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Role Model Bhutan Takes Zen Approach To Climate Change
HughPickens.com writes: Matt McGrath writes at BBC that Bhutan, the strongly Buddhist country where up to three-quarters of the population follow the religion, is the only country in the world considered a role model by the Climate Action Tracking organization. Bhutan has put forward the concept of "Gross National Happiness", that represents a commitment to building an economy that would serve Bhutan's culture based on Buddhist spiritual values instead of western material development gauged by gross domestic product (GDP). Bhutan's Constitution mandates its territory to be at least 60% covered by forest – the vast carbon sink a boon for its balancing of humanity and nature. Right now over 70% is under trees, and so great are the forests, that the country absorbs far more carbon than its 750,000 population can produce. As well as inhaling all that CO2, the Bhutanese are pushing out large amounts of electricity to India, generated by hydropower from their fast flowing rivers. The prime minister says that their waters hold the potential to offset 100 million tonnes of Indian emissions every year. That's around a fifth of Britain's current annual outpourings.
Bhutan has embraced electric vehicles and the government envisages the capital city Thimpu, as a "clean-electric" city with green taxis for its 100,000 citizens — Bold plans for a city that at present doesn't have any traffic lights! "We see ourselves on the one hand being able to use electric cars for our own purposes, to protect our environment, to improve our economy, but also to show in a small measure that sustainable transport works and that electric vehicles are a reality," says Tshering Tobgay. ""In Bhutan the distances are short, electricity is very cheap and because of the mountains you can't drive exceedingly fast, so all these combined to provide us with the opportunity for the investment."
According to Dr Marcia Rocha, it's not just a question of Bhutan being spectacularly endowed with natural advantages. "I think they are a country that culturally are very connected to nature, in every document that they submit it's there, it's just a very important focus of their politics." "We may be small, our impact not huge, but we always try many conservation projects," says Kinlay Dorjee, mayor of capital Thimphu. However the modest Bhutanese Prime Minister rejects the idea that his country is the leader of the climate pack. "I feel that calling Bhutan a role model is not appropriate, every country has their own sets of challenges and their own sets opportunities."
Bhutan has embraced electric vehicles and the government envisages the capital city Thimpu, as a "clean-electric" city with green taxis for its 100,000 citizens — Bold plans for a city that at present doesn't have any traffic lights! "We see ourselves on the one hand being able to use electric cars for our own purposes, to protect our environment, to improve our economy, but also to show in a small measure that sustainable transport works and that electric vehicles are a reality," says Tshering Tobgay. ""In Bhutan the distances are short, electricity is very cheap and because of the mountains you can't drive exceedingly fast, so all these combined to provide us with the opportunity for the investment."
According to Dr Marcia Rocha, it's not just a question of Bhutan being spectacularly endowed with natural advantages. "I think they are a country that culturally are very connected to nature, in every document that they submit it's there, it's just a very important focus of their politics." "We may be small, our impact not huge, but we always try many conservation projects," says Kinlay Dorjee, mayor of capital Thimphu. However the modest Bhutanese Prime Minister rejects the idea that his country is the leader of the climate pack. "I feel that calling Bhutan a role model is not appropriate, every country has their own sets of challenges and their own sets opportunities."
In the 1990s, Bhutan expelled or forced to leave most of its ethnic Lhotshampa population, one-fifth of the country's entire population, demanding conformity in religion, dress, and language .[55][56][57] The decision was motivated by the concern that the fast-growing Nepali minority were starting to revolt for a separate independent state, recalling similar events that caused the collapse of the nearby kingdom of Sikkim in 1975.
I love Jesus, except for his foreign policy.
Fucked up buddhists. Everybody knows that money==happiness. What are they teaching their children?
Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
All the CO2 they consume during growth they reproduce when the trees die and rot.
Actually not all the carbon will be released. The dead plants will rot and slowly turn to soil. Some of the carbon will be trapped in the soil and slowly over time go deeper and deeper. The coal and oil burned today are mostly rainforests plants and they grew like 300 million years ago (if I remember correctly). Regardless of specific age, it's way before the dinosaurs and the saying about burning dinosaurs for fuel is not based on facts.
Also if they release as much carbon as they consume in their lifetime, they would take up the oxygen they released, leaving nothing to animals or humans. Clearly plants release more oxygen than they consume.
Bhutan is not a role model for anybody.
