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Careful Where You Put That Tree
Ant writes "Wired News is reporting that according to Stanford University's atmospheric scientist Ken Caldeira, forests in the wrong location can actually make the Earth hotter. From the article: 'Plants absorb large amounts of carbon dioxide during photosynthesis, so scientists and policy makers have long assumed new forest growth helps combat global warming. At an American Geophysical Union conference in San Francisco earlier this month, however, Caldeira rolled out a provocative new finding: Trees may be good at capturing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, but their dark leaves are also very efficient at soaking up sunlight, which is later released as heat. At certain latitudes, the net effect of these two processes is warming, rather than cooling.'"
Plant them in antarctica! That's where all the problem is, and it gets way too little sun. Problem solved!
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all insignificant chit-chat. We have only one environmental problem in this world en that is the huge number of people on this planet.
All other problems are just secundary manifestations of this one.
Don't worry. If we go on like this, that problem will be solved too!
Send email from the afterlife! Write your e-will at Dead Man's Switch.
It's not the trees we need to worry about, it's those phytoplankton in the oceans. Whales eat them (therefore we need to nuke the whales).
The fact is pointed out that some things are much easier to break then to fix.
See, here's where I'm torn: I happen to like global warming. It would be good for farming and would make a greater percentage of the civilized world comfortable for our aging population. But the part where I'm torn is that the articles I'm reading this week tell me that to get my wish, I do precisely what the environmentalists have been urging since the 80s. Drive less and plant more trees, but this time in support of global warming!
a big part of their argument is that the smog acts almost as if its sunblock.. ultimately making the temperature on earth cooler.. but you can't honestly say, that we need to pollute more, just so we can have our sunblock on ;-) we need to be thinking LONGTERM which is the most important factor.. yes, if we slowly decrease our use of gas-guzzlin' bitches, it will get hotter on earth.. if we plant trees, it will clean up the polluted air which acts as our sunblock, making the earth much hotter.. but hey, we better start now, because it'll be twice as hot, if we wait too long..
*plays the Apogee theme song music*
"planting trees has a variety of environmental benefits unrelated to global warming, such as restoring threatened animal habitats and preventing the erosion of topsoil."
-- Carbonfund spokesman Craig Coulter
The obvious solution is to cut down all the trees.
of nature. We've worked hard over the past few centuries to cut, burn and concrete everything. Mother Nature IS going to bite us in the ass in return.
Our refusal to respect and live in harmony with nature will be our undoing.
We must run frantically to this new train of thought, and cut down all trees. However, before doing that, we must destroy any evidence that trees were ever beneficial in the first place. Minitrue will deal with this. 2+2=5
It would seem then, that the reforestation of large tracts of former farmland in the Northeastern USA over the last 150 years or so isn't neccessarily a good thing, climate-wise?
Fascinating.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
In the UAE, the government is trying to forest the desert.
An article from 1995:
"the UAE has planted more than 100 million trees"
http://www.wrmea.com/backissues/1295/9512052.html
I wonder how many more trees have been planted since '95.
Someone still has to explain to me how Mars has a Global Warming issue while neither or the Republicans have ever set foot on the red planet.
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
He conciders it in the area of the Equator but doesn't for the rest of the areas. Error found!
Too late I already got my christmas tree, oh well I guess I should throw it out... wait! your meant to do that on new years.. doh doh doh doh doh :P
#!/bin/bash
login root
chmod 775 universe://
Maybe we just need more beavers in the right places.
The change in the atmospheric composition is happening rapidly while new forests are not appearing rapidly. Climate change is okay as long as it doesn't happen so fast humankind and the critters and plants we share the planet with can't adjust in time. Rather than worrying about minor influences, we should look at the biggest influences (hell, water vapor contributes to global warming). This research, however, should stop people from thinking they can plant their way out of the situation.
"The absurd is clear reasoning recognizing its limits"
-Albert Camus
.....if you look at all the benefits, the trade is worth it. Trees-plants in general- are very necessary for the health of the planet over-all, and provide us with numerous useful products. Well, yes,this is obvious, but still, I wouldn't be afraid of planting more trees. Growing plants are one of the only ways we have currently to harness nuclear fusion, which is the sunshine we receive. So the question really gets to more energy-good or bad? From my perspective, more energy wins. Like where is the problem if one day we determine we have too many trees? That just means more affordable housing and furniture and paper and other forest related products like foodstuffs and biomass for energy conversion. Still a win for hoo-mannzz.
