Loss of moist broadleaf forest in Africa has turned a carbon sink into source(www.nature.com)
73 pointsby PaulHoule16 hours ago6 comments
  • Herring15 hours ago
    Humanity being the first species to go extinct because it was more profitable than continued existence.
    • wwweston15 hours ago
      Not so much profit as a particular failure of accounting. Focus on privatization of profit with socialization of costs allows making staggering and possibly fatal costs someone else’s problem.
      • Loughla14 hours ago
        We've turned the tragedy of the commons into an economic practice.
      • echelon_musk15 hours ago
        AKA externalities.
    • BLKNSLVR15 hours ago
      Remind me of the fantastic line:

      "The economy is a wholly owned subsidiary of the environment"

    • phtrivier15 hours ago
      Let's emulate world class leadership from the greatest country on earth, and immediately stop funding those alarmists doomsayers.

      Anyway, I read on HN that AI was about to solve climate change any time now. I'm sure prompting LLMs the right way will harness the world knowledge to generatively hallucinate a way for trees to grow better.

      • BLKNSLVR15 hours ago
        I think Elon is working towards colonizing Mars because once it's all worked out, that's what Earth's environment will be like.
        • kibwen15 hours ago
          Nope, it's Venus that we're racing towards.
    • timr10 hours ago
      Humanity is not going extinct.
  • dr_dshiv16 hours ago
    Happened in Finland too— forests becoming net carbon producers.

    https://www.icos-cp.eu/news-and-events/news/finlands-forests...

    • jabl15 hours ago
      Notably, politically the notion of forests as carbon sinks have been a very convenient fig leaf for politicians not wanting to reduce emissions in other parts of society.
      • timr13 hours ago
        The link you are replying to is explicit that forests are carbon sinks (which is just a scientific fact), and that the change here is due to logging.

        Planting more trees than you cut down is an effective way of offsetting CO2 emissions.

        • dr_dshiv4 hours ago
          And… “increased logging, rising emissions in peatland forests and declining carbon sink of mineral soils.”
    • mc3213 hours ago
      Isn't there an age-of-tree related curve? Up until XX years they are net producers -afterwards they become sinks.
      • PaulHoule11 hours ago
        That’s what people thought 20 years ago, careful accounting seems to show climax ecosystems of all kinds still capture carbon if undisturbed, I met someone who helped prove it by measuring trees with calipers year after year.
  • padjo14 hours ago
    At a certain zoom level we appear very similar to bacteria that undergoes a population explosion, destroys its host and ultimately dies out.
  • tbrownaw14 hours ago
    They measure/model aboveground biomass, and present the change in that measurement as being a source/sink in the carbon cycle, ie as coming from / going to the atmosphere.

    But I also see multiple places they mention the changes as being at least partly due to logging or wood harvesting. Which seems like biomass being removed and yet not going into the atmosphere.

  • BadBadJellyBean14 hours ago
    I don't even want to read these anymore. The whole climate crisis made me feel so powerless. I try to vote, I try to educate, I try to be vocal but it's all for nothing because ... I'm not even sure. I think it's stupid and greedy people.
    • BLKNSLVR12 hours ago
      It feels as if the more I go in one direction, the more the rest of the world goes in the other.

      My in-laws are a lost cause. I can make immediate ground in most discussions, but give it a day and they're back to their same FUD arguments that I'd just taken down the day before.

      The pitiable thing about their position is, I think, that they want the lifestyle they lived for their kids and grandkids, and think that this "green scam" will impoverish and threaten the viability of their extending family.

      Unfortunately the future could be much worse than that, but for basically the opposite reason.

      It's surreal watching human denial working in real-time.

  • roldie13 hours ago
    This is really sad to read. Unfortunate that it will likely keep happening as forests disappear, seas acidify, and climate keeps warming. Very scary.
    • timr13 hours ago
      The change here is due to logging, not some inevitable climate feedback loop. Cut down fewer trees than you grow, and the situation reverses.

      In fact, the natural feedback cycle of increasing CO2 in the atmosphere is for greenery to increase, not decrease.

      • BLKNSLVR12 hours ago
        Easy solution then, let's just cut down on logging.

        ...waits 50 years...

        • timr12 hours ago
          or plant more trees. immediate.