They exported or exterminated their ethnic minorities in the 1980's and 1990's to make a racially pure, and religiously uniform society. They banned television until the early 90's. Their king and queen routinely scout European tourists for orgies.
Modern Bhutan is the equivalent of the United States exporting or exterminating its blacks (the lowest achieving socioeconomic group), banning immigration and only allowing the most beautiful tourists in for sexual abuse, and then reaping the rewards. Modern liberal societies do not participate in this behavior.
It's not a given that forests act as carbon sinks, or at least as good ones. See for example this article;
"Conventional wisdom has long held that tropical rainforests act as a sink for carbon dioxide, cleansing the atmosphere of a major greenhouse gas. However, biologists studying the forests of Costa Rica are finding that rising temperatures are causing trees to grow less and to pump out more carbon dioxide, adding to an accelerating pattern of global warming."
Added to variations in the amount of carbon sequestered by trees are variations in soil emissions. Warmer climates can cause the organisms in the soild to release more carbon dioxide and methane from the soil. Complicated stuff.
Oh no... it's the future.
Or you know you could make something useful like paper and when you are done store it underground (ie landfill) to sequester the Carbon.
I love Jesus, except for his foreign policy.
GDP is not bad. The reason it's commonly used is because you need a certain level of productivity to sustain a population. You need to be able to produce enough food, clothing, and shelter for each person, so a certain minimum level of productivity per capita is required. Productivity beyond that can go to a variety of uses, ranging from research into new medical procedures, development of new technology which increases productivity even more, or (on the flip side) materialistic things like solid gold toilet seats.
While happiness should be a goal, it can never be the primary goal because it is not self-sustaining. You can dope up the entire population on morphine and they will be extremely happy. They will also die within a month because nobody is producing the food they need to survive.
Productivity was easier to measure back in the hunter-gatherer days when each individual had to collect enough food to feed himself, and build his own clothing and shelter. The entire reason the modern economy developed is because having each person learn every trade like this is extremely inefficient. It's much better to have one person devote himself solely to farming, another solely to hunting, another solely to building homes, and another solely to making clothing. When you split tasks up like this, each person can concentrate on and learn more about their sole task in depth, improve upon it, and productivity per capita increases.
But then it's no longer possible to directly compare people's productivity. How many bushels of corn equals a house? That's where money and the market economy come in - those allow you to value different kinds of productivity using a common currency. A bushel of corn is worth $x, a house is worth $y, and now you can figure out how many bushels of corn equal a house. And when you add up the productivity of everyone in the country, you get GDP. Divide it by the number of people and you get productivity per capita, which is then comparable to productivity when each person had to be completely self-sufficient and do everything himself.
If you wish to factor in things like pollution and CO2 emissions, you simply add them as negatives to productivity. Sure there will be a lot of debate over exactly how much a negative a pound of CO2 emission is. But ditching GDP entirely is throwing out the baby with the bathwater.
The coal and oil burned today are mostly rainforests plants and they grew like 300 million years ago
Actually, they are mostly plants that grew in swamps, with water that had very little oxygen or nitrates. When the plants died, and sunk into the muck, they didn't decompose because of the lack of oxygen. This does not happen in rainforests. Rainforest soils contain very little organic material, which is one reason they quickly erode when the vegetation is cleared or burned off.
Clearly plants release more oxygen than they consume.
This is only true if you ignore the CO2 exhaled by the animals that eat the plants. A mature forest sequesters a lot of carbon, but it does not continue to sink more.
One scheme to remove CO2 from the atmosphere, is to plant fast growing pine trees on plantations, harvest them every decade or so, and burn them to produce electricity, and then sequester the resulting CO2 in shale formations where the CO2 reacts with the rock to form solid carbonates. The trees are then replanted. There are plans (heavily subsidized by British taxpayers) to do exactly this.
All the CO2 they consume during growth they reproduce when the trees die and rot.
I've explained this before, but I guess I'll explain it again.
When trees decompose slowly, some of the carbon is sequestered. The more slowly, the more carbon. Tropical rainforests turn over too quickly to sequester a meaningful amount of carbon. Larger trees tend to put on more biomass every year than small ones (per unit of area) so older growth is more valuable for CO2 sequestration. Some species may well reach a point at which younger trees would do more good; at that point you can cut them down and build things out of them, which also provides CO2 sequestration.
