How to Halt Global Warming for $300 Billion

[BBSA]

$300 billion. That’s the money needed to stop the rise in greenhouse gases and buy up to 20 years of time to fix global warming, according to United Nations climate scientists. It’s the gross domestic product of Chile, or the world’s military spending every 60 days.

The sum is not to fund green technologies or finance a moonshot solution to emissions, but to use simple, age-old practices to lock millions of tons of carbon back into an overlooked and over-exploited resource: the soil.

“We have lost the biological function of soils. We have got to reverse that,” said Barron J. Orr, lead scientist for the UN Convention to Combat Desertification. “If we do it, we are turning the land into the big part of the solution for climate change.”

Rene Castro Salazar, an assistant director general at the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, said that of the 2 billion hectares (almost 5 billion acres) of land around the world that has been degraded by misuse, overgrazing, deforestation and other largely human factors, 900 million hectares could be restored.

Returning that land to pasture, food crops or trees would convert enough carbon into biomass to stabilize emissions of CO2, the biggest greenhouse gas, for 15-20 years, giving the world time to adopt carbon-neutral technologies.

How to Halt Global Warming for $300 Billion

 

[Emjay]

A lot of us have been saying this for a while now. I challenged people in the Trump thread to plant some trees, and 1 (one) person expressed any interest. It's like back in my social activist days. Everyone has so much to say, but the moment we have to actually do something, it's crickets. That is why I don't think we will achieve anything with regard to global warming. We are waiting for big government to save us, but in reality, we should all be doing our part as a minimum.

 

[Ponderer]

Its about money.
It always is.

 

[RaptorSA]

Planting lots of trees and crops have many advantages but storing carbon is not one of them... when that tree dies it's simply released back into the atmosphere.
The additional carbon we've released will be with us for hundreds of thousands of years unless it's locked up permanently.

 

[cerebus]

A lot of us have been saying this for a while now. I challenged people in the Trump thread to plant some trees, and 1 (one) person expressed any interest. It's like back in my social activist days. Everyone has so much to say, but the moment we have to actually do something, it's crickets. That is why I don't think we will achieve anything with regard to global warming. We are waiting for big government to save us, but in reality, we should all be doing our part as a minimum.

Yes 'in reality' we should all do our part and a lot of us do. But also 'in reality' the problem is predominantly structural, and our collective individual efforts will not put a significant dent in global warming.

Spending $300 Billion Is Not Going to Solve Climate Change

At most it'll buy us a few years.

slate.com

This plan is promising indeed, I hope governments can get behind it. But it can only slow down the problem, not reverse it. We still need political will to regulate industry and transform energy generation. And unfortunately that does need to happen at the level of big government; there's no other entity that has the clout to enforce the changes that need to happen. Even this plan requires big government spending.

 

[rambo919]

And yet the earth is greener now than it was 20 years ago..... China of all places being at the lead with planting trees like no tomorrow.

 

[C4Cat]

Planting lots of trees and crops have many advantages but storing carbon is not one of them... when that tree dies it's simply released back into the atmosphere.
The additional carbon we've released will be with us for hundreds of thousands of years unless it's locked up permanently.

That's why you need plants to be continuously replenishing themselves and for every tree cut down a new one must be planted and allowed to grow to maturity

 

[grok]

$300 billion. That’s the money needed to stop the rise in greenhouse gases and buy up to 20 years of time to fix global warming, according to United Nations climate scientists. It’s the gross domestic product of Chile, or the world’s military spending every 60 days.

Easy then, call a 2-months worldwide armistice and use the money to save the world!!!

 

[rambo919]

Easy then, call a 2-months worldwide armistice and use the money to save the world!!!

And halfway in random invasions will start because a few groups secretly did not comply and used the opening.

 

[stricken]

...but storing carbon is not one of them... when that tree dies it's simply released back into the atmosphere.

Unless it is burnt, how?

 

[RaptorSA]

Unless it is burnt, how?

Decomposition.
The process of breaking down the lignen etc. from rotting plant matter means feeding trillions of fungus and bacteria, all breathing out CO2 created from the exothermic processing of carbon that was originally part of the tree.

Remember, decomposition is exactly the same as combustion, it's just combusting in trillions of tiny mitochondria instead of in one big fire.

