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So, there's a lot of commotion at the moment about fires in
the Amazon rainforest (which is where there used to be
Jungle), and everyone is getting very snippy about the
Brazilian president.
This strikes me as very unfair. The world is claiming that the
rainforest produces 20% of our oxygen,
is home to gazillions of
unique species, and needs to be preserved. And yet the
burden of this seems to fall solely on Brazil - preserving the
rainforest means losing access to valuable mineral, timber and
agricultural resources.
Shirley, therefore, the world at large should be prepared to
pay to preserve the rainforest from which we all benefit. We
need to decide on the monetary value - in cold cash - of a
square mile of rainforest. This value will be somewhere
between how much Brazil could earn from clearing the forest
and using the land for other purposes, and how much we in the
West value our oxygen. We should then pay Brazil this
amount, annually, for every square mile of intact jungle.
Given the ubiquity and precision of satellite data, this would
not be hard to police.
The nuclear misssile engineer that started Greenpeace
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Bohlen
My understanding it he later bemoaned the fact that the commies took over the movement. [doctorremulac3, Aug 24 2019]
UK births & deaths
https://twitter.com...10143177859072?s=20
excluding the effects of immigration a net decrease year on year [Skewed, Aug 24 2019]
Buy your own plot of rain forest.
http://www.buybrazi...-property-for-sale/
Buy three and we'll throw in the Brooklyn Bridge? [doctorremulac3, Aug 25 2019]
You are being manipulated
http://magaimg.net/img/8t4x.jpg
[Voice, Aug 25 2019]
Carbon fixed house
Carbon_20fixed_20house
[Voice, Aug 26 2019]
Old Bessie is the new caviar
https://www.busines...d-dairy-cows-2015-6
Carbon neutral if she's fed seaweed and grass [Sgt Teacup, Aug 26 2019]
Silent Running
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=6WVspvb3c3o
reads like a documentary now [xenzag, Aug 28 2019]
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Not sure if you're being semi-facetious but I thought of
this as well. Ted Turner, a big media mogul, the guy who
started cable news owns 2 million acres. Ten land barons
in the US own 13 million acres combined. 2.4 billion acres
in the US so these guys own about .08% of the country.
This project would obviously dwarf that by several orders
of
magnitude. |
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An interesting free market solution but you'd have to pay
for it somehow. I see that pretty large portions have been
set aside for conservation, but I think that means they're
set aside until somebody wants to pay the government for
it. |
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I think the only way to do it is by finding the politicians
and bureaucrats who give the OK for the clear cutting and
buy them off. Then tell them to have the Brazilian
military patrol the place. |
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[+] Devilish detail though. |
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This is called realising externalities and I think
ought to be partially factored into the idea behind
the Carbon Credit scheme. How effectively that is
working in practice is another matter - but judging
by the fires, not very well. |
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Effectively charging the right person for the
consumption of an appropriate externality is a
tricky ask - but something we ought to fix if we
want to stick to capitalism AND preserve difficult
to replace natural resources. But for that to work,
you need a workable international organisation of cooperating countries. |
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//I think the only way to do it is by finding the politicians and
bureaucrats who give the OK for the clear cutting and buy them off.
