6 comments

  • roldie 9 minutes 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.
    • timr 5 minutes 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.

  • dr_dshiv 2 hours ago
    Happened in Finland too— forests becoming net carbon producers.

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

    • lmc 2 hours ago
    • jabl 1 hour 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.
      • timr 8 minutes 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.

  • BadBadJellyBean 59 minutes 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.
  • Herring 2 hours ago
    Humanity being the first species to go extinct because it was more profitable than continued existence.
    • wwweston 1 hour 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.
      • Loughla 52 minutes ago
        We've turned the tragedy of the commons into an economic practice.
      • echelon_musk 1 hour ago
        AKA externalities.
    • BLKNSLVR 1 hour ago
      Remind me of the fantastic line:

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

    • phtrivier 1 hour 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.

      • BLKNSLVR 1 hour 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.
        • kibwen 1 hour ago
          Nope, it's Venus that we're racing towards.
    • PaulHoule 1 hour ago
  • tbrownaw 58 minutes 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.

  • padjo 40 minutes ago
    At a certain zoom level we appear very similar to bacteria that undergoes a population explosion, destroys its host and ultimately dies out.