Tree planting and climate change
If true, this is pretty amazing:
“This new quantitative evaluation shows [forest] restoration isn’t just one of our climate change solutions, it is overwhelmingly the top one,” said Prof Tom Crowther at the Swiss university ETH Zürich, who led the research. “What blows my mind is the scale. I thought restoration would be in the top 10, but it is overwhelmingly more powerful than all of the other climate change solutions proposed.”…
But tree planting is “a climate change solution that doesn’t require President Trump to immediately start believing in climate change, or scientists to come up with technological solutions to draw carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere”, Crowther said. “It is available now, it is the cheapest one possible and every one of us can get involved.” Individuals could make a tangible impact by growing trees themselves, donating to forest restoration organisations and avoiding irresponsible companies, he added.
I have no idea whether AGW is correct, and I’ve done a lot of reading and written many posts on the subject. But this seems to offer the possibility of a mode of attack that those on both sides could agree would be the least disruptive way of trying to approach it:
New research estimates that a worldwide planting programme could remove two-thirds of all the emissions that have been pumped into the atmosphere by human activities, a figure the scientists describe as “mind-blowing”.
The analysis found there are 1.7bn hectares of treeless land on which 1.2tn native tree saplings would naturally grow. That area is about 11% of all land and equivalent to the size of the US and China combined. Tropical areas could have 100% tree cover, while others would be more sparsely covered, meaning that on average about half the area would be under tree canopy.
The scientists specifically excluded all fields used to grow crops and urban areas from their analysis. But they did include grazing land, on which the researchers say a few trees can also benefit sheep and cattle.
Perhaps too good to be true. And certainly a major effort would be required. But it sounds more practical than any other solution I’ve heard.
[NOTE: If you have access, here is the full text of the article.]
Sounds believable, and it’s something we could all get behind. Plant trees, and harvest them regularly! Young trees use a lot more CO2 than mature ones.
More critically, it is something that can be done without spending trillions of stolen dollars or implementing draconian governmental controls….
Full denial media onslaught beginning in three… two…
The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago, the next best time is today. I am under the impression that the USA has come a long way in restoring our forests and trees over the last seven decades. That includes all of the urban forests like the Dallas, Fort Worth metro area where I used to live that at one time was grass prairies and now full of trees. Add to that all of the old worn cotton fields of the South that are now mile after mile of pine forest owned and managed by lumber companies I feel optimistic about this tree thing.
Very good, who could be against that.
But, if temperature continues its rise, as it did starting from 1700 without any CO2 accruing caused by men?
Nobody denies that CO2 has some impact on temperature, being a weak greenhouse gas, but its importance is quite uncertain. The incredibly huge cap of ice covering central Europe till 15k years ago melted almost completely in about 800 years, without any CO2 influence.
Look at this video, in particular starting at 1:45
https://tinyurl.com/yyqf3xue
“who could be against that”?
I mean, except those who gain a lot of money and power from the global scare.
Actually president Reagan made the point growing trees absorb CO2, mature trees don’t. Yet another example of progressives refusing to realize the other person sometimes is right.
I’m 64 and remember the grief he took for that statement.
Grow the trees, cut them down and bury them in trenches, and grow more trees. To the extent that humans have caused the CO2 rise it’s because we’ve spent the past 200 years digging carbon out of the ground and setting fire to it.
There’s no doubt we have liberated a lot of carbon that was locked up in the earth — we can remedy that by burying new plant material now.
In several tens of millions of years it will form coal or oil.
Utter rubbish.
The US is more forested than it was 100 years ago.
A lot of this is pine monoculture, fast-growing in plantations in the South.
Cedars, awful trees of no utility, are taking over the Nebraska Sandhills where they were planted by FDR 90 years ago as winter “shelterbelts” from blizzards for cows.
Tree overgrowth (cedar and mesquite) has dried up the West TX mountains where there were-free-flowing streams with trout 100 years ago. Each tree sucks up 20 gallons per day! I am not making this up.
Takes about 20 years to bring plantation pine to harvest. Much of Mississippi is densely planted in plantation-pine forests, trees covering what was previously conventional agricultural land. Looks good from the highway, but like all monoculture there is little associated biologic diversity; deer don’t eat pine cones.
