Indonesia, the world's fourth-largest country and largest Muslim country, is the third-largest emitter of greenhouse gases, after #1 China and #2 USA. The source is a vast disintegrating layer of peat that covers much of the island of Borneo. Peat is the decaying detritus of dead trees and other plants that often covers the floor of forests. It is full of carbon dioxide, but the forest keeps it cool and moist so the CO2 does not escape rapidly. Peat is also full of more complex molecules of carbon compounds, the components of all lifeforms and their dead remains, and was used as fuel in ancient times before fossil fuels were discovered. But deforestation has come to Indonesia--as it has to much of the Third World and until recently even the more prosperous nations--as the harvesting of tropical hardwoods, the spread of rubber and palm oil plantations, a foolish attempt to turn the island into a giant rice paddy, and other commercial and government projects reduce the forest land of Borneo by an area the size of Connecticut every year. As the peat dries it releases its carbon dioxide into the atmosphere: two billion tons annually, more than the emissions of Germany, the UK and Canada combined, and more than the emissions from America's berated engines of transportation. It often catches fire, both spontaneously and by the spread of fires started by villagers to clear farmland, and the smoke accelerates the emission. These fires are as difficult to extinguish as the raging coal mine fires that keep China at the top of the list of polluters, since an area larger than Virginia has seven fire trucks. They bring life to a standstill and overwhelm the hospitals with smoke inhalation victims. The people of Borneo are locked in the classic Third World economic dilemma, in which the cost of protecting the environment exceeds not just their discretionary income, but their total income. Villagers earn as much as $8 a day by clearing land for the corporations, an income that would place them above the poverty level in many not-so-poor countries and makes them downright prosperous in Indonesia. Peat could be commercially mined for fuel and raw material for plastic--similar to coal, petroleum and natural gas, which are merely peat after a few million more years of pressure. But the cost of starting the industry would run into the billions and the payoff would not begin until many years in the future. Greenhouse gases are a larger and more complex problem than the popular press generally presents. I agree with the scientists and economists who say it will be utterly impossible to avoid reaching the point of no return in global warming (if the calculations are correct) by the methods that are currently in use and planned. While Americans grapple with their hedonistic spirit and try to embrace tiny electric cars, while the Chinese grapple with coal mine fires that could take decades to burn out and which even the Americans can't figure out how to extinguish... what are we going to do about the drying peat in Indonesia? We might need to build some of those gigantic atmosphere pumps that the iconoclasts have suggested. See the Washington Post article for more details.
Oh, Fraggle, for an old guy you're so impatient. This too shall pass. And soon the Indonesians will all be connected to the Internet and they can become educated about all that pollution that they're doing ....and they'll stop immediately. Either that, or they'll use the Internet to figure out how to bottle the carbon dioxide, then use the Internet to sell it to buyers all over the world. And FedEx can deliver it to all the buyers. Wow, what a deal. Oops, wait! How much pollution will be caused by all those FedEx trucks and airplanes? More than the pollution from the peat? Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! Baron Max
Damn. We should invade them and take their oil. Wait. . . they're running out? Oh. Nevermind. ~String
Depends on who you talk to, that darned anti-nuclear stance seems to have caused a lot of strife over the years. "Can we have a free trade agreement?" "Can we send our nukes over again?" "No." "Well, there's your answer then." :3
We humans are not going to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions. The sooner everybody accepts that reality, the sooner we can start coming up with realistic ways to deal with Global warming.
I hate video games, but this one was the ONLY one that ever made me stop and go, "Hmmmmmmmmmm." I just loved the commercial. I'm stunned that it didn't catch on better. ~String
Ya big wanker. Of course humans can reduce their greenhouse emissions ( obviously not if they share your defeatist attitude). Where I live in the South East corner of Australia, we have a self imposed target to reduce emissions by fifty percent and produce half of our energy needs through renewable energies by 2020 ( it's called 50/50 by 2020) and we are presently on target ( or very close) and the movement is gaining momentum and snowballing. Get on board people.
Sorry, it takes longer than I thought. My post here is the response to Fraggle Rocker's & Quadraphonics' posts in the Multiculturalism is Nonsense thread. Because the topic is more relevant to this thread, I am posting my response here. Fraggle Rocker said there (and here) that my country (Indonesia) is the 3rd Largest Polluter, to which I replied that's not true. Fraggle Rocker's next response was: To which I reply: Quadraphonics also responded to my posts there: and then: Ok, here is my response: As I said earlier, the last official IPCC report (4th assessment) on it was published in 2007, the next one (5th assessment) will be published on 2014. So, official, latest data inventory that has been published is until 2006. As shown in this link (UN report) for annual data of all countries CO2 emission since 1990 until 2006: http://mdgs.un.org/unsd/mdg/SeriesDetail.aspx?srid=749&crid= Indonesia isn't among the top 3. I have spent a little bit of time just now to make the summary of top 20 emitters for you, in which you can cross check all the numbers by yourself in that UN link: Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! remarks: my excel sheet is in German numbering system, so comma and point is reversed. I took the 1990, 2000, and 2006 emission data (to show the trend how was it in the past, in between, and at the latest UN data) and I sort it by rank of the year 2006 emission amount. As you can see in the list, the top 3 emitters are: #1 China, #2 USA, and #3 Russia. Indonesia is at #19. It is quite understandable why top 20 emitters are those countries, because they are also among big and most populous countries. To see per capita emission, I have copy paste the respective area size and population number of the countries from wikipedia. Dividing the amount of emission with the area and population, and sorted the result, you will got the rank as I show in column 8 and 11. As you can see in column 8 and 11 of the table, in emission per area and per capita, the rank of my country is still #19. Now, consider this. My country is the 10th biggest country in the world and 4th most populous country in the world. Yet, its emission is the 19th biggest. You can draw conclusion yourself from this. Added to that, I would also like to point out that although in 16 years my country's emission has become double (from 150 thousands in 1990, to 330 thousands in 2006), the magnitude is much smaller compared to the top 5 emitters, with China 6 millions, USA 5.7 millions, and so on. To give you the idea of the magnitude, I have plotted the data into graph, please feel free to recheck and remake everything: Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! Therefore, you can judge yourself the impact of magnitude of my country's emission in global affair. To be continued, this one is too long.
