<story><title>Indonesia&apos;s palm oil fires emitted more greenhouse gases in a day than the U.S.</title><url>http://qz.com/528160/indonesias-palm-oil-fires-are-emitting-more-greenhouse-gases-every-day-than-the-entire-us/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>IkmoIkmo</author><text>Sliiightly misleading headline, although not incorrect in some ways.&lt;p&gt;For about a quarter of the year there are virtually no fires, another quarter (we&amp;#x27;re there now), there are a lot. Further, in most years the fires are much fewer than they are now, and we&amp;#x27;re now in a record year.&lt;p&gt;So the headline is true, but only for the worst part of a record breaking year.  You can&amp;#x27;t extrapolate it. In general, say per year or per decade, the headline is false, and CO2 emissions are a topic that is spoken about in the context of such timeframes, not &amp;#x27;who emitted the most in a 30 day period in one particular year&amp;#x27;.&lt;p&gt;Further, the comparison itself is misleading as the CO2 figures for the US (and all other countries, for that matter), only count burning fossil fuel (and producing cement). Not capturing emissions when fracking? Not counted. Millions of cows farting all over the place? Not counted. Agriculture? Not counted etc. That&amp;#x27;s why if you compare Indonesia to the US, Indonesians emit about 6 times less CO2 per capita. That&amp;#x27;s why it&amp;#x27;s a bit of a weird comparison. You&amp;#x27;re comparing one country&amp;#x27;s emissions within limited parameters, to another country&amp;#x27;s emissions from phenomena that fall outside of those parameters.&lt;p&gt;Anyway obviously it&amp;#x27;s a big concern nonetheless and a better comparison would probably be that this single industry approximately doubles Indonesia&amp;#x27;s fossil fuel burning CO2 output on average every year. That&amp;#x27;s quite excessive for just one industry (last I checked ~8% of exports, with exports at $200b on a GDP of $870b) and it doesn&amp;#x27;t have to be that way, palm oil can be grown (slightly more expensively) by simply clearing a forest rather than burning it and all the peat underneath. (the peat is really the issue, forest burning itself is often in large part compensated by regrowth)</text></comment>
<story><title>Indonesia&apos;s palm oil fires emitted more greenhouse gases in a day than the U.S.</title><url>http://qz.com/528160/indonesias-palm-oil-fires-are-emitting-more-greenhouse-gases-every-day-than-the-entire-us/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>siilats</author><text>The article title is misleading though. It was for 1 day that they emitted more. So overall about 1% of us emissions if you average for the year or 100 times less.</text></comment>