Greenies speak of “carbon-banking”, which is CO2 incorporated into bark and wood. The Nature Conservancy of my southern state gets (or at least got—maybe now stopped) payments from Detroit Edison to offset its carbon-generation because of TNC forested holdings. Carbon “credits”! Al-Gore gone wild.
Hybrid American (xAsian) Chestnut are ready to go, I think. Bring ’em back. Great food, great wood, beautiful boughs.
American Chestnut Foundation
Link: https://www.acf.org/
Cicero:
Salt Cedar is one thing, White Cedar, Western Red Cedar are quite another. Hybrid Poplar are another plantation type deciduous tree grown exclusively for pulp and paper. Greenies decry preferential planting of Douglas Fir for forestry (pulp, lumber, paper) over naturel mixed stands of trees. But greenies would rater they die and rot and not be used except as scenery and maybe watersheds. There is no pleasing them.
It used to be common knowledge that trees removed CO2 from the air. Then some decades ago, some “smart” environmentalists made the plausible argument that when dead leaves, pine needles, branches or whole trees fall to the ground, the decay process releases all of the carbon back into the air. Conclusion: forests don’t impact the carbon balance or climate change.
Then 5 or 10 years ago a science group did a detailed analysis of the carbon balance of the Amazon rain forest. Surprise! It is a huge carbon sink. Probably it is a much bigger carbon sink now than it was a hundred years ago, because it grows faster with the higher levels of CO2 that we now have. Gosh, that is almost like a Gaia style feedback mechanism.
I don’t know the details, but I think the catch is that when dead vegetation falls to the forest floor rapidly, much of it is buried before it can decay in the open air. Would it work that way for a few sparsely planted trees in grazing land?
I would think that an acre of grass would create more mass than an acre of trees. If that mass represents CO2 being captured, then the acre of grass would be better. (Although the trees are more useful for building material.) I also seem to remember reading that algae are even more efficient. Algae blooms are visible from space. If you consider an effective use of land, algae could be grown on land in tanks. Not as pretty as trees or open fields, but potentially capturing more CO2, leaving more open land for biodiversity, farming, or housing. The most efficient solution is to capture CO2 to make useful chemicals. Pilot plants are being built now.
You cant plant trees if you need the land for solar cells..
here is their work on glacier park…
Photo Evidence: Glacier National Park Is Melting Away | National Geographic
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=2&v=ur4I8tYnxP4
then
Dr. Roger Roots documented the quiet disappearance of global climate alarmist propaganda from Glacier National Park:
Glacier National Park climate fraud
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Afa6mMMuZhg
from the park
because they did not make models…. certainly not predictive ones…
how much money and effort and lives are being misinvested and maladaptive?
the best is to read their explanations for things their models do not include and so cant trend
[if 20 years of a bit too little snow showing a decline can be made up and exceeded by one or two years snowfall… what is the trend?]
Some 272 billion tonnes more snow were being dumped on the White Continent (antartica) annually in the decade 2001-2010 compared with 1801-1810. This yearly extra is equivalent to twice the water volume found today in the Dead Sea. Put another way, it is the amount of water you would need to cover New Zealand to a depth of 1m.
and the stuff that drives science minded people who read a lot and know that policy and money is being spent, and choices for long term futures…
thats not a little thing… if real science is falsifyable, none of these guys are playing with any kind of thing at all… nothing they do is falsifyable… even when something like above appears, they cant get that such a critical thing to their models and assertions would mean a complete rework, and so, the ods of their prior work being ok would be next to nil
“But this seems to offer the possibility of a mode of attack that those on both sides could agree would be the least disruptive way of trying to approach it”
For many ‘progressives’, it is the disruption that is specifically one of the major goals in focusing on climate change.
This is why they are so fervent about any possible risk from climate change, but not at all focused on possible risk from asteroid strikes. Dealing with the latter does not provide any justifications for reorganizing the entire society.