Fun fact: The only place in the world where this process isn't happening properly is at the Chernobyl site, causing the area to result in a tinder box ready to burn like a mofo one day.

Forests Around Chernobyl Aren’t Decaying Properly

It wasn't just people, animals and trees that were affected by radiation exposure at Chernobyl, but also the decomposers: insects, microbes, and fungi

www.smithsonianmag.com

 

[Lupus]

Unless it is burnt, how?

Trees actually give off carbon dioxide as well, mostly at night though.

 

[Alan]

A lot of us have been saying this for a while now. I challenged people in the Trump thread to plant some trees, and 1 (one) person expressed any interest. It's like back in my social activist days. Everyone has so much to say, but the moment we have to actually do something, it's crickets. That is why I don't think we will achieve anything with regard to global warming. We are waiting for big government to save us, but in reality, we should all be doing our part as a minimum.

Indeed. Always quick to demand others make sacrifices while making none themselves. For them it's nothing more than a virtue signaling exercise.

 

[Emjay]

Yes 'in reality' we should all do our part and a lot of us do. But also 'in reality' the problem is predominantly structural, and our collective individual efforts will not put a significant dent in global warming.

Yes, every little snowflake thinks it is not to blame for the avalanche.

 

[Emjay]

Way to turn an interesting debate into an opportunity for personal snipes

There was nothing personal in there at all. You seem to have a chip on your shoulder.

Whether or not you like it, you are part of a global machine that is driving consumerism. Each human being putting in some effort to save the environment is a worthwhile pursuit. Whether it be skipping a cell phone upgrade, or riding your bike to work, or not using polystyrene, or recycling, or planting trees, etc, all add up. Big government is not going to achieve a single thing.

 

[cerebus]

There was nothing personal in there at all. You seem to have a chip on your shoulder.

I deleted my post already

 

[Unhappy438]

A lot of us have been saying this for a while now. I challenged people in the Trump thread to plant some trees, and 1 (one) person expressed any interest. It's like back in my social activist days. Everyone has so much to say, but the moment we have to actually do something, it's crickets. That is why I don't think we will achieve anything with regard to global warming. We are waiting for big government to save us, but in reality, we should all be doing our part as a minimum.

So if i donate to tree planting, do i then get to complain?

 

[cerebus]

Whether or not you like it, you are part of a global machine that is driving consumerism. Each human being putting in some effort to save the environment is a worthwhile pursuit. Whether it be skipping a cell phone upgrade, or riding your bike to work, or not using polystyrene, or recycling, or planting trees, etc, all add up. Big government is not going to achieve a single thing.

Well to use an analogy, in America they have a major obesity problem that's driven by personal eating habits. But it's also driven by the fact that the government has subsidized the wrong kinds of food produce like corn syrup:

How the Government Supports Your Junk Food Habit

The most popular junk foods come from crops that are heavily subsidized by the federal government.

well.blogs.nytimes.com

So yes every individual is to blame for their eating habits. But the government has an enormous role to play in shaping how consumers eat foods, by taxing or subsidizing certain kinds of food that mean that for the average consumer. junk food is actually cheaper per calorie than healthy food.

McDouble is 'cheapest and most nutritious food in human history'

www.telegraph.co.uk

Government policy could and should be used to influence the behaviours of consumers, and to place regulations on the backend processes that none of us have any control over. A consumer is working with extremely vague information when it comes to the purchasing end over which they have responsibility. I currently separate my garbage into four units for recycling, but I have to trust that they are actually going to be recycled usefully and to be honest I'm clueless if that is happening or if it's all being dumped into a landfill.

 

[R13...]

Easy then, call a 2-months worldwide armistice and use the money to save the world!!!

As if the people who have hands deep in that pie and getting fat off of it would ever accede to any sort of attempt to close the taps. It is absurd that so much money gets spent toward crap that is not even needed - maybe the cynical view would be they need to show how their weapons are killing off enough people to offset climate change in some sort of macabre cost/benefit analysis.

 

[Ponderer]

Has it been proven that (atmospheric) CO2 is the cause of global warming.
No - its all speculation and hearsay.
Has it been proven that an increase in (atmospheric) CO2 increases plant growth - that the more there is, the more/faster plants grow.
Yes - beyond a shadow of a doubt.

Its all about money.