On Fri, Jun 14, 2019 at 8:53 PM Donna Y <[email protected]> wrote: > Forests and oceans both draw in carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, > —reforestation—$ 1—$10 per ton CO2
Easily fundable by the timber industry if we could protect them from wall street raiders. (Back in the 80s, wall street fraud took over our timber industry - which needs something like 30-60 years to grow its trees - and put it on a quarterly (4x/year) investment cycle.) > Paradox: Three billion years ago, the sun was only about 70 > percent as bright as it is today. Earth should have frozen over, > but it didn’t. Why not? > Because greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, mainly methane and > carbon dioxide, trapped enough of the sun’s heat to keep temperatures > above freezing. When photosynthetic organisms produced enough oxygen > it reacted with the methane in the atmosphere, transforming it > forever. About two billion years ago, the methane haze cleared and > the sky turned blue. You left out water vapor. H2O is a more significant greenhouse gas than CO2. (This is why temperatures are more extreme in deserts than in coastal regions.) The problems posed by CO2 include things like acidification of the oceans (wiping out coral reefs, for example) which gradually hit the global food supply. > In the world of a Pigouvian tax (cost imposed on activities that create > social harms), markets sort out the most cost-effective ways to reduce > emissions Sort of... For global problems, though, localized taxes seem remarkably ineffective. > Blending corn ethanol into gasoline up to a 10 percent ratio provides > essentially costless emissions reductions (replacing more expensive octane > booster) Not costless -- you get increased maintenance costs -- and the reductions don't seem all that significant, Anyways, ... critical omissions in the current rhetoric on these issues seems like they have been deliberately designed to fail to convince people. Thanks, -- Raul ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm
