And the chairman of Boeing says if you have any questions then his door is always open.
Ja nee ā¦
Titbit:
45% of urban areas in China are sinking by more than 3mm every year, due to water extraction and the increasing weight of rapid urban expansion.
And Chinese people are quite short already.
For the Capetonians, my brother did an interview on Cape Talk this morning:
https://www.primediaplus.com/climate-change-causes-deadly-coldwaves-which-threaten-rare-species/
A bit more detail:
https://theconversation.com/climate-change-is-causing-marine-coldwaves-too-killing-wildlife-227781
The interview was unfortunately very short, but it does give an idea how even small changes in local conditions can cause massive (and unexpected) impacts.
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Two things have been rattling around in my brain this week, questions, things I wonder about.
The first is the assertion, quite often heard in debates on social media, that China is building two coal plants per week, and therefore whatever the rest of us is doing makes absolutely no difference at all. After hearing this for a while, and given the fact that coal plants generally takes at least a few months to build (unless youāre South Africa and you have a couple of tenderpreneurs involved, in which case a few years is more like it), I started wondering 1) if it is true, and 2) why the deniers donāt even pause to think if that is in any way true.
Well, it turns out (as usual) to have some truth to it. China is approving two coal projects per week. Not necessarily a coal plant, and they donāt actually finish the plant in the same week. After some more research into that, by which I mean that I googled until I found something that sounds sensible (ie, Iām aware and fully enjoying the confirmation bias involved), it seems that a devolution from central- to local planning at the province level is causing the various provinces to build coal plants to guarantee supply, while they are actually running those coal plants at a much lower level. In short, they are building more coal plants, but using them less.
The second thing rattling around, is the question of whether we can counter the overall issue simply by planting more trees.
There is estimated to be around 3 trillion trees on the planet. A mature tree sequesters 22kg of carbon in a year. There are 7 billion people on the planet, so there are about 430 trees for every person on the planet, which means each has an annual allowance of around 9 metric tons of CO2. The global average is apparently around 4.6, while South Africa is around 7.4. That yields a result that seems incorrect, since we know the CO2 in the atmosphere is rising, which means I didnāt account for something properly. Two things I can immediately think of, is that obviously not all trees are mature trees, and that the trees we have donāt all sequester carbon indefinitely (some are burned or decomposed into CO2 again within the same cycle). Oh, and a third oneā¦ humans arenāt the only ones who get āan allowanceā. Our animal friends are here too.
But at least the experiment did make me wonderā¦ if we could double the amount of trees (which has some challenges of its own), might that be sufficient to save us from our fossil fuel habits? What am I missing?
Deforestation issue? For one example large swaths of the Amazon were chopped out?
Volcanos?
ā¦that popped to mind?
Oh yes, deforestation. Thatās why we have only 3 trillion trees right now. We apparently used to have twice that. Hence me asking what effect doubling the number of trees would have.
For a long time, Iāve had the feeling (though cannot prove it of course) that we donāt need our emissions to be zero. I mean, apart from the fact that all the non-plant living entities respire and will always have a non-zero carbon footprint, there is some room for what one might call recreational activities, in as much as you remain within your āallowanceā. Thatās the thought experiment I am toying with right now. What would it take if we wanted to make no changes at all? My gut feeling is that there are good reasons why that simply wonāt work (one being that trees need time to grow and we donāt have that much time), but it is still a fun exercise.
Edit: In my minds eye I already see some American getting very upset about the word allowance. He will probably demand to know who I foresee would be handing out these allowances, and why I would want to live in such a dystopian place! 
From your thought experiment, the first feeling I got, the picture in my mind (I think in pictures) was that you are spot on in that more plants, not just trees, would bring mother nature in balance again with humans actions, within our allocation per person.
The challenge is in calculating how much of it weād need, and if we have the space, the water, and everything else we need for that to be practical. If the planet once had twice the number of trees, then in theory that would suggest that it could have them again. In reality, however, we needed some places to build our houses and other bits and pieces of our empire, and ideally we want to put these extra trees somewhere else. The challenge is to do it without changing anything else.
The reason for the challenge is fairly simple: If it turns out that it cannot be done, that something has to give, which is almost certainly the case, that is a very useful result too! It gives you something to aim for.
This came to mind:
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Also read once about a plan by Dubai/Saudi/Israel considering desalination to green the desert.
More plants or trees?
Well, the carbon cycle is a bit more nuanced than that.
Letās just consider carbon for the moment, although plants do have a methane component as well as other volatile components. Carbon is a major component.
If a plant in its plant pot is weighed along with any H2O added it can be seen that it will weigh more than its added components. That is because the plant extracts the carbon component out of the air.
Which is a good thing.
But when that giant oak falls in the forest, it rots away within a relatively short time (2-3 years) and the vast majority of that carbon is returned to the atmosphere as aerobic microbe farts. The softer the plant material the shorter the cycle is.