Forests now cause global warming? Next they'll say that volcanoes cause global cooli... Uh, nevermind...
This space for rent
If in the name of lower greenhouse gas emissions we start putting photovoltaic cells all over the place, won't their dark surfaces do the same thing as the trees?
Paradoxically, global warming might lead to an ice age in Europe because the gulf stream will stop flowing due to a lower heat gradient. This will at least lead to harsher winters (which might call for even more fuel burning under the current housing conditions)
I'm still trying to figure out what people mean by 'social skills' here.
Somewhere ... deep within the hollows of suburbia ... a logging company executive is feeling cautiously optimistic for 2006.
I can see the headlines now...
U.S. leads world in new woodlands increases that cause global warming - Largest increase in history under President Bush!
Without even reading the article, think about this logically. What is most of the land mass in the world covered with? Trees, shrubs, plants, etc. There are a few extremely arid places that don't grow trees, but they probably did at one point in time. And at higher elevations, the growth can't survive, but that is a small percentage by area. But even in the very dry southwestern USA, plants grow all over the place. So, if the idea of this article is to caution everyone's eco-planning policies so that they don't go planting trees carelessly, then I call B.S. Now if someone was arguing for terraforming the Sahara or is trying to analyze large swaths of plankton or algae on the surface of the ocean, this might be useful. But your average tree-hugger doesn't need to be worried with this. We've cut down many more acres of trees for farms, plantations, subdivisions, and buildings in the last 100 or so years than we have planted.
From the TFA ...
but their dark leaves are also very efficient at soaking up sunlight, which is later released as heat. At certain latitudes, the net effect of these two processes is warming, rather than cooling.
What sort of trees did they use in their simulation? Did They reforest with an even mixture of what trees where natively found in the region? Or even the altitude? The article doesn't say.
Anyone who has spent some time in the woods knows a forest is diverse system. within a few miles walk in New England, you can found varieties of spruce, maple, cherry, oak, among others. All prospering in environments suitable for each. Did their simulation reflect this? Did their simulation reflect "natural" clearing? (Forest fires, die off, etc etc)?
IANAG (not a geologist), but wouldn't there be evidence that North America would've been actually warmer some 400 years ago? I've read that the early settlers would say a squirrel could go from Maine to kentucky, and never touch the ground. Isn't earth warming currently at fractions of this rate? (with all of man's humble efforts?).
Just like the 'research' on eggs, just wait another week and they will be good for you.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
"Watch out for that T*R*E*E!"
- George J.
CAN-CON 2019 - Ottawa's only book oriented Science Fiction Convention! October 18-20, Sheraton Hotel, Ottawa, Canada h
That makes a lot of sense, but I have to wonder if other dark things we tend to place in the sun aren't in fact contributing a great deal to the global warming problem, in addition to other factors such as greenhouse gases... I wonder how much more heat is retained in areas with tar roofs and black-top streets and parking lots, as opposed to areas with gravel and dirt roads and shingled/fiberglass roofs.
That aside, this is a very interesting finding. There's no doubt in my mind that the logging industry will use this as an excuse to ramp up production in the face of opposition from environmentalists, but it could also be useful in helping us understand how to control our own climate naturally. Maybe certain kinds of trees and plants reflect more heat than others. Maybe certain arrangements and placements of trees and plants are cooler or hotter than others. Landscaping for climate control, anyone?
Do as before, it´s good what you do, do the best you can
.. rocks, pure rocks, hard to bring back, the rain-forest with it´s micro-climate .. so planting alternative trees,
- save energy
- use insulation, improve insulation, (it works as a two way effect,
a good insulation stops heat from escaping in the winter,
and in summer stops heat from wandering in (with a house with a good insulation
you need less power too heat up your house in the winter, and you need less
power for your aircooler in the summer, because the chill is preserved as in
a fridge )
The problem is, that the processes involved in trees and the hole climate
system are complex, and hard to understand, and so a single isolated findings
or fact might not concur with the system, even climate isn´t the same as weather, it´s the interaction between local processes and global processes.
