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Read about palm oil in NYT. We're in big trouble.

nytimes.com/2018/11/20/magazine/palm-oi ... e=Homepage

Litwitlou wrote:Read about palm oil in NYT. We're in big trouble.

nytimes.com/2018/11/20/magazine/palm-oi ... e=Homepage

Yes this is a very disturbing article, especially about how stupid global climate policies have led directly to the destruction of the magnificent biodiversity of tropical rainforests, due to the priority of politics over science.

I first became aware of how this monstrous global policy incentivises the climate apocalypse in Indonesia when I worked for the Forest Climate Initiative in the Australian Agency for International Development in 2007. The destruction of ecosystems by palm oil was a major factor in my advocacy of large scale ocean based algae production, as a climate restoration technology that aims to improve biodiversity rather than destroy it.

Robert Tulip wrote:
I first became aware of how this monstrous global policy incentivises the climate apocalypse in Indonesia when I worked for the Forest Climate Initiative in the Australian Agency for International Development in 2007. The destruction of ecosystems by palm oil was a major factor in my advocacy of large scale ocean based algae production, as a climate restoration technology that aims to improve biodiversity rather than destroy it.

Have you seen this advertisement?

nytimes.com/paidpost/exxonmobil/algae-m ... 0006080550

Equally as discouraging, there is no end in sight to the rapid expansion of coal-fired plants, which are easily the greatest contributors to climate doom, while being essential to giving Asians a decent standard of living.

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Climate change: CO2 emissions rising for first time in four years

Global efforts to tackle climate change are way off track says the UN, as it details the first rise in CO2 emissions in four years.


"The emissions gap report says that economic growth is responsible for a rise in 2017 while national efforts to cut carbon have faltered.
To meet the goals of the Paris climate pact, the study says it's crucial that global emissions peak by 2020.
But the analysis says that this is now not likely even by 2030.'

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science_and_environment

Longing for the good old days when nuclear energy was the problem and we worried our kids might be born with gills and 12 toes.

The palm oil story reminded me of my big worry about algae growth as a source of carbon fixing: without incentives to take into account externalities, it could make the problem worse. We need to know what natural growth is being displaced, and account for the impact of that, and we need to know what the algae is being used for, because if it drives down fossil fuel prices, by adding to fuel supplies, it can have follow-on effects inhibiting transition to other technologies.

There is no substitute for prices which reflect actual scarcity of the inputs, adjusted for the unmarketed impacts (external effects like GHG's).

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Study Warns of Cascading Health Risks From the Changing Climate

nytimes.com/2018/11/28/climate/climate- ... mp;ref=cta

The Lancet? That yellow rag full of fake news is an enemy of the people!

Harry Marks wrote:The palm oil story reminded me of my big worry about algae growth as a source of carbon fixing: without incentives to take into account externalities, it could make the problem worse.

The main difference in this comparison is that algae for carbon removal aims to improve biological productivity in the vast High Nutrient Low Chlorophyll regions that cover 60 million square kilometres of the world ocean, improving biodiversity, whereas palm oil is wreaking apocalyptic destruction on some of the most precious ecologies of our planet, sending rainforest species extinct.

The economic debate on externalities and incentives is central to developing a credible political and investment case for carbon removal technologies. Another word for externalities is side-effects. I just had an interesting conversation about side effects of carbon removal technology. Any ocean-based algae production method must focus on ecosystem alterations, weighing up all environmental consequences in assessment of safety and efficacy.

Assessing such ocean based climate restoration methods is like pharmaceutical trials. In medicine there are often situations where the benefits of a treatment significantly outweigh the risk and damage of side effects. High efficacy can outweigh safety problems, depending on the frequency and severity of the problems, to justify decisions to approve trials and subsequent deployment.

With ocean fertilization, adding iron might cause an overall increase in biodiversity and a net cooling impact. These possible protective effects should be weighed against a range of possible harms.

In drug trials, design of economic incentives is central through patenting of intellectual property, but overall the main incentive of the developer is to comply with the regulatory requirements in order to bring the product to market. The moral debate around climate puts some perverse incentives in place by comparison, with the overall leftist tenor of debate viewing patents with disdain, applying a moral theory sometimes called cutting off your nose to spite your face.

The context for algae is that political criticisms of climate restoration proposals, especially activist claims of moral hazard stopping emission reduction, appear to have stymied all field research into ocean fertilization in the current decade, so the market is highly distorted and gives incentives not to engage in research. There is a risk that hypothetical and real side effects can sometimes be exaggerated and distorted, overshadowing potential benefits. Very different incentives are needed, but as with patents, these are likely to be more in regulation than taxation.

