot "Discussion!"

[Anonymous Coward]

Nothing like a good burst of cynicism to waste everybody's time.

You could have saved 0.000000000000000000000000000003% of this year's carbon emissions by not typing your useless observations, and actually done some good.

Re:Sigh... Let's Have a Slashdot "Discussion!"

[Damek]

While there is truth in your comments, they could apply to any discussion on Slashdot, not just the ones about the environment. So, perhaps we should get rid of Slashdot? Or perhaps you should just avoid stories and discussions that you feel are going to waste your time?

Personally, I did learn a couple of things from this story's discussion. That's why I come to Slashdot. Why do you?

Re:Sigh... Let's Have a Slashdot "Discussion!"

[nanojath]

That's why I come to Slashdot. Why do you?

To give you an opportunity to get on your high horse.

Hiyyyyy-o Silver! Awaaaaay!

Re:Sigh... Let's Have a Slashdot "Discussion!"

[Damek]

Well, it's hard to find a low horse these days...

Re:Sigh... Let's Have a Slashdot "Discussion!"

[DeltaSigma]

Ingore him, else you find yourself in my situation.

Re:Sigh... Let's Have a Slashdot "Discussion!"

[nanojath]

SOME say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I've tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To know that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.

carbon schmarbon....

[shirameroix]

Is this really anything all that new? I mean, havent fires been occuring since the dawn of time? Im not denying the fact that a climate change occured, but Im thinking that it isnt anything that we should worry about. Do climate records exist that date back far enough so that an accurate comparison of carbon levels and the resulting effects may be made? Whos to say that the earth is or is not experiencing normal or even below normal levels of carbon in the atmosphere? Without a larger collection of information, can we really make an accurate judgement?

Re:carbon schmarbon....

[Anonymous Coward]

Who do Environmentalists blame the Ice Age on? Was it the 'cavemen' and their fires that caused the global climate change? Climate change is inevitable...why are we so high and mighty to think that humans caused it.

Remember! It was the cavemen that were careless and did not pass environmental laws to prevent the iceage! They're the ones to blame for the world as we know it. Quick! Lets lobby for Reparation from the decendants of the cavemen for the world as we know it.... ...
I need to lay off the caffeine

Re:carbon schmarbon....

[quantaman]

In the past forest fires wouldn't of really made a difference other than a momentary blip. The problem is that with all our consumption of fossil fuels we're adding carbon to the carbon cycle. Carbon that has been out of circulation in the form of fossil fuels for hundreds of thousands or even millions of years. For the the current situation we know the carbon levels are higher than normal it's as simple as 1 + 1 = 2, or more precisely (current carbon) + (carbon that has been out of circulations for a VERY long time) = (greater than current carbon). The forests have absorbed a lot of this excess carbon but the problem is that they are just displacing it temorarily, and when they burn that carbon goes straight back into the atmosphere. True we don't have a great idea of what it was like in the past (as far as I know) but the fact is that we are resonably sure about what we are doing. Given what may happen to the environment if we are right it is imperative that we take action to avoid this problem rather than sit around and whine that the science isn't exact enough to warrent the damage to our economy while we continue to see the environment degrade around us.

Ronald Reagan was right...

[dpbsmith]

...trees really DO cause pollution!

Now, about ketchup being a vegetable...

The planet will survive , but will we?

[Viol8]

The question isn't whether we'd destroy the planets enviroment completely (unlikely) but whether we could damage it enough to make the current human population unsustainable (very likely) due to drowned land , drought and/or flodding causing food crops to fail. The asteroid that supposed to have hit the earth 65 million years ago wasn't a big deal to the planet as a whole but it didn't do the dinosaurs any favours did it?

Link to "All Things Considered" story about this

[Montag2k]

Wow, I heard a clip about this the other day when I was listening to NPR. It's a really interesting audio segment that explains the problem and how it might happen again soon due to an El Nino condition this year. The link to the page that has the audio story is here. Note: This is in RealAudio format.

Regards, Montag

Random thoughts

[Anonymous Coward]

Europe and the United states went through their own industrial ages where lots of forests were cleared, lots of pollution was injected into the environment. We know more about the devastating effects of pollution now, but what right do we have to tell developing nations that they should not grow as quickly? Rather, I believe we should make every effort to assist them in growing quickly in an environmentally conscious manner.

It's arrogant to think that we can destroy the planet. We can make it inhospitable to humans (destruction of arable farmland, poisoning of waters). We can make it more expensive (increased cooling costs, increased food costs, deleterious effects on health leading to increased medical costs, etc.). But if all humans die out then other species will take our place. Maybe it'll be armadillos. Maybe cockroaches.

There's a need to balance environmental responsibility with progress and the economy and the current lifestyles. Lots of people talk about being environmentally conscious but don't want to give up their six computers, SUVs, air conditioning, etc.. Think globally, act locally... Many debates seem entirely polarized around the two camps with few people taking the middle ground. The arguments often go along the lines that choosing the middle ground is akin to joining one of the camps or that the other camp is so extremist that it forces extremism in this camp. Blah blah blah.

Coal seam fires

[Arctic Fox]

I was surprised to learn that burning coal seams in China contribute nearly as much greenhouse gases as all of the cars in the US. (http://www.discover.com/oct_99/break.html).

Re:Coal seam fires

[Anonymous Coward]

Complete red herring. The emissions from China pale in comparison to the total amount from the United States.

Re:Coal seam fires

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, I guess that clinches it people, its OK to keep driving those SUVs! Now that we know other people are ALSO bad polluters, we can CONTINUE to also be bad polluters until THEY do something to clean up THEIR act!!

Sorry, but there seems to be a common knee-jerk reaction from all the USians in the crowd that "others are also bad polluters THEREFORE its perfectly OK for us to continue this way, instead of leading the way and setting the example for the rest of the world to follow". Doesn't anyone see the flaw in this logic? I thought Americans were traditionally proud of their status as role models for the rest of the planet. Is that role model behaviour?

me too!

