Trees vs. Atmospheric Carbon: A Fight That Makes Sense?

StartsWithABang writes Yes, carbon levels in our atmosphere are rising, it's causing the Earth to warm and the climate to change, and our dependence on fossil fuels isn't going away anytime soon. Yet even if we ceased all carbon emissions today, the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere is already high enough that it is likely to result in long-term catastrophic effects. But getting that carbon that's already in the atmosphere out of it isn't a pie-in-the-sky dream, it's a solvable problem that's as easy as planting a tree, something every one of us can help do with very little time, money and effort.

Comments

That's revolutionary

[Anonymous Coward]

Trees are carbon sinks?!? Who knew?

Re: That's revolutionary

[Anonymous Coward]

Irrelevant. Humans are excessively inefficient carriers of DNA. Be free in the knowledge bacteria will outlive you and your spawn.

Re:That's revolutionary

[Anonymous Coward]

They are very inneficient carbon sinks. The problem is that they do eventually die and decompose. Decomposition is essentially a very slow fire, and most of the carbon is converted back into CO2. It takes millions of years for the trees to capture enough CO2 to make a difference. The idea that we can grow trees over the necessary time span to make up for the current burn rate of petro-chemicals is a bit naive.

Re:That's revolutionary

[gl4ss]

well, what it really is, is a good reason to cut down as many trees as you can and make buildings, furniture or whatever using the wood instead of letting it decompose - and then plant new trees. so tree farms to rescue! and landfills where paper diapers are buried.

Re:That's revolutionary

[Anonymous Coward]

I knew that my babie one day saves the world, but I never guessed it was so early in my little sunshine's life.

Re:That's revolutionary

[Rei]

I'm actually curious about the balance here. When a tree dies and is left on its own, what percentage of its carbon ends up permanently in the soil vs. returning to the atmosphere after decomposition? I'm sure it varies greatly from forest to forest, of course - things like peat bogs having little decomposition, but probably much more efficient decomposition in rain forests. And how does this compare to, say, grassland? Or perhaps more to the point, how does it compare to the typical modern practice of sending your grass clippings to the municipal dump where they'll be entombed in a low-oxygen environment?

And back to trees, are there processes one can use to increase the amount of carbon stays in the soil? For example, does making biochar increase or decrease the sequestered carbon?

Re:That's revolutionary

[Anonymous Coward]

A growing tree requires much more co2 than a mature tree already mostly grown, so the game is to grow trees to maturity, cut them down and use the resulting wood for "stuff" like furniture, construction, etc. to sequester the carbon held within the tree. In the US, the way we do things now is prevent all fires which means that only fires which can't be stopped are allowed to continue. These fires burn hotter and can actually "glass" the soil so they not only result in a full release of the sequestered c02 but also have much more immediate environmental implications, erosion and retarded regrowth not the least of them.

Also, how 'efficient" a carbon sink is seems.... tricky... to figure out given the largely autonomous and self correcting nature of the medium-term (10+ years) nature of the sequestration. Given that, what would you say is a more efficient naturally occuring carbon sequestration strategy?

Re:That's revolutionary

[Marginal Coward]

Then there's the matter of lignin. I'm no expert on this, but as I understand it, the plants that eventually became fossil fuel grew during a period in which lignin had been invented by them, but microbes hadn't yet figured out how to break lignin down. So, imagine trees piling up over a long period (millions of years?), not rotting, and their carbon being sequestered. Now, wind things forward a few million years, and imagine that one big-headed creature figures out how to release all that carbon back into the atmosphere, and proceeds to do so over a short period of just a few hundred years. That's gonna have a big impact, and it's going to be irreversible using plants alone.

Re:That's revolutionary

[GuB-42]

We don't need to allow the trees to decompose. They can be buried (effectively putting petrol back into the earth), or converted into charcoal. I don't know how feasible it this though. My guess is that it is technically possible but that it would require measures so drastic that it won't be done.

Re:That's revolutionary

[onepoint]

You make a valid point. A large percentage of the carbon absorbed is placed back into the air (I would venture a guess of 80% since about 80% of the tree is above the ground). But this solution is a stop gap until other means of carbon reduction can be implemented. Also, if tree farming is used for crop's IE: wood products with a life span of 30 years, then we have locked in carbon for; growth time + usable life span of products.

I, myself, have planted trees all my life, and my dream retirement goal is to create a forest somewhere near the Mississippi River. Lots of trees, all different breeds, providing a rich environment for wildlife. Nothing fancy, lot's of southern pine ( that can be used for telephone poles, or sunk in the mud to support buildings in Louisiana ). Some hardwoods, and if possible, some trees that grow very fast for natural wind breaks.

With over 1 million users on Slashdot, I would venture that if we all planted 1 tree in our life time, the net effect would be in excess of 20 million tons of CO2 removed in our lifetime. While that is just a drop in the bucket, it's a start. I recently read that your basic tree removes in the range of 30 to 40 tons of co2 over 30 years. So I ask you all to plant a tree, think before traveling to find the most effective fuel route, recycle both sides of your paper if possible (I save 20 reams of paper every year that way) and use your bikes if you can.

Thanks for your comment.

Re:That's revolutionary

[Eunuchswear]

The only problem is that they're temporary carbon sinks.

If you just leave them in place they die and rot and release the carbon into the atmosphere.

If you cut and down and use them for something (paper, furniture, house building) they'll eventually be incinerated or buried in landfill and release the carbon back into the atmosphere.

The only way they can be long term sinks is if you bury them and turn 'em back into oil or coal. And nobody is going to do that.

Re:That's revolutionary

[ComputerGeek01]

Given that, what would you say is a more efficient naturally occuring carbon sequestration strategy?

Algae for one. They also happen to live in an area of the planet that we don't, and I for one am pretty confident in our ability to suppress fire in their natural habitat.

Don't get me wrong, I have nothing against trees so plant as many as you'd like. But don't put all of my eggs in one basket and tell me that it's the only way to get things done.

Re:That's revolutionary

[bill_mcgonigle]

Cut down the forests to save the planet! :) There's even math that shows if your area has significant snowcover (Canada-on-up) that you shouldn't even plant the trees at all because the IR reflected out into space due to the albedo is worth more for reducing warming than the CO2 that can be absorbed at those altitudes. Not everything that's true is immediately intuitive (science, bitches).

Not that I necessarily trust that particular math nor anybody's math which claims to account for all variables and reveal the truth, but it makes sense that what we need is more biomass at the equator where it can grow denser and sequester more. Such as if the desertifying of the Sahara could be reversed, as "its" water is being gradually locked up at the southern pole. But to melt those ice sheets and put the humidity back into the atmosphere would required ... dun, dun, dunnnn!

Re:That's revolutionary

[WillAdams]

Ars long, vita brevis.

Make beautiful things with the wood which will be cherished by generations to come --- that's what I tried to do when making my archery case:

http://lumberjocks.com/project...

Re: That's revolutionary

[Anonymous Coward]

But they are prettier then no trees. The shade along a stream, the edge of a lake. Help to both create and limit the extremes that our world go thru.

Re:That's revolutionary

[Anonymous Coward]

They may eventually die and decompose, but in a natural forest there's always a new tree that comes along to take it's place, absorbing the CO2 again. so the solution is maybe plant more forests, not plant more trees. Also if you have areas of the forests coppiced regularly, then thats even more of a carbon sink assuming the harvested wood isn't just burnt.

Re:That's revolutionary

[rossdee]

They can't be carbon sinks - everyone knows that wood floats

Re:That's revolutionary

[Eunuchswear]

So, now you just need to make about 29 gigatonnes of archery cases a year.

Better get to work straight away.

Re:That's revolutionary

[Will.Woodhull]

Creating biochar from woody vegetation sequesters carbon for up to tens of thousands of years. The stuff is also a great soil ammendment. About 33% of the carbon in woody waste can be converted to biochar. This is charcoal in a form that is biochemically inert but with physical structures that, like reefs, promote a rich ecology-- but in the soil rather than in sea water.

It is reasonable to presume that naturally composting woody vegetation on the forest floor is undergoing a process of conversion that is broadly similar to biochar manufacture, though much slower: a couple of years as opposed to a couple of hours. That suggests that for every 10 tons of forest litter generated in a year, somewhere between 1 and 3 tons is sequestered as the final product of composting after a year or two.

It is not too long a step from this to recognizing that the more vibrant soil ecologies of a forest are holding a lot more carbon in the form of microorganisms than can be found in corn fields or wheat fields. While that is not "sequestered" in the same way as biochar, carbon in those ecosystems is removed from the daily CO2 cycle (by moving it into cycles measured in 10k years).

The summary: planting trees, especially deciduous in climates with a cold season, does "sequester" carbon for the long term (in the sense that carbon is moved from the daily CO2 cycle to much longer CO2 cycles). While only a fraction of the carbon in a dead tree is "sequestered" in that way, there are multipliers in the soil ecosystems that significantly increase the amount of carbom removed from the daily cycle.

Go plant a tree. At present it is the best thing a person can do to directly counter the increasing CO2 levels.

Re:That's revolutionary

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow! That's incredible!

So, Weyerhauser and Georgia Pacific and the entire newspaper industry are correct after all?
Surprise! Surprise!

Re:That's revolutionary

[Bonus Mop]

Since the industrial revolution, we've released about 375 gigatons of sequestered CO2 through burning and cement production. There are 3.67 tons of CO2 from a ton of carbon so we need to capture on the order of 100 gigatons of carbon to reverse this.

Dry wood is about 50% carbon by weight. So I need 200 gigatons of wood to sequester the necessary carbon. Amazon tells me this chair weighs about 20 pounds, or 0.01 tons. Seems high, but I just need a rough estimate.

200,000,000,000 (tons of wood) / 0.01 (ton of wood/chair) = 20,000,000,000,000 chairs.

That's like 2800 chairs per man, woman, or child on the planet. Maybe then my daughters won't cover one of mine with legos and dolls.

Re:That's revolutionary

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem is that they do eventually die and decompose. Decomposition is essentially a very slow fire, and most of the carbon is converted back into CO2.

It takes millions of years for the trees to capture enough CO2 to make a difference.

Hmmm... Decomposition is NOT "essentially a very slow fire". Decomposition is a biological process where other organisms reclaim the basic parts and use them for themselves. The carbon based components would be transferred from the dead tree to the organism that is decomposing it.

A fire releases heat (plasma) and light through a process of oxidation. This would release much more CO2 into the atmosphere.

Re:That's revolutionary

[JeffAtl]

Chairs tend to have very small mass to volume (density) structures. One 16 foot 2x4 piece of lumber (dried) weighs 20 lbs by itself.

I'm not saying that I agree with the premise of the article, I'm just pointing out that you chose a really poor example. You'd do much better calculating how many average sized homes would need to be built.

Re:That's revolutionary

[dryeo]

Living in a temperate rain forest, after 10000 years since the glaciers left, there's only a few inches of soil over most of the ground. Exceptions are in depressions and such where you have the cycle of ponds slowly turning into meadow and then forest but most of the trees seem to rot pretty quick. Then there are fires that periodically go through (90 years ago here since the last big fire). Vancouver Island as an example seems to get thoroughly burned about every thousand years based on the shade intolerant tree species.
As for the municipal dump, the one here is now in the business of building and selling soil. Huge chipper chips all green waste as well as lumber and reduces everything to small particles when it is mixed with chicken shit, composted fast in big plastic tubes with huge fans driving air through so it rots in a couple of weeks. I'd guess much of the carbon would go back into the air but a good chunk would get sequestered, especially if the soil is laid down thick. There are a lot of bacteria, fungi and such that will eat the soil and release the carbon.