On the one hand, tree-letters reflect light (as brigther the letters are, the more light is reflected) and trees also have a cooling ability too,
they transfer water from the roots to the letters where it evaporates and the process of evaporation transfers heat through the vapour, and so providing an insulating layer atop of the ground, preserving the humidity within the ground,
by limiting the vapour from the ground through the layer of trees.
Even trees/wood keep the surrounding area cooler, than bare rocks can do,
the darker the rocks the less they are reflecting the light, the hotter they are.
You can simply check this while walking in the wood and off the wood
on a hot summer day, under the trees it´s cooler, and if you ever made
a walk on rocky grounds on a hot day, you´ll starve too reach a wood or even a single tree to rest, but trees and especially their roots also have an anti-erosion effect, it´s visible there where wood got destroyed in favor
of agriculture, especially visible in brazil,
the ground under the rain-forest, is a 2-5(max) meters layer of earth,
when you burn all the trees you can do a 2 years agriculture,
furtilized through the charred trees, (the expensive trees are choped before)
but after the ground is degraded and leached, the countrymen leave the bare grounds.
Naturally in the rain-forest it rains, and so the rain erodes the degraded grounds and what you can see than is where the rain-forrest is based on
has a stabilizing effect on the global climate
is a try to substitute the binding of CO2 in biomass, but this must
be also said for a limited time, as long as the tree lives.
And there is even a historical missmatch, because in days before the
industrial revolution, there was extremly more wood, the rain forest in south america eroded dramatically over the years, even europe was widly covered with large compounding woods, there was less agrocultured land.
So you can plant the trees without worry, and without mentioning the environmental effects trees have, they are also good for children to
climb or to build a tree-house.
don't trees shade the ground from getting hot? if the trees are getting hot and the ground isn't, what is the difference between trees and no trees?
/drinks up
happy christian bastardized pagan holiday.
its really siberian shaman reindeer piss drinking day.
Trees are parts of the axis of evil. Lets nuke them all
"Insanity in individuals is something rare, but in groups, parties, nations, and epochs it is the rule." - Nietzsche
I've been using linux for a few years now, and am a sys admin in likewise at a uni. That said, apart from trying to co-found one at the college I went to (didn't really pan out to much while I was there), I'd never been to a LUG.
;-)
Just recently however I started attending the one in my city, to bring my oldest there (7 years old). It's really wonderful, gives us some nice time together, and exposes him to linux and part of linux culture. After the first time (which was an installfest, where some fellow there let him play a bunch of linux games on his box) my son asks about going ahead of time and looks forward to it. If something less than interesting for a seven year old is being discussed, I just bring my lappie with free games on it anyhow to keep him entertained (loves wesnoth). That and the the free food of course
gah! wrong article...
Working in my chile field (a whopping 15' x 30') the air above it feels noticibly more humid, I assume because of the water vapor being transpired from the leaves. Evaporation means cooling and the air within the plant canopy _is_ cooler not, I believe, just from the soil being shaded by the canopy but because the of the evaporative cooling of the leaves. Additionally, the leaves, although 'dark' are not as dark as the soil. (Now, around northern New Mexico the soil can be pretty red, and if I remember correctly, red and green render as pretty much the same shade of gray. So maybe there are cases where the leaves would heat up more than the naked soil.
The whole point of this (besides the fact that I make a killer mole), is that a case can be made for either side of the argument, and there is so much money at stake the powers-that-be, if they wanted to, could buy any results they needed to make their case: Science is just another whore these days. My personal position is that no matter what the theory du jour is global warming is a fact, and two degrees F. is enormous. So put things back the way they were: more trees, fewer poor people farming inefficiently and way fewer European-derived malicious idiots driving SUVs and trucks that don't do real work.
Of course there are powerful interests whose power and fortunes lie in continuing on the present path and they don't care because they'll always have the money to buy food and air conditioning. But history shows that such interests always fall. The manner of their ending is up to them, but their end always comes, it's a cycle of history that has never been disrupted. Things here won't change until a majority of people in the world stop believing that they'll be swept off to some perfect place and they can defile their current location with impunity.