I've provided citations for all of this before, again and again in fact. So you should be able to find them by googling slashdot for things like 'drinkypoo' and 'CO2'.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
...Has Bhutan been seized by Buddhist Fundamentalists?
Growing forests is not a zero-sum game. Yes, when a tree dies and rots, the carbon in it largely (but not entirely) returns to the air. But if I have X acres more forest, I have locked up the carbon that's in those X acres of forest. The carbon that is released by dying trees gets balanced by the new trees that replace them.
is to not worry about it.
It's better than sending the government out to bully people, police their energy choices, and burden them with higher energy bills that only rich Tesla drivers can afford.
Yeah but doing things your way would mean passing up a hell of a money/power grab. When you rule over carbon-based life forms, the ability to regulate/tax carbon gives you tremendous political opportunities. Having a really good reason for wanting to do this just makes it even harder to do it reasonably, because omg what will the children inherit? If you are against my draconian proposal obviously you hate children!
burden them with higher energy bills
Since 2010, I have cut my home energy use in half. I switched to all LED lighting, added insulation to my attic, replaced the central heater & A/C with spot heating/cooling, and bought a Samsung Smartthings hub to turn off unused devices. This did not cause "higher energy bills". Due to tiered pricing, my energy bill is about 1/3rd of what it was five years ago.
Reading that Bhutan is a role model for the climate, I can't stop wondering what a role model is. I used to think that is a somebody other people should copy. However here the role model is producing electricity with hydro powerplants. This requires water at a high level, which goes downhill. This is easy to find in mountains and Bhutan is nothing but mountains. However in other to copy that, the country copying it must have mountains as well, making it useless in great parts of the world. Japan has a great unused potential here due to their terrain, but with a prime minister, who shuts down construction of renewable energy sources to ensure there is no alternative to nuclear power, it's an open question if they will use it anytime soon.
Another issue is the claim about having lots of forests. Sure it's good, but it's not as easily copied either. They only have 19.9 people for each square km, making it one of the least populated countries in the world. For comparison Germany has 230. This naturally affects the trees to population radio. Also the low population density results in low power usage, making it easier to feed the population entirely with hydro power.
I would dare to say that Bhutan is as much a role model as Iceland. Iceland use geothermal power like no other country in the world and can supply all buildings with heat and electricity. They even have heated roads to make them clear of snow and ice. While it sounds great on paper, Iceland is the only place on the planet where a geothermal hotspot sits on top of a crack in the tectonic plates. This mean their geothermal power is unique, making it impossible to copy paste their power supply buildings to any other country. Iceland is also great for hydropower, though volcanos under the glacier have a history of flash flooding, which wash away everything in their path. Powerplants are at risk and bridges have been lost.
If we go back to asking what a role model is, it should be a template to copy. Where I live the terrain offers none of those options, which mean I can't use such role models for anything. A useful role model would be something like burning garbage and turn it efficiently into electricity to reduce the fuel needed in powerplants or something like that. That particular example used to be a role model, but now it has been copied so much that it is more like "that's how it is", which in turn requires new role models to copy. A useful role model would be to use waste heat from industry (like major internet servers) or powerplants to provide heat for houses, hot tap water or heat requiring industry. It is being done, but there is a huge unused potential here. Alternatively it could be something as simple as a new turbine for powerplants, which reduce fuel consumption and emission by 20% for the same power output. (no, I did not make up that number. That really is the difference between standard and high efficient plants).
Of all the land-based plant habitats, peaty wetlands would do the best job of sequestering carbon for long periods of time. Just don't go around digging the stuff up and burning it.
whoosh!
Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
Tell a poor family to do the same. Just buy all this stuff instead of healthier food or a reliable used car. Except they rent, so they can't. They're stuck paying higher energy bills.
Incorrect. Oil comes from oceanic deposits like coral reefs. Coal comes from terrestrial deposits, like swamps which may or may not be in a rainforest.
Surely Bhuta must be like a paradise, unless you are a Lhotshampa. You want that kind of shame or the carbon kind?
* not all buddhism is zen buddhism
* there's nothing buddhist or enlightened about the mentioned policies and approaches
* fucking shit eating headline, it should be forcibly changed just for the stereotypes
"Stratigraphically the origin of agriculture and thermonuclear destruction will appear essentially simultaneous" -- Lee
This is only true if you ignore the CO2 exhaled by the animals that eat the plants. A mature forest sequesters a lot of carbon, but it does not continue to sink more.
How are you defining "mature"? Because in fact, larger trees tend to sequester (psst, "sink" and "sequester" mean the same thing buddy) more carbon than young trees. A quick google search will prove it, if you want to know the facts so you can propagate those instead of nonsense.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
It's easier to get great reductions on improvements if your house is poor to begin with
My house was not inefficient to begin with. It was about average. I know this because PG&E includes a comparison on every bill, telling you how you compare to other houses in your neighborhood. I went from about 50% to the top 5%. Last month I was at 4%. Once my teenage daughter moves out, I expect to move to the top 2%.
Cutting my energy consumption in half was not particularly hard. It is fun, in a geeky way, to be able to turn things on and off with just my voice. The smart hub has a published API, and I have written some scripts. For instance, my son rides his bike home from school, and then uses a personalized code to open the front door. If that code is not entered by 3pm, I get an alert on my cellphone, letting me know there could be a problem. I think the scriptable home may be the next big thing.
I spent about $500, but I save about $80 per month on my gas/electricity bill, so the payback is very quick.
I'm sure all of the wildlife that live in the rivers take a different point of view to lots of rivers being blocked and used for electricity... or for the animals that lived in the areas flooded.
Or did people forget that not so long ago, it was environmentalists that opposed damming rivers?
The motto of the true environmentalist should be : first, do no harm... it would avoid so many mistakes being made today by people claiming to help "the environment".
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Hydropower is evil. It kills fish and alters the flow o rivers downstream (holy rivers to some). And it screws up the natural distribution of sediments and nutrients to land downstream.
At least that's what all the fish huggers tell us about our hydropower.
Have gnu, will travel.
It's easy to be a role model if you happen to win the geography lottery. My closest example would be Norway, which has both hydropower and oil, so they can sell the fossil fuel for nice profits while living off clean energy themselves.
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
If you think that all the CO2 that vegetation such as trees takes in is given off when it rots, how do you explain where the hydro-CARBONS in fossil fuels came from?
You didn't really think that through, did you.
Complicated stuff indeed, and not at all the "zero-sum" that angel'o'sphere imagines.
There's also the various uses of wood that man has. When it's burned it may release CO2, but it's better than digging coal out of the ground and releasing that CO2. When it's used for building or other manufacture, it locks away carbon for decades or potentially centuries in the item.
Bhutan has a population density of 18/km2, the world land population density is 47/km2, including infertile areas. So what applies to Bhutan may not apply to everyone unless we decide to reduce world population by 2/3.
You did all that for only $500? Did you miss a zero?
No. The SmartThings hub was $99 on Amazon. LED bulbs are $2 each on eBay. The attic insulation was loose fiber, and I rented the blower from Home Depot for $40.
They's just an excuse for nobody ever doing anything to make the world better. Presumably you throw litter in the street, because after all, you as one person couldn't possibly make a difference.
Yeah the peasants of bhutan must be thrilled, while they are substanance farming, living off free foreign aid rice imported from India, at least thru have the comfort of knowing that they will always have a green forest to look at.
The microbes of 300 million years ago were still not very good at breaking down wood. They've become better since then. The rate of coal formation has dropped dramatically. That would be fine if we weren't digging up and burning so much coal.
a,e,i,o,u and sometimes w and y (at be if of up cwm by)
So why don't we cut down forests, bury the carbon our own way, and then plant more trees?
By that token, you are responsible for the genocide of the native Americans. What are you doing to atone for your crime, NostalgiaForInfinity?
Who will make these electric cars?
Not the Bhutanese: they do not have the heavy industry required to extract the basic elements for a rechargeable car, make the components, or assemble them into a whole. If they want to keep all that closeness to nature, they won't want to develop a complex heavy manufacturing, ore processing, chemicals processing, based industry.
That will be done somewhere else. Bhutan will be fine. China, or India, or Vietnam, or USA, won't.
This plan is just as selfish as the USA importing cheap iPhones made in environmentally-degraded China.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled"
I was wondering this myself. It sounds nice, "National Happiness" and all that, but I wonder how they treat those who dissent. On the point of Buddhist Theocracy, I am always a bit surprised that people have such a positive opinion of the Dalai Lama, as what he wants to return that country to is exactly that. Why would a Buddhist Theocracy be a good thing, but a Muslim Theocracy (for example Iran) but bad?