Re:That's revolutionary

[JeffAtl]

Isn't algae susceptible to mass die offs?

Re:That's revolutionary

[Will.Woodhull]

Biochar converts roughly 1/3rd of the dry woody input to charcoal through pylorisis, the rest is consumed-- often as the fire that heats the retort. Biochar is charcoal that preserves the microstructures of the plants. Of itself, when added to soil, it is basically chemically inert and stable for 10k+ years. However its physical structure retains water and many plant nutrients like a sponge, and it acts as a slow release reservoir that benefits crops.

The biochar structure also acts like a reef providing microenvironments that foster rich and complex soil ecologies. So in addition to the carbon directly "sequestered" in making biochar, there is also the increased carbon absorbed by the enriched soil ecology.

A deciduous forest dumps tons of dead leaves every autumn. These leaves naturally compost, in a process broadly similar to biochar production but over a period of a couple of years where biochar batches are done in a couple of hours. The end result is the same though: a fraction of the carbon in the fallen leaves becomes a chemically inert but highly structured physical ammendment to the forest soil.

So far as I know, no one has attempted as yet to quantify how much more biomass biochar or compost produces when it is added to a soil. As a wild ass guess, perhaps in a poplar forest every year every 10 tons of autumn leaves produces 1.5 tons of finished compost (with the rest of the carbon leaving as CO2 during the winter rotting period). Between the inorganic soluble nutrients retained as the leaves rot, and the physical improvements with respect to drainage and environments conducive to soil microbes, the compost will at least double the amount of carbon that is "sequestered". So (again as a WAG) an acre or so of poplar forest that produces 10 tons of dry dead leaves each year could be sequestering 3 tons of carbon each year. Every year. For thousands of years.

"Sequestered" as used in the above refers to carbon that is removed from the daily CO2 cycle to some longer term cycle that is measurable in tens of thousands of years. These would be the lifetimes of entire forest ecologies. What we have been doing for the last century or so is moving carbon from very long term cycles of millions of years and pumping it into the daily CO2 cycle. What we can do (we've got the technology yaddayadda) is move more carbon from the daily CO2 cycle into cycles of 10k+ years. It is a matter of identifying the forest types that are best for over-all carbon absorption and then getting down on our knees and planting some trees.

Re:That's revolutionary

[Will.Woodhull]

You are thinking about it wrong.

The problem is that we are taking carbon that had been in a long term CO2 cycle of millions of years and injecting it into our daily CO2 cycle, and that is very disruptive.

The proposed solution is to move more carbon from the daily CO2 cycle into cycles that are measured in tens of thousands of years. Specifically, into the forest ecosystem cycles. Rebuilding the great forests of the Americas, Europe, and Asia will eventually stabilize the excess CO2 we have already generated. There probably is no other way to do it.

It would mean learning to manage the world as a forest. We can probably do that. Yeah, I think we could figure that out. Maybe.

Re:That's revolutionary

[kent_eh]

Naive, maybe.

But planting trees is better than not planting trees.

Plus, they have other benefits. Like producing oxygen, food, shading the ground, absorbing water (as opposed to runoff), stabalizing soils, providing habitat for critters, they are affective windbreaks,and trees just generally make the place look nicer.

Re:That's revolutionary

[FatdogHaiku]

They also make a great fuel supply! /jk

Re:That's revolutionary

[Captain Splendid]

Dude, with 2800 chairs per person, I could build every man woman and child a chairhouse, guest chairhouse, summer chairhouse and chairhouse cabin.

And still have enough chairs left to build a full suite of chairfurniture for each one.

Re:That's revolutionary

[TheRaven64]

The big problem is that rotting trees produce a lot of methane, which is a much worse greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. Burning the trees cleanly is a lot better for the atmosphere than letting them decompose. The good thing about trees is that they live a long time and absorb a lot of carbon in the meantime. Fast-growing evergreens are a good cheap way of getting carbon out of the atmosphere, as long as you do something sensible with the wood. If you keep replanting them, as long as you do so in ground that didn't previously contain much vegetation, you can even burn them for heat periodically and have a net reduction in carbon.

Re:That's revolutionary

[unrtst]

Dude, with 2800 chairs per person, I could build every man woman and child a chairhouse, guest chairhouse, summer chairhouse and chairhouse cabin.

Build log cabin-ish structures, rather than drywall covered toothpicks that are so common today. I'm betting that'd get is a lot closer to being effective, but it's still a pretty stupid/naive idea.

We've destroyed a ton of rain forest. No amount of planting trees in our backyards is going to make up for that, especially when most backyards used to have trees, or already do. To tackle the problem with vegetation, we'd need to reverse the rain forest deforestation, cultivate arid lands (deserts and dustbowls), and probably look into ocean based stuff (algae etc... oceans covering more of the earth than anything else, have they all have water and sunlight readily available).

Personally, I'm a bit curious (but not curious enough to look it up) how long it'll take, or how rich in CO2 we'd need to be, before we see giant pre-historic-ish trees make a comeback. I'm guessing we'll all be dead before that happens, but I like to think the earth will manage just fine with huge CO2 levels, even flourish.

Re:That's revolutionary

[Petfish]

I knew that my babie one day saves the world, but I never guessed it was so early in my little sunshine's life.

The technical term is babby.

Re:That's revolutionary

[JeffAtl]

Then why not do the actual calculations using a more suitable wooden structure like a house?

Again, if you read my original post, I stated explicitly that I'm not endorsing the article, just that using a chair as a benchmark to debunk it is really stupid.

Re:That's revolutionary

[Anonymous Coward]

They can't be carbon sinks - everyone knows that wood floats

As do ducks. Build a bridge out of her!

Re: That's revolutionary

[ceoyoyo]

That's why we need to stop recycling the things. Cut the bit ones down, turn them into stuff, then when we're done with that stuff bury it at sea.

Re:That's revolutionary

[MrBigInThePants]

You are so right. My dream home is a medievil-inspired (i.e. log + stone feature wall + thatch-style roof) house. And it is not as expensive as you would think since you don't need all the insulation etc. (still more expensive though)

If you have never checked out the modern log home you really should google it. :)

Re:That's revolutionary

[Euler]

An exercise left to the student?

200 Gigatons *2000 pounds/ton / 2 lbs per board foot / 16000 board feet in average house: 12.5 billion houses?
http://www.idahoforests.org/wo...
http://www.osbornelumber.net/w...

Re:That's revolutionary

[Captain Splendid]

I just really liked the idea of building houses out of chairs :)

Re:That's revolutionary

[Anonymous Coward]

When a tree dies and is left on its own, what percentage of its carbon ends up permanently in the soil vs. returning to the atmosphere after decomposition?

This is the wrong way to think about it. For any given tree, eventually ~100% of it will rot - but by that time, new trees will have grown.

For each forest type, there are two meaningful numbers. The first is how long it takes to mature - to reach an equilibrium in which the carbon emissions from rotting trees balance the carbon fixation from new growth. (This will be an asymptotic thing, gradually approaching the equilibrium, but at least we can put a characteristic time value to it.) The second is the carbon density - when it's mature, how much carbon does it have fixed, in units of (say) kg per m^2?

Note that the ratio of these two numbers gives you the carbon sequestration rate (in e.g. kg per m^2 per year) while the forest is still growing. If you keep chopping down the trees and storing them somewhere, that's how quickly you're fixing carbon.

Re:That's revolutionary

[WillKemp]

They are very inneficient carbon sinks. The problem is that they do eventually die and decompose.

....... and are replaced by new trees. It's not the tree that's the carbon sink, it's the forest.

Re:That's revolutionary

[jc42]

They can't be carbon sinks - everyone knows that wood floats

Heh. Everyone except the folks who work with wood know that. There are some varieties of wood, e.g. ebony, boxwood, and ironwood, that are (usually) denser than water, and don't float. It depends on what percent of the wood is the little internal spaces filled with air. Similarly, there are some humans who don't float unless their lungs are completely filled with air. They're they folks without the fats that account for most people's buoyancy. (Here in the US, we have a lot fewer such dense people than we used to, so we had to repurpose the term "dense" to refer to mental capacity. ;-)

But your remark deserves its "funny" rating.

Re:That's revolutionary

[GameboyRMH]

Your guess isn't far off, TFA says that an acre of trees sequesters 2.6 tons of carbon per year.

Re:That's revolutionary

[budgenator]

First of all the World's equator is primarily ocean, so trees don't work well there; even where there is land on the equator, the land is notoriously infertile. Equatorial land tends to have elevated rainfall and temperatures, this causes the micro-organisms in the soil to decompose organic matter at high rates, if you go to Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2, it's easy to see the the world's highest levels of atmospheric CO2 are located over the South American and African equatorial rainforests, even equatorial waters have high levels of CO2 over them.
The Sahara is a desert mostly because it lies in the horse latitudes, pretty much everywhere on latitude 30N and 30S is desert.

Re:That's revolutionary

[budgenator]

Depends on the time frame, at equilibrium, which likely takes decades to centuries, I suspect any where from 0 - 5% of the tree carbon remains sequestered. In an equatorial forest the equilibrium might be achieved in less than a whole decade, at the Arctic tree line it's likely centuries. Elemental carbon isn't bio-degradeable, so biochar sequesters the carbon until it is burnt in a fire; so once it below about 10 cm of dirt, I suspect it's forever. I'm looking into building a charcoal kiln to make char for our vegetable garden.

Re:That's revolutionary

[budgenator]

It would mean learning to manage the world as a forest. We can probably do that. Yeah, I think we could figure that out. Maybe.

In the United States, which contains 8 percent of the world's forests, there are more trees than there were 100 years ago. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), "Forest growth nationally has exceeded harvest since the 1940s. By 1997, forest growth exceeded harvest by 42 percent and the volume of forest growth was 380 percent greater than it had been in 1920." The greatest gains have been seen on the East Coast (with average volumes of wood per acre almost doubling since the '50s) which was the area most heavily logged by European settlers beginning in the 1600s, soon after their arrival. More trees than there were 100 years ago? It's true!

Seems we're doing pretty good at it.

Re:That's revolutionary

[WillKemp]

The only problem is that they're temporary carbon sinks.

No they're not. You just can't see the wood for the trees.. It's not the tree that is the carbon sink, it's the forest.

Re:That's revolutionary

[NortWind]

Trees are only carbon sinks if you wait for them to grow, turn them into charcoal, and bury the charcoal deep in the earth. Otherwise, when the tree dies and rots, it will release all the CO2 it soaked up. It is only breaking even if you just maintain a forest.
Sea life that grows calcium carboinate shells that sink to the sea floor are a way to actually remove CO2 from the carbon cycle, but it takes a long while to do.
If we get freen, clean unlimited energy, we could talk about pulling the CO2 apart and making O2 and synthetic coal, and burying the coal. That's probably not happening soon.

Re: That's revolutionary

[romons]

Much of the oil we are burning was created in a time after trees evolved, but before bacteria evolved to eat them. They were buried, taking their carbon with them. That allowed the partial pressure of oxygen to build up to much higher levels.

Re:That's revolutionary

[fustakrakich]

It'd be an interesting place for a bar fight... and you'd have lots of kindling afterwards

Re:That's revolutionary

[AK Marc]

I'm just pointing out that you chose a really poor example.

You are naively optimisic if you think that was an accident. I think he deliberately chose it to make it look like a bad idea. How many homes per person is it? My home weighs more than 20 lbs.

Morons that cannot do math....

[gweihir]

No, that problem is not solvable in this infantile fashion. Either you are a moron or you are doing propaganda for the CO2 industry.

Re:Morons that cannot do math....

[Anonymous Coward]

CO2 industry ? who are those people and how do they make money ?

Re:Morons that cannot do math....