// But then there would be more. |
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The rainforest is about 5 million square kilometers. Let's suppose
that a square kilometre of rainforest is worth $5000 per year to
Brazil, if it's cleared and used for agriculture. (There's also the value
of the timber but, given the slow growth of trees, I'd be surprised if
it worked out to more than $100 per year, on average.) So, the
whole rainforest is worth $25bn per year to Brazil. Suppose also
that we set the price at $7000 per square kilometre per year, or
$35bn for the whole thing. |
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Each year, satellite imagery is used to calculate how much virgin
rainforest remains, and the world writes Brazil a cheque for that
amount - $35bn at present. That's pretty big for Brazil, but small
change for the world as a whole. If land is cleared for agriculture or
logging, the government loses out. If there are forest fires that are
allowed or encouraged to burn, the government loses out. |
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Suddenly, the government has a strong financial incentive to protect
the rainforest. You can bet that the army will be sent to prevent
illegal clearing or logging, and to fight fires. |
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One drawback is that this would impact badly on farmers and
loggers, who need to live. But that then becomes a domestic
problem rather than a global one. You could try stipulating that 10%
of the money must go to supporting farmers/loggers to develop other
ways of living, but that's difficult to police. |
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Pity there isn't a way to pay each individual a share. Stick the money in at rock bottom. The individuals will police themselves, to keep the payment high and capitalists will have fun trying to aggregate the collective cash. |
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[+] Unfortunately, given the caliber of most world
leaders, ie mostly at despot, retard, criminal, or
psycho level, this idea will never gain traction.
Greedy morons like The Trump Gump will see a
great opportunity to sell flame throwers and gas
masks to the Brazillians; Bonkers Boris probably
likes his Brazil nuts gently roasted; Putin is spying
the land for potential missile bases, and Xi Jinping
wants the rainforest for a network of 10 lane
highways and 350mph trains weaving between
giant mahogany fuelled factories. Call me cynical?
Look around the world and tell me that it’s not
gone cuckoo. |
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//We should then pay Brazil this amount, annually// |
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No, if anyone was to do this it should be by freehold not
rent. |
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//Suddenly, the government has a strong financial incentive// |
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Oh hang on! yes, as you outline it there [Max] in essence it
really is quite elegant, the specifics of exactly how much to
pay them might need some study & tinkering but the
overarching premise I
like when you restate it like that [+]. |
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I clearly wasn't thinking straight b4 |
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Singling out Brazil might be a bad idea. Enacting a world
wide forest preservation plan where Bernie Sanders just
wrote a check for several trillion a year to all the
complying countries would probably be a more egalitarian
approach that didn't put Brazil on the defensive. |
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Problem with any pay-a-lot-for-good-stuff schemes is that
evil people will, in short order, take over. The carbon
credit scam where they got the bright idea to get rid of
nuclear power to increase use of carbon fuels thus
increasing the flow of carbon credits being a good
example. If you create a cash flow like the world has
never seen before, you're basically going to create pirates
looking for plunder and booty. They'll wear suits and ties,
make beautiful speeches and have important and
humanitarian sounding organizations behind them, but
their goal will be to get their hands on this money. It's
just human nature so you need to factor that in. |
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That's why I think you might just take that into
consideration right off the bat and pay off the thugs
running the place. Set them up with a nice sounding
rainforest saving organization and make sure they're on
the board of directors and set for life and cut the money
off for every acre burned or cut down. I guess that sounds
cynical but probably best to factor in
the human nature aspect of any plan involving humans. |
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And the politicians and ruling class are going to get their
cut of any money flowing into their country anyway,
might as well just cut to the chase. |
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A better idea than all the above might be to look at ways
to monetize the forests that don't impact their ecological
effect on the atmosphere. Most parts are very beautiful,
maybe you could put a few hundred resorts here and
there that would bring in more money than clear cutting?
Then people are voluntarily infusing cash into that area.
The image of the rainforest being a beautiful place would
be enhanced as well. Yea, you'd have little spots of
development but if that allowed for preservation of the
majority of the forest it might be something to look at. |
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Nobody's suggesting plowing all the beaches and tourist
areas in Hawaii into
farmland. There's a reason for that. |
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[MB] have you looked into isolating the Tibetan mutations
such that we can CRISPR it into the general population and
live on less oxygen? Seems like a more viable enterprise. |
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Are we sure that the fires aren't part of a natural cycle?