[Anonymous Coward]

after last night's two-pizza (per person) eating contest, there were some definite Methane Releases in Oklahoma...

Overpopulation is a red herring

[jdfox]

It's easy to fall into the Malthusian trap of thinking that overpopulation is the problem. I suggest you read Bookchin's classic essay Which Way for the Ecology Movement?, which lucidly and rationally debunks this idea.

In fact, the most recent estimates that I would consider objective are that post-2050, population numbers will decline significantly.

We need to stop blaming world population growth for climate change, when in fact the more static populations in the west are responsible for far more man-made pollution per capita. The focus needs to be on the real problems of pollution and climate change.

Re:Overpopulation is a red herring

[error0x100]

when in fact the more static populations in the west are responsible for far more man-made pollution per capita

This may be true, but other problems have to be considered too. It could be that the Earth would naturally have been capable of "cleaning" the amounts of pollution produced by the more developed nations had it had the full atmosphere-cleaning capability of the rainforests, for example. But within 50 years, these will be gone, and that combined with the pollution & CO2 emissions produced by the developed nations may be catastrophic. So you have to also solve the problem of deforestation.

One of the current problems with the goals of sustainable development seems to be that most people are only capable of looking at one particular problem at a time, e.g. greenhouse gas emissions, deforestation, overfishing, plankton, global warming, whatever. Each one taken on its own appears to have valid counter-arguments that render it seemingly harmless. But, the real question is, what will be the effects of all these problems COMBINED as each of them starts to peak in the next 20 - 40 years or so? As a species we should be thinking about such things. We can solve these problems, but we have to work at it, and acknowledge that they are problems that should be solved. We have to grow up and stop calling anyone who thinks these things are problems "tree huggers", "bunny huggers" etc. We cannot carry on like we have been, we need a culture change and behaviour change, we need to realise that it WILL inconvenience us to build a system on this planet that allows us to live more than at most another 100 or 200 years.

This site provides some interesting food for thought: http://smile.jcon.org/sustain/b1/introduction/para dise/ParadiseLost_Part3.html.

Possible use

[wazzzup]

Couldn't we extract it from the atmosphere and turn it into something useful like inanimate carbon rods?

An inanimate carbon rod saved the space shuttle you know.

Re:Possible use

[Anonymous Coward]

The inanimate carbon rod also won the Employee Of The Month award... Long live the inanimate carbon rod!!

Cool!

[Anonymous Coward]