How do the trees produce MORE heat than just the sunlight hitting, say, the ground? Presumably the energy is going to all become heat eventually, so it doesn't matter if the trees are doing it instead of the ground, right?
http://www.TheGamerNation.com/Forums
This new finding just strengthens my(non-expert relatively ignorant) view that the earth's climate is amazingly complex and the current climate models may still be missing many very significant variables. It seems that we can't even be sure of the real effects of trying to restore the balance, assuming it is even out of balance in the first place. There are that many potentially unforseen past, present and future climate cause-effect cycles where do you start? I've read both sides of the argument on climate change, and not being an expert I really can't decide - so don't bother trying to bombard me with more information from either side, I've already been through it.
At the end of the day the most confident thing I can say, and it's still not a certainty, is that human ingenuity is an amazing thing. If humans needed to migrate off the planet, or create totally artificial enclosed ecosystems within 100 years to survive, I think it would probably be possible. However given human nature etc it may mean that the poor are left behind.
This is only anecdotal evidence, but in evergreen forests in the North East, the forests actually are much cooler than the open areas. Sometime in summer, walk into a densely forested area and it can be 10 degrees cooler. Even if the trees are just acting as shade, I don't think they're doing much of anything to increase the temperature. Maybe it's different in other parts of the world but surely the total tree-heat is millions of times less than BURNING things.
Nature is a much greater force than mankind.
My worry is that all the efforts lead by environmentalists will lead to a massive ice age due to over compensation and Mother Nature's bad disposition about being screwed with.
If nature is a greater force than mankind, then how would the efforts of environmentalists have any impact at all?
So we don't even know for sure if trees (and their ability to absorb CO2) are net warmers or coolers of the environment....yet we should sign on for hundreds of BILLIONS of dollars in programs which will 'reduce global warming'?
R-i-g-h-t.
Look, I think that it's patently obvious that 5 billion people cooking things, burning fuels, and generally living energy-intensive lives must be warming the planet (whether this is moreso than natural cycles is up for debate). But the whole 'Kyoto' religion smacks of Environmentalist's "Intelligent Design" - ie 'we don't really know WTF we are talking about, but just trust us, this is the RIGHT thing to do!'
Coupled with a healthy dose of white, western intellectualist guilt, and ample resentment of the first world by the third world, (with a dash of anti-globalization thrown in) and I see Kyoto and the efforts to effectively hobble Western Industrial societies as little more than a post-colonial revenge.
We hear many, many stories about how the industrial western societies (mainly the US) have ruined and continue to ruin the world. I'd say that an increase in average human lifespan in 1900 of 44 to whatever it is now (82) is a good thing, brought on entirely through the benefits of industrialized, advanced western societies.
Of course, at the root, environmentalists would be afraid to admit it, but they'd ultimately probably prefer a goodly chunk of these still-living humans to die.
-Styopa
but liars can use numbers to suit their purposes.
... to the result that much germ plasm diversity is now forever lost.
I RTFA and also all the responses (including the one from the moron who claimed to be a sysad but posted to the wrong thread... sheesh!).
What I take away from all of this is conveyed in the last line of the article where it said, in effect, "the less we mess with things, the better off we are".
The small family farmer needed a woodlot, vegetable patch and several types of livestock in order to run a farm. That diversity is gone now since city folks wanted to jump up the price of their cars and trucks and greeting cards but only pay a pittance for their food. The independent farmer couldn't produce food for that price so he got bought out by the food-factory conglomerates who got rid of the diversity and headed right straight for monoculture cropping
And the woodlots and the organic agriculture disappeared, never to return.
harpoon a tree.
Where do you think the CO2 goes to, anyway? Most of the trees, leaves and roots rot - they are turned back into CO2 by fungi and bacteria. Much of the rest burns up: remember the wildfires of the Western US this year? Tropical forests have very little organic matter in the ground. If they were soaking up CO2, they would be sitting on top of huge layers of branches and leaves etc. Stable tropical and temperate forests have nearly no net CO2 absorption.