I keep reading that deforestation is to blame. |
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I need to learn a lot more about environmental
science. A hero of mine said that despite the
environmental
movement
being taken over by bad people, there's a real
possibility that the ocean heats up enough it'll
release a lot of stored carbon dioxide and we'll
have a really bad run of years. |
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A guy who's interesting that I don't know too much
about that I'm putting on my reading list is the guy
in the link, a nuclear missile engineer that started
Greenpeace. I'm curious about what his solutions
were. Seems like a guy motivated by good
intentions tempered by logic. |
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the natural cycle of human reproduction, for sure. |
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It's OPB -- Other People Breeding (or Breathing, if you like).
Everyone on the planet wants other people to use less
oxygen, less gas, less energy, less food. That will keep the
glaciers from melting. They're really worked up about it,
btw. |
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Weren't the same people who sold us "The Population
Bomb" in the 70s the ones telling us we need to
replenish our dwindling numbers because people
aren't having enough kids? |
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[dr] -- reread above -- WE are not having enough kids.
Other people are having way too many kids |
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That's why we're importing the people that have
too many
kids. The ruling elites figured out that people
make them
money through taxes and expanded voter bases, so
screw
the environment. |
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I also hear from those same elites that Japan,
because their population isn't
exploding like it is in the 3rd world, is going to
burn
down,
flip over and sink into the Pacific. Unfortunately,
I've
never been there myself, but I know people who
have
gone. |
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From what I've been told, they're the very model
of a
society that works. While America descends into
3rd
world status in many major cities, they have
toilets that
sing to you. |
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Oh yea, and they also suffer from the dreaded
"homogenous society" *shudder*. |
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Couldn't speak to any other country (because I've not looked
for the stats) but in the UK we have a birth rate below our
death rate providing us with a net drop in population year
on year. |
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So you're right there [their], at least for the UK,
the problem isn't us. |
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2017 figures.
9.4 Deaths / 1,000 population.
8.7 Births (excluding those born to mothers from outside
the UK) / 1,000 population. |
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The [linky] I just posted provides links to sources for that
info. |
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//And yet the burden of this seems to fall solely on Brazil - preserving the rainforest means losing access to valuable mineral, timber and agricultural resources.// |
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This is only a burden if you assume those natural resources belong to Brazil in in the first place. In this way it is a great burden for me not to have access to the cash in my local bank's vault. Or was that the joke? |
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//If there are forest fires that are allowed or encouraged to burn, the government loses out.// |
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You lost me there. Here in the US preventing smaller fires has created massive ones. |
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//In this way it is a great burden for me not to have access
to
the cash in my local bank's vault. Or was that the joke?// |
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But doesn't detract from the core concept. |
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Providing
financial incentive for the nation (or nations?) closest to it
to
not encroach on it further & police any activity that may
encroach on it. |
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Being closest they're best placed to caretake it & they
essentially get paid by results for doing so, still a [+] from
me. |
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Your point may factor more into into the question of 'how
much' they should be paid than it does into 'if' they should? |
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//WE are not having enough kids.// I'd actually say that
*everybody* is having too many kids. Europeans and
Americans are the least bad, with birthrate dipping below
replacement. Other (historically poorer) countries are
reducing their birthrates too. But we should ALL be having
fewer kids. The human population has more than doubled
in my lifetime, and was too high (3 billion) even then. |
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We should aim to get the human population down to 1
billion at most, over the next 3-5 generations. The big
counter-argument is that falling birthrates mean fewer
workers to pay for the elderly, and that is a valid point. On
the other hand, our society is an order of magnitude more
productive than it was 50 years ago thanks, largely, to
automation. So we ought to be able to solve this problem. |
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//The human population has more than doubled in my
lifetime, and was too high (3 billion) even then// |
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My condolences on your departure from this mortal coil [Max],
when did it happen? Oh & could I prevail on you for access to
the method of your continued existence, for personal use
when I need it ;) |
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//counter-argument is that falling birthrates mean fewer
workers to pay for the elderly// |
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//society is an order of magnitude more productive than it