[jellomizer]

Soda (Pop).
Air guns.

Re:Morons that cannot do math....

[bluelip]

If the greenies and those making billions off of CO2 hysteria, like Gore, are so worried about the environment, get to the root off the problem and starting reducing their own population.

Re:Morons that cannot do math....

[jklovanc]

Or Canadian

Re:Morons that cannot do math....

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure, point at the imaginary billions in the CO2 industry and ignore the existing billionaires in the fossil fuel industry who are buying politicians in bulk to avoid regulation

Re:Morons that cannot do math....

[Anonymous Coward]

No, that problem is not solvable in this infantile fashion.

What if we include everybody listening to that beady-eyed mop-headed 70's hippie John Denver? If we pipe his crappy folk music into the air will it absorb some of the carbon?

Re:Morons that cannot do math....

[Anonymous Coward]

Derek Jeter is retired now. Leave it alone.

Re: Morons that cannot do math....

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, it kind of goes like this...

1) Plant a tree

2) let it grow 150 years

3) burry the tree to get it out of the carbon cycle.

That last step is the important one, because otherwise the tree just winds up as methane anyway. The problem is we burn coal a million times faster than we could ever sequester trees, so we could never hope to stay even. Even so, the fuel used to bury it just puts you back that much more.

Re: Morons that cannot do math....

[Rei]

Gap in your thinking. The carbon is sequestered the instant it gets into the tree. Short-term, at least - as you note a good chunk will return to the atmosphere after the tree's death, the exact amount depending on a lot of details. But you don't have to wait 150 years for the benefits. A 150 year old redwood can be as tall as the Statue of Liberty. That's an awful lot of carbon held in there.

Re:Morons that cannot do math....

[BasilBrush]

There are few scientists with maths as poor as gweihir.

Re: Morons that cannot do math....

[Anonymous Coward]

And let's all ignore the the consumers spending billions to keep that shit pumping out of the ground - it's not their fault, it's solely the fault of a few billionaires bent on destroying the world!

Re:Morons that cannot do math....

[L. J. Beauregard]

If the greenies and those making billions off of CO2 hysteria, like Gore,

1) Citation needed.
2) What about the billions that ExxonMobil and BP are making off of denying climate change?
3) If AAAAALLLLL GOOOOORRRRRE! took a wrecking ball to his mansion, composted the shards and retired to a hippie commune, would you trade your Hummer for something that gets at least 30 miles per gallon?

Re:Morons that cannot do math....

[Anonymous Coward]

If you asked for a pop in any store within 100 miles of Yankee stadium, nobody would know what the hell you were talking about.

Re:Morons that cannot do math....

[P3r1$c0p3]

Isn't it funny that the people pushing so hard for the climate change meme stand to make a killing off of it? http://www.forbes.com/sites/la... Pay Al Gore money and the scarry carbon can't hurt you.

Re:Morons that cannot do math....

[tompaulco]

Hummers aren't even being made anymore. And they were never sold in great quantity compared to other brands. With reliability being a serious factor and age now also a factor, I doubt that Hummers make up a significant fraction of vehicles. The demographic that I normally saw driving them was lower middle class, the same people also frequently driving Escalades.

Re:Morons that cannot do math....

[bill_mcgonigle]

If the greenies and those making billions off of CO2 hysteria, like Gore, are so worried about the environment, get to the root off the problem and starting reducing their own population.

They don't even have to do that. Every time an environmentalist takes a cold shower instead of a hot shower, he prevents, on average, 8 lbs of CO2 from being created.

Well, the environmentalists who love the planet enough anyway. I haven't found too many, though, willing to do this one small thing to help out (at least ones who were planning to shower in the first place). They all start talking about educating other people to reduce their carbon footprint.

Uh, huh. It's a good litmus test to winnow the ethical from the hypocrites.

Re:Morons that cannot do math....

[Chas]

What if we include everybody listening to that beady-eyed mop-headed 70's hippie John Denver? If we pipe his crappy folk music into the air will it absorb some of the carbon?

No, but if I understand movies right, lots of people will die in mysterious, Rube Goldberg-ian ways.

That might help balance things out.

Re:Morons that cannot do math....

[gweihir]

Fascinating fail.

I have a full mathematical base education and some advanced subjects like logic and algebra. That means I have more than about 90% of all scientists and I passed all on the first try. Looks like you are the clueless one here.

Re:Morons that cannot do math....

[Curunir_wolf]

If the greenies and those making billions off of CO2 hysteria, like Gore,

1) Citation needed.

Well, let's see. You could start by comparing the expenditures of a single "green" lobbying group, the "Environmental Defense Fund" of $120 million with the TOTAL lobbying dollars for all of the oil industry, which came in at about $71 million. Of course, we've left out all the big ones like the Sierra Club, SELC, Greenpeace, etc. To see what it's really like here is a handy chart for you.

Re:Morons that cannot do math....

[rgbatduke]

Agreed that "greenies" aren't the only ones making billions off of CO2 hysteria -- see the Koch brothers in the article below:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...

but there are lots of people seeking to make money in the carbon and carbon trading game, and IIRC Gore is indeed one of them. A description of the billions at play already can be found here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C...

where the number given is "60 billion dollars" which certainly counts as "billions" in any marketplace where people make a margin on all trades. The bulk of the people making money of of CO2 hysteria are, however, not Greenpeace volunteers or the like -- they are the same extremely wealthy individuals and companies who both "run civilization" and incidentally own the big energy companies worldwide. If you looked at where directly invested money intended to combat CO_2 goes (e.g. research money) a substantial fraction goes directly to the energy industry in the form of research grants, another substantial fraction goes to the energy industry in the form of subsidies. But the real payoff for the big carbon-based energy companies is, paradoxically, in the artificial inflation of carbon based energy costs to the consumer. Again, power companies make marginal profits, generally at what amounts to a fixed (publicly regulated) margin. The only way for them to increase profits at fixed production is to raise prices. The only way to raise prices in a world where coal is plentiful and cheap is to create an artificial scarcity, which has the added benefit of stretching out the lifetime of profitability of the resource to the owner. I would argue -- although it is difficult to put specific numbers to this since it is difficult to see just what fraction of the cost of a kilowatt-hour is directly attributable to the global warming hysteria, and because the media is strangely reluctant to follow the money (perhaps because they are predominantly owned by the same wealthy people, perhaps because they profit from things that rouse strong feelings, like an impending global catastrophe) -- that the increased marginal profits to the global energy industry due to catastrophe-driven price increases dwarfs all other money being made in association with the hysteria and is the great invisible elephant in the debate.

As Br'er Rabbit once said, "Don't through me into that briar patch, oh please no no no..."

I am, however, curious as to why you'd ask for citations and then refer to the billions being made off of "denying" climate change by (specifically) two large oil companies. Surely you understand that oil companies are nearly irrelevant to global warming, a small fraction (around 13%) of greenhouse emissions relative to coal fired electrical plants, industrial energy production, etc:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L...

and

http://www.epa.gov/climatechan...

The oil companies are perfectly happy to skim billions off of the artificial renewables industry that has been created by the hysteria, and until this year have been both investing and making billions from it. But the bottom has apparently fallen out of this:

http://www.eenews.net/stories/...

very likely driven by the increased supply of oil and gasoline that is reflected in oil prices dropping by nearly 1/3 this year. They are suffering far more from a SURPLUS of oil that leads to low prices and hence a serious hit on their profits than they ever suffered from global warming hysteria in a world where demand is nearly copmletely inelastic and generally growing. It also appears that the profitability of sustainables is taking a (in my op

Re:Morons that cannot do math....

[Anonymous Coward]

As you know, Earth's atmosphere is only 0.0397% carbon dioxide and carbon dioxide is a trace gas. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmosphere_of_Earth

Re: Morons that cannot do math....

[Anonymous Coward]

I think your math is pretty reasonable.

Too bad you have not taken the time to look up any of the numbers, though. Still I got to admire your fortitude-- pulling numbers like that out of your arse has got to hurt some.

You fail it in oh so many ways.

Re:Morons that cannot do math....

[BasilBrush]

I have a full mathematical base education and some advanced subjects like logic and algebra.

If you think logic and algebra are advanced subjects then you are just as mathematically challenged as I said. But you clearly don't realise it.

Re:Morons that cannot do math....

[AmiMoJo]

The environmentalists have to spend more on lobbying because they don't own as many senators and congressmen outright. When your or your family's money is tied up in oil and coal you don't need to be bribed, sorry lobbied as much to support them.

Re:Morons that cannot do math....

[operagost]

Taking cold showers might also reduce their reproductive drive, which seems to be a good thing.

Re:Morons that cannot do math....

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, and the "green" politicians keep getting defeated in those pesky elections, despite massive AGW lobby funding. Why not encourage your messiah declare to martial law and be done with it. Then, he wouldn't even need presidential memos, he could just fabricate law. It will be like paradise!

Re:Morons that cannot do math....

[Anonymous Coward]

"...carbon levels in our atmosphere are rising, it's causing the Earth to warm and the climate to change..."

Do that include, or not include, the falsified data from NOAA, NASA and AMOS????

Check for yourselves, my dear lemmings.
LOLZ
; )

Re:Morons that cannot do math....

[Anonymous Coward]

As a deep green, I am offended by glow ball wamming fsckies hijaking the green agenda
with their pseudo science.

10 beeellion tons of CO2 burned per year
= 75 x 75 miles square of forest
(excluding what is in the ground)
= 50 x 50 miles square of forest including what may be buried in the ground.

Last 100 years of CO2 released is hardly enough to account for
about 500 miles x 500 miles square of forest.

CO2 of 0.04% does not cause any kind of warming.
Add it to a jar and lets check it.
The glow ball wamming fake videos on youtube don't say how much CO2 they used.

The glow ball wamming *fsckies* can't be bothered to do their maths.

Re:Morons that cannot do math....

[firewrought]

If the greenies and those making billions off of CO2 hysteria.

Speaking tours, book deals, green charities, and even research funding are complete CHUMP CHANGE compared to coal and petroleum consumption. By any conceivable metric (gross, % of GDP, jobs, etc.), the latter utterly dominate by 2 or 3 orders of magnitude.

If you want to argue against cutting CO2, then by all means introduce facts and reasoning. But don't be the fat girl who bullies people about their looks.

Re:Morons that cannot do math....

[Opportunist]

I get it that I may shoot you when you try to flee the rising water levels and try to climb my mountain?

Re:Morons that cannot do math....

[Anonymous Coward]

You could start by comparing the expenditures of a single "green" lobbying group, the "Environmental Defense Fund" of $120 million with the TOTAL lobbying dollars for all of the oil industry, which came in at about $71 million.

Why would you compare the **total revenues** (not even expenditures) for a group like the EDF with the lobbying expenditures of the oil industry? Let's see what they actually spent on lobbying... oh, about $940,000. Sierra Club? $280,000. Greenpeace? A laughable $23,387.

opensecrets.org can help you correct your numbers, if you actually care.

Re:Morons that cannot do math....

[firewrought]

Every time an environmentalist takes a cold shower instead of a hot shower, he prevents, on average, 8 lbs of CO2 from being created.

Ah yes, insist that they reduce their personal emissions by the most painful avenues possible. And once they do that, just find another ad hoc or ad hominen reason to ignore the dangers they are pointing out. That's a totally rational way to undertake public policy. Too bad we didn't have fine voices like yours back in the sixties so we could enjoy the enviable air quality of Beijing, PCB's in our fish, and awesome DDT health complications! (Of course, next time, you could ask those darn hippies if they recycle, eat less meat, buy local, use CFL or LED bulbs, or keep their their tires properly inflated. Those are much easier ways to reduce your footprint, and some of them help with the wallet too.)

