As wildfires hit Australia, ocean warming from climate change endangers Tasmania | Hacker News Reader

As wildfires hit Australia, ocean warming from climate change endangers Tasmania

washingtonpost.com

52 pointspseudolus19 comments

I know this article is mostly touching on the kelp forests and the Tasman sea warming, but the current fires in Australia are unprecedented and seriously frightening. We're at the point where it's uncertain that the usually accepted belief that fires like this are carbon neutral will hold. Areas that haven't burnt in living memory have been destroyed, and areas that would usually regrow have been decimated to the point that experts are worried that they may not recover.

This is something new for Australia, and Australia has one of the longest records of living memory when it comes to fires.

It's not important to Australia that it be habitable, or that its seas survive. It's only important that its coal extraction industry is not impaired. This, after all, is what Australians have voted for; who are we to defy democracy?

https://www.insurancejournal.com/news/international/2019/11/...

Since this is a global problem, I woukd be happy if the government in my country could make it simpler to reduce my carbon footprint. Now all I get is frustraded by reading news like this.

If you're in the US then don't get your hopes up. The president actively acts against such interests. He dropped out of the Paris Agreement and has done tons of environmental protection rollbacks.

One example: https://www.cnbc.com/2019/12/24/5-major-trump-climate-rollba...

Just one example from there:

> The new rules make it easier to take out protections for threatened animals and plants and allow federal agencies to conduct economic assessments when deciding whether to protect a species from things like construction projects in a critical habitat. The rules also remove tools used by scientists to predict future harm to species from climate change.

As you can see, as with previous actions, he makes changes to benefit business because it's too difficult for businesses to thrive when they need to worry about the environment (paraphrasing of what he's actually said in the past).

You could emigrate. The Dutch American Friendship Treaty remains in force and the Netherlands enables far better living.

Would be interesting to see if in due time when the death toll rises we get to see proceedings in the international court in The Hague.

If the court isn't submerged by then...

It's already happening

https://fortune.com/2019/12/20/climate-change-litigation-hum...

At a certain point it becomes charges of omnicide :(

> Now all I get is frustraded by reading news like this.

Don't just get frustrated. Go do something about it.

It’s not just carbon. Methane is much worse and mostly comes from cows.

https://www.netflix.com/title/80033772

Neither of those statements is true. Methane is not a worse source of overall warming than CO2 (which I assume is what you were trying to say). And methane does not come mostly from cows. These facts are trivially searchable.

Livestock methane is definitely a significant concern, but it is not helpful to use exaggerated claims to make that case.

Methane is a hydrocarbon. It's carbon and hydrogen.

Better reference than Netflix?

The book “The Carbon Farming Solution” is a really good reference. Methane is a problem, sure, but land use and a food system that is heavily reliant on petrochemicals (from fertilizer to transportation) is the real, systemic issue.

We need research into perennial crops (which require less petrochemical inputs and sequester more carbon) so we can start moving away from annual crops, which convert forested land into crop land, mainly to produce animal feed.

This can go a long way, but isn’t enough on its own — we still need to transform energy production and transportation as well.

It’s an interesting watch if you’ve not seen it. It’s about how no one dares even talk about methane being an issue because of pressure from the meat industry.

If you find it helpful, here's an Outline of the article: https://outline.com/uAUtV9

Not seen this service before. Does it work with all paywall sites?

It works on quite a few sites e.g. Financial Times, Bloomberg, Washington Post. But not on Wall Street Journal.

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