was 50 years ago thanks, largely, to automation. So we ought
to be able to solve this// |
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Agreed, I've always said I don't mind working my whole life
(health allowing), just as long as I'm getting a decent living
wage for it. |
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It seems there's not a lot of disagreement among the
non leaders of the civilized world, the people that
actually pay taxes, make things light up, compute,
move and taste good. Population
control is probably a good thing. |
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I'm not impressed by the argument that we need a
rising population to support the needs of a rising
population. I'm less impressed by the idea that population
control might also require a couple of pay cuts to the
money class for whom "enough" is an abstract concept if
it's in their vocabulary at all. |
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//not impressed by the argument that we need a rising
population to support the needs of a rising population// |
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It's ultimately an unsorportable approach in terms of
food production, pollution & available space that
leads inevitably to a
disastrous scenario. |
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One that can only be projected to be ever more
catastrophic the larger the population gets b4 it happens. |
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So
far better to get a grip on it sooner rather than later. |
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One fundamental problem is that as AI gets more
developed and cheaper, it's going to be increasingly hard to
employ
people. Bus/truck/taxi drivers will be redundant in 20
years; manufacturing jobs will drop by 50% in 20 years;
service industry ditto. Some of the slack will be taken up
by the arts, science, and industries where person-to-person
is important. But only some. So we need to figure out -
fast - how to pay jobless people well and in a way that
everyone is comfortable with, now that robots make all our
stuff for free(ish). |
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The fact that some people worry about not having enough
young people earning enough money to pay enough taxes to
pay for the old people is insane. |
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It's simply "tax farming", a plan to fill the coffers of the
ruling class. A trim, functional, even slightly shrinking
society can be completely healthy, but it might not
generate the big tax money the elites who run things are
after so it's called a dying society. |
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By the way, didn't people in Europe do just fine after the
black plagues? Was there a "lowered population die-off"?
Pretty sure I would have heard about that. |
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You know, it occurs to me that most societies have either
just sort of fallen into place naturally, had the monarch
model, that is, the person who's best at violence and
killing the opposition running things, or the disastrous
communism experiment that just turned out to be an
inverted monarch model. |
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The art and science of designing an efficient society is
ongoing every day, but there's been no consensus on how
to do it. That bodes ill for a science. There's no
controversy about electricity or chemistry but when you
get into creating an efficient social order, there's nothing
but controversy. |
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It's almost like humans aren't capable of figuring out how
to run the human family because they're too human. |
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The creepiest thing is that the more of an expert at
societal design a person purports to be due to their being
in high political office for instance, the more off the rails
their solutions appear to be. The average citizen seems to
have it much more dialed in just using common sense. |
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Maybe that's it, running a society smoothly isn't flashy or
interesting, it's a lot of science and engineering tempered
with some humanity wrapped up in common sense which
isn't very exciting. The guy who's going to get all the
attention is the one who says: (fill in the blanks) "We all
need to _____ and _____ all those damned _______ who
______ so we can have _____ or else we'll all ____! And
we're running out of time!". Lots of solutions to our
problems aren't particularly exciting. I think exciting
solutions might get a lot more press than good solutions. |
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//the disastrous communism experiment that just turned out
to be an inverted monarch model// |
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It wasn't inverted, it was merely 'Monarchy (or
dictatorship, take your pick) by another name that it turned
out as in most cases. |
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//It's almost like humans aren't capable of figuring out how
to
run the human family because they're too human// |
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Your confusing competing self interests with a lack of
certainty or agreement, just because those at the top want
one thing because it suits their profit margins
better doesn't mean they're in any way confused about the
fact that long term what they want is going to be bad for
most
people. |
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It's tragic what is happening. The wildlife that is being left to
flee to safer ground. Just think of that...these beautiful
exotic species being tortured by this government. I cry for
the trees and all the living aspect of this magnificent forest,
as well, and am sickened we are even having this discussion. |
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//It wasn't inverted, it was merely 'Monarchy
(or dictatorship, take your pick) by another name
that it turned out as in most cases.// |
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Lenin came from a family of serfs and
became the ruler but it wasn't any better for the
people than before, in fact it was much worse.