Kevino if you want the plants that can convert CO2 to mass fastest then look to kudzu, water hyacinth, and bamboo…
i wanted to use hyacinth as a way to process farm outflows and create fertilizer loop… not that anyone listens to my ideas… (if they dont get it, they dont follow, if they do, they negate it)…
water hyacinth Eichhornia crassipes – It grows so quickly that it could theoretically, cover the whole globe in two and a half years, given the chance. The number of plants doubles in a fortnight so, within a year a single plant could produce 17-20 million offspring (you could check this scientist’s calculation), and increase its volume 67 million times.
yes, its invasive… on water
but on land? i know nothing that beats kudzu…
Kudzu can grow up to 60 feet per season, or about one foot per day.
another invasive species… covers everything, kills tall plants, causes power outages, obscures roads not traveled frequently enough, creates a constant labor need to live with
Certain species of bamboo can grow 910 mm (36 in) within a 24-hour period, at a rate of almost 40 mm (1.6 in) an hour (a growth around 1 mm every 90 seconds, or 1 inch every 40 minutes).
there are other fast growers too… but i think the three above are best known
there is also ersicaria perfoliata… which you probably have seen if you have traveled the east coast.
do note we do have some fast trees… hybrid poplar…
oh, and of course the herb called hemp can grow quite large, 12 feet is not uncommon
Duckweed?
Sequoia!!
Acacia….
problem is that they tend to be problems… ie. they grow the instant there is enough material.
they are the real world equivalents of tribbles..(furry star trek critter that eats, and multiplies incredibly fast)
it is calculated that if you could supply duckweed with enough nutrients for its 30 hour cycle, it could make four earth sized masses in four months…
Cicero:
It doesn’t depend on whether the US is more forested than 100 years ago or not. I didn’t see any assertion in the article about the model that the US is less forested than 100 years ago. It is just saying that if it were more forested than it is now, that could help the situation, and that there is a possibility of more forestation without inconveniencing cities or grazing land or farmland.
Plus, of course, there is more use of fossil fuels now, so that would supposedly require more trees to offset it.
But again, I don’t see anything there that says there are fewer trees in the US now than 100 years ago. If you click on the link in the article on “forest destruction,” you’ll find that it talks about rain forests in Brazil, Congo, Ghana, Ivory Coast, and Indonesia.
Re: global warming. Last month I spent a couple of weeks on the Dalmatian coast. There are islands galore all down the Croatian coast. They’re not volcanic; they are the tops of the ridges and hills, while the valleys were submerged when the glaciers melted. I don’t think this was caused by primitive peoples making too many campfires.
Oscillations of the baseline of solar magnetic field and solar irradiance on a millennial timescale
Recently discovered long-term oscillations of the solar background magnetic field associated with double dynamo waves generated in inner and outer layers of the Sun indicate that the solar activity is heading in the next three decades (2019–2055) to a Modern grand minimum similar to Maunder one.
On the other hand, a reconstruction of solar total irradiance suggests that since the Maunder minimum there is an increase in the cycle-averaged total solar irradiance (TSI) by a value of about 1–1.5 Wm?2 closely correlated with an increase of the baseline (average) terrestrial temperature.
[snip]
The summary curve shows accurately the recent grand minimum (Maunder Minimum) (1645–1715), the other grand minima: Wolf minimum (1300–1350), Oort minimum (1000–1050), Homer minimum (800–900 BC); also the Medieval Warm Period (900–1200), the Roman Warm Period (400–150 BC) and so on. These grand minima and grand maxima reveal the presence of a grand cycle of solar activity with a duration of about 350–400 years that is similar to the short term cycles detected in the Antarctic ice25,26. The 11/22 and 370–400 year cycles were also confirmed in other planets by the spectral analysis of solar and planetary oscillations29,30.
The next Modern grand minimum of solar activity is upon us in 2020–2055.
[snip]
The terrestrial temperature is expected to grow during maxima of 11 year solar cycles and to decrease during their minima. Furthermore, the substantial temperature decreases are expected during the two grand minima47 to occur in 2020–2055 and 2370–24156, whose magnitudes cannot be yet predicted and need further investigation. These oscillations of the estimated terrestrial temperature do not include any human-induced factors, which were outside the scope of the current paper.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-019-45584-3
I do not know if this is a fad or the real thing But the latest I have heard is the miracle moringa tree. It can grow 15 -20 feet in one season. You can eat, dehydrate or make oils from the leaves and stems. It is grown in the hottest of areas year round but will freeze during the cold winters. It can be grown as an annual plant. More than this I haven’t heard. If true, would be worth its weight in gold.
There’s a very good discussion of this method of “fighting Climate Change” up currently at Samizdata:
https://www.samizdata.net/2019/07/oh-no-we-might-not-have-to-overthrow-capitalism-after-all/#comment-784754
The focus is mostly on the net effectiveness of the method and alternatives to massive tree-planting, but most Samizdatists (including me) are already of the opinion that the whole CAGW/CatastrophicAnthropogenicClimateChange issue is a nothingburger; so there’s only a little push-back against the basic premise.
For push-back, Anthony Watts presents a piece by Matt Ridley entitled “Global greening is happening faster than climate change, and it’s a good thing” [sic: Some people eschew capitalization in a title of the initial letter of each “important” word beyond the first. Pity].
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2019/07/05/global-greening-is-happening-faster-than-climate-change-and-its-a-good-thing/
In deplorable landia we welcome more CO2. Makes plants grow faster/stronger. Bigger yeilds, more money at least until the markets punish over production, as markets often do. People divorced from rural economies are clueless about the gambles of the rural heartlanders. You city folk know not where your food, fuel, and everything you depend upon is producted.
We can abandon you in a heart beat. Don’t cry to me DC, etc. Country folks will survive.
Artfl, thanks for the detailed info on the various minima and maxima of the global temperature and sunspot cycles, past and probable future, and for the link.
And also for your preceding comment on (and links to) amounts of recent snowfall and glacial changes.
.
By the way, just ahead of Matt Ridley’s article at WUWT, there’s the piece
“Antarctic sea ice is declining dramatically,” including some interesting comments:
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2019/07/05/antarctic-sea-ice-is-declining-dramatically/ .
And from the end of May, “The polar ice melt myth”:
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2019/05/28/the-polar-ice-melt-myth/
The increase in CO2 in the atmosphere has increased the area covered by trees and other plants substantially. Since satellite images of the plant cover were first taken ~40 years ago, the arid (dry) areas have decreased by about 15 % due to plants starting to grown on them. See for example:
https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-36130346
and
https://www.ornl.gov/news/climate-study-finds-human-fingerprint-northern-hemisphere-greening
Secondly, the increased CO2 has been greatly beneficial to agriculture. It has been known for decades that increasing the CO2 in greenhouses substantially improves the quality and quantity of many crops. At least 5% of the world’s commercial agricultural produce is due to the increase in CO2, representing close to $500 billion dollar equivalents per year in production with no added costs for the farmers. This has also reduced the land needed for farming, which is increasing the land covered by trees without any human intervention.
Reducing CO2 in the air would not have any benefits and could substantially reduce the benefits to all life on earth from the higher CO2.
One other point: The U.S. is much more forested today than it was 100 years ago. Renewable fuels (wood from trees) were a major source of energy then (and of course even more so 200 years ago, but with fewer people in the U.S.).
“The scientists specifically excluded all fields used to grow crops and urban areas from their analysis.”
Wow! I never knew there were fields used to grow urban areas!
I guess they gotta come from somewhere.
Gaia has been regulating Co2 and oxygen on this plane for longer than humanity’s existence. It is just human hubris to think that they can impact or destroy the “balance” of a system that they live on rent free, without any knowledge how or who created it.
If humanity was ever in danger of disrupting the system… well, bye bye. Just look at your predecessor civilizations that “disappeared”.
Aesop — Picky, picky! ;>)
Yammer:
What is this Cobalt 2 you speak of? Only Gaia knows.
North America and Europe have plenty of forests. The areas of the planet that are most lacking in forests are those in the least developed regions, Africa, Central Asia, and the Middle East.
We have only had civilization for about six thousand years. This is an eye blink in geological terms. No doubt, we have yet to deal with the most extreme weather Mother Earth can deal out.
However, even as roaming bands of hunter-gatherers, we survived all of the Earth’s extremes for about 200,000 years. Somehow, I expect that we will continue to adapt and survive. It is what we are good at.
It appears that what we are really bad at is being happy and content and leaving good enough alone.
What about “VOC”? The Great Smoky mountains have smoke caused by volatile organic compounds, from trees.
I saw this article about a week ago and wrote an op-ed for the local paper. One of the things I noted is the Green Belt Movement.