Do you think coal was placed into an unchanging earth 6000 years ago before some puny God retired or do you think the earth is a changing thing with ongoing processes such as buried vegetation becoming coal?
The original poster of this article says the "followers of the religion" but Buddhism is compatible with atheism, agnosticism, antitheism, it's not even a religion as much as a bunch of philosophies.
Example: Sam Harris, is an atheist (actually he doesn't like that word though) who supports much of buddhism ideas (but is also critical of some of buddhism)
Buddhism and non religious people are compatible with each other... becuase buddhism is not about worshiping an invisible man in the sky
Disclaimer: I am not a buddhist and don't want to be, as I reject the label.
You are holding a nation with the population of a small city, but with less infrastructure, up to a measure that a small city cannot match either.
Why?
The CO2 sometimes gets delayed - coal and oil sit in the ground for MILLIONS of years and there is no CO2 coming from that oil or coal until you burn it.. Plants turn into oil and coal.... So the idea that CO2 comes from the rotting of trees is not really true, if, and this is an important if, you can keep the coal and oil the way it is without burning it. An example is the dinosaur times: the dinosaurs ran around without burning things in combustion engines. They burned some food to live in their mitochondria, but a lot of the plants got trapped underground and turned into coal and oil, stopping the CO2 from coming up (oil stores the carbons in itself).
So if we could generate electricity without burning coal or oil, by using gravity (water damn) or violating the second law (Sheehan and Capek, challenges to second law of thermodynamics), then we could literally take CO2 and turn it into other chemicals and store all the Carbon underground like how oil and coal have been sitting underground for millions of years undisturbed (until we f**ked it all up and used much of it)
In math it would be stated as:
money = happiness
In a C program this could imply that money is a variable that becomes happiness, not that it equals happiness. Which is it?
confusing assignment with equality, one step at a time. Thanks Dennis Ritchie
Also if they release as much carbon as they consume in their lifetime, they would take up the oxygen they released, leaving nothing to animals or humans. Clearly plants release more oxygen than they consume.
That is nonsense.
The amount of oxygen on this planet is fixed. Either it is bound to CO2 or something else or it is in the atmosphere as O2.
Plants simply inhale CO2 (over day time), fix the C and exhale the O2.
If the rot (after dying) the fixed C is concerted back to O2, except if by a landslide the trees get buried and over over millennia get sucked down into the earth and get converted to coal or oil.
Even then, bottom line it is a zero sum game.
If we plant as many trees as we can right now, and don't change the CO2 production, in 30, 40, 50 or 100 years, when the trees die, we will be back on square one.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Even more facpalm
Clearly plants release more oxygen than they consume.
Sorry, you dummy: how should that be physically or chemically be possible?
You plant a seed, a plant grows (nice how the same word means so different things) and then it is producing O2 ... from what exactly?
Read a damn book about science ... does not matter which one. It will enlighten you.
The quote above is the dumbest thing I I have read here on /. since years ... unfortunately you are not alone, I have to make that claim every 3 months or so ... WTF!
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Wrong on all accounts.
The massive deforestation of the European continent (from 90% prehistoric to less than 10% today) has been a huge contributor to carbon in the atmosphere
Neither is the puny amount of wood burned any comparison to the amount of oil/coal burned nor are we down to 10% of woods.
In fact we are up to 60% - 80% again since decades, depending on country.
This is an inconvenient truth for Europeans, because if you take that into account
Wrong.
Europeans prefer to ignore this massive historical carbon debt
There is no such dept. All wood on earth burned today would add less than a one year CO2 pollution mankind is doing every year.
You are an idiot.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
If money could buy a sense of humor, every armchair social commentator and his dog would have one.
If it acquires resources on instantiation like a duck, then its a shared_ptr<Duck>
You know you're on Slashdot when the troll posts are indistinguishable from normal behaviour.
Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
If their apartment complex covers utilities then the complex may be interested in efficiency upgrades. At any rate, as a poor renter with a small space I use far less energy than the wealthy so my electricity bill is $20 a month. Need to raise that to $25 to save the planet? Alright.
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Well, I'm glad you at least agree implicitly that countries ought to be held responsible (1) for the carbon released by deforestation relative to natural, prehistoric levels, and (2) need to be charged for the capture deficit resulting for the forest cover that is missing relative to natural, prehistoric levels.