Now they'll be able to port all those Asian OS 9 apps to Steve's glorious new platform!

~~~

bfd old news

[Anonymous Coward]

That's an amount equal to 40 percent of the total amount of carbon released annually in the combustion of fossil fuels worldwide.

Bfd. if thats all the carbon that was released, then what are they bitching about? hell every year we already do 2.5 times that amount, so really the asain forest fires are just a drop in the bucket.

plus just to comment on the other articles, dosen't any one realise that we are at the end of a fucking ice age? the earth will consistantly get warmer as we move forward in time. and eventually it will get colder again because of the next ice age. because we are at the end of an ice age, the poles are going to melt anyway, so why dosen't everyone quit bitching and move inland.

Re:bfd old news

[Big Mark]

He's right you know. What's more worrying is that the warming of the earth will eventually bring the next ice age upon us, and all we're doing is quickening it's arrival.

We're overdue an ice age anyways - they're meant to come at 15,000 year (? I forget) intervals and its been about 20,000 years since the last one. It's coming, and soon. If we don't act now the human race is if not doomed then in several feet of the brown stuff.

"Indonesia Wildfires Release Carbon"

[mulhall]

Oh my God! Surely not!

Was anyone else shocked by this revelation?

Ice age vs Global Warming

[cronus42]

Has anyone considered that the most probable ecological disaster is an Ice Age?? Our global environment has been in fluctuation between warm and cold for 900,000 years!

Maybe the CO2 will save us from the next one! Maybe we're just delaying it. Who knows how much environmental change is natural vs. mankind? I'm not sure we have enough of an observational timeline to say that we have caused any of it.

My point is that the global climate is dynamic. Maybe we should stop flipping out about every tiny variation. It's obvious that pretty extreme fluctuations occur normally!

Here is a timeline of past ice ages.

Re:Ice age vs Global Warming

[tiedyejeremy]

thanks for the link.

I agree completely.

Re:Ice age vs Global Warming

[fizban]

I agree, we can't assume that global warming is a man-made event.

But we can sure as hell do better with out environment anyway. There is no excuse for air-pollution, water-polution, encroaching upon wildlife, tearing down forests willy-nilly, heedlesly diverting natural waterways for irrigation, recklessly wasting our money on inefficient and limited energy supplies and all that other fucking crazy shit that goes on in the world today. Our lives, our health, our economy, our world and every other fucking thing we can think of will be a hell of a lot better off if we start working with mother nature, instead of against her. That means preserving the natural cycles that were already there, replanting what we take from the earth, not moving habitats around the world just because we feel like it, investing in renewable, efficient and cost-effective energy sources, and doing whatever it takes to make sure the world we live in continues to be able to sustain our quickly growing global population.

Re:Ice age vs Global Warming

[cronus42]

Who is we? I don't see any problem with my environment here in the US. The environmental disaster area's are in china, eastern europe, and Russia. Why is it WE in the US are always the one's who get the blame?

Re:Ice age vs Global Warming

[fizban]

I live in the U.S. too. If you don't see environmental havoc, open your eyes. WE is everyone in the world. Don't flatter yourself.

Re:Ice age vs Global Warming

[cronus42]

Where? I've lived all over the US and Europe:

Michigan, Ohio, Florida, California, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Arizona, New Mexico, Missouri, Texas, Germany, and Austria.

My only complaint's are the over abundance of vacant steel mills in the rust belt, and the air quality in Los Angeles!

It's not the end of the world! People don't die of black lung in the US because they use Charcoal to heat their homes. Even our coal fired power plants have scrubbers and pollute very little. The worst pollutant in the US is GASOLINE. But maybe if the feds hadn't destroyed the interstate rail system we wouldn't have nearly the problem.

The point is, we do everything we can within reason to preserve our environment in the US.

Go to Mexico where sewage runs free in the streets!

Imagine if the ecowhacko's would let us use Nuclear power? Then we could get rid of all of those petrol based sources. But will they let us, NO! Why? Because they would rather bitch and whine and let Al Gore tell us that we should all drive Geo's while he flies about in his private jet, or 5+ liter V8 Limo. Maybe he can invent functional fusion power for us to use.

Re:Ice age vs Global Warming

[MadBurner]

No doubt! My environment isn't fucked up till I open the door from my house. Go outside. smell the smog.

Re:Ice age vs Global Warming

[shepd]

>There is no excuse for air-pollution, water-polution, encroaching upon wildlife, tearing down forests willy-nilly, heedlesly diverting natural waterways for irrigation, recklessly wasting our money on inefficient and limited energy supplies and all that other fucking crazy shit that goes on in the world today.

The moral approach to environmentalism (BTW: WTH is up with slashdot this week? I'm going to turn off all the science stories if all I'm going to get is whining environmentalists on my front page all the time).

The problem is, some of us have different morals. Some of us only care about making sure people are safe and happy. Some of us don't care about the feelings of trees, and some of us don't care all that much for wildlife, and a lot of us couldn't care less if we filled the entire arctic with nuclear waste if we get the next 10k years of power without brownouts. [A lot of us know that by the time that becomes a problem it'll be solved anyways]. Canada could use the money, anyways.

The only approach that will actually gel people together is the scientific approach, which is used far too little by people who preach environmentalism. Must be why I get those funny looks when I stare back blank faced after being asked to plant a tree to save the earth.

Re:Ice age vs Global Warming

[fizban]

Sorry you feel that way. I care to make people safe and happy too. I also care to make the world around me vibrant and full of life, rather than a rotting trash dump of festering crud.

Morals have nothing to do with survivability. I will kill in order to survive and I will make damn sure that no one dumps shit in my streams so that I can survive and I'll kick major butt on anyone who decides that lining their pocketbooks from the sale of toxic waste is more important that my health.

I guess we do have different morals. Take your relativist attitudes and shove them up your ass. While your at it, shove some nuclear waste up there as well to clean out all your shit. I'm sure you'll be pleased with the monetary compensation.

Conservatives love to talk about how global warming is just a natural process and we should let mother nature run its course, but the moment someone tells them to leave the trees alone, keep their waste out of the air and water, and let the wolves roam free, i.e. let mother nature run its course, they go whining on about the economy and jobs. Two-faced, I'd call that.

Re:Ice age vs Global Warming

[geschild]

Unfortunatly, it is very possible the warming will set off the next ice-age. Not much is understood about global climate at all and especially about how large changes come about.

It is not at all unthinkable that warming will lead to an overload situation that pushes the larger feedback-loops into a new equilibrium and that new 'state' may very well be an ice-age...