Re:Morons that cannot do math....

[Kernel Kurtz]

If anyone could actually predict the climate with good resolution on any sort of meaningful timescale they could easily be billionaires themselves. That would be a huge intelligence coup for strategic investing. Not surprising they can't, and don't, though.

Re:Morons that cannot do math....

[Curunir_wolf]

Let's see what they actually spent on lobbying... oh, about $940,000.

$120 million is expenditures, not revenues. I don't know how you arrived at the $940,000 figure, but EDF is a non-profit (a 501c3), so they have to limit the "lobbying" line item on their financial reports. Their major efforts are focused on "lobbying" judges (basically, they perform "friendly lawsuits" against the EPA. They do a lot of local lobbying, too, they just don't call it that, they call it "program support", because they've basically bribed a local government into enacting specific policies in order to get monetary support for it.

opensecrets.org can help you correct your numbers, if you actually care.

My numbers are accurate and referenced, AC, you should try it some time.

Re:Morons that cannot do math....

[Anonymous Coward]

If the greenies are making so many billions of dollars, why isn't Wall Street or Exxon getting in on that action?

Re:Morons that cannot do math....

[gweihir]

Have a look into an advanced masters' curriculum for discrete mathematics some time. Most universities rather strongly disagree with your statements...

Of course that is "Modern Algebra" or "Abstract Algebra" (as anybody with the least bit of clue in the area would have realized), and advanced topics in Logic like Automated Deduction, HAL and the like (again, as anybody that has a clue, unlike you, would have realized).

Re:Morons that cannot do math....

[BasilBrush]

You looking on Wikipedia is convincing nobody.

Re:Morons that cannot do math....

[Anonymous Coward]

You should do your part and stop exhaling it.

Re:Morons that cannot do math....

[Anonymous Coward]

hey now, if we replace every hectare on earth with moso bamboo we could get rid of ~2% of the world's CO2 in the first year (~3x10^12tons of atmosphere CO2, moso bamboo absorbs 5.1 tons of CO2/hectare/year, 11.3 billion hectares on earth), more the second year, and so on.

then you build a giant slingshot from all that bamboo, to you know... shoot all the bamboo into the same spot in space. eventually, all the bamboo mass in space would start to bunch up and you know, form a proto-planet. itd get its own gravitational pull and everything - would make adding more bamboo even easier.

over time itd be come denser and denser, then there you have it: a bonafide bamboo planet. maybe toss a couple big magnets at the opposite poles, maybe build a hotel. nice little vacation spot.

positive energy, brah. you miss 100% of the shots you dont take. thats michael jordan.

Which will eat whose babies?

[Anonymous Coward]

Is all that I need to know.

Forest Land Area from 1630 to 2002

[Anonymous Coward]

http://forestry.about.com/library/bl_us_forest_acre_trend.htm

European Settlements Impact Forest Area
Growth of the very earliest European settlers in North America initiated large land clearing efforts which had a great impact on forest acreage - especially in the new colonies. Lumber was one of the first exports from the New World and these new English colonies produced great quantities of quality wood for England, mainly ship building.

Until the mid-1800's most of the wood cut was used for fencing and for firewood. Lumber was only made from the best trees that were easiest to cut. Still, there were nearly one billion acres of forests in what was to be the United States in 1630 and stayed that way until the end of the 18th century.

The 1850 Timber Depletion
The 1850's faced a major boom in cutting trees for lumber but still used as much wood for energy and fences as ever. This depletion of the forest continued until 1900 at which time the United States had fewer forests than ever before and less than we have today. The resource had been reduced to just over 700 million forested acres with poor stocking levels on many, if not most, of the Eastern forest.

Fledgling government forestry agencies were developed during that time and sounded the alarm. The newly formed Forest Service surveyed the Nation and announced a timber deficit. States became concerned and formed their own agencies to protect remaining forest lands. Nearly two-thirds of the net loss of forests to other uses occurred between 1850 and 1900. By 1920, the clearing of forests for agriculture had largely subsided.

Our Present Forest
About 30 percent of the 2.3 billion acres of land area (745 million acres) in the U.S. is forest today as compared to about one-half in 1630 (1.0 billion acres). Some 300 million acres of forest land have been converted to other uses since 1630, predominantly because of agricultural uses in the East.

The forest resources of the U.S. have continued improving in general condition and quality, as measured by increased average size and volume of trees. This trend has been evident since the 1960s and before. The total forestland acreage has remained stable since 1900.

Re:Forest Land Area from 1630 to 2002

[cmdr_tofu]

However the US has outsourced at least in part its deforestation to countries like Canada (where my wood pellets come from) and Brazil (where mcmeat comes from).

Re:Forest Land Area from 1630 to 2002

[BreakBad]

Lets all plant 1360 acre forests. http://www.mnn.com/earth-matte...

Re:Forest Land Area from 1630 to 2002

[__aanbvm4272]

See my name? Grow Old Timber. What a concept. My idea? If the industry wants to cut down the remaining largest trees(which they do) I say grow your own old trees to harvest and leave the remaining one for us to remember what the country was before it was paved over. A little history;.. Gifford Pinchot 'invented' the phrase "tree farm" to plant the idea in the minds of the people of sustainable harvests regularly (every 40yrs) has now become every 38years...the moss doesn't even have a chance to form, leaving the moisture collecting benefits of moss gone. In the remaining rain forest here, it 'rains' on non cloudy days due to the hanging moss effectively wringing-out the moisture of the air, really. 40 times it's own weight was measured. That's why streams decline after the forests have been altered. The US forest service named the largest forest in the NW US after him (Gifford Pinchot) Now that's ironic. 30 years ago the harvests had reached the top of the cascade range. Damn. Let's blame the tree-huggers, we need those remaining monster trees, right? What's worse, the pulp and timber industry have gone overseas and to Brazil Indonesia etc for MORE. Destroying animal habitat and wreaking havoc on the unsuspecting. The industry only sees 1 thing, product, and does not even understand half of what they are doing. Now it gas become more apparent biting us on the ass...with higher tides etc. Still they will deny it. Most of the big trees were cut down in the late 1800s to make coke(that's an old name for purified charcoal) for creating a better iron (steel) for the railroads. Thanks to Andrew Carnegie. That's how most of the original virgin timber was given to them, in exchange for rails. This was done just before we figured out how to use electricity(by a mere 20 years) to clean the iron ore better How sad is that? So Plant a maple tree in the front yard for a source of leaves to wipe your ass with. Hardly a solution I admit. Trees breath CO2 and exhale Oxygen, shade the earth creating micro-climates and make wonderful composts. ALL beneficial. If you have the groundwater to support it, Plant that tree and let it become Old Timber. Thanks .

Re:Forest Land Area from 1630 to 2002

[Solandri]

Unlike mining or drilling (which permanently removes the minerals or petroleum from the ground), deforestation only happens when the rate at which you're harvesting trees exceeds the rate at which they grow back. If Canada is properly managing their forests and they're not losing tree biomass, then there is no deforestation occurring regardless of how much wood the U.S. buys from Canada. (Deforestation in Brazil has much more to do with them trying to increase agricultural land than exporting wood to the U.S.)

Along the same lines, we need to stop recycling paper ASAP. Throwing away paper in landfills is a form of sequestering carbon underground. Drilling and burning oil removes carbon from the ground. Throwing away paper puts it back. (This assumes a proportional increase in reforestation efforts to satisfy the greater demand for new paper. If you throw it away without planting more trees than you did before, then recycling is in fact better.)

Re:Forest Land Area from 1630 to 2002

[dryeo]

Not only that, but in Canada we're now logging the northern boreal forest, trees that grow a couple of inches a year and will take a long time to regenerate the forest.

Re:Forest Land Area from 1630 to 2002

[__aanbvm4272]

"we need to stop recycling paper ASAP Throwing away paper in landfills is a form of sequestering carbon underground." WRONG. There is plenty of paper NOT able to be recycled that ends up in the landfill, (our future methane source.) and plastic bags are the 'cells' that will sore the methane in pockets there. Use your plastic shopping bags for garbage disposal which most of us do now. Our ancestors will appreciate it.

Re: Forest Land Area from 1630 to 2002

[ceoyoyo]

The forested area of Canada has been stable for a long time and is currently increasing, much as it is in the US. Canada exports a lot of wood products but forests are managed and foresters are required to replant.

Re:Forest Land Area from 1630 to 2002

[Anonymous Coward]

Higher tides? Are you sure you know what causes tides? It's not atmospheric CO2.

Re:Forest Land Area from 1630 to 2002

[Anonymous Coward]

Ancestors? You mean descendants?

Either Or Switch India and China Over To Rootbeer

[TrollstonButterbeans]

If 2 billion more people drank root beer, the situation would stabilize itself.

temporary

[Anonymous Coward]

By default, when the tree dies, it will rot and return all that CO2 back to the air. So it's not really a solution unless you sequester the wood after the tree dies.

Re:temporary

[Chrisq]

By default, when the tree dies, it will rot and return all that CO2 back to the air. So it's not really a solution unless you sequester the wood after the tree dies.

One of the more crazy ideas I have read is to make charcoal then bury it in old coal mines!

Re:temporary

[Blaskowicz]

I think old forests are stable CO2-wise but a growing one is capturing CO2, and a shrinking one is releasing it - from fire and the rot going away.
So I would think reforesting does work, albeit it cannot cope at all with human emissions at current levels either now or for coming centuries if they were to remain stable.

Re:temporary

[ljhiller]

Parent beat me to this, but has score zero. Trees are great. But trees (and plants) are not carbon sinks. To be a carbon sink, you got to cut it down and bury it so deep that it'll never come out again in geological timescales. Like the abyssal ocean. Into a subduction fault. Turn it into limestone. Clathrate.

Some dead plants turn into peat. This is a great carbon sink, for millions of years, until some humans find out you can burn it. Or global warming melts the permafrost and it starts to rot. Most plants don't keep for millions of years, they just rot right away.

Plants are carbon neutral. That's why bio-fuels are a (marginally) good idea, if you can, grow, harvest, and transform the plants into biofuel using only biofuel and renewable sources.

Re:temporary

[ChunderDownunder]

Timber? Wood has been 'sequestered' by civilisation for millennia.

As long as you plant more trees than you cut down and don't use it as a fuel source.

Re:temporary

[ljhiller]

Almost all of the wood used for building in the last 5 thousand years has burned, either accidentally or from war, or after being replaced by stone, the junked wood was burned or exposed to the elements, where it rotted. Exceptions are shipwrecks and creosote-soaked rail ties. How many 1,000 year old wood buildings are left? What happened to the rest?

Re:temporary

[Urkki]

By default, when the tree dies, it will rot and return all that CO2 back to the air. So it's not really a solution unless you sequester the wood after the tree dies.

Sounds like you are not seeing the forest for the trees...

Re:temporary

[Anonymous Coward]

Go outside and into a forest sometime. Try to find the boundary stones which mark the corners of plots of land. If the forest is mostly left to itself, you'll have to dig into the soil to find the stones, which were once at the surface.

Trees will rot after they fall, but they don't rot to nothing. Trees bind carbon as they grow in the short term. Medium term, trees fall and turn to soil. Long term the soil is covered with more soil and eventually stops rotting because it is cut off from the air. Active sequestration of lumber may theoretically be able to remove more CO2 from the air faster, but I doubt that either process will be fast enough, and active sequestration seems implausible on a scale that would make an impact.

Re:temporary

[cmdr_tofu]

Unless you drastically increase the surface area of a tree (by making it into sawdust or something) it will compost anaerobically and serve as a carbon sink. also the roots of the tree are already buried underground. (I believe that's around half the mass of the tree)

Re:temporary

[St.Creed]

A lot of the older buildings in the cities in the EU have wooden beams to hold up everything. They're pretty solid and have been in place for centuries.