One can quibble about the percentages later, but suffice it to say: no matter how you look at it, Europe clearly has undergone massive deforestation at the hands of its inhabitants, and the resulting carbon that was released into the atmosphere, as well as the missing carbon sequestration capacity should be treated just like emissions.
Actually, forests hold more carbon than the entire atmosphere. ftp://ftp.fao.org/docrep/fao/0...
They also capture the equivalent of 30% of all man-made emissions (about as much as oceans).
The carboniferous period (coal seams) was before mushrooms. Now the fungi decay fallen wood, very little carbon gets sequestered - coal is a non-renewable resource.
So, you didn't RFTA, which clearly says the DO have lots of Hydro electric power.
So I suppose wind and solar violate the second law?
Moron.
http://www.governing.com/topic... "Several large dams block migrating fish from reaching their spawning grounds. Dam reservoirs impact flows, temperatures and silt loads of rivers and streams. Over the years, these factors have drastically reduced fish populations. At one time, the Klamath River in Oregon and California had salmon runs in the millions. The construction of four dams along the river reduced the fish runs to a fraction of that."
Hydropower doesn't even count as renewable energy in USA..
http://www.governing.com/topic...
"Several large dams block migrating fish from reaching their spawning grounds. Dam reservoirs impact flows, temperatures and silt loads of rivers and streams. Over the years, these factors have drastically reduced fish populations. At one time, the Klamath River in Oregon and California had salmon runs in the millions. The construction of four dams along the river reduced the fish runs to a fraction of that."
"That’s why hydropower doesn’t count toward utilities’ renewable energy mandates in most states—that, and the fact that there is already so much hydro out there"
You know you're on Slashdot when the left wing liberal hippies post stuff to the firehouse that appears to be nice and liberal, while actually thinking about it deeper means killing all the fish in our oceans, rivers, and lakes. You also know when you are on slashdot when you get a bunch of people upvote all the comments that encourage damaging the environment in massive scale, because it seemed liberal and right at the time... you know you are on slashdot when you see people downvoting anyone who criticizes this damage to the environment as "a moron" and "a troll". Because left wing liberal hippie slashdotters can't distinguish what's actually good for the environment, and what isn't. Go out and buy a Tesla car - it'll save the environment! No, wait, let's think about this carefully.
Do you not think some belief systems are better than others? If not, do you not think some belief systems are more conducive to life, happiness, thriving than others?
I believed that trite "all beliefs are equal, valid, and true in their own way" hogwash when I was younger, but you're never going to see religiously motivated violence from Jainism, for example. So can you tell me by what metric a Muslim theocracy would be as good as a Buddhist theocracy? Even the most obvious metric falls down--you might say that Muslims would be happier in a Muslim theocracy. However, looking at both sides (this is a comparison, after all), Muslims would be far happier in a Buddhist society than Buddhists would be in a Muslim society.
A cat can't teach a dog to bark.
The worst outcome is burning wood. Of course, forest fires have their advantages but burning wood for heat puts everything back in the air.
For goodness sake don't tell the greenies or wood-burning-stove-merchants that. They are contantly (here in the UK anyway) trumpetting that burning wood is ecologically sustainable. In fact that would only be true if trees were planted and grew as rapidly as they were burned, which they are not.
Around 1000 AD lowland Britain was largely covered by forest. By 350 years later (time of the Black Death) most of it had gone. In fact there was a looming crisis in that the population was becoming unsustainable in terms of food and fuel, which the Black Death solved for a time. What forest remained after that only did so because it was largely "preserved" (by lords wanting forests to hunt in) - a similar situation to today but without the hunting. That depletion of the forests occurred with quite a small population, using it for heating and construction (but most would have been for heating). What little forest remains in Britain today would vanish probably in the first Winter if everyone used it for heating.
A mature forest sinks a lot of carbon, but it does not continue to sink more after it is filled.
Filled? What do you mean filled? You mean that the trunks are touching each other? Or do you mean that you're just posting more anonymous cowardly FUD to try to promote your bullshit view of the universe?
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
They keep demanding more and more, but no matter how much they take, the planet never gets "saved".
LED bulbs are $2 each on eBay.
From what I have seen, $20 is more like the price, if not more.
What? Even Walmart has them for under $4 ... and those include a lot of fancy packaging that the eBay bulbs lack.