When a gardener composts plant material to improve his soil, the soil improvement is temporary. Every year he adds compost a large component of the previous yearās addition has been eaten by soil microbes and that sequestered carbon has been returned to the atmosphere.
Although the advantages of composting still obviously last longer than burning the wood, or even worse feeding the plant to a ruminant.
(Ruminants use their body temperature anaerobic microbes that fart methane, like an unuseful bio-digesterā¦ but I digress).
Anyway, this means that having more trees in the natural cycle is just short of a zero-sum game. Doubling the number of trees will be a short-lived gain, as soon we will have double the amount of rotting trees.
Any advantages to humankind are not going to happen in time to save us from ourselves.
Enter charcoal. If charcoal is created and added to the soil. It makes the carbon cycle for 20-30 years instead of 2-3 like composting. Because charcoal is a purer form of carbon, a kg of charcoal sequestered in the soil is the equivalent of 3 kg of CO2.
(Because CO2 isnāt pure carbon, it has an oxygen component).
Yes, making charcoal means initially burning wood, but the process largely fuels itself as it gets going. The nasty wood gasses ( methane & CO etc) become the fuel that provides the heat to power the process.
Now enter Biochar: Is nothing more than charcoal made at a higher temperature than normal charcoal. Normal braai charcoal is made at a lower temperature so that it still contains a bit of those flammable nasties and it inherently has more stored energy. Biochar on the other hand is made above 600 deg C, and is a very pure form of carbon. This temperature is still easily achieved in a backyard charcoal retort.
When biochar is added to the soil that carbon is sequestered for an estimated 2000 -3000 years.
Now, that is a significant difference.
Charcoal is a sponge that absorbs chemicals like Kleenex. If just added to the soil as is it will cause temporary soil infertility issues as it soaks up plant food chemicals.
Biochar is high-temperature charcoal that has been deliberately inoculated with components of the gardenerās choice before it is added to the soil. It becomes a slow-release fertilizer that benefits the soil for thousands of years, (Google: Terra Preta). It also has a massive water-holding capacity.
So gardeners out there, stop with this relentless cycle of adding compost to your garden and start adding biochar. It will benefit your soil permanently and have a lasting benefit on the atmosphere.
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That is sort of what I was expecting. It only works if you bury the tree and make sure the carbon doesnāt get back into the atmosphere. You cannot burn it or allow it to rot.
Now that I think of it, essentially the issue is that youāre taking carbon out of an oil well, and trying to store it in trees. Youāre always going to run out of space at some point. The only way this works is if you can somehow turn the old dead trees into oil and burn that (instead of drilling for āold treesāā¦ so to speak). Otherwise the cycle is simply not complete, and you always end up with a problem.
Nature functioned for millions of years.
It is a case of getting the balance with this new addition called human kind.
And the Christmas pig had a great life until Christmas eve
Pretty sure Nature will survive you and your belly full of bacon. 
Yeah, Iām not quite sure what weāre arguing here. From my side, I donāt like appeals to nature. Depending on how you want to frame it, you can argue that absolutely everything is natural. Baboons raid fruit trees before the fruit is fully ripe, and while the humans living next to that tree dislikes this, this is just what baboons do. It is their nature, and there is no right or wrong to it. Humans themselves, as overgrown apes, raid the resources of the planet despite the dislike and warnings of others. It is in their nature, so we can argue. There is no wrong or right to it.
Nature will survive, because everything that is (in context) is nature. Maybe the oceans boil away and what goes for ānatureā is quite different in the future, the statement remains trueā¦ and utterly uninteresting. If that natureās victory, it frankly sucks.
But, in a way you are probably right. Nature will probably whip its humans into shapeā¦ likely by killing a whole heap of them. Sadly.
It all boils down to one single fact ā¦ nature must stay in balance, or there will be a ācorrectiveā result outside of our control".
You made a post. Phil made a post. Both have merits.
The thing is, neither is the nirvana we are striving for.
The balance required is EXTREMELY far-reaching and COMPLEX. Way past our current understanding of exactly how this immensely complex system actually fits together.
One can muse on a few things industrial humans could have done ā¦ but that is 20/20 hindsight.
And NOTHING is going to stop what is coming until serious consequences have taken place that force industrial humans to change our way. Every. Single. One. Of. Us ā¦ at about the same time.
Bad case, large swathes of humans are going to die.
Worst case ā¦ we start over with a small core of genes āleft overā and āprobeer weerā.
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I agree. Here is the thing: There is no line in the sand, no definite limit. Some part of humanity will probably survive, unless we really really screw it up. We are making a compromise right now: We are saying, in order to give us time to make a change, we are willing to āspendā up to 1.5Ā°C temperature rise to get thatā¦ maybe even 2Ā°C. The more weāre willing to pay for this luxury, the more time we have, but this was the compromise made, and a certain amount of deaths (our species, and others) will pay the price for that. I probably sound all judgemental and all, but I am not. That is simply the reality. Trying to move too fast has negative side effects tooā¦ some Americans will probably shoot you if you try to take their ātruckā away