The GBM was started in Kenya in the seventies by US-educated Kenyan activist Wangari Maathai, whom I knew when I lived in Kenya 1991-1995. She started the GBM to empower rural women, to teach them the value of planting trees to replace forests cut down for kitchen fuel, and to make seedlings available. The GBM also taught other useful skills, such as bee-keeping.
Professor Maathai received the Nobel Peace prize in 2004. A very impressive example of grass-roots development.
The reason tree-planting would not be attractive to people running for the Democratic nomination is that it does not centralize power and lead to increased taxes. They don’t want to save the planet — they want power and money.
Artfldgr: Thanks. I’m sure that there are better plants to use than trees.
I also liked your comment about destroying habitat to make room for solar panels. That is a key point. “Green energy” enthusiasts in my area are literally cutting down forest to make room for solar panels. The idiots don’t stop to think about the harm they are doing. We need to produce energy efficiently, and that includes using land efficiently so that we leave room for farming, housing, and natural habitat.
If you believe that CO2 capture is important, the amount of land utilized is an important consideration.
There was recently a lawsuit filed against the EU by some environmental group, arguing that the EU’s focus on ‘renewable’ energy generation via wood-burning (with the theory that the trees cut down will be replanted) actually *increases* CO2 levels relative to coal, because the newly-planted trees (even if they really *are* planted) will take a long time to grow to the CO2-consuming levels of the ones that were cut down, AND wood is less energy-intensive than coal.
It’s interesting, though…hardly anybody talks about ‘conventional’ forms of pollution any more, just CO2. I’d be interested in knowing how the wood-based generation compares with the coal-fired type on such metrics as mercury and sulphur emissions.
More practical, less controversial, and significantly less expensive. The Progressives will never go for it.
IF AGW is correct (and I don’t see a correlation between CO2 and temps over, say, the last 100 years), this is still a temporary fix. New forests indeed suck carbon out of the atmosphere. But as they mature it stops, and as trees die or are cut, the CO2 goes back into the atmosphere. Take your average maple, ash, whatever – reaches maturity at about 25-30 years and after that is no longer sucking CO2 out of the air.
That being said, I have 30 acres of forest. If anybody complains about my CO2 footprint, well, I have 30 acres of offsets. 🙂
AGW is bunk, but planting trees is a good idea anytime. They enhance property values. Keep your house cooler in summer. Anyone can do it , there are tree giveaways every year in most communities. What’s not to like. Even the left should love this.
Ohh yeah it doesn’t increase the government footprint , doesn’t raise taxes, planting trees may be racist, or homophobic , or misogynistic , or islamophobic because why ?
What is this Cobalt 2 you speak of? Only Gaia knows.
You don’t know how Carbon Dioxide _2 is written?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_dioxide
That should help heh.
The bigger issue is why if space is a vacuum and not a liquid, the Naviar Stokes equation does not have a gradiation that smoothly applies to the vacuum of space sucking out the air of the atmosphere.
As for the idea that gravity holds the waters and air on Earth, the fact that some guy with a straw can suck up water and air away from the Earth is itself an example of how “gravity” isn’t strong enough there. The suction effect from a mouth is way less than the suction of negative Torr vacuum space.
Of course, if classical physics has been 100% wrong and space is a liquid, then… it’s time to throw out the textbooks and burn them.
Yammer:
CO2 is carbon dioxide,
Co2 is an imaginary Cobalt something (not a molecule in our world) maybe it is comedy gold.
Co = Cobalt, C = carbon, O = Oxygen. Periodic table look it up, it’s one of the sciences, called chemistry.
But again, Bozo, comedy gold.
Ymarsakar:
This is at least the third time I’m requesting that you stop posting about flat-earth and related type theories here unless they are the topic of a post of mine or are otherwise a topic of conversation. There are plenty of forums where you can post about that as much as you want.
I direct you to my previous comment to you here. Here’s the gist of it, again:
Yaammer:
Now expounding on the properties of another molecule H2O, or is it H2o? Maybe H2o is different in your world that water and gravity and physics is in out world? Laugh a minute.