> but a Muslim Theocracy (for example Iran)
Because the Dalai Lama would never want his own nuclear arsenal??
Was that so hard??
Not all "theocrats" are created equally..
-- Mike Greaves
biology calling: plants both consume and produce oxygen.
the short version (without getting into the multiple types of photosynthesis and endless variation between plants) is that plants respire too, just like animals. and respiration is the chemical interaction of oxygen and food to create energy. This particularly happens at night, when photosynthesis isn't happening, so the plant burns sugars to produce energy.
http://scienceline.ucsb.edu/ge...
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
you are an idiot making symbolism over substance same as article. People like you are the real reason nothing is done, because you only go for emotional victories rather than anything with technical merit
It matters what the big producers of this planet do, China, Japan, USA, etc.
No. People like me are why things ARE done. Because I act personally, and I campaign, and I congratulate those who do the right thing.
You do nothing. Because you couldn't give a shit.
Because their religion is not exclusive. Tolerance is actually something to be practiced by mere mortals, rather than being something only Jesus is expected to practice.
# make clean sig
How not to be fucked-up capitalists.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
All Theocrats seek absolute political power though. As far as Iran's nuclear ambitions go, if I ran Iran I'd be seeking nuclear weapons too. They are surrounded by enemies, and at least one of them probably has nukes.
You are self-deluded, nothing you have done is of any consequence to reducing world's pollution or changing the growth of fossil fuel use. That lies in the realm of engineering, of people like me. I have done work in power plants that have zero carbon emissions, that's actual real step toward the goal. "Activism" is not.
That is correct.
Nevertheless, the amount of oxygen they "consume" is neglectible in relation to the amount they "produce".
If you already know so much, I wonder why you don't now that.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Europe clearly has undergone massive deforestation at the hands of its inhabitants, and the resulting carbon that was released into the atmosphere,Actually, forests hold more carbon than the entire atmosphere. ftp://ftp.fao.org/docrep/fao/0...
:D
Might be, more reason not to burn them
They also capture the equivalent of 30% of all man-made emissions (about as much as oceans).
That is wrong in both ways.
The CO2 consumption of woods and oceans are a zero sum game. They release as much as they consume, except for short blossoms of growth as we experience it right now as we are pumping so much CO2 into the atmosphere.
Your idea implies: if mankind would not produce CO2, woods and oceans would suck up all of it, and soon we hat an CO2 free atmosphere: that is wrong.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Europe clearly has undergone massive deforestation at the hands of its inhabitants, and the resulting carbon that was released into the atmosphere,
And since the 1960ths the forests in the industrialized world have been regrowing till today to a level we had around 1600. There are plenty of stories and satellite photos/maps about this.
We have a "high forest level", the highest since centuries.
Actually, forests hold more carbon than the entire atmosphere. ftp://ftp.fao.org/docrep/fao/0...
:D
Might be, more reason not to burn them
They also capture the equivalent of 30% of all man-made emissions (about as much as oceans).
That is wrong in both ways.
The CO2 consumption of woods and oceans are a zero sum game. They release as much as they consume, except for short blossoms of growth as we experience it right now as we are pumping so much CO2 into the atmosphere.
Your idea implies: if mankind would not produce CO2, woods and oceans would suck up all of it, and soon we hat an CO2 free atmosphere: that is wrong.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
The hydro carbons of fossile fuel are not "rotten" ...
but mainly wood that got "covered with earth", sucked down into the earth and converted there.
You didn't really think that through, did you.
Did you?
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Building new forests captures a bit of CO2. (a)
Afterwards it is a zero sum game, the new forest dies, and perhaps new plants/trees grow immediately and consume the CO2 set free. However you are now limited to the level you already have reached with (a).
The misconception of most people is: the forest is sucking CO2 out of the air continuously indefinitely. Increase the forest and you increase the speed of this "depletion". Which is wrong, as as soon as the trees start dying you get the CO2 back.
So bottom line: X trees remove a certain amount of CO2 out of he atmosphere, that is it. A fixed amount. No continued reduction.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
In fact, that's exactly what happens: forests and oceans sequester carbon and remove it from the atmosphere. As a result, atmospheric CO2 concentrations drop. That continues to the point where temperatures drop so low that much of the land and ocean gets covered in ice and carbon capture by forests and oceans becomes so slow that it is balanced by carbon release from volcanoes, respiration, and decay. Every 100ka, that balance is then disturbed due to the Milankovich cycles, and we get rapid thawing, with CO2 release from formerly ice-covered areas creating a positive feedback. It stays warm for 20ka or so and then temperatures drop again as plants start removing CO2 again. That's been going for about 7 million years now.