That's what I mean by inverted. Same system,
different assholes in charge. |
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//Your confusing competing self interests
with a lack of certainty or agreement,// |
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There's certainty and agreement on how to run a
civilization? What is that undisputed universal
agreement?
There isn't one. I'm not sure it's even a good idea
to have everybody on Earth agree on ANYTHING.
What if they're wrong? Nature loves diversity, it
hedges its bets. "Universal truths" beyond physics
and chemestry and other sciences are going to
have a hard time catching on and there might be
good reason for that. |
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Civiliization's conflicts are biologically driven.
What was a useful trait of tribes establishing an
alpha leader has morphed into these structured
"alpha groups" that have only that group's interests
at heart. I'm a history geek so I'd suggest studying
Attila and his boys to see this at work. |
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So Max, maybe we don't need a fancy calculation
on how much it is to protect the rain forest, just
how much it is to buy the land from the people
who currently control it. Let them do the
calculation. If Maxco and Remucon merge and form
World-Dom LLC, how much capital would we have
to raise to just buy the land and protect it? |
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One company (see link) is selling lots starting at
$55,000. Don't know if this is the same as selling
the Brooklyn Bridge though. I doubt sending these
guys $55 grand is a good idea, but if there were a
way to make this legit, could be one approach. |
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//these beautiful exotic species being tortured by this government.// |
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What about the similar torture that has happened every single year throughout the existence of the Amazon? Since the present government didn't exist and get credit, can I have some of the credit? I've always wanted to be a villain. |
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//If Maxco and Remucon merge and form World-Dom LLC,
how much capital would we have to raise to just buy the land
and protect it? |
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Well, I'm assuming Remucon could come up with around ten
billion dollars. So the total would be ten billion and four
dollars. |
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//Preserving the wood in a non CO2 consuming state e.g. in
log cabin form// |
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Or we could store it in all those old coal mines, seems
suitably
circular. |
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Step 2: Divide it into 100 segments. |
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Step 3: Log (& replant) one segment a year. |
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Step 4: Pack the resulting lumber into old coal mines. |
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If we still want to store more Carbon in cellulose form when
the coal mines are all full just sink it into the Mariana
Trench. |
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I think what’s being generally skimmed over here is
the irreversible destruction of something that
would take many hundreds of years to replace. |
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How do you solve a problem on a short-term
policy-setting cycle of 5 years, when the problems
in front of you have generational timescales? |
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They're trees, so hardly irreversible, you just replant & wait
a while, it really doesn't take that long
for
new one's to grow, your not even talking a whole lifetime, a
little less hyperbole is probably more helpful :) |
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//How do you solve a problem on a short-term policy-
setting cycle of 5 years// |
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Well, with a cycle that's longer than 5 years. |
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//Step 2: Divide it into 100 segments. Step 3: Log (&
replant)
one segment a year// |
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It's really not that hard. |
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There's an island somewhere where the natives have
divided it up into segments & log one a year. |
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By the time the get back around to the 1st one the trees
are fully regrown, iirc they have it on a 50 year cycle, I
don't think they even need to actively replant the logged
sections either. |
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I'll do some Googling & see if I can find a link for you. |
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//How do you solve a problem on a short-term policy-
setting cycle of 5 years...?// Agreed, of course. |
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However, preserving something for eternity means
preserving it for five years. Then you preserve it for
another five. Repeat. |
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The destruction of the Amazon (and many other natural
habitats) usually comes down to money. If there is no
financial value in preserving something, any value that
comes from destroying it (logging, farming) will naturally
win. If undamaged rainforest earns more money than
logging, farming or other destructive exploitation,
preservation will win. |
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Give the money to the government. They are probably
corrupt, but they also have the muscle to enforce things
that are in their best interests. |
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And regarding the timescale to restore rainforest, it
depends on the pattern of deforestation. Multiple small
gaps can be regenerated quite quickly. Large swathes may
never regenerate to their original condition, because they
start from an unnatural condition and
will arrive at a different ecological balance than the original
one. |
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//I'll do some Googling & see if I can find a link for you// |
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It may have been an Attenborough piece I'm remembering
but I'm having difficulty finding it. I'll have another bash at
it another time. |
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Howsoever, I have found these details in one source. |
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If you don't use modern heavy equipment tropical forest
regeneration under natural growth conditions takes 25 year |
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If you use modern heavy equipment a section of logged
forest can take up to 50
years to regenerate. |
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So divide your forests into sections & harvest 1/70th of
it a year seems sufficiently sustainable.