So better get a new bathing-suit and a woolen coat while you're out shopping. Just in case...

The Cost of Putting Carbon in the Air

[Anonymous Coward]

Because we dont know what the cost is!
The biggest and most expensive scenarios for global warming are mostly 50-100 years down the road, which is when all the major damage is supposed to take place. Thats very long time. The costs will change vasty between now and then. We probably wont be burning oil and coal 100 years from now. They will be far to valuable for other things.
To paraphrase julian simon, it's simply cheeper to polute now and clean it up later (when we will be relatively better off and more technologically advanced), the truth is that pollution sorta comes after day to day survival. Only countries that are able to adequately feed, clothe, and shelter their population (for the most part) can afford to worry about things like asteriods and other calamities like massive climate change or the distruction of the ozone layer. Basically, we are better off spending our money on research until we can find something more economically viable than oil, because thats when oil and coal will be replaced.

Jackpot

[Anonymous Coward]

I just got three Einsteins in a row on Slashdot. Do I win the jackpot for that?

Third world countries emitting carbon?

[croftj]

What is this world comming to? Now even third world countries are messing with the environment! I guess the UN will have to consider subjecting ANY country with forest fires with carbon taxes. They can pay it back to the industrial nations as a rebate on their carbon tax.

Slashdotters think you're a pompous ass.

[Anonymous Coward]

What do Slashdotters think?

We think you're a ponderous bonehead who takes himself far too seriously. You know what? We're right.

affects

[Hythlodaeus]

some interesting research in the affects of forest fires

"Affects" is a verb. "Effects" is a noun.

Re:affects

[Malc]

Not true.

Affects is a noun, a verb, and a transitive verb.

Effects is a noun and a transitive verb.

In this case though, you are correct in that effects was the correct word to use.

It depends on your definition, doesn't it?

[Interrobang]

From a certain point of view, overpopulation is the problem. In terms of resource use, carrying capacity, and sustainability, the Western World as we know it is incredibly overpopulated. See, the thing with overpopulation is (what you folks don't get), it's not the sheer numbers, it's the footprint left by those numbers. Therefore, if your land area and available resources can support x number of people at y standard of living, it can only support x-p people at y+q standard of living, where the ratio is most probably an exponential inverse proportion. And because our standard of living is so out of balance with the carrying capacity of where we live, we're drawing resources away from other areas, and, in some cases, causing the diminishment of their standard of living and carrying capacity.

In short, I will agree with you that no matter which way you look at it, we're the problem.

God, I *so* get sick of the SUV comments...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, I drive an SUV. Yes, it gets horrible gas milage. But, you know what? It's paid for, and as an unemployed college student, I don't fancy going 20k+ into debt for a few more MPG.

So, unless you holier-than-thou yuppies want to chip in and buy me a Honda Civic hybrid, my 17 year old Pathfinder is staying on the road for the forseeable future!

Re:God, I *so* get sick of the SUV comments...

[tomstdenis]

Unless you desperately need the SUV why not take a bus or other public transportation? Would be cheaper and better for the environment/economy

Unless you're hauling lumber through off-road terrains you don't need to drive an SUV and I'd personally be happier to see them outlawed.

Tom

You are kidding, right?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ok, how exactly do you "clean up" CO2? Tax, or not? Heck, for fun, let's set the tax rate to 100% of everything.

Grow stuff, perhaps? Well, given that plant life will naturally fill every square inch of ariable land -- all by itself -- I just don't see how money can help that very much.

Fine, so we can set aside land on which stuff can grow! Great, we can let the UN buy land with our tax money and let it lie fallow. Well, that's nice, let the UN tax us, buy us with our own money, own us, then send everyone in the world into someplace plants don't grow, like Antarctica. Why bother with these all these silly government things. Yea... that'll work.

Ok, maybe we can pull it out of the air and fill CO2 bottles? Or, or, keep it as dry ice? Or, maintain a billion bottles of Coke on inventory? Oh, wait, what on earth would we do with mountains of CO2 tanks, or a billion bottles of Coke? But, hey, all that dry ice might keep us cool, right?

Or, maybe, crack it back into coal and O2? Naw, it would take us more energy to do that than we get burning it. Burn 1 g to light up your TV, then burn 2 more to clean it up. Somehow, I don't see the math working for us here.

Face it, CO2 and H2O are the 'end-state' energy molecules. Suggesting we can "clean up" CO2 from the world is like suggesting we can "clean up" its water.

**********

Ok, now, you want something to do? How about this...

Models exist that suggest high mountain ranges have created a desicant process over the whole of the atmosphere. Too much precip. on the windward sides, less everywhere else. Plant life needs water to grow. It is a fact, the earth's eco-system holds CO2 in balance using processes that require copious quantities of H2O.

So, go forth and level Mt. Everest (and similar). Maybe rains will come to more of the world, plants will grow faster, and your problem will be solved. But, probably not. Growing wood is "modern" CO2, it cycles in the air with the death of each tree, dropping of the leaves, breathing and rotting of animals that eat them, etc. On whole, it doesn't do much.

Next, you can start "cleaning up" whatever is killing off the reefs. Calcium carbonate is a major a CO2 sink, but dying reefs aren't growing reefs, so they aren't going to take up the slack.

The reverse is also true

[NutMan]

You can offset the increase in CO2 production by planting woody plants for agriculture rather than annual grains. Check out these articles by Phil Rutter of Badgersett Research Farms:

Reducing Greenhouse CO2 Through Shifting Staples Production To Woody Plants

Woody Agriculture: Increased Carbon Fixation and Co-Production Of Food and Fuel

Re:The reverse is also true

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a nice thought, but problematic because current woody crops don't match the output of traditional crops. The articles mention converting 1/4 of the current world crop to woody crops could help balance C02 emissions elsewhere. Problem is that people are already starving at the current levels. Good luck trying to make them produce less. Woody crops also take longer to mature and produce food.

One possibility is to lock carbon into things like furniture. This has been proposed before using quick growing timber woods. The problem is that this would have minimal effect globally. But I think the idea is sound and if done on a large enough scale can be significant in reducing carbon.

Re:The reverse is also true

[NutMan]

It's a nice thought, but problematic because current woody crops don't match the output of traditional crops.

Actually this is not necessarily the case. It depends on a variety of factors, including the weather, soil, availability of labor, availability of equipment & the fuel to run it, etc. In the middle of Illinois, you are better off with corn/soybeans. (however you might struggle to make a living at it) There are many acres of land that are not productive in grains, but could produce viable crops on shrubs or trees. At full production woody crops would easily out-produce grains. A couple of tons per acre is certainly doable.