Oh come on, CO2 is a minor ‘greenhouse’ gas. Water vapor is a shield against the rule of the sun. The vasr majority of the daily weather and long term climate is responsible to what the sun dictates. Blame it on the sun.
kevino & David –
The “gains” by the eco-movements only look good because they never present their actions & preferences in full context, but only the “upsides” — such as ignoring or downplaying the killing of protected bird species by wind turbine, or their frying by solar panel glare (PowerLine IIRC had several articles on that); the cost of making and disposing of car batteries, and that the electricity has to come from coal or gas fired plants; and so forth.
Plant A Tree by Michael Savage (Weiner)
https://www.amazon.com/Plant-Tree-Working-Regreening-America/dp/0020637802
CO2 is carbon dioxide,
There’s no sub score 2, so that’s not correct either.
If you want to be orthodox, it has to be the 2 below the line.
Maybe H2o is different in your world that water and gravity and physics is in out world? Laugh a minute.
I get the joke but none of the chemical formulas written here is correct, because the format is wrong. So no reason to hold to correct capitalization, as that mistake is far less serious than the other ones for molecular formulas.
C=O=C or O=C=O can at least be written in this type format. Unlikely most people know what that is however.
I live on the same Earth plane as the rest of you or humanity. There is no difference. It just is a different cosmology than what your textbooks describe in geoscience (a light scam there).
Perhaps you don’t read all my comments to you, because quite some time ago (and it would take me quite a while to find it now, but I would say maybe 2 or 3 months ago), I explained in a comment to you that you were posting way more than you used to about certain theories and/or beliefs of yours such as flat earth. I said that you are free to post occasionally about such things, but that this blog isn’t a platform for comment after comment that pushes certain beliefs I’m not in agreement with.
Nobody even comments or replies to those comments (other than to ridicule it or treat them as jokes), so I have no idea why you think this is pushing some kind of thing you don’t agree with especially given the last thing you moderated or wrote about on this subject was a week to 3 months ago. As Leftists here write a lot more out of topic stuff that we don’t agree with at a far higher frequency than once every few weeks or once every 2 months. There’s a lot more you aren’t thinking about here.
As I mentioned before, Alphabet tries to get rid of conspiracy theories and other conservative beliefs because they don’t agree with it. While they don’t outright ban or moderate (well now they do but before they didn’t) it, they take pains to make sure nobody sees it because it “bothers people” on a fundamental level. Cognitive dissonance Social Justice Warrior screaming level.
Otherwise, this entire site would be taken over—for example—by porn and by insults from trolls.
You somehow think conspiracy theories, which you have no idea whether I hold or not in particular or in specific, is somehow equivalent to porn and insults from trolls? Well certainly Flat Earthers get a lot of trolls insulting them or whoever brings up the topic, or vice a versa. This is akin to Ravelry owner’s justification for banning the Bunker. That they drew too many Leftist trolls from the main site or outside harassing the owner, so they might as well target the Bunker and get rid of the Bunker since minorities are easier to get rid of than the majority.
These are not “opinions” like in politics where you can agree or disagree with them. The math either works or they do not. Do you understand the Math Behind Newton’s 3 body problem, with your education background and IQ Neo? If not, then you are just “moderating” and banning stuff you don’t understand, not stuff you disagree with.
I’ll clarify something. The Naviar Stokes liquid gradiation equation for fluid dynamics is not a “theory” in “conspiracy lala land”, Neo, if you or anyone else had that impression. Go look it up on wikipedia.
These are not theories like which “porn actress” looks better with Trum. They are also not conspiracy land “theories” about who blew up stuff in 9/11.
These are not theories but more hard core scientific data and research. Your “request” ends up being “you can’t talk about stuff that nobody else here understands or wants to talk about”.
That would be nearly impossible to apply to a political argument, of course, because the moment some political topic is brought up, people will be bringing up stuff that I don’t want to talk about or read or listen to.
You are in a situation where you or most likely your readers emailing you complaints, are triggered and bothered by a topic they cannot get rid of. Exactly the same situation Alphabet, FB, Amazon, and Twitter finds itself in.
And they are bothered and triggered even in excess of what they find with Leftist trolls here, which is amazing when you consider the tribal affiliations associated with Hillary’s camp vs Trum’s camp.
Instead of questioning why certain topics bring these emotions up, you just take the Ravelry route, the path of least resistance. That’s your choice, not mine however.