But even more, Amsterdam is built mostly on wooden beams, going into the ground for at least 10 meters, and most of the times 20 meters. Just the palace on the Dam alone has a foundation of 13659 wooden beams. There most be millions of trees underpinning the foundations of Amsterdam.

So while I agree it's not the majority, there is still a lot of old timber being used today.

Re:temporary

[Anonymous Coward]

It still releases back to the atmosphere - it just takes longer.

Even the roots rot... eaten by bacteria, termites, various fungi - and thus released back to the air.

Re:temporary

[Anonymous Coward]

The only reason there is "more soil" is due to sand being blown in.

The organic material returns to CO2. The various minerals used by the tree remain... but those don't sequester carbon - they bind to oxygen (well, other than some of the salts that bind to chlorine).

The only carbon sink that actually works is the ocean - forming calcium carbonate... when compressed, becomes marble.

Re:temporary

[Anonymous Coward]

Parent beat me to this, but has score zero. Trees are great. But trees (and plants) are not carbon sinks. To be a carbon sink, you got to cut it down and bury it so deep that it'll never come out again in geological timescales. Like the abyssal ocean. Into a subduction fault. Turn it into limestone. Clathrate.

Trees are carbon sinks, you just have to keep them as trees. You can't just have a plant and hope that it magically binds an infinite amount of carbon.
A certain volume of forest will bind a certain amount of carbon. If you want to bind more you need more forest.
There might be more efficient ways to store carbon but trees are pretty easy to manage if you have the space for them.

Re:temporary

[Anonymous Coward]

If you turn cropland into forest, you reduce the amount of carbon in the atmosphere by the difference between the amount of carbon contained in the trees and the amount of carbon contained in the crops. (Trees die and rot, but new trees grow, so the forest is carbon-neutral once it's grown.) This is non-trivial - but it's a once-only benefit, and you lose the use of the land for growing crops.

Ideally, you want to grow stuff, chop it down, bury it somewhere, and repeat. We actually already do this: we grow trees, turn them into paper, use it, and bury it in a landfill. Just make sure you don't use recycled paper.

Re:temporary

[Anonymous Coward]

No, they are not carbon neutral.
If a tree lives for 20-50 years, then for that time, the absorbed carbon is out of the system.

Re:temporary

[sribe]

By default, when the tree dies, it will rot and return all that CO2 back to the air. So it's not really a solution unless you sequester the wood after the tree dies.

Epic fail in the most simple of logic: every living tree sequesters CO2, more forest area means more living trees. (Or, in other words, in a forest, when one tree dies, others grow.)

Re:temporary

[sribe]

How does such a pathetically idiotic post get modded up to 5???

Every living tree sequesters CO2, more forest area means more living trees.

The forest is only carbon neutral in the sense that it represents a stable carbon sink. Once mature, it neither adds nor reduces atmospheric CO2. But planting forest where there is none does most certainly reduce atmospheric CO2, for as long as the forest lasts.

Re:temporary

[drinkypoo]

One of the more crazy ideas I have read is to make charcoal then bury it in old coal mines!

It's totally off the nut, bananas crazy, unless the plan is to use thermal solar to cook the charcoal, and to capture the released gases (including CO2!) somehow and use them for something. But hey, maybe that is the plan. Wood gas is a thing. Maybe making charcoal and cooking that stuff out and using it for power is still a good way to sequester carbon.

On the other hand, why would you bury the charcoal? There's lots of demand for it. Then we can stop doing whatever we're doing for charcoal now, which is obviously less efficient since we're not capturing the gases, and probably aren't using direct solar thermal.

Re:temporary

[kenai_alpenglow]

Look up "sunken lumber"--lots of logs became waterlogged and sank, and are now being harvested in very sound condition. Bury the trees and they stay sound. Wasn't the big enviro-cry earlier that "nothing decomposes in landfills"? Just because a tree dies, doesn't mean it will always rot. Heck, if you're that worried, take the logs out to the sahara (or other similar desert) and dump them and let them desiccate....

Re:temporary

[Anonymous Coward]

Diamonds. Diamonds everywhere!

Re:temporary

[Anonymous Coward]

How do you think all that charcoal got there in the first place? The ancient ones buried it there before they died off.

Re:temporary

[Anonymous Coward]

By default, when the tree dies, it will rot and return all that CO2 back to the air. So it's not really a solution unless you sequester the wood after the tree dies.

One of the more crazy ideas I have read is to make charcoal then bury it in old coal mines!

Better yet... make wooden cabinets, fill them up with wooden spoons and bury them in coal mines. There I knew I could one better you.

Re:temporary

[JeffAtl]

Why geological timescales? Seems like that is setting the bar higher than any solution can meet.

Re:temporary

[JeffAtl]

A certain volume of forest will bind a certain amount of carbon. If you want to bind more you need more forest.

Not necessarily. A forest can be harvested, converted into building materials and then replanted.

Re:temporary

[fuzzywig]

I think the point of the article is to plant new forests (or rather replant the ones that were there before humans arrived). You're right that an already existing forest is carbon neutral, adding a 'new' tree will reduce the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere (and the amount of water, and a bunch of nutrients and stuff).

Re:temporary

[Type44Q]

By default, when the tree dies, it will rot and return all that CO2 back to the air.

Does anyone else realize how ignorant this statement is?

Re:temporary

[Anonymous Coward]

So while I agree it's not the majority, there is still a lot of old timber being used today.

Do you understand the timescales we are talking about here? 200 or 300 years is nothing. The Earth will not even finish warming from current CO2 levels, never mind stabilizing or cooling off.

Do you also understand the scale of the problem? 14,000 wooden beams is about the amount of carbon that Amsterdam unsequesters every day of every year for the last few centuries. Ever since they burned coal.

About 50,000,000,000 m3 of natural gas is burned by Neatherlands each year. That's 105,000,000 tons of CO2 emitted from natural gas alone, ignoring gasoline, diesel, propane, kerosene (jet fuel), and others. So unless Amsterdam's "wooden beams" weigh in at 20,000kg each, they are very short of the daily unsequestered carbon amounts for just Neatherlands.

source:
http://www.carbonindependent.o...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L...

So, do you now understand the scale of the problem?

And world CO2 emissions (unsequestrations, not just burning of wood, for example) mean the equivalent of all those beams in Amsterdam going up in smoke every second of every day of every year. And the rate of that burnup is going up, not down. In China alone, 2 full coal trains are burned per second. Another 2 in the rest of the world. 120,000 liters of oil are burned in the world every second. And 105,000 m3 of gas. 15 years ago, it was only 80,000 liters of oil per second.

Re:temporary

[St.Creed]

It was a response to the question "How many 1,000 year old wood buildings are left? What happened to the rest?", nothing more. The idea that planting a few trees for use as timber in housing would be a solution to the current rising CO2-levels never even crossed my mind, otherwise I'd have made that more explicit in my post.

Re:temporary

[Anonymous Coward]

Could also print out more stuff and archive it ;). Buried paper in a landfill often decays quite slowly too. So if you don't care about the pollution paper making creates, or the paper you use is made in environmentally friendly ways, then it's actually not that bad to print stuff out and keep it or bury it in a landfill.

As for the claim that trees are carbon neutral because typically the tree/wood rots and the CO2 eventually returns to the environment, it's only neutral as long as the rotting rate matches the growing and chopping down rates. If you're growing trees and chopping them down faster than the wood is rotting/burning, you're locking up more CO2 than you are releasing.

Re:temporary

[Moof123]

Nope, missed it. Please explain.

A chunk of forest will hold a relatively constant amount of carbon. A new tree grows while old trees rot. Unless you plant different trees that have wider trunks, or add more square miles of forests, it is a net push. Even in the long term planting an extra square mile of new forest will only sequester up to a certain mount of carbon, while burning fossil fuels will steady add C02 to the atmosphere.

It is like fixing a leak in your roof with a bucket. A steady drip cannot be indefinitely dealt with using a bucket, it eventually overflows. You have to fix the source, not run around finding new places to squirrel it away.

Re:temporary

[Anonymous Coward]

BioChar FTW. Sequester the carbon for centuries, use it to enhance our agricultural topsoil, reduce the amount of nitrate/phosphate laden fertilizer, *and* have 20% energy excess after the process for whatever you'd like.

Re:temporary

[__aanbvm4272]

Why all these sequestering facts? That's beyond the point entirely Geez. Just realize trees breath CO2 continually and exhaling oxygen? As long as it's alive. Isn't that enough of a reason for more trees? The ocean locks up the most carbon as limestone. That's why our oceans are important too.

Re:temporary

[Anonymous Coward]

By that time, a new tree grows again. I don't see the problem.

Re:temporary

[shbazjinkens]

On the other hand, why would you bury the charcoal? There's lots of demand for it. Then we can stop doing whatever we're doing for charcoal now, which is obviously less efficient since we're not capturing the gases, and probably aren't using direct solar thermal.

Right now I believe most is made from waste wood from lumber factories. They do a low-oxygen burn in charcoal sheds. It doesn't seem efficient, but it is more efficient than turning perfectly good lumber straight to charcoal.

Re: temporary

[ceoyoyo]

The idea is to use increased forest area to store excess carbon long enough for reduced emissions to have an effect. Basically blunt the short term climate change problems long enough for long term emissions reduction to take effect.

Re:temporary

[Type44Q]

Please explain.

Um, trees sequester shitloads of hydrocarbons that are hardly re-released to the atmosphere the instant the trees die?

If they didn't, the natural reforestation in Central/South America in the 16th/17th centuries [due to the decimation of indigenous peoples by Spanish conquistadors] wouldn't have resulted in the global cooling-off period that it did...

Re:temporary

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, what actually works well is Terra Preta, using charcoal as a soil amendment. The lifetime of charcoal in the soil is fairly long, and it retains nutrients, allowing both the use of less fertilizer as well as improving crop yields.

Re:temporary

[Anonymous Coward]

To be a carbon sink, you got to cut it down and bury it so deep that it'll never come out again in geological timescales.

We don't need geological timescales. Decades-to-centuries is good enough. That way, if we keep doing it, we'll (on average) keep a mass of carbon out of circulation that compensates for what we've injected into the atmosphere from burning fossil fuels.

Re:temporary

[Anonymous Coward]

That was the point of his rant - this way, nothing can be done to match his demands, so it's better to do nothing!

Re:temporary

[Anonymous Coward]

Trees also make the oxygen you breath too. You do like breathing don't you. Where do you think oxygen come from?

Re:temporary

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually the majority of carbon sequestered by trees ends up in the soil while the tree is still alive and remains there after its death.

Almost all plants have some sort of symbiotic relationship with various microorganisms in the soil, the plant needs nutrients provided by the microorganism so encourages their growth. Generally the trees will receive biologically available nitrogen and the like and return carbon dioxide. In the end the tree effectively ends up as a conduit passing CO2 from the atmosphere into the lower levels of the soil where it's locked up as bacteria, fungi, and other odd things. The amount of CO2 which stays in the tree, and so can be released on death, can be quite small in comparison to the amount taken out of the atmosphere.

The conspiracy

[Anonymous Coward]

The conspiracy is a conspiracy, and this thread is a hoax! WHAGAHAHAG!

Money quote

[DiamondGeezer]

"the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere is already high enough that it is likely to result in long-term catastrophic effects"

Like the shrinking of deserts and increased biodiversity? A true disaster.

We all know that glaciers are biological hotspots which is why every one that calves into the ocean is another death-knell for life on Earth.