And here are the quotes from Indonesia's President and National Climate Change Council confirming Indonesia's status as the world's 3rd-largest emitter: http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSSP495601
I have just took some break and now is already 2:30 AM but posts and posts are coming, I haven't even finished replying the whole Fraggle & Quad posts :bugeye: Thanks for your interests, but I will have to cut very soon and continue the reply tomorrow evening because tomorrw morning I have to work. Okay, a little bit part first: Firstly, not the whole part of Borneo island belongs to Indonesia. We share this Island with Malaysia and Brunei. The part of Borneo that belongs to our territory is called Kalimantan and it covers about 3/4 of the Borneo island. Secondly, although deforestation is a major issue in my country, I'm not going to touch this one into very detail. Suffice to say that it's not the illegal logging by local people which is the major issue like most people think. It is the land use change into industrial timber plantation, massive production of pulp and paper, etc. in which the major owner of those industries is -censored-. This is something that we inherit from the previous regime in which eventhough the regime is already fall in 1998, -censored-. Added to that, Kalimantan is the center of oil and gas drilling and exploration activities. Oil companies such as Halliburton, Total E&P, UNOCAL, Schlumberger, Conoco, Exxon, blablabla long list of foreign oil, gas, and contractor companies are operating there. Ophiolite, a respected member of Sciforums from USA, had spent some years working in my country in oil field related, he can support me to explain how active is oil and gas drilling in that particular island, me thinks. Oil is a hot business, especially foreign oil companies are giving local people salary in Dollar and Euros standards. Guess what, settlement is expanding and expanding, and the cause is very complex. However, I acknowledge that most blame lies on ourselves. To be continued (tomorrow). Edit: I will reply most likely in Sunday evening. I have a lot of other things to do, I hope that's ok. Another edit: I have removed some sentences and words that reveal too much unnecessary details.
Hi, I'm sorry for my slow response. Something in real life caught me. Here is a screenshot from Quadraphonics' link, I added red lines: Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! What boost Indonesian emission data is emission from forestry, but then when I look up at the footnote, it is mentioned that the data for forestry emissions are from 2000, i.e. from "Houghton, 2003". I then scroll to the list of references, but I could not find the said reference (Houghton, 2003): Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! I tried to google for publication of Houghton (2003), and found this: Houghton, R.A. 2003.Revised estimates of the annual net flux of carbon to the atmosphere from changes in land use and land management 1850-2000. Tellus55B(2):378-390. Here is the fulltext article. However, nowhere in that article I can find "Indonesia". Other countries, though, appear there. Maybe it's in some other article of "Houghton, 2003". Nevertheless, I guess it's a bit careless of the worldbank writers for not listing such important source in their references list, especially this type of worldbank report usually helps governments in decision making process. Anyway, here is what is written in the Preface part of the Worldbank report (page ii), red line is mine: Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! *** In any case, despite of its actual emission rank, it is indeed a serious problem (the deforestation). I'd like to believe also that our government is working on it. I have to split the rest of the comment because this post already contains 3 images.
As I said again, it's me that should apologized. As Quadraphonic pointed out, according to the Worldbank report indeed we (Indonesian) are the 3rd biggest polluter, eventhough as I said the report is not clearly referenced. In the previous link that I posted (UN report), where my country is ranked as #19 in carbon emission, there is no explanation whether it already includes emissions from land-use change. What I have heard previously in climate change seminar is something like this (this one is from US EPA, the image is clickable to its original link): Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! That's where my misunderstanding came from, I was pretty sure that my country isn't among top 5 emitters, otherwise I would have noticed it in the seminar. We are far from being example of peace and tolerance, but thanks for your compliment...! I agree 100%. And about the apology, it's me that is in the wrong, especially that I was very rude in my first reaction. Thanks again for accepting my apology in my visitor message. I have apologized to Fraggle personally. It came from my misunderstanding. I would have asked for banning (of myself) for mistakenly calling someone a liar, but lately I rarely have time to post anyway, so banning me won't affect me Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! Yea he (Fraggle) was correct. Nevertheless, from the same source: http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE5AM1GQ20091123 (Our government rejects "world's third-largest emitter" tag Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!)
Fraggle rockker is very interesting article , very superb , I need some more messages the Washington post article Thank you.
