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Comment by bobbington | Hacker News Reader

CO2 is a natural element that is everywhere. To stop producing it requires never driving anything but an electric car, never flying a plane, and using energy from only "green" sources. That is just not a transition the world can make over night. Doing so would decimate economies, and people would probably end up starving. Currently gasoline is by far the most efficient way to store energy on a small scale. but if people couldn't drive tractors where would the food come from? If people couldn't drive trucks how would food be transported?

I'm time people will solve these problems. However it's best not to worry because co2 is a natural element that the environment naturally soaks up. I don't think CFCs are naturally absorbed either

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True, what you can do is plant trees and stop cutting trees. Plant trees that suck more CO2.

Amazon rainforest is being cut enormously. About 90% of cut Amazon is solely for beef production and soy exports for USA beef production.

Of course, the enormous convenient life of average USA citizen might need more government control (24/7 AC, cars everywhere, heavy reliance on animal agriculture etc.) and that stuff costs but it is long-term investment. Of course, no one sees 100 years as long-term, 100 years is invisible. Huge amount of forest also cut for palm oil. The new plant oil that ends up everywhere (sunflower oil turned out more expensive in this millenia).

I've heard from many parents that they don't care if their lifestyle habits promote the business-as-usual culture.

Wasn't Amazon forest deemed net producer of CO2 some time ago?

If we get a direction of such a large processes wrong, how the hell are we so sure that CO2 level is even a source of problem instead of being a result?

It still produces less CO2. This will of course not be a fact if fire rate increases.

It's a feedback loop. The warmer it gets more CO2 gets produced, not just by humans but by nature. The melting of ice caps will produce about 100 years of human CO2 equivalent methane (CO2 yearly production of 2016, I believe).

Humans are the source of the problem. They can remove themselves from the equation but it requires a less convenient life for most.

Just use logical first principles. Wood is basically a bunch lignin and cellulose. Those are just a bunch of C, H, and O in different configurations. The more wood that exists somewhere, the more C, H, and O are sequestered in it. All forests are seasonally more trap or sink. Look at global seasonal CO2 concentration maps (if those haven't been taken down from the EPA website). Forests grow and make leaves during some seasons. They tend to have forest fires during others. Finally, many shed leaves and those rot and release CO2 during other seasons. On the net, though, they trap carbon dioxide, which plants specifically consume in addition to water to make glucose during photosynthesis.

Many, many, many comments on HN use logical first principles and turn out to be wrong.

And many have been right. The burden is on you to provide counter-evidence. If you have reason to believe he's wrong please post it, otherwise your comment is just spreading FUD.

Source for your stats on exports to the US from Brazil for Beef and Soy, and the corresponding deforestation of the Amazon. Far as I can tell Brazil exports less than a tenth of what Australia, Canada and New Zealand do to the US.

http://www.thecattlesite.com/news/50023/cme-how-much-brazili...

>Although the maximum limit of Brazilian beef exported to the US could be 64,508 mt, based on market competition it is very unrealistic to think Brazil would overtake the full quota. Longer term (in 2020) these TRQ’s are scheduled to change, and could give Brazil a higher volume ceiling.

>To put this in perspective, in 2015 the US imported 570,740 mt of beef from Australia, 299,955 mt tons from New Zealand, and 285,036 mt from Canada (to name our top 3 sources) for an annual total of 1.5 million mt.

I'd imagine Asia is the major importer of Brazilian Beef, I could be wrong, but don't think so

Soy. I wrote soy exports. Not "beef production exports".

Brazil (with Argentina) is main soy exporter for most of the worlds livestock.

In the documents below you can find clear numbers of how much hectares is used for pasture, corn, soybean etc. and how much stays forest.

The cause of that deforestation is clear, it is soybean + corn + beef = animal agriculture. Brazil has one of the highest rates of deforestation in the world.

http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/758171468768828889...

https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/bitstream/handle/10986/1...

Yep, except again none of these detail the exports of Soy or Beef to the US. You said USA importation was the cause but it appears that Soy beans too are being exported to Asia not the US.

China buys about 60 percent of soybeans traded globally.

In 2011, China accounted for 43% of Brazilian (top destination) and 25% of Argentinean soy exports

http://wwf.panda.org/what_we_do/footprint/agriculture/soy/fa...

Now would you care to back up your statement

>About 90% of cut Amazon is solely for beef production and soy exports for USA beef production.

Nothing you've supplied comes close to asserting this statement

Yes, I apologize, my statement refers to 90% of cut Amazon. Not that 90% of it is cut for USA.

As for the beef and soy exports it's not enough to check just the exports number. The most important number is beef consumption. Per capita the US has a pretty small consumption. But compared to EU or China, the US is leading, extremely in absolute amounts.

http://beef2live.com/story-world-beef-consumption-per-capita...

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