Re:Money quote

[Anonymous Coward]

Glaciers are a major part of the planets main water supply - they buffer precipitation. Let them melt away and you will see plenty of extra flooding in the wet seasons and rivers drying up the rest of the time.

You may or may not increase biodiversity on the site of the old glacier, but everything downstream will be fucked.

Re:Money quote

[DiamondGeezer]

And where would we be without ACs making shit up?

Re:Money quote

[Anonymous Coward]

Which part was made up?

Re:Money quote

[Anonymous Coward]

Here you go.

http://www.skepticalscience.com/shrinking-Himalayan-glaciers.htm

Try not to read it all at once. Some of the words are a bit long for you.

Re: Money quote

[mSparks43]

what a load of crock.

a believable site would say:

climate myth:man is responsible for the ice melting

what the science says: the earth has been coming out of an ice age for 10000 years.

Re:Money quote

[drinkypoo]

Like the shrinking of deserts and increased biodiversity? A true disaster.

You're probably just trolling, but just in case you actually believe your own propaganda: increased CO2 forces more warming, which means more desertification. Also, most plants are already near the upper bounds of how much CO2 they can utilize. In order to use more, they would require more average sunlight. However, over certain temperatures, the plants basically shut down and do not function, so the sunlight would have to be better-regulated. Even then, they would only be able to consume a small additional percentage of CO2.

Re: Money quote

[ceoyoyo]

Not necessarily. One of the leading theories about the formation of the Sahara, for example, suggests that periodic changes in the axial tilt have made North Africa cooler. The cooler temperatures result in less convection and so less cool moist air being drawn in from over the ocean. The monsoon then fails, and you eventually get desertification.

The implications of global warming vary depending on a lot of local factors and are we're not very good at predicting them. A little warmer might be good for general biodiversity - it certainly seems to have been in the past. But it's almost certainly not good for our current civilization because we have a lot of people and infrastructure that are dependent on established climate patterns.

Re: Money quote

[david_thornley]

"Science" is an abstraction that doesn't say anything. Scientists say things. The scientists who have studied the issue are almost unanimous in saying that we're almost certainly responsible for global warming and such things.

Re: Money quote

[mSparks43]

then I'd love to see their explanation of how we stopped the ice age.

and then try a little of whatever they were smoking.

Re: Money quote

[drinkypoo]

A little warmer might be good for general biodiversity - it certainly seems to have been in the past.

It might, if it weren't happening so quickly.

Re: Money quote

[david_thornley]

How we stopped the ice age? We didn't. We're in an interglacial period, that's all, and that's perfectly natural.

Re: Money quote

[ceoyoyo]

Mass extinctions are only briefly bad for biodiversity. It's still a topic of debate, but mass extinctions might well be good for biodiversity in the long term.

http://www.nature.com/nature/j...

Re: Money quote

[mSparks43]

Glad you finally came round to my way of thinking.

420!

[Anonymous Coward]

I rather smoke some trees anyway

likely to result in long-term catastrophic effects

[mSparks43]

yeah, like causing the sea levels to rise a few mm.

Why wont somebody think of the sand flee children. How will they ever keep dry!!!.

Re:likely to result in nasty biatches

[Anonymous Coward]

yeah, like causing the sea levels to rise a few mm.

Why wont somebody think of the sand flee children. How will they ever keep dry!!!.

Or like causing your mama to get crabs again. She's got crotch crickets!

It's true

[Anonymous Coward]

....r you are doing propaganda for the CO2 industry.

I am in the CO2 industry and I need to clear my conscious. We supply the CO2 for soda, dry ice, beer, and many other uses.

I assure you that the parent is correct. Panting trees will lower our margins or even ruin our business.

Before you go and plant a tree, just please, PLEASE, think of the beer!

Re: It's true

[Anonymous Coward]

Shut your trap. You won't have a business if global warming wipes us all out. We all need to WORK TOGETHER to solve this pressing problem before we ALL have to deal with the consequences.

Re: It's true

[Anonymous Coward]

Whoosh

Re: It's true

[Anonymous Coward]

I prefer to be dead than living in a world without beer.

Re:It's true

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, beer will clear your conscious, if consumed in large quantities...

Re:It's true

[worf_mo]

Panting trees will lower our margins or even ruin our business.

What if we make them breathe slowly?

Re: It's true

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh my. Consequences...

Oh, not warm beer. Please let it not be warm beer.

Re: It's true

[Opportunist]

Hmm... Planet ... beer ... planet ... beer...

One question, did they manage to brew in space?

Re: It's true

[Kernel Kurtz]

Anecdotally speaking, warming is generally good for beer sales.....

How many trees per person?

[reboot246]

In my younger years I worked planting trees, so I've probably planted more than 100,000 trees. At my various homes I've had I've planted another dozen, including fruit trees. I've lost count of how many shrubs and flowers I've planted. Do I need to plant more or is that enough?

Does Al Gore owe me money?

Re:How many trees per person?

[oodaloop]

To say nothing about the hundreds of millions of people living in cities that are unable to plant a single tree. You should probably plant a lot more, to try to partially make up for what city dwellers can't plant.

Re:How many trees per person?

[bluefoxlucid]

I have argued for the planting of fruit trees in our cities.

I speak often of a citizen's dividend: of removing half our taxes (covers the $1.28 trillion of welfare paid out of the federal pocket, of a total $1.62 trillion of welfare) and slapping on a separate tax to collect what amounts to a social security payout for all natural-born Americans over the age of 18 and resident in the country, providing every individual just barely enough to live on. This is not my only plan, however; there are other ways to make high-efficiency gains in the security of society.

One of my frequent suggestions is to stop planting oaks (nectar is toxic to bees) and start planting fruiting trees. Tall trees? Pecans. Small trees? Dwarf prunus (cherry, apple, pear, etc.), plum, persimmon. Bushes? Blueberries, bush cherries, pomegranate. Fill our cities, our parks, our highways, with fruit. We have volunteer organizations who harvest fruit and take it to soup kitchens to feed the hungry; we could allow casual and charitable collection, and prohibit organized collection for commercial purposes. If the trees are bare, it means people are hungry and eating (or birds are stealing your blueberries).

We greenify our streets all the time. The cost to greenify by fruiting trees is similar, as the trees cost as much and are as labor-intensive as any other. We can improve our maintenance programs to maximize yield, but we would derive significant benefit even without this. All this comes at little to no cost, as we will otherwise put other trees in these exact spaces.

Grow POT

[cheekyboy]

it grows faster than trees, and has 10000 uses, and is fun to smoke.

Get a clue govts

Re:Grow POT

[Anonymous Coward]

But you are not sequestering the carbon. It is almost immediately turned back into atmospheric carbon.

If "catastrophe" is already "highly likely"

[Anonymous Coward]

Chit mon, if we're already screwed, we might as well party and pollute like there's no tomorrow. Might as well use the earth all up since it's a goner anyways.

When all is lost, you don't have care anymore. Thanks, global warming alarmists.

Re:If "catastrophe" is already "highly likely"

[Anonymous Coward]

Chit mon, if we're already screwed, we might as well party and pollute like there's no tomorrow.

That's exactly what we are doing. Digging up coal and pumping out oil faster than ever. Fuck it, we'll be dead before the worst effects hit, so it's not our problem.

Re:If "catastrophe" is already "highly likely"

[Urkki]

Chit mon, if we're already screwed, we might as well party and pollute like there's no tomorrow. Might as well use the earth all up since it's a goner anyways.

When all is lost, you don't have care anymore. Thanks, global warming alarmists.

But all is not lost. Things are just going to be bad, but just how bad, that remains to be seen.

On the other hand our ancestors lived self-sufficiently off this land for millenia. On the other hand, that was not very fun life. But then, even if global civilization collapses, information does not disappear overnight. I for one will teach my kids both to make fire with flint and steel, and create and program a robot which can make fire with flint and steel. That should cover a lot of possible futures.

Re:If "catastrophe" is already "highly likely"

[Anonymous Coward]

I hear there's lots less carbon in the atmosphere of the moon, we could always move there.

Re:If "catastrophe" is already "highly likely"

[Urkki]

I hear there's lots less carbon in the atmosphere of the moon, we could always move there.

The problem with the moon and carbon dioxide is, just exhaling a few times will make the CO2 ppm in lunar atmosphere rise to Jurassic levels. And then next thing you know, there will be allosauruses roaming about eating the colonists. So going to moon is no solution, we'd need to be even more careful about carbon emissions there.

Is Betteridge's Law Applicable Here?

[mentil]

Answer: No

Feh

[wonkey_monkey]

something every one of us can help do with very little time, money and effort.

Come back when you've got "very little" down to "none." And "every one of us" down to "someone else."

Re:Feh

[CrimsonAvenger]

something every one of us can help do with very little time, money and effort.

Come back when you've got "very little" down to "none." And "every one of us" down to "someone else."

And this summarizes the crux of the whole problem quite nicely. Everyone thinks something should be done about the problem, and everyone thinks that the problem is best solved by OTHER people doing whatever should be done about the problem.

Note that mostly they're right. The problem should be solved by other people. Specifically, the people who make decisions for power companies. If it were less advantageous to burn fossil fuel, and more advantageous to do anything else, then we'd stop burning that stuff....

Re:Feh

[Anonymous Coward]

Ahhh, I see you've already justified why you're the first one to bail on the idea.

Great attitude, there, dickwad.

Re:Humans are oxygen sinks

[Anonymous Coward]

Starting with people too ignorant to see the two major parties are engaging in the thousands-of-years-old strategy of "divide and conquer" would be better.

Would you FUCK SCREECH?

[Anonymous Coward]

be honest

Re: likely to result in nasty biatches

[mSparks43]

they should use that in their advertising.

plant a tree or yo mama gets eaten by crabs.

would certainly be one of the more effective campaigns I'm sure.

There is more to do

[Anonymous Coward]

After you planted that tree, you have to cut another one and bury it in a swamp.

Vajk

What happens to the CO2 when the tree dies?

[Layzej]

What happens to the CO2 when the tree dies?

Re:What happens to the CO2 when the tree dies?

[drinkypoo]

What happens to the CO2 when the tree dies?

That depends on the rate and therefore type of decomposition. In anaerobic decomposition, the kind that happens when the biomass falls rapidly and covers up other biomass which isn't done decomposing, most of the carbon is released again. However, this doesn't happen until (as you note) the tree dies, which is expected to be decades or even centuries (for some species) into the future. In aerobic decomposition, more of the carbon becomes other solid stuff, and less of it becomes part of a gas. Consequently, tropical rainforests do little to fix carbon, even though they consume far more carbon due to their increased rate of growth vs. other forests. They do also help break up weather patterns, however; there are lots of reasons to plant trees. I favor focusing on species which produce food, because free food is cool. Let's not forget that plants hold down the soil, and we like soil.

Another "however"[, however,] is that all plants are made mostly out of carbon and that carbon comes almost entirely from the air, even in the case of plants which are said to get a comparatively large amount of carbon from the soil. If you put a rainforest into a space where some relatively bare space is now, for example occupied by cattle, then you're still going to sequester however much carbon is tied up in that biomass. However, the benefit ends there. Since relatively little of the world will support tropical rainforest, the argument might be made that we should focus our efforts elsewhere. However, the tropical rainforest is valuable because of its biodiversity. Over 70% of all medications are either derived directly from natural sources, or are a synthetic analogue of something we discovered in nature, not something we created ourselves. We made the copy, which in some cases works better, but the majority of our medicines were still "invented" (through blind trial and error) by "nature" without our willful intervention.

Ahem. TL;DR: Forests are at worst carbon-neutral, provide other functions which are valuable even in that case, and can definitely be net carbon sinks even in the long term.