The only thing that matters is NET soakin up of CO2. There are two good ways to get this from forests.
First, a Northern forest is usually so cold that a fallen, dead tree does not rot, and turns into peat and eventually (perhaps) coal.
Second, PEOPLE CUT DOWN TREES, and turn them into wood products like houses and paper. If this is permanently sequesterd (e.g., into a home), then this CO2 is removed from the atmosphere [as new trees grow to take their place].
So, to reduce the CO2 in the atmosphere, cut down MORE trees to turn into homes.
Common sense, and personal experience don't bear that out. If you're in the middle of a city, on a bright, sunny day, it's going to be *real* fucking hot. Much hotter there than in arid regions in the same general area. Grasslands will be cooler. Forested areas tend to be much cooler, often strait out cold.
Clearly, plants absorb sunlight, and some of what they absorb will be radiated as heat, but there's a lot more going on in their ecosystem than that. Before we start worrying about heat absorbed and radiated by forests, which have covered vastly more of the earth before the industrial revolution than afterward, when global temperatures began to increase, I think we should work on reducing the environmental impact of concrete and blacktop.
Seriously, I was wondering if it's not the tree we need to worry about, but asphalt instead. It consumes no CO2 and absorbs much more heat than leaves. Of course it all depend on how much asphalt we are going to put in tropical latitudes. It melts quite easily there i guess.
---- MISSING MISCELLANEOUS DATA SEGMENT --- [sigdash] trolololol
BROKEN MODERATION SYSTEM!!! Mod Parent Up, not down.
On 2005-12-25, 11:02, the parent comment is at -1, Troll. But, it is exactly correct, and very insightful.
To repeat: "We have only one environmental problem in this world, and that is the huge number of people on this planet. All other problems are just secondary manifestations of this one."
Merry Christmas!
I wonder if that study should have taken into account at how the absorbed heat is utilised by trees. Is the absorption of sunlight by chlorophyl to synthesize sugars for plant metabolism an endothermic reaction? If it is, then that heat is used to build biomass that has the end result of absorbing atmospheric CO2 and giving off oxygen. I'm willing to bet that higher CO2 levels in the atmosphere would be a larger problem than forested areas being somewheres they hadn't been before - the effect of them could be damaging, but in a more localised manner.
I'm sure there's logging lobbyist groups creaming themselves over this. But the article seems, at least to me, a statement that nature is an increasingly complex and delicate system that we may never fully understand. But even for those that aren't biologists, even the most base layman can understand that you don't need to be a mechanic to know that if you throw a wrench into a running engine, it will come to a grinding halt.
The last line of the article sums it up the best: "The less we interfere with the system, the more likely we are to have a healthy planet."
I've long believed that global warming is nothing more than a pattern of warming/cooling that is part of the earth's cycle. Depending on how much heat these trees are producing, could it be possible that they are a major contibutor to the heating of the earth; the process that we assume is global warming?
This just in! 3 out of 4 people make up 75% of the population.
Another note to go with my parent post: This article is HIGHLY suspect. It could easily be from the Cut-Down-All-the-Forests-to-Make-a-few-People-Rich -Institute.
Yes, drown those New Yorkers so that there will be more for Coloradoans.
Should I ask for Paper or Plastic?
Trees are storage devices for solar energy. Every inch a tree grows represents a huge amount of sunlight converted to solids in the form of the materials of the tree. When we burn wood, we're releasing that energy - tanstaafl, you know.
Anyone who has been downhill from a forested hill in Missouri during high summer knows that trees store energy; you can detect a significant temperature gradient from the concrete to the trees - even though concrete has a much higher albedo than the leaves and needles of most of our indigenous trees. I would wager only actually replacing snow with trees would increase temperature.
Thinking outside my Head
Black cars and clothes are the reason for global warming. There we go.
But, honestly, even though it may be true, and if it's a lie, then in every lie there's a bit of truth... it just sounds more like an excuse for ecoligal negligence more than anything.
"Hey check it out, SOME trees COULD be bad, so feel free to cut 'em all".