Woody crops DO take longer to produce food. However this is not as long as you think. Phil has chestnut seedlings that were started from nuts in his greenhouse THIS YEAR, and have already flowered and produced a handfull of nuts. These varieties will probably not be the most productive in the long run, but do demonstrate that a field of mixed varieties could produce a limited amount of food in the short run, and as the long term producers come on line the precocious producers could be culled.

If you are ever in south-eastern Minnesota, pay Phil a visit. He is making a difference.

What's with slashdot...

[Codex The Sloth]

It's a Trollfuck for envirowackos.

As opposed to a trollfuck for technowackos? Personally, I saw "Carbon releases in asia" and though -- "You mean OS X hasn't come out in asia yet?" ... but I digress...

Stop the Insanity !

[Anonymous Coward]

Think about all the people oveclocking their processors to high heat emitting speeds. For what? 20% 40% increase in computing power. THAT IS THE BIG CULPRIT HERE!!! It's the CPUs!!! Shame on you, all you overclockers out there!

I knew it was terrorists not automobiles...

[ainsoph]

Whenever I heard about "global warming" I had this sneaking suspicion that somehow, some way, Osama Bin Laden and Al Queda were behind it all.

Now my fears were addressed. No longer should I subscribe to the lefty rhetoric that claims that the arrogant use of the SUV has anything to do with "global warming" and its ill (but useful) effects.

First Dinosaur farts then this!! Yet another reason for getting rid of nature. It just screws with everything!

Carbon Releases?

[scrow]

I'm more concerned about the release of methane coming from the customers of a certain taco stand down the street. whew!

Nuclear

[Fascist Christ]

I wonder how many people who are against cutting down the trees are also against nuclear power. A conflict of interest I'd say.

If we had more research in nuclear power, maybe we can make less radioactive waste (more efficient) and dump it all in Nevada's desert (to lazy to make link).

PS: My electricity is 60% Nuclear.

Re:Nuclear

[Melantha_Bacchae]

Fascist Christ wrote:

> I wonder how many people who are against cutting
> down the trees are also against nuclear power.

Trees are a renewable resource. Cut down all you like, as long as you replace them. Burning them, and fossil fuels, releases pollutants. Even if you don't subscribe to the global warming theory, the particulant pollution is nasty for people with chronic sinusitus and other health problems.

> A conflict of interest I'd say.

No it's not. Nuclear power can be even nastier than a coal plant, especially when run by stupid people. Just ask the nice folks in Tokai how they liked Godzilla's 1999 visit to their plant.

> If we had more research in nuclear power, maybe
> we can make less radioactive waste (more
> efficient) and dump it all in Nevada's desert
> (to lazy to make link).

Making less would be an improvement, but we already have a Godzilla-sized lump of it to dispose of. In 10 years, we will have made enough to fill up Yucca mountain (77,000 ton capacity, larger than even the largest Godzilla at 66,000 tons). Yucca mountain will take 25-38 years to get all the waste there, and will be hot for at least 10,000 years. What are you going to do with waste in ten years? How will we keep Yucca Mountain safe, when worse case scenario has it destroying the life carrying capacity of this planet? How many more Yucca Mountains are you prepared to create?

Godzilla's definition of clean energy forbids both fossil fuels and nuclear (including fussion). It pays to listen to the big guy, as he has a tendency of destroying plants he doesn't like. Search Google for "tokai nuclear criticality" if you don't believe me.

Sonora:"New Godzilla reading. He's moving inward toward Tokai."
Shinoda: "The nuclear plants, I knew it.
Sonora: "Afraid so."
Yuki: "Well, that's just lovely. Another Chernobyl."
"Godzilla 2000" (US version dialog)

Re:Nuclear

[Fascist Christ]

You just justified my opinion on the need for more nuclear research.

Yucca mountain ... will be hot for at least 10,000 years.

I'm sure we could find a way to reduce that dramatically. But not without sufficient research.

In 10 years, we will have made enough to fill up

Really?

"As of December 1999, the United States had generated about 40,000 MTHM of spent nuclear fuel from commercial nuclear power plants. This amount could more than double by 2035 if all currently operating plants complete their initial 40-year license period."

We're not exactly filling it up every ten years. Although this is another thing sufficient research can possibly fix as well, rather than researching how to get the most boom out of your bomb.

For an analogy, just because gasoline is a pollutant doesn't mean we shouldn't research methods of increasing the fuel mileage on automobiles. Efficiency takes research. I'm not a nuclear physisist, but I do know an mp3 takes up a lot less space than a .wav file, and mp3 did not come first. Our current nuclear power methods are far from the ultimate, maybe one day we can power the whole country on one Uranium pellet. You never know.

Sure...

[misleb]

Then why is it that I am not supposed to eat more than one fish a MONTH from Lake Michigan around Chicago? I'm really not supposed to eat ANY fish from the Mississippi River. Especially if I were pregnant. Have you SEEN the shit we pump into our river's and lakes? Maybe you live in some small country town where the air is fresh, but here in the cities, its a mess.

"We" are not to blame. "We" are just trying to take responsibility.

-matthew

Re:Sure...

[Anonymous Coward]

then perhaps all you 'city' people who cant keep your places clean are to blame. To blame 'ALL' of us is a crock. It is all you city people to blame.

I'm doing my part to reduce Carbon

[Anonymous Coward]

...All my Mac programming is in Cocoa!

Jeez guys...

[Sgs-Cruz]

Oh come on. This story is sooo old. Carbon has had the capability to be released in Asia since it was created. I mean jeez!! take a look here you'll see what I mean.

/bad pun

Re:Responsibility? It's people.

[Bob Violence]

To amplify on the previous poster's comments a bit--the fires were started by humans, both to clear land for small farmers (traditional slash-and-burn agriculture) and to clear land for large-scale plantation farming (mostly for the production of palm oil). It sounds like the larger commercial operations are mostly responsible for setting the fires.

That season (1997/1998), the fires spread because the forests were unusually dry. This was partly because it was an El Niño year, which caused severe drought.

But human activity was probably a more important factor--in the mid '90s large drainage canals were cut in the peat forests (as part of the Mega Rice Project), which dried out large areas of peat; and large areas of the forest have been damaged by other activities, especially logging. So the fires spread along the banks of the drainage canals (see this article from the Guardian), along logging roads, and in general, areas where humans had damaged the forest--pristine areas were far less affected by the fire, even when they did burn. (See Satellite shows how logging makes forest more flammable, which is based on an article in the Nov 22 2001 issue of Nature.)

So, yeah, I'd blame humans for this fire--they started the fires, human use of the forest made the fires both larger and more damaging than they would have been otherwise. El Niño was a huge factor in the spread of the fires, but humans made it way worse.

