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posted by martyb on Sunday June 21 2020, @12:21AM   Printer-friendly

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

The Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii recorded an increase of 2.4 parts per million (ppm) of carbon dioxide (CO₂) to a total of 471.1 ppm in May 2020.

[...] In 2015, fires ravaged 2.6 million hectares due to slash-and-burn methods to clear areas that were dominated by peatlands. A dry season influenced by El Nino climate variability also contributed to the increasing spread of hotspots.

That year, NASA satellites detected more than 130,000 hotspots.

These fires in peat area released 802 million tons (Mt) of CO₂e (carbon dioxide equivalent) in 2015, making it one of the worst emission events in the country.

[...] The average annual emission from peat fires from 2000 to 2016 was 248Mt of CO₂e.

Approaching peak dry season in August, peatland will still be vulnerable to fires.

[...] The country has been struggling to control these fires, which are becoming an annual event.

[...] However, the coronavirus pandemic is challenging climate change commitments. Nations will be focusing on bouncing back economically.

With predicted cuts to economic growth resulting from this virus, concerns are growing that Indonesia will clear more forests and depend on cheap fossil fuel to buffer the financial impacts.


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 21 2020, @08:20PM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 21 2020, @08:20PM (#1010775)

    Your response is not helpful. The fact that I'm criticizing this story does not imply that I have not contributed to this site. Indeed I have submitted stories. When I do so, I write my own summary instead of copying text directly from articles. I try to write good summaries that require minimal editing by the staff. That was pretty much expected when submitting stories to Slashdot, so I've just done the same thing when submitting to SN. My experience is that SN tends to post such stories very quickly because they require less work from the staff. If people would write their own summaries instead of just submitting URLs or having bots copy the entire text of stories, it would reduce the workload for SN's staff and we would probably get more articles to discuss.

    I'm also pointing out an error in the summary, something that could be corrected by the editors. While I would have preferred this error to never make it into the story, it's still helpful for editors to make corrections. I clearly recall when CO2 concentrations passed 400 ppm a few years ago. I suspect I'm not the only person who remembers this. It would have been a staggering rise to increase from ~400 ppm to ~471 ppm in a few years, implying a far faster increase than what is actually occurring. Because of the large number of climate deniers who will seize upon any mistake to try to discredit AGW altogether, it's particularly important to avoid such errors.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 22 2020, @06:33AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 22 2020, @06:33AM (#1011003)

    In case you or anyone else doesn't already know Arthur T Knackerbracket and upstart are bots.