Re:What happens to the CO2 when the tree dies?

[Layzej]

What happens to the price of beef when grazing land is reforested? This sounds like a call for farm intensification - which is an energy hungry process - which is typically supplied by oil and gas...

Re:What happens to the CO2 when the tree dies?

[drinkypoo]

What happens to the price of beef when grazing land is reforested?

There are more important issues at hand than being about to buy a burger for a buck, like whether production of burgers will even remain a viable proposal for, say, the next generation.

This sounds like a call for farm intensification

Nope. This is a call to graze cattle on native grasses on slopes. And if that means less beef is produced, and it costs more, you're just going to have to get comfortable eating other things — or spending more money on beef. But there's no particular reason why beef should destroy the biosphere.

Re:What happens to the CO2 when the tree dies?

[ChodeMonkey]

My guess would be that a fair bit of the CO2 will be released into the atmosphere but probably not all of it. An interesting thing to consider though is that trees do reproduce on their own if given an appropriate environment. If a forest is created where there was no forest before then the CO2 associated with those trees will be pulled out of the atmosphere. Eventually the forest region will probably reach an equilibrium with the environment: absorbing CO2 to produce new trees while at the same time emitting CO2 from decomposing trees. The change from "no forest" to "forest" will be a net decrease in atmospheric CO2.

Re:What happens to the CO2 when the tree dies?

[Layzej]

Your response is thoughtful and informative - I'm just skeptical that this is any more than a feel good effort with no real world benefit. The good news is that the world is reforesting without our intervention. About 25% of the carbon that we release is sequestered by biomass. Some of that may be algae, but some of that is also a greening arctic: http://earthobservatory.nasa.g...

Re:What happens to the CO2 when the tree dies?

[drinkypoo]

Unfortunately, algae's rate of conversion has been harmed by increased UV exposure, the algae near the surface is dying off. Most UV is absorbed by the first foot of water, so algae below that are doing fine, but they don't get nearly as much gas exchange there. Oceanic algae is where pretty much all our O2 comes from, in fact, so it's an issue for some significant concern.

Re:What happens to the CO2 when the tree dies?

[Layzej]

Increasing the price of food doesn't sound like a good alternative to adapting low carbon energy technologies that are already available - especially since reforestation doesn't really address the root cause - at best is just defers the problem.

Re:What happens to the CO2 when the tree dies?

[drinkypoo]

Increasing the price of food doesn't sound like a good alternative to adapting low carbon energy technologies that are already available

Making food's price reflect its cost can only be a good thing.

Re:What happens to the CO2 when the tree dies?

[Layzej]

What, if anything, would you do for the poor and hungry if this came to pass? In what way would that be better than adopting and investing in available technologies?

Re:What happens to the CO2 when the tree dies?

[drinkypoo]

What, if anything, would you do for the poor and hungry if this came to pass?

Let them eat chicken.

In what way would that be better than adopting and investing in available technologies?

It's not "better", you do both. It's not clear that there are any technologies which will let us continue deforesting without consequences.

Re:What happens to the CO2 when the tree dies?

[Layzej]

We are not talking about deforestation here - we are talking about planting 6 billion trees/year to defer the carbon increase for that year. As you point out this would mean reducing farm land. That impacts the livelihood of the farmers and also the cost of food. It is also insanely expensive even with the lowest imaginable cost for land and per tree. It also doesn't address the root problem. You would have to keep it up every year until you've run out of land. I agree that we don't have do do either/or - but this reforestation policy is really so expensive with such negative impact on the poor and with so little gain as to not be worth considering.

Re:What happens to the CO2 when the tree dies?

[Anonymous Coward]

What happens to the price of beef when grazing land is reforested? This sounds like a call for farm intensification - which is an energy hungry process - which is typically supplied by oil and gas...

Just genetically engineer cattle that can climb trees.

Re:What happens to the CO2 when the tree dies?

[david_thornley]

The economically efficient way is to give the poor and hungry money to feed themselves. Subsidizing any particular form of food production leads to economic inefficiencies.

Re:What happens to the CO2 when the tree dies?

[Layzej]

True enough. Which makes this scheme even more ridiculous. Not only do you need to pay for the 6,000,000,000 trees (proposed in TFA) each year, plus land to plant them on plus laborers to plant them, you also need to subsidize the poor who have been priced out of food. It seems like a crazy alternative to investing in and implementing existing low carbon energy technologies that are getting cheaper and more effective with each passing year.

Re:What happens to the CO2 when the tree dies?

[cwsumner]

What, if anything, would you do for the poor and hungry if this came to pass? ...

Note that many of these schemes for reducing carbon and "saving the world" include a requirement to significantly reduce the world population. They don't usually say how, but I suspect the poor and hungry would find out...

Re:What happens to the CO2 when the tree dies?

[Layzej]

Alarmist much?

I'm pushing it !

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm pushing it REAL GOOD!

Leave BRITNEY ALONE!

[Anonymous Coward]

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Dubious Article

[xarragon]

The linked article is a plug for the Arbor Day Foundation (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arbor_Day_Foundation) and comes complete with "inspirational music" from John Denver. There is no research or even coherent presentation of facts at all, but rather a thinly veiled attempt to get readers to join the foundation by emotional manipulation. All the usual suspects are here, touching music, stock photos of old and young saving the Earth together and the excuse that, "while the foundation might not be the solution to all problems, I feel good doing something, and so should you!". I read the TFA; now someone please explain what reason is for this article has to even be CLOSE to Slashdot. It has no scientific value, presents no research, does not inform the reader in any meaningful way and does not try to systematize the idea of capturing carbon through planting trees. I guess the domain name "medium.com" should be a warning in itself. My guess is that this is simply the new face of advertising; paid link-bait articles.

Re:Dubious Article

[Anonymous Coward]

> It has no scientific value, presents no research, does not inform the reader in any meaningful way
> and does not try to systematize the idea of capturing carbon

How is that different from (the majority of) the rest of the global warming theories?

Re:Dubious Article

[DiamondGeezer]

A: Slashdot is dying. These articles are the cause of the funny smell coming from the bandages.

Re:Dubious Article

[Bob9113]

I suspected as much from the synopsis. Came to the discussion hoping to get the straight dope before rising to the clickbait. You delivered. Thanks!

Re: likely to result in nasty biatches

[mSparks43]

then being eaten by crabs is the least of your worries.

yeah. think you are on to a definate winner with that one.

implying planting trees is like sex. and if you don't yo mama will be crab food is definately going to rally the troops.

surprised no one thought of it sooner.

perhaps we can all live in tree houses.

Re: Humans are oxygen sinks

[Anonymous Coward]

So are the Dems. Look how many people believed Mr. Obama was gonna bring "hope and change" to the world. Lol.

Exercise Less

[CoderFool]

The less you exercise, the less CO2 you exhale. Or, if you are *that* conscientious about the environment, you could just stop breathing altogether.

Re:Exercise Less

[Moof123]

Vasectomies are "green".

So far the best population control seems to be hope and a good education. Families with decent incomes and good access to healthcare don't have a strong desire to have 6-10 kids, but rather have 1-3 kids in a more controlled fashion. Long term it will be a lot easier to have a sustainable world with fewer people.

Plant a tree

[Anonymous Coward]

I planted almost 2000 acres' worth of trees. Leave me alone.

Re:Plant a tree

[geekoid]

The best thing you can do for the children? Don't have any children.

Re: Humans are oxygen sinks

[flyneye]

Both wings of the Repubmocrat party sing that song EVERY election. The majority buy it every time and we have had a Repubmocrat in office, sucking our lifeforce out, for more than a century now.

With carbon-nuetral energy, sequestration

[TheRealHocusLocus]

Sure, a few trees would help. But do you want to twerk around and do a dinky bit of dis and a little of dat, of do you want to get the job done?

We're not lost lambs in the field trudging around looking for tender shoots of clover and going "Baaaa!" when we cannot find any. We are human sheep! We harnessed and domesticated clover, made it grow in rows where it is sucked into great machines and stored in tanks and all we do is stick our muzzles into clover dispensers and glorious compacted clover product shoots into our mouths! Then we spill hot clover juice on our lap and we SUE!

We can do the same for energy, because that's really all that matters, finding new and better sources. With a grand surplus of energy anything becomes possible. Want to absorb 50 POUNDS of carbon a year? Plant a tree. Want to absorb several TONS of carbon per day? Then build a single carbon sequestration plant on the edge of town. Why are people on a technological forum discussing planting trees to solve a simple problem of chemistry and applied industry?

You should be ashamed of yourselves!

I see folks advocating solutions like re-terraforming the Earth with invasive monocultures to make fuel, sequester CO2 or perhaps just to annoy the locals, because everyone on Earth is presently surrounded by plant species they cherish and are evolved to their own area. Or by proposing efforts that might get off the ground in a miniscule way and doing practically nothing, people are just pushing walk-away solutions for salving their conscience.

1. develop and scale a massive, reliable source of carbon-nuetral energy
2. do anything you want with it, including capturing CO2
3. If you make synfuel with captured CO2, at least you break even when it burns.

If you're proposing wind and solar as that energy source, you may as well start planting trees. For all the good it will do. And there's only one possible source of energy that could scale and meet these challenges:

Thorium has become sort of a in-joke around here and suggesting anything besides wind and solar tends to get a flood of Beavis and Butt-head responses. Perhaps we are seeing the human race split into two races --- the Eloi, their numbers few, devolved into wandering berry and leaf eaters as they graze in overgrown fields among the rusted wind turbines and vine-encrusted solar panels... and the Morlocks, proud stewards of mankind's technological heritage as we whiz around in our electric cars powered by clean, boundless energy.

Proud to be a Morlock. That cannibalism thing is just a rumor we spread around to keep them off our lawns.

___
For the straight poop, watch Thorium Remix and see my letters on energy,
  To The Honorable James M. Inhofe, United States Senate
  To whom it may concern, Halliburton Corporate

Re:With carbon-nuetral energy, sequestration

[drinkypoo]

If you're proposing wind and solar as that energy source, you may as well start planting trees. For all the good it will do. And there's only one possible source of energy that could scale and meet these challenges:

Claiming that wind and solar can't do this job is spectacularly stupid because this is a job ideally suited to wind and solar. They don't necessarily blow when power demand is highest, but that doesn't matter if you're using the power to make fuel, because the fuel will wait for you.

Thorium has become sort of a in-joke around here

Yeah, if by "around here" you mean "on earth".

Re:With carbon-nuetral energy, sequestration

[silas_moeckel]

What advantage does wind/solar have over fission/fusion? Radioactive waste seems to be the only downside and that is more a regulatory issue than a technical one.

Re:With carbon-nuetral energy, sequestration

[bluefoxlucid]

A surplus of energy. Yeah, that hasn't happened yet, and won't for a while: energy scarcity is the root of all scarcity. Once we solve energy scarcity, communism works.

Re:With carbon-nuetral energy, sequestration

[njvack]

Want to absorb 50 POUNDS of carbon a year? Plant a tree. Want to absorb several TONS of carbon per day? Then build a single carbon sequestration plant on the edge of town.

Assuming your numbers are correct... how many is several? Let's say 50. That's a pretty generous "several." So, you're looking at 100,000 pounds of carbon a day. That's a lot! To match that with trees, it would take... 2000 trees.

I'm willing to bet that I can obtain and plant 2,000 trees cheaper than you can build a carbon sequestration plant. (I'm willing to bet this is true for 20,000 trees, too. Maybe 200,000.) Your plant is made of concrete and steel, both of which produce carbon emissions. This page suggests that I'll need somewhere in the neighborhood of 11-12 acres of land for my 2k trees (for reference, Central Park is somewhere north of 800 acres), so that's pretty manageable. In addition, I'm willing to bet I can operate my trees for less money than you can operate your sequestration plant. Then, in X years, I can if I choose harvest these trees and turn them into lumber -- this, of course, does not release (all of) their carbon into the atmosphere. And I know this is subjective, but I tend to think trees (even tree farms) are more pleasant than industrial plants.