While the carbon released by the fires is something to worry about, these fires also caused a big loss of biodiversity. Borneo is one of the few places where orangutans are found in the wild, along with other endangered primates. The fires are thought to have killed thousands of orangutans and destroyed much of their habitat. This wouldn't be such a huge problem--forest can grow back, after all--except that Borneo is being heavily deforested, because of (largely illegal) logging, conversion to farmland, and so on. At current rates of deforestation, some think that Borneo's forest might be essentially gone in two decades, driving orangutans, proboscis monkeys, and other species to extinction.

Incidently, since these fires were burning in peat, some of them never really stopped--the peat has just been smoldering for years. It's an El Niño year right now (much weaker than '97/98), and there are fires on Borneo again (or at least there were, as of August--it's hard to find current information, though you can look at the Global Fire Monitoring Center's webpage for southeast Asia). Another chance to take measurements of carbon emissions, I guess.

Co2, medieval warming period

[ChuckMaster]

I always take every "warming" story with a huge grain of salt. Ever temperature timeline we see for the last 500 years shows the "Hockey Stick" graph : A declining line that suddenly upswings at the end of the 20th century. This is the "shock" graph researchers use to scare people into giving them more funding.

However, the graph conviently leaves out the medieval ice age, where rivers in britan froze and is mentioned in the "Cantabury Tales," and the medieval warming period that allowed the Vikings to colonize Greenland.

In reality, we're not sure which way the temperature has been swinging and we just now have technology and methods to study it with, rather than taking tree sample rings in isolated sections of the globe and guessing what the temperature was that year the ring grew.

My biggest concern is painting Co2 as the "killer gas" that will prevent the spread of alcohol fueled cars since their main byproduct is c02 and water.

Re:Responsibility? It's people.

[sbjornda]

Damn, I just wasted my moderator points earlier today. Give this guy +1 for Informative.

.nosig

FIRES!?

[SkWaSH]

Sweet! I'm gonna go fight the wildfires in Asia! Woohoo!

I think there is plenty of room

[MichaelPenne]

in the solar system. And of course we have only barely begun to farm and colonize the seas of Earth.

And I think the very greatest resource is human intelligence, so the more folks we have, the better chance we have of finding solutions for our various problems.

In the near term, we should certainly be working on helping the developing world implement cleaner forms of energy, sources of building materials, and better farming methods for the developing world.

The current course seems to be dominated by blind faith in some invisible hand, which seems to me just replacing "God" with the "free market" rather than a sensible attempt to find and implement the best solutions.

I think it is about time that the dominant species on this planet (i.e. you and me) start taking some responsibility for climate change.

I agree with that, we need to figure out how to control the weather so that changes efforts to make a decent, healthy, and productive life to every human being don't enhance the wild swings of the natural cycle.

New markets for Apple?

[wcspxyx]

Am I the only one who read this and thought that Apple was releasing a special version of their OS for Asian markets?

Re:Random thoughts

[MadBurner]

I'm hoping three toed flying squirels will take over myself.
or... maybe the banana slug.
ALL HAIL THE MIGHTY BANANA SLUG!

Efficiency and cleanliness

[MichaelPenne]

in the long term are probably more good than harm for our economies, I would say.

We know burning oil causes health problems, and we know the supply is not going to be sufficient for the next century, so getting going with cleaner and more efficient forms of energy is a good idea.

And of course the nations that get going on this idea soonest will be the ones selling the power to the ones that just muddle along trying to find a few more barrels of heroin *cough* I mean oil...

So while orbital solar, better photovotaic ground based solar, pebble bed fission, etc. are expensive to research and get started with, the folks who get good at it can turn around and sell it to the rest of the world as the oil runs low and folks get tired of breathing gas fumes instead of air...

Damn asian spicy foods

[docbrown42]

If those Asians wouldn't eat so much spicy food, then there wouldn't be so much "carbon emissions" from Asia!

...what do you mean "Methane"?

So, Do We Pollute Less Now than Nature Used Too?

[RhettLivingston]

I think the question that this should put into the queue is, when the American plains burned off most every year, was the resulting total carbon emissions higher or lower than today? On the one hand, we burn lots of fossil fuels, on the other, we've stopped nature from periodically burning a million square miles....

This is eerily like the ozone equation here in St. Louis. We've got lots of Oak forests to our west which boost our ozone levels. There are indications that the forests are a primary contributor to our ozone problem. I suppose much of the rest of the country already solved the problem by replacing their Oak forests with faster growing trees that by chance, don't produce so much ozone.

Ahh. Now, are the world leaders REALLY this dumb?

[Fantastic Lad]

What if. . .

The world leaders, diplomats and power brokers, (many of whom are really, really smart; Rhodes Scholars and crazy high IQ's, as many of them are, believe it or not. I know a few, and I tell you, they breed that way. You don't get to be fucking powerful by being a dolt. Unless you happen to be a Bush on a String, but that's a whole different ball of wax), anyway. . , what if they actually listened to their scientific advisors? 'Cuz they're certainly not eating from the same trough or reading from the same books that the rest of us schmucks are. What if they knew, for real, in advance that a big pile of shit was going to hit the fan? --And by 'shit' I mean ecological collapse, country-killer comets, ice age returns, possible magnetic pole-flipping, and a train load of other dark and nasty things I won't even touch on. What if. . ?

See, there's been this mega-cheesey, bad sci-fi idea floating around for the last fifty years or so called, "Alternative 3". --The idea being that all the rich and wealthy build a big pretty space ship and leave the planet while the rest of us die in filth and misery. Pulp fiction fairy tale nonsense, of course. But fairy tales have their roots you see. . .

I've gotta ask. . . "Why are there so many damned tunnels dug under the U.S.?" Underground military bases which go deep, deep, interconnecting throughout much of the continent. --I'm serious. Look this stuff up if you don't think it's true. If you have a friend or two in the military who work on one of the big bases, well they might just be able to nod at you and say, "Yeah, half the damned military is underground, forcryingoutloud!" --The Denver Airport, like a big pimple, for some reason is one of the places where it hits the surface. Big scandal. Tunnels galore. Look this shit up. LOTS of digging. What's up with all of that? Why? Fear of nuclear strikes? Nuh-uh. They've been digging this shit since the the 30's. There's a damned base 3 hours north of where I live, and everybody in the whole town knows the army is lying when they tell us the base closed down in the nineties. Not with that many soldiers around, it didn't! --Not with the transport trailers vanishing into hillside tunnel mouths where there ain't no other side to come out of!