None of the sections should be too big of course, because
you need mature forest nearby to reseed the freshly
harvested sections, not found anything to suggest optimal
section size & layout yet. |
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^ Don't forget to pay 70 years worth of taxes for the massive tree farm. |
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Well I don't know how they do it anywhere else but in the UK
there are no taxes for 'tree farms', & as we don't have a land
tax that means there's nothing to pay until you sell the lumber
& get taxed on the profits,. |
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Dunno what that falls under,
income tax probably, though capital gains tax instead
is a possible I suppose. |
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Correct me if I’m wrong, but you can’t restock
what you didn’t know you had - so on the oft cited
assumption that’s there are still many
undiscovered, increasingly near-to-extinction
species of flora and fauna living in this dwindling
natural resource - a little “hyperbole” probably
isn’t going to do a great deal of harm. |
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//you can’t restock what you didn’t know you had// That
is an excellent point. |
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But even if you know what you had, it is very difficult to re-
establish it. For instance, some tree needs a type of ant to
protect its fruit, but the ant needs another plant, and the
other plant only thrives if there are these moths to
pollinate it, and the moths are killed by these lizards, who
are kept in check by this type of monkey, which only thrives
if there is also fruit from this tree... etc. |
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Rebooting a rainforest is a bit like re-animating a human:
you'd need to jump-start everything in the right way and at
the same time. Once a human stops working, it is very
difficult to reboot them. Same for any complex ecosystem. |
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Regeneration of small patches is easier (just as healing a
scar is easy if the rest of the person is alive), because
species creep inwards and the surrounding healthy
ecosystem propagates inward. |
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//Correct me if I’m wrong// |
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No you're right, fair point. |
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But I was (still am really) thinking of things from a CO2
reduction & O production point of view, rather than any
hitherto unknown biodiversity one. |
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We can probably live without the later, the former?
'arguably' not so much. |
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Call it issue prioritisation ;) |
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International boycott of lumber from the Amazon? We do have
managed timberland. Maybe a law saying timber has to pass
some kind of environmental impact review and certification. |
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Such laws already exist. They are not widely enforced. |
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Seriously - cold hard cash in the hands of the people in power
is the most effective way to get stuff done. |
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//The world is claiming that the rainforest produces 20%
of our oxygen// |
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Presumeably from CO2/NO3, That will continue until
Brazil slowly rises above the Andes on layers of fixed
carbon. In reality, equilibrium is reached. From my*
limited understanding, rainforests are quite equilibrium-
y. It's understood that following deforestatioin, the soil is
shot in one season. Shirley the way to get the Amazon
working well is a little bit of forestry management?