If I want to talk to Aesop about some LDS leader of his that talked about the moon landing and what not, I will do so. If you want to get in the way, Neo, you are free to do so. But you are not free from the Divine Consequences that incurs.
And if you want to make up a rule about it, Neo, you are gonna have to make that rule apply to everyone, not just a minority called Ymar.
But again, Bozo, comedy gold.
What insults you delete, insults like that Neo?
I am not gonna address Omni if he addresses me in such a fashion. But your selective moderation of some comments vs others, just depends on your personal, shall we say, filter or arbitrariness, the ego of humanity aka the Shadow or the rationalized mind in psychology.
The comment in question which I raised, was posted in a thread in which people had mentioned the Apollo landing. That was what the “scam” comment was directed to. So you arbitrarily let that first comment through, because it is “orthodox” and does not bother people. But the second comment does bother you and others, and you don’t allow that through.
you stop posting about flat-earth and related type theories here unless they are the topic of a post of mine or are otherwise a topic of conversation.
You don’t actually adhere to your own rules as specified. Do you understand that when you don’t enforce your own rules and use too much arbitrary decisions, there’s little reason for me or anyone else to self censor ourselves.
There are a lot of “related type theories” such as geoscience and the Earth’s mantle. Who decides who and when and what they should self censor?
You, behaving like Ravelry, while criticizing Ravelry, sounds good from the inside out. It does not sound good from the outside however looking in.
Ymarsakar:
I have had the same rules for everyone for a long time, not just for you. I don’t allow comment after comment about some extraneous topic that involves what I consider to be a conspiracy theory.
This is a personal blog, not a website like Ravelry that purports to be a knitting community, and I don’t ban or censor people lightly but I absolutely have always banned people and censored comments here, and have always defended my right to do so.
It’s nothing new here. If, for example, some commenter decided to post comment after comment after comment about that person’s idea that JFK was murdered by Lyndon Johnson, I would ban that person or at least unapprove those comments. I decide whether or not I want to turn this blog into a forum for a conspiracy or other theory I don’t share and don’t credit. I do not want this blog to turn into that, and I made that decision from the start. There are many places online where a person can discuss JFK assassination conspiracy theories or flat earth theories (or other theories I don’t credit) to their heart’s content and they are free to do so there.
However, if I wrote a post about flat earth theories, or a post about JFK assassination conspiracy theories, I would have somewhat more tolerance for quite a few comments about those things in the threads for those particular posts, because they would be on topic. But not in other post threads, and not generally.
There is nothing personal about it, and nothing new. I have been blogging for almost 15 years now and I’ve been doing those things all those years, and most of the time no one would notice it except the person whose comments are censored. If I did not do it, many many extraneous topics and conspiracy theories would totally take over the comments on this blog.
And by the way, I also censor serious insults to me (not criticisms, but insults) if I see them. I also stop people from seriously insulting each other, especially if there’s a lot of back-and-forth on it. If you’ve read the comments here regularly, which you seem to do, you may have seen me do this from time to time, and I have devoted a post or two to explaining the rules about this. But it’s fairly labor-intensive, and of course I don’t spend all my time doing it and so I sometimes miss some insults. Nor do I censor mild insults or a little bit of back-and-forthing. It’s a judgment call.
You have been commenting here for many many years, but it’s only recently (probably in the past year or two; I’m not exactly sure when it began) that I’ve noticed you commenting over and over about flat earth. I have been extremely patient with you because you are a long-established commenter here, but my patience is not infinite. I am extremely loath to ban you, so please abide by the rules as I’ve stated them several times.
Sorry but this is the only post I could find about climate change.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/task-urgent-crucial-now-u-130540801.html?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cudGhlcGlyYXRlc2NvdmUudXMv&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAKJSjMwy2zVdZwfK-gWq3-NHNg3D3aAxifrv2tMKyD6x6a3h-kEcNhSd0PQGLSZmpPaT-0n7A9wGkKIAHEAH6qtJJ6gW3RixKeRRN9NXzjPw0qyfz6SWybOJBZbn9EiiaW4qo8Uu3mv_Z4q0u8_HRXbmyOq0ZOCghAslDE2uaWex
John Kerry recently gave us i think 9 years … UN says 10 months!
We all better get to planting.