Shadow governments? Everybody knows about this. Some people even know about Fema; (Which they even tried to make sound pretty on 'The West Wing', (more sleepy-time propaganda about how nice things aren't. All is fine here in the fairy tale. Go back to sleep while we bleed and ass-rape you.), --Oh, everybody knows, and it scares the shit out of them; it touches a nerve. When Jay Leno cracked his Shadow Government joke one evening back when the facts were surfacing into indisputable pop culture last year, the audience sure didn't laugh. No way. --They made an awkward, unhappy and nervous sound. None of them saying it aloud, but all thinking in that flash moment, "Oh, Yuck! I don't like it. I don't like it. I don't like it! Jay! You're supposed to calm us and lie to us! Let us sleep in the belief that everything is fine. Please stop it with the Shadow Government! How it bothers me!"

Not that those who know a few things are any less confused. There's a mind game a-raging; a massive misdirection game. "Can you find the Boeing?" "Who REALLY bombed the WTC?" "WHY is the economy going to tank right when it would really help plunge us into war?" And "Why, oh why are there so many storms and earthquakes and volcanos?"

Douglas Adams called it the "Interconnectedness of All Things", (and if he didn't, then it's only because he used better wording than I can summon or recall at the moment.)

And what's with this made up war? It came out of nowhere! Could it be any more contrived? I've never seen any global event which has been more desperately engineered than this one! There's a rush-darn schedule to keep, by gosh! (Of COURSE the Kyoto agreement got ditched and all those coal reacters got fired up back in 2000. What does it matter when the signs are screaming. Just a quick cash grab before the curtains.)

It doesn't matter how far up one's head is stuffed, or how much Leno minces out his trademarked litte high-pitch voice. Even the real dopes are beginning to get a clue. The freekin' clocks make you hold your breath these days! The days aren't just a little shorter. . . Fact is, for the last few years time has been more and more quickly scurrying willie-nillie that even the damned muggles are beginning to get wise. "I say, Honey, doesn't it seem like we just got out of bed a very short time ago?" "Why, yes, dearie! But let's discuss such things. It flusters by blusters!" "Oh, terribly sorry, Honey!" "Quite okay; just don't do it again!"

--We've got Christians who don't want to get, "Left Behind", we've got Alien huggers who dearly want to believe that they're going to get lifted by their UFO friends when the time is right, (nevermind the fact that those alien buggers sure seem to like their bovine lips and cow plasma; hey, everybody's got a fetish or two, right? Me, I waste my time spouting off on Slashdot, so I'd be a right hypocrite to blame somebody for a cow-lip and blood fetish.). And shit! We've got freekin' Cruise and Travolta smug in whatever bullshit their twisted little cult is pumping them full of. (Travolta was in their damned movie!, for crying out loud!) No matter how far under your rock you happen to be jammed, it's getting harder to shut out the fact that some weird shit is up! And those who are well tuned in are making travel plans and enjoying their last few milk-shakes but good!

So waddaysupposedtado? Huh?

Well, I tell people to keep their heads together and try not spill their coffee when the shit begins to fly. That and sell your damned stocks while the selling is good! The PPT (Plung Protection Team) is going to let the cash run dry and the gold stocks soar when the time is exactly right. . !

The U.S. was born under the sign of Cancer, and in about seven months time, Saturn returns with a vengeance for two and a half years. Whoopie. Hard times ahead, by gum! --Course, that's just some sort of astrology shit, and so long as one is safe under a cool and cozy rock, one can rationalize all day long, watch 'Friends' and eat their Taco Bell Smurf Food while sucking down some Sodium Benzoate enriched beverage like a good little consumer.

-Fantastic Lad

graph

[js7a]

Here's a graph of atmospheric CO2 showing that the sigmoid (resource consumption) curve fits the data withR^2 > 0.98. That means all but about a percent of the variation can be explained by an equation in four variables. That does not bode well for anyone's ability to do anything about the problem.

Re:graph

[Simon Field]

It seems suspicious to me that the curve seems to follow the use of fossil fuels, the economy of the northern hemisphere, the population of the world, and the progress of deforestation.

Saying that there is little we can do seems to fly in the face of a correlation with things we have done.

If four variables make it hard to undo, why didn't it make it hard to do in the first place?

Global warning...

[Anonymous Coward]

And I was ripped to shreads for mispelling a harder word then "Warming"

Carbon Releases in Asia

[phigga]

Thank the Gods....I'm sure my asian brothers were really, really tired of having to re-write all of their apps from the ground up using Cocoa....this should save some headaches!

Furthermore, the bugs can spell better than you.

[Anonymous Coward]

n/t

Do your part....

[Elpenor]

... to prevent carbon dioxide... stop breathing... ;)

Elp

Ocean

[Anonymous Coward]

We will start to live in underwater cities. Remember, there is a lot of free space down there.

Global Cooling

[fritz_269]

If it hasn't been posted before:
www.globalclimate.org/Newsweek.htm
(Article from Newsweek April 28, 1975)

In the early seventies, the world's climate scientists were paranoid about global cooling. Has the system really changed that much in 30 years due solely to human intervention? I would think the climate would have more inertia than that; are we just reading signals in the noise?

A quote from the article:

A survey completed last year by Dr. Murray Mitchell of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reveals a drop of half a degree in average ground temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere between 1945 and 1968. According to George Kukla of Columbia University, satellite photos indicated a sudden, large increase in Northern Hemisphere snow cover in the winter of 1971-72. And a study released last month by two NOAA scientists notes that the amount of sunshine reaching the ground in the continental U.S. diminished by 1.3% between 1964 and 1972. To the layman, the relatively small changes in temperature and sunshine can be highly misleading. Reid Bryson of the University of Wisconsin points out that the Earth's average temperature during the great Ice Ages was only about seven degrees lower than during its warmest eras - and that the present decline has taken the planet about a sixth of the way toward the Ice Age average. Others regard the cooling as a reversion to the "little ice age" conditions that brought bitter winters to much of Europe and northern America between 1600 and 1900 - years when the Thames used to freeze so solidly that Londoners roasted oxen on the ice and when iceboats sailed the Hudson River almost as far south as New York City.

Re: mmmm.... Tasty.

[cronus42]

This is turning violent! I say we tie all the environmentalists up and barbecue spotted owls!

rant() {

The "democratic" (read elite socialist oligarchy) portion of our society would like to return us (meaning the people) to the stone age. It has nothing to do with the environment. It's all about control.

If in a century or two we find that carbon dioxide is really damaging our environment, then we can remove it. Technology has been the solution to all of our problems for several hundred years, why stop now?