Design of algae production may be able to minimise unwanted side effects, but discussion needs to ensure that isolated effects are not unduly generalized. Externalities from algae production using iron fertilization could potentially include production of toxic species, depletion of oceanic oxygen, and robbing of nutrients downstream from the location of iron fertilization. As well, there is debate on how long removed carbon would stay out of the air.

Geological data from the ice ages suggests these hypothesised effects might be very small. Advocates of field trials consider these hypothetical effects to be either too small or too long term to block the need for field research. It is difficult to make a cost-benefit analysis of such claims in the absence of major field trials, especially where the a political agenda is in play.

Many climate scientists oppose carbon removal because of the moral hazard argument that it would reduce political pressure to cut emissions, although the debate is shifting following major recent reports. In some cases the moral hazard line can lead to exaggeration of possible harm from technologies like algae farming.

Algae production using the iron salt aerosol process that I am advocating, of which more later, could potentially work with other cooling effects to become a cost-effective contribution to climate restoration. If it turns out to be the case that the price, speed and safety of this method are far better than anything else, the moral problem arises of what level of system disruption is acceptable, as long as such disruption is clearly outweighed by the benefits.

Harry Marks wrote: We need to know what natural growth is being displaced, and account for the impact of that, and we need to know what the algae is being used for, because if it drives down fossil fuel prices, by adding to fuel supplies, it can have follow-on effects inhibiting transition to other technologies. There is no substitute for prices which reflect actual scarcity of the inputs, adjusted for the unmarketed impacts (external effects like GHG's).

On displacement of natural growth, one leading scientist presented a model at at the Canberra Negative Emissions conference suggesting that adding enough iron to the Southern Ocean to optimise plankton productivity there would slowly deplete the nutrient levels in tropical waters, the alleged 'downstream robbing' effect. It is far from clear if this model is accurate, in view of the immense quantities of nutrients in the deep ocean. The timeframes for such effects are measured in centuries or millennia. Immediate benefits, reducing the impact of global warming, may be judged to be worth the risk of uncertain long term disruption. But the situation now is that anxiety about such side effects completely outweighs political support for using such technological intervention to help stabilise the world climate.

If algae farms occupy 1% of the world ocean there would be local ecosystem disruption, but this could be justified by broader stabilisation.

Your point about price effects is a very good one. My view is that algae technologies such as iron salt aerosol will work in combination with marine permaculture to help create new carbon markets that will mean lower prices for fuel can be balanced by other large scale methods of carbon storage such as biochar, plastic and concrete.

My view is that it may even be possible to store algae in fabric containers on the bottom of the ocean, a carbon bank that could be rapidly built up to stabilise the air and regulate the climate, then gradually drawn down for fuel and other uses. The volume needed would be about twenty cubic kilometres per year, or 0.000002% of the world ocean.

Litwitlou wrote:

Robert Tulip wrote:
I first became aware of how this monstrous global policy incentivises the climate apocalypse in Indonesia when I worked for the Forest Climate Initiative in the Australian Agency for International Development in 2007. The destruction of ecosystems by palm oil was a major factor in my advocacy of large scale ocean based algae production, as a climate restoration technology that aims to improve biodiversity rather than destroy it.

Have you seen this advertisement?

nytimes.com/paidpost/exxonmobil/algae-m ... 0006080550

Bill McKibben has a good article discussing Exxon and climate change in the latest New Yorker. McKibben is among the most articulate and perceptive preachers of the current apocalypse.

I don't know what to make of it, but all my efforts to speak with people in oil companies have come to nothing. By and large I think their algae work is greenwashing public relations.

Robert Tulip wrote: Bill McKibben has a good article discussing Exxon and climate change in the latest New Yorker. McKibben is among the most articulate and perceptive preachers of the current apocalypse.

I don't know what to make of it, but all my efforts to speak with people in oil companies have come to nothing. By and large I think their algae work is greenwashing public relations.

That article is more frightening than anything Stephen King, or H.P. Lovecraft, or Adolph Hitler, or Friedrich Engels, or Karl Marx ever wrote.

The scariest part:


"Shortly before the I.P.C.C. report was published, Hurricane Michael, the strongest hurricane ever to hit the Florida Panhandle, inflicted thirty billion dollars’ worth of material damage and killed forty-five people. President Trump, who has argued that global warming is “a total, and very expensive, hoax,” visited Florida to survey the wreckage, but told reporters that the storm had not caused him to rethink his decision to withdraw the U.S. from the Paris climate accords. He expressed no interest in the I.P. C.C. report beyond asking “who drew it.” (The answer is ninety-one researchers from forty countries.) He later claimed that his “natural instinct” for science made him confident that the climate would soon “change back.” A month later, Trump blamed the fires in California on “gross mismanagement of forests.”


I've now written 4 sentences in this space and deleted them all because, in Mr. Tulip's words, "I don't know what to make of it."