Slashdot Mirror
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.
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
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
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.
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 ----
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.
Since it is Christmas, I shall be kind to such a response. Mars is experiencing Global Warming.
So is NASA lying? Or don't you believe in their facts?
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
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
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."
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".