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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!
Send email from the afterlife! Write your e-will at Dead Man's Switch.
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.
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).
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
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."
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.
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://
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?
Somewhere ... deep within the hollows of suburbia ... a logging company executive is feeling cautiously optimistic for 2006.
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.
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.
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
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.
"100 million" To put it in context, In North America, billions of trees are planted every year to replace the billions that are cut down. Forestry is a sustainable industry.
Oh well, what the hell...
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."
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".
Props to parent for hitting the nail on the head. If trees are "the problem" they why the hell is it so much cooler in the countryside than in the city, or even a large town, where it is noticably much warmer? I've noticed this for decades, and have long just assumed it was the concrete and asphalt covering everything in urban areas. The ground can't dissipate heat nearly as well through that stuff. No doubt someone here has more knowledge on the subject than me (geologists?), so feel free to chime in here.
I find this article rather dubious.
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.
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
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.