(In fact, it's been going on for about 50-100 million years, it's just that only in the last 7 million years, the globe has become so cold that we have been living in a permanent ice age and get these massive glaciations.)
How nice, but utterly irrelevant to my point. Europe used to be 90% old growth forest. Now it's less than 10% old growth forest, plus a lot of flimsily reforested areas that don't actually sequester much. Europeans should be held responsible both for the historical carbon release and the lack of sequestration. The fact that Europe isn't quite the environmental shithole it used to be is irrelevant when it comes to the global carbon balance.
The hydro carbons of fossile fuel are not "rotten" ...
Well indeed. That's why your zero-sum game claim was nonsense.
Are you to dump to grasp it?
Every tree which is not converted to coal or oil, or more precisely: which is not covered by water or earth, for what ever reason, produces exactly the same amount of CO2 after it dies as it used up during growth: so yes, it is a zero sum game No idea about what you want to argue.
It is only not a zero sum game if YOU somehow manage to grow a tree and then remove it from the environment by burying it air tight somewhere ...
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Now it's less than 10% old growth forest
That is wrong.
And as pointed out already: the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere that comes from lost forests is neglectible in comparison to fossil fuels.
Your chain of arguing makes no sense. The lost european woods are a drop compared with the woods lost every year in south america.
The fact that Europe isn't quite the environmental shithole it used to be is irrelevant when it comes to the global carbon balance.
That is complete nonsense.
Your other post
In fact, that's exactly what happens: forests and oceans sequester carbon and remove it from the atmosphere.
No, that is not what is happening. Both forests and oceans "exhale" more or less the same amount of CO2 which they inhale. Hint: google for it.
As a result, atmospheric CO2 concentrations drop. No it does not. At least not in the long run. It drops for a while when we have a huge surplus (as we have right now, however as pollution is still increasing, there is no drop, the ocean can not absorb as fast. If we stop increasing CO2 output the ocean will be quickly at an equilibrium again.)
Every 100ka, that balance is then disturbed due to the Milankovich cycles,
That has nothing to do with CO2 and the influence of glacials and interglacials on the CO2 cycle of the planet is irrelevantly small. Perhaps: read a book about it?
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Are you to dump to grasp it?
Always funny when someone misspells an insult.
Every tree which is not converted to coal or oil, or more precisely: which is not covered by water or earth, for what ever reason
That's not every tree then is it. So it's not 100%. So it's not a zero-sum game. If you understand what zero-sium means.
Well list off the badness that happens in a Buddhist Theocracy?
As a religion I have found it to cut out the most crap surrounding the topic of religion, the crap that serves no other purpose than to perpetuate whatever religion injects the crap or provide a separation of us and them believing in the wrong thing.
But if if you were yourself to not use the term religion a more humanitarian guidelines for life, how different would your view be than that of core Buddhist beliefs anyway ? Remember it has to scale, the same rules for everyone.
Unfortunately certain other religions prove themselves time and time again to simply serve those above that wear the highest ranking uniform in the so called religion, that puts them at an advantage over others. To some extent the real animal world is exactly like this, eat-or-be-eaten. But isn't religion meant to be above all this ?
You can test the core beliefs of Buddhist in any situation at any time, you don't have to pay respect to an ethereal entity (or representation of that entity) if you don't want. The rules are more based on the innate humanitarian response within all humans and many other more complex religions seem to have adopted the same kinds of rules anyway, they just dress them up with a lot of other crap.
But it is clear that a particular religion you mention seems to be on one end (or both ends) of all recent wars in the world. From my long distance view all I see is power grabbing much in the name of religion.
Where in the Buddhist world does this happen ? What wars have existed in the name of the religion.
Out of all the Theocracy that could exist, I think a Buddhist would rank rather well.
Then show me a tree in our times that is not rotting and converted back to CO2 ... good luck.
But I get it, you only want to nitpick ... but are to dump or to lazy to point that out.
For me it does not matter if 1% of the trees we plant right now might be sucked down into the earth and not immediately be converted back to CO2.
For me it is still a zero sum.
If that matters for you, I hope you never have to make political decisions.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.