Carbon is taken up by growing plants, not mature
senescent trees. Selective removal of mature trees will
remove carbon, it can then be stored long-term as Rolls
Royce dashboards, or custom yachts named "Kon-Teaky"
etc. Leaving space for new growth, which could be
encouraged by selective nutrient enrichment of the soils. |
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I wonder if the CO2 becomes limiting during peak
photosynthesis? We could move a couple of powerplants? |
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//Seriously - cold hard cash in the hands of the people in
power is the most effective way to get stuff done.// |
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Unfortunately I think that's the only way. |
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//Tibetan mutations such that we can CRISPR it into the
general population and live on less oxygen?// |
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You can drop the O2 quite a bit and most people don't
notice. Aspen CO. has an effective O2 of 15%, and it
didn't
affect my ability to get to and from the bar. If the oxygen
budges significantly, I'll be amazed. CO2 moved from 0.03
to 0.04% or so, apparently at the expense of O2, but
that's not clear, if we made a dent in the O2, that would
be a hundred fold rise in CO2 and that would be cause for
the sort of panic the media is in already. |
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//stored long-term as Rolls Royce dashboards// Now we're
talking. There are very few justifications for felling a
magnificent tropical hardwood tree, but I've got to admit
that's one of them. |
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//justifications for felling a magnificent tropical hardwood
tree,// |
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How about getting to it before it falls over and becomes
prey to microbial lignin oxidation? If we can squeeze out all
the micronutrients and return them, wood is an exercise in
carbon capture. |
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Not sure that's a viable option, in economic terms. It'd be a
bit like raising cattle and then waiting for them to die of
natural causes before sending them for slaughter. |
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Not exactly. It's more like how cattle is raised for beef. You
slaughter them when they stop growing significantly. Taking
trees as soon as their growth curve slows is the best time in
terms of carbon capture. I'll bet there's a peak age for
timber quality too, which is also analagous, ex dairy cows
are practically inedible. |
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There's a thought, solve ageing and we can eat the ex-dairy
cows. Real savings there. |
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Ah. I thought you were just waiting for these trees to fall
over and then catching them. |
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The real damage from logging comes from the creation of
logging roads, the consequent influx of people, and the
damage done by dragging a 150ft tree out of the jungle.
Dirigible-based lumberjacking has, I think, been tried and
would seem to be the way forward. |
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Already eating the old dairy cows [bs0u0155], at all the finest establishments (see link). |
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Believe it or not, I own a third of an acre in the
Amazon, near the Bolivia/Peru/Brazil tripoint. |
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A 3rd of an acre, that's about enough for a mid size house (2
maybe 3 bedrooms) with
a medium to largish garden. |
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One hopes that wasn't what you
had in mind when you bought it ;D |
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No it wasn't. It has a bridge on it going between
Brazil and Peru, across a river. |
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I wonder what happens to dairy cows in the UK, where they're
raised outdoors and eat grass? |
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Also, v. impressed by [19thly]'s ownership of some Amazon. |
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//Not exactly. It's more like how cattle is raised for beef. You slaughter them when they stop growing significantly. Taking trees as soon as their growth curve slows is the best time in terms of carbon capture.//
- but maybe the worst time in terms of maximising the tree's oxygen-production capacity? |
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// It has a bridge on it going between Brazil and Peru, across a river.//
Have you been there? Also, is the land you own in both countries? |
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No, I haven't been there. The land is in both
countries, yes. The bridge is quite large but it isn't
mine. |
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My father used to own some land in Buckinghamshire
which was almost inaccessible, which he sold. I think
it has garages on it now. His pigsty used to be on it. |
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this reminds me of how my inlaws got suckered into buying
land in Florida by General Development in the 80s. The
bubble finally burst when they attempted to visit the lot and
saw some cows on pasture. |
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General Development ultimately settled a class action suit --
one of many land related suits in Florida. |
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You could at least have got some free hamburger out of it. |
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//The land is in both countries, yes. The bridge is quite large but it isn't mine//
Very cool. So, taking into account the carbon-dioxide-absorbing properties of the trees on your bit of the Amazon rainforest, is that enough to make you carbon-neutral? |
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//Believe it or not, I own a third of an acre in
the Amazon, near the Bolivia/Peru/Brazil tripoint.// |
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I'm impressed too but how, when, why? etc. |
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//I wonder what happens to dairy cows in the UK, where
they're raised outdoors and eat grass? // |
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When I mention "grass-fed butter/beef" to my parents,
they're mystified "what the bloody hell else are they going
to eat?" Yet the caring/feely part of my social circle will
lecture me on why such farming is wrong, "you could grow
3x the protein on the same land with soy!" they tell me. |
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Well, what if the land in question is the land around
where I grew up? If you want to plant soy, go ahead.