No matter if trees have a warming or cooling effect or if automobile pollutants have a warming or cooling effect. Its quite obvious that plants are good for the planet and burning fossil fuels is not. Pollutants are nasty things and detrementally affect ecosystems. While trees in their native environment can rarely have a detremental effect on the ecosystem, even the detremental effects that they do have are natural (ie falling and killing something. There is no problem with planting native trees into an ecosystem and there wn't be as long as that ecosystem has not been completely skewed due to human activity.
Dude, what are you talking about. How will they melt? It's freezing down there!
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.... This report comes sponsored by "Logging'R'Us".
Pack heat in magical giant heat bags and then release in space with every space mission, when it occurs.
Sounds good enough for a patent. One day, I'll be a rich guy.
It's about as juvenile and tired as "We're FBI: Female Body Inspectors".
Get a new joke, kids.
September 2011: Looking for Cocoa/iOS work in Boston area Cocoa Programmer Quincy, MA
Reminds me of another fact about trees, under some circumstances, some forests release more carbon than they absorb.
You just got troll'd!
i knew it! it's those tree huggers that are a secret organization not to save the world but to destroy it! they'll plant all the trees until they slowly kill everything, all the while sitting snugly in their cool underground city. it's time to torch some forests! who's with me? :)
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
The problem with the theory is that each leaf is part of a massive liquid cooling system. The heat is far more likely to be transported into the core of the tree, along with the products of photosynthesis, than it is to be reradiated.
If you roll around on a green lawn in summer, the grass is cool. Leaves on a tree are also cool, in my experience, it's just rather difficult to roll around on them because they're so spread out.
But dead grass? Not cool. No water flow, so no cooling.
September 2011: Looking for Cocoa/iOS work in Boston area Cocoa Programmer Quincy, MA
Things can get worse you know .. A self-stabilizing feedback system might not have enough buffers to "protect" the ecology if too much CO2 is released at once.. We are just nannites sown on this planet to dig for ore ..
I'm still trying to figure out what people mean by 'social skills' here.
In economics, the sticker cost is never the true cost. It is the sticker cost AND the oppurtunity cost. Something is glaringly missing from this: Yes, the dark green of trees absorb heat instead of reflecting it. But how much does the dark brown of barren soil absorb? What about green grass, which is the same color as trees and thus should absorb the same amount of sunlight?
The idea of dark colors absorbing sunlight instead of reflecting is well known, but generally in the context of when arctic ice melts and the melting reveals barren brown ground that does not reflect the same way as ice/snow and that thus quickens the melting of arctic ice/snow. So if you replace a field of snow with trees (trees that are not snow-covered, mind you--snow-covered trees are mostly white, depending on how recent/fresh the snow is), then yea, you'd get a nice warming effect. But if you replace a barren spread of brown soil with trees, I seriously doubt that you would get that much warming effect.
Black cars and clothes are the reason for global warming. There we go.
These two men have a lot to answer for then!
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Katrina was bad because of its size. In fact it was so large that the potential for damage was said to be greater than some previous category 5 hurricanes.
5 /katrina/katrina-satellite-t.gif
Here's a look at Katrina from NOAA
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/img/climate/research/200
Compare it to Hurricane Andrew
http://www.noaa.gov/images/hurr-andrew-082492.jpg
Now to category 5 Hurricane Camille
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane_Camille
You'll see that while Katrina may have had ultimately lower overall windspeed, it had a lot more energy (as evidenced by its size). Whereas many hurricanes will weaken and dissipate after making landfall, Katrina had so much energy that it was able to sustain its strength and make a second landfal even after venturing far enough inland to cause huge damage.
There was an article a while back (Couple months ago? Too lazy to look up the link) that talked about exactly this. The conclusion was that during the next 20 odd years, we should see hurricane activity increase back to what it was before 1900. The reason for the change? The Atlantic ocean is warmer because the Gulf Stream is slowing down again. The last 30 years in particular was a record low for hurricane activity.
environmentalists don't affect the environment. what they do is screw over the economy. (see kyoto accord, for reference)
What about transpiration? The process of evaporation of water throught the leaves should probably have a cooling impact as well.
The temperature is going to be the same regardless if its trees absorbing the sunlight or the ground. This research is baseless.