> The Amazon contributing 741 ± 61 teragram of carbon-its highest level since 2000 and more than half of the global fire emission anomaly. This surge, driven by exceptional heat and drought, offset two decades of declining deforestation emissions.
That's rough, whatever gains we thought we made, puff gone. The next sentence paints us a picture of what the future holds. Many of us are going to be here for pretty drastic events I could imagine.
In 2023 there was also massive fires in Canada covering a similar area, 2021 Siberia, in 2019/2020 in Australia, 2015 in Indonesia (peat fires, less area but similar emissions)... there is a long list of extended fires with weighty emissions all in the last decade that nullifies and add a big share to every trial of forestation as natural carbon capture method. And things will get worse as that is in part a positive feedback loop.
"Tree trunks in the Amazon are getting 3.3% thicker every decade as the plants absorb extra carbon dioxide, suggesting they are more resilient to global warming than previously thought."
> Today, 29 percent of the natural gas extracted in North Dakota is just burned away. This wasted amount represents enough gas to heat half a million homes
The Amazon forest is unique in many ways but most importantly because unlike other forests, it CANNOT grow back. The reason for this is that it is a leftover from when the planet was covered in rainforests because it was a lot warmer and wetter in the Eocene epoch. The forest is sustained by the rain it creates from itself. Once the trees are gone, the water will be gone. [1] We also have reasons to think this self-sustaining climate is going to collapse soon [2]
So far the best way to protect it I have found is through the Rainforest Trust [3] which is a foundation that's trying to purchase and protect parts of the rainforests that companies would otherwise cut or burn down for agricultural use.
Something to keep in mind in the comments when talking about climate change and CO2 levels is that it’s not the level so much as the rate. We’re on the path to doubling (or have doubled if you look at CO2 equivalents) global CO2 levels faster than likely any other time in earths entire history. We have the CO2 levels equivalent to a time period when the earths poles didn’t have ice caps and instead forests in the span of about 200 years.
Every organism and ecosystem you’ve ever encountered in your life is adapted to an Ice Age climate, but we’ve recreated the conditions of a Hot House earth. Species and ecosystems adapt on much slower time scales. They cannot adapt to changes this abrupt, which means they will necessarily collapse if we do nothing and allow emit CO2. Every other time in earths history that the CO2 levels have rapidly risen it’s lead to a mass extinction. Yes it’s been hotter before but that change happened gradually. It’s like the joke about poison vs medicine, it’s the dose that kills you.
The upping was most clearly down 1940-1950. When shipping and/or industry took a hit. Together with the sulfur emissions debacle, it's clear that most interventions (either radiative cooling or at-source capture) need to focus on shipping.
But then you hit the "laws of the high seas" problem. Maybe tariffs can have a role to play here! Via a Nobel Prize!
Fires are part of a natural short-term Carbon cycle at around 5 years on average. These events have little impact on global climate change, and highlights the absurdity of planting trees for carbon credits.
Long-term carbon cycles last about 30000 years, and the majority of climate change is driven from burning old carbon sources deep in the earths crust.
Fossil oil is incredibly useful stuff, and it is wasteful burning it as fuel. Something to consider between the floods, fires, droughts, and contrarians. lol =3
As soon as we decarbonise we will see an imediate reduction in atmospheric CO² and global temperatures will follow quickly.
Given how bad and likely some of the failure modes of climate change are, decarbonisation is our only reasonable way forward that guarantees our continued technological progress as a species, vs a dark age.
We need to halt the AI rollout and focus on using engineering talent to help make sure afforestation works and forests conditions are monitored carefully. We need to make sure that the forests we have can be sustained and the carbon we have emitted can be successfully sequestered back into the forest.
Most importantly we need to drastically change our consumption patterns to prevent emissions from continuing to rise.
16 comments
[ 1.5 ms ] story [ 51.6 ms ] threadThat's rough, whatever gains we thought we made, puff gone. The next sentence paints us a picture of what the future holds. Many of us are going to be here for pretty drastic events I could imagine.
https://www.livescience.com/planet-earth/climate-change/amaz...
Think about how much fuel they waste, tons of CO2 and heating the atmosphere just to get to the oil
https://www.npr.org/sections/krulwich/2013/01/16/169511949/a...
> Today, 29 percent of the natural gas extracted in North Dakota is just burned away. This wasted amount represents enough gas to heat half a million homes
So far the best way to protect it I have found is through the Rainforest Trust [3] which is a foundation that's trying to purchase and protect parts of the rainforests that companies would otherwise cut or burn down for agricultural use.
[1]https://youtu.be/hb3b-A6QAc8
[2]https://www.nasa.gov/earth-and-climate/human-activities-are-...
[3]https://www.rainforesttrust.org
Every organism and ecosystem you’ve ever encountered in your life is adapted to an Ice Age climate, but we’ve recreated the conditions of a Hot House earth. Species and ecosystems adapt on much slower time scales. They cannot adapt to changes this abrupt, which means they will necessarily collapse if we do nothing and allow emit CO2. Every other time in earths history that the CO2 levels have rapidly risen it’s lead to a mass extinction. Yes it’s been hotter before but that change happened gradually. It’s like the joke about poison vs medicine, it’s the dose that kills you.
But then you hit the "laws of the high seas" problem. Maybe tariffs can have a role to play here! Via a Nobel Prize!
https://skepticalscience.com/The-CO2-Temperature-correlation...
Long-term carbon cycles last about 30000 years, and the majority of climate change is driven from burning old carbon sources deep in the earths crust.
Fossil oil is incredibly useful stuff, and it is wasteful burning it as fuel. Something to consider between the floods, fires, droughts, and contrarians. lol =3
Most importantly we need to drastically change our consumption patterns to prevent emissions from continuing to rise.