All I hear is: Ban Human Cloning! Ban Nuclear Power! Ban SUV's! Ban Diesel Engines! WHY??!

WE ARE THE TOP OF THIS FOOD CHAIN. Welcome to natural selection. Nature will always adapt. If the malaysian spotted shit frog goes extinct, WHO CARES! We could nuke the whole planet bare and nature would recover.

Oh, and just to make things clear. I'm not a conservative. I'm not a "liberal". If you feel the need to label: I'm an Atheist Libertarian.
}

I hope this is a joke

[cronus42]

I'm not sure I can put together a valid response to this.....

Look at the data and you might not say that again.

[CemeteryWall]

Do climate records exist that date back far enough so that an accurate comparison of carbon levels and the resulting effects may be made?

Very probably. See here for a graph of past CO2 concentrations, ice ages etc.

It also has links to the US Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center, which show CO2 and surface temperature data.

Is Homer Simpson logged in as an AC?

[felix rayman]

Marge (to Homer): That's your solution to everything: move under the sea - it's not gonna happen!

Re:Random thoughts

[Anonymous Coward]

We can have a devastating effect on the ecosystem. Pine forests, desertification, even cropland can significantly reduce biodiversity, which is what keeps the ecosystem running.

No joke. Just quickly written on too little sleep

[Fantastic Lad]

I'm not sure I can put together a valid response to this.....

You just did.

But the world's most popular response to dealing with the end/beginning of time, (comfy, "What's on TV?" denial), won't work for much longer. When the music plays, everybody dances.

But don't sweat it. You've got another six years or so before things start to get really ugly.

-Fantastic Lad

Headline

[Myco]

I love how headlines always, always have to be in the present tense. The Guardian proclaims:

Indonesia Wildfires Release Carbon

But they're talking about fires that occurred in 1997. The news is still up-to-date, since it's recent analysis that's being reported on, but the headline is just a little ludicrous. It's like if they discovered that the Titanic had hit a rock rather than an iceberg, and reported "Titanic Hits Rock, Sinks!"

Re:Responsibility? It's people.

[Anonymous Coward]

There has been 'haze' in Malaysia this year, and also every year since 1997. It comes from local forest clearing for development, as people do not understand that the biomass could be productively used for fertilizing the earth elsewhere instead of burning it, or they deem such use too expensive. But this is a minor contributor, although it can have a very nasty local effect; imagine a smoldering forest in the next lot of your new condo producing stinky, acrid smoke for days or even weeks on end, as the clearing goes on slowly and carelessly. But this is only a minor contributor.

The thick body of the 'haze' comes from forest fires from Sumatra and Borneo. Land is being cleared for rice fields after it has been mostly illegally logged. This 'haze' is so thick it can cover entire nations (in this case Malaysia) hundreds of miles away.

The worst is that the 'haze' is really nasty, it has a deep offensive stench that stings in your nose, and contributes to early death for people with breathing and cardiovascular problems. Asthmatics and the elderly are confined to their homes living next to an air purifier, and very few people in Malaysia can afford to buy a decent electrostatic air purifier with an active carbon filter element which is the only thing that would really help them.

Officially, 'open burning' is illegal in Malaysia. But in practice it's going on all the time. All one has to do it take a trip to the new KL airport (from KL that is) and use your nose (by car, the new KL Airport Ekspres train is so thoroughly air-con you won't smell anything of the outside world). Reports have been coming from the new 'Multimedia Super Corridor' area of open burning used for development land clearing, right now. Because of illegality, the pace of the clearing has just been tuned down, instead of a raging fire the lots are burned very slowly, mostly at nights, to avoid problems with the police. But this produces much more smoke than a good open fire.

This is not something that happened once in 1997, it's happening right now. People do not speak or write about it in global forums because they're so sick of it and so used to it. Even if the visibility is less than 600 feet you still have to cook dinner for your kids, drive to work, play some basketball and so on.

Both Indonesia and Malaysia have been paying lip service to the problem, if even that. Malaysia is hard blaming Indonesia ignoring what goes on locally, and the police does not act unless someone makes an enquiry. And in Indonesia, nobody gives a sh.t. It's all more logs, more money, more rice fields, more food, more money, more family, more logs, more rice fields, more everything more.

Re:No joke. Just quickly written on too little sle

[cronus42]

So the world's going to end, huh? In six years? Have you been talking to "God"? Have you been listening to Art Bell? Or is it just the crack?

THE SKY IS FALLING!

Easy on China

[Stultsinator]

I see a lot of people are quick to lay it on heavy with China, but balance this article with the Three Gorges hydroelectric plant they're building. It will be absolutely huge, and they're sacrificing a lot of cultural identity to get it. Once it's in place and the rivers start rising, they'll wash away litterally thousands of archeological sites dating back to before the Ming Dynasty. Equate that with flooding Rome or Greece.

All that is to produce clean, renewable energy and to prevent the incredible loss of life those rivers cause when they flood.

what about unix

[Anonymous Coward]

They can't reproduce

Clean carbon?

[Anonymous Coward]

Alcohol C2H6O or CH4O are nice ways of storing hydrogen. Breaking H-C bonds in alcohol actually releases more energy than the C-C bonds. Most gasoline is aproximated by C(n)H(n+1)where n is a large number and the ratio between C and H is nearly 1. The alcohols above have effective ratios of 5:2 and 3:1, respectively.

For the rest of you, burning alcohol yeilds a higher ratio of water to carbon dioxide than burning gasoline. Biodiesel has most of the same properties of alcohol, but both cost more than petroleum derivatives.

More importantly though is the fact that biodiesel and alcohol are renewable. Biodiesel and alcohol, except for cheap tequila, are relatively non-toxic compared to petroleum derivatives. Due to the connectivity of the compounds in gasoline, etc. they don't burn well and thus create lots of particulate emissions and toxic byproducts. Alcohol and biodiesel actually create almost no toxic byproducts, but it does create carbon dioxide.

Hey who gives a sh*t about the environment, we only care about ourselves and our health and how much poison we can stand and hey, what does toxic mean...

Sorry if you all already knew this.

fashionable gas masks

[gotih]

these are for protection of demonstrators from the nasty gasses released by cops at demonstrations. sort of stylish...

Uh huh. . .

[Fantastic Lad]

So the world's going to end, huh? In six years? Have you been talking to "God"? Have you been listening to Art Bell? Or is it just the crack?

The funny part is that people like you said similar things only a couple of years ago whenever I told them that the U.S. was due to turn, practically over night, into a fascist state.

And when the comets, (and other things), start blasting holes in your cozy little illusion of reality, I wouldn't be surprised if you just dove a little deeper into that ever-popular Egyptian river.

Do as you will.

-Fantastic Lad