While you're working between the rocks on a 30° angle in
the driving rain there will probably be a bloke in a flat
cap and wax jacket having a good laugh with his black
and white dog. What grows there is grass, and on the
really boggy bits, heather. We can't eat those, but sheep
can, and they'll do it efficiently in the rain. If 4ft of snow
falls overnight, they have the good grace to be alive the
next day. The energetics argument is dumb and
simplistic, if there were a more efficient farming practise
for the land people right on the edge of existance
wouldn't deliberately do it the wrong way. |
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If you're eating meat in the UK, you don't need to feel
guilty about slashing down rainforest. That's someone
elses fault. Similarly, the great Pacific garbage patch is
not composed of Waitrose bags. |
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//but maybe the worst time in terms of maximising the
tree's oxygen-production capacity?// |
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Trees don't just make oxygen, they remove the C from
CO2. The formula is Light + CO2 = More tree + O2. You
can't have a net gain in O2 without growing tree, the two
are linked. An old tree with minimal net growth is in
equilibrium, ultimately it dies, falls over and is turned
back into CO2 and minerals by microbes equipped with
rather fancy lignase enzymes. I'm getting quite sick of this
"20% of our oxygen" thing being bandied about |
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There aren't many trees on it. The reason I have it is
that people were trying to sell off bits of land there
all over the world to prevent the bridge from being
built because they didn't want loads of vehicles
coming through. Also, there's some kind of factory
built nearby which they didn't want. So I bought a
bit. It was about two and a half dozen years ago. |
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[nineteenthly] do you have google Earth coordinates? we
could police/pry on it for you. Are there neighbouring
stretches for sale? We could buy a 1/2 croissant shaped
section... |
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So we have an actual case of somebody here purchasing a
part of the Amazon to preserve it from development? That's
pretty notable. |
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The French have done much the same with France. |
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That's a bit harsh, [bs]. I've been there, and now they have
actual toilets. It can only be a matter of time before they
connect them to sewers. |
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Is that followed by phase 2 where they then extend the
toilet above ground level? |
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Chinese companies are devastating the vast forests
of Siberia with full approval of Putin. It's under the
radar, but it's as destructive as what the Bolsonaro
moron is doing in Brazil. |
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It's hardly under the radar. But at least they're only
deforesting Siberia because they've restricted logging within
China. So the pandas will still have plenty of pinecones to
eat. |
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//So the pandas will still have plenty of pinecones to eat// |
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You're confusing pandas with squirrels [Max], it's an easy
mistake to make I know but a little more care with
your taxonomy is probably a good idea, a squirrel is unlikely to
eat you if you offer it a pinecone but a panda might & we'd
hate to lose you to a comic taxonomy related incident. |
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//The land is in both countries, yes.// |
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That's totally awesome! Oh My God the odds against such a thing. Ha!
<TIL [nineteenthly] plays cards close to the vest> |
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Who would ever have thought that the film Silent
Running, in which Bruce Dern struggles to save a
precious orbiting eco system in the face of greed,
ignorance and stupidity, would have turned into a
documentary? See last link for a seminal scene as
Dern defends his naturally grown food against the
manufactured chemical muck being eaten by his
fellow cynical members. Does this all not
seem very prophetic? |
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Of course an alternative solution would be to just kill
off all of the evil people. The 300 or so left would
have plenty of elbow room... |
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I'm waiting for the reparations proposal from the EU, to the
rest of the planet, for deforesting Europe and generally
raping the resources of every other continent for about
2,000 years. |
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Once that's settled, we can move on to working on the
Amazon. |
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