I'm not saying carbon sequestration plants are horrible ideas, but that trees probably win economically if the numbers you cite are in the right orders of magnitude.

Re:With carbon-nuetral energy, sequestration

[njvack]

Ah, I missed the "day" and "year" parts (should have made those ALL CAPS too, I guess), so we'll need closer to 500,000 trees, assuming "several" really is 50. Still, I think the numbers have enough orders of magnitude (trees are cheap) that we're still looking fairly competitive.

Re:With carbon-nuetral energy, sequestration

[drinkypoo]

Radioactive waste seems to be the only downside

That's a real down side.

and that is more a regulatory issue than a technical one

It's not going away. People still regulate things.

Re:With carbon-nuetral energy, sequestration

[Anonymous Coward]

It's much much cheaper than fission or fusion. Also, unlike fusion, we can actually do it right now.
Also, when the North Koreans or Iranians start making fission reactors, we worry that it's a cover story and they are actually breeding Plutonium to make bombs. If they make solar panels, on the other hand, nothing to worry about.

Re:With carbon-nuetral energy, sequestration

[TheRealHocusLocus]

Claiming that wind and solar can't do this job is spectacularly stupid because this is a job ideally suited to wind and solar.

Intelligence has nothing to do with it. I could be thick as a brick... yet still capable of imagining a continent-wide Winter storm that begins with freezing rain, leaving a shell of crystalline ice, drifts of fluffy snow and a hard freeze condition lasting a week or more. I don't mean just a little wave of storms, such as the ones that caused NextEra to shut down wind farms that were supposed to last '20 years' or more... I'm talking about real weather. It has happened before. It will happen again.

It's all a big FAIL, an idea that should have been laughed out of the room years ago, by people with more power of imagination than intelligence.

Taking critical base load power generation outside and raising it up on giant stalks, with millions of precision moving parts exposed to the elements, is stupid. It's an engineering nightmare. Staking your very survival on the combined output of acres of solar panels is beyond stupid. It's gone further still into the realm of the 'ridiculous'.

Don't quote happy spreadsheets claiming that the happy Chinese are willing to buy more happy bonds and sell us thousands of turbines with tons of happy molybdenum magnets, to put in places distant from people and all these small (but happy!) 3MW contributions of power are going to add up to a happy aggregation of happy survival.

Just try to imagine a single giant ice storm. A really SAD one.

Generating gigawatts of electricity inside a seismically hardened building by a process that can keep a few years' worth of fuel on-hand --- that's not even smart. It's a no-brainer.

> Thorium has become sort of a in-joke around here
Yeah, if by "around here" you mean "on earth".

I know you're trolling me, but do you really know how far off the mark you are? People want (reliable, affordable, clean) energy. Those attributes are in their proper order of preference because people are practical and parents have little mouths to feed. And NO generation has ever ethically concluded that their own children were entitled to less available energy and fewer choices than their own.

Are you so enamored of coal and natural gas, so convinced they will save your ass, that you feel comfortable dabbling in unworkable ideas? Coal and gas are not renewable. They too will fall prey to this massive ice storm, as gas distribution networks suffer power outages and coal trains stop running. Solar and wind are not 'renewable' either, they are 'disposable', as in failed experiment, money and precious time wasted.

If any of those anonymous contributors who modded my GP 'interesting' have deep pockets, how 'bout we go full frontal John Galt and all gather some where in the world that is not populated by hysterical radiophobes, and place as much of a priority on the perfection and scaling of molten salt technology as say, we did for steam, rail and other things.

All aboard for Galt's Gulch!

Re:With carbon-nuetral energy, sequestration

[cwsumner]

... yet still capable of imagining a continent-wide Winter storm that begins with freezing rain, leaving a shell of crystalline ice, drifts of fluffy snow and a hard freeze condition lasting a week or more. ...

You have a point.
But the same thing has been said repeatedly about the transmission of electricity over wires. Which the central Generation stations depend on.
As with the existing systems, we just handle it. I have watched the repair teams out in the storm fixing the downed lines. I imagine there will be teams for the wind and solar generators. 8-)

Re:likely to result in long-term catastrophic effe

[Anonymous Coward]

The coastal risk, like you say, is most easily shown in static rises in elevation, which mostly concerns low-lying nations which you probably don't care about.

The harder to show, but far more devastating risk, is from storms. Coastal damage from storms is not just from rain and wind and such, but from storm surge... say you today have in your major metropolitan area minor flooding on the outlying areas... then add 10cm to that. Add half a meter to that. Storm repairs get funded by your tax dollars... get it yet?

trees are nice. plankton absorb CO2

[raymorris]

Trees are nice. I'd like to have more trees. Last I checked, planting a few trees won't affect CO2 levels. Plankton does almost all of the co2 conversion. If you can plant an entire rainforest, that would be helpful.

Re:trees are nice. plankton absorb CO2

[drinkypoo]

Trees turn CO2 into wood, then we can use the wood, sequestering the carbon. Plants are made mostly out of carbon, virtually all of which comes from the air even in the case of "heavy" soil carbon users like corn.

On the other hand, bamboo would be a lot better, because it grows a lot faster.

Re:trees are nice. plankton absorb CO2

[Anonymous Coward]

Bamboo doesn't grow well here but there are other interesting alternatives. Aspen trees sucker from their root systems after being clear cut, producing about 20-30,000 stems/acre the following year. So you don't waste energy re-planting, they grow very fast and you can repeat the process via clearcut or fire indefinitely...

Re:trees are nice. plankton absorb CO2

[drinkypoo]

Bamboo doesn't grow well here but there are other interesting alternatives

Bamboo grows well in the USA, well up into Oregon. Not all varieties work everywhere, but that's hardly an indictment against bamboo, since there are many varieties.

You do need water, but it doesn't need to be clean, and we can supply dirty water about as fast as you like.

Re:trees are nice. plankton absorb CO2

[l0n3s0m3phr34k]

Seems to be working for China's "Green Wall"

Re:trees are nice. plankton absorb CO2

[Phronesis]

Last I checked, planting a few trees won't affect CO2 levels. Plankton does almost all of the co2 conversion.

Where did you check? According to this paper, far from doing "almost all of the CO2 conversion," plankton does less than half: "the global net primary production from phytoplankton is given as 45–50 Gt C/year. This may be compared with current published estimates for land plants of 45–68 Gt C/year and for coastal vegetation of 1.9 Gt C/year."

Trees!

[MrKaos]

That's how we got into this mess in the first place!!!

If you harvest it, it’s not neutral.

[borad]

Obviously if it goes into a house or something otherwise substantial, it’ll be stable for a century.

But the less-realised benefit is that modern tips don’t really rot much, so even when you’re done with the wood (or to a lesser extent, wood product) it’ll be stable for a long time — long enough for us to work our crap out.

In a perverse way the most efficient action in a coal-burning society may be to simply destroy the trees locally in a high-efficiency burner to generate power. Not many tree farmers are emotionally keen on that, though.

Re:If you harvest it, it’s not neutral.

[Firethorn]

Not many tree farmers are emotionally keen on that, though.

You might be surprised there. Lots of wood burners up where I live and pellet stoves are increasing in popularity.

To the point that they're actually an air hazard.

Re: Humans are oxygen sinks

[MrKaos]

Indeed! It's a debate that has provided the trees with ample fertilizer.

Not enough land area.

[Anonymous Coward]

There just isn't enough arable land area for each person to be planting an acre of trees per year suggested in the sub-linked article.

Yes,the only geoengineering that makes sense ...

[fygment]

... with one condition: don't all plant the same kind of tree! Use a variety.

Oceanic Iron Fertilization

[Anonymous Coward]

If we really have to reduce the CO2 levels iron fertilization of the oceans works pretty well. Each kg iron results in about 80 TONS absorbed CO2.

But whatcouldpossiblygowrong?

Re: likely to result in long-term catastrophic eff

[mSparks43]

tax is some weird thing you communists do.

but by "funded by your tax dollars"
do you mean like new orleans?
cos I don't think they got much.

as for storms. wind rain and a barely measurable rise in sea levels.

now I'm confused.
I thought the next big problem was a shortage of water. sounds like you americans could do with some extra rain.

Re: Humans are oxygen sinks

[Anonymous Coward]

Not at all. Sometimes you've had a Demoplican. You have all the choice you want: isn't multi-party politics wunnerful!

Bury a tree

[sberge]

Planting trees is fine, but hardly the best use of your time since trees tend to pop up on their own just fine. If you want to sequester carbon, your time is probably better spent preventing the carbon which has already been bound in existing trees from being released into the atmosphere. For instance by burying a tree in an anaerobic swamp. Less romantic, more effective.

Re:Bury a tree

[l0n3s0m3phr34k]

OFF TO THE BOGS WITH THEM!

Re:Bury a tree

[geekoid]

^^ THIS ^^

The Ents

[Anonymous Coward]

The Ents are going to war.

Re: Humans are oxygen sinks

[MrKaos]

Indeed! It's a debate that has provided the trees with ample fertilizer.

Actually I think I should say the salient point that hovers in my mind. No matter which country this constant left vs right struggle for power occurs in, it leaves many of the real structural issues we face as nation states unresolved so perhaps two party systems no longer serve democracy.

Now, as a race, we seem to be promoting that ineffectual leadership system to a level where it can threaten us as a species. It won't matter which side presides over this debate about which side can or has used the science deniers to best win points in the debate while the structural issues remain unresolved.

"We the people" will continue to suffer the consequences of the apathy in ourselves before any real changes can take root and grow.

Because of mass

[aepervius]

Just a nitpick : Plant a few million trees and you will sequestrate way more than a few messily pounds of CO2 or even tons of CO2. Not enough ? Plant a few million more. That said I think nuclear is the wy to go, and throw a bit more money at fusion research than the few measily billion it gots per decade.

Re: Humans are oxygen sinks

[l0n3s0m3phr34k]

He DID bring "Hope and Change", just not to us. "Hope" for the the NSA to do whatever they want, and the "change" of making it all legal.

You didn't think he was talking about you, me, and the rest of the peasants did you? HAHAHA

Still ineffiecient

[l0n3s0m3phr34k]

Compared to iron filing "seeding" in the ocean. Seeding is a REAL solution and could fix the CO2 issue overnight. It would probably have all sorts of unknown side-effects too, but it could solve that one.

Re:Humans are oxygen sinks

[king neckbeard]

It's not an excuse, it's just showing the shortcoming of your plan. We need to dismantle the whole thing, not just cut off one head of the Hydra.

*sigh*

[Anonymous Coward]

Interesting how warming always PRECEDES rises in CO2 levels historically. My mental keyword scanner saw "CO2", "Warming", and "Fossil Fuels" and my logical, reasoning brain just kept on going to the next article. Please stop posting fantasy articles like this.

We knew this 20+ years ago...

[urbanriot]

I've been hearing this since at least the 90's, that we need to plant more trees to offset the increasing carbon, yet here we are in 2014 and we're still cutting down the amazon and we're still turning northern forests into subdivisions. Echoing previous suggestions may influence a person here or there to plant an extra tree in their back yard but this suggestion isn't working for our planet.

Re:We knew this 20+ years ago...

[Qzukk]

Echoing previous suggestions may influence a person here or there to plant an extra tree

Sorry, my subdivision bylaws say there is to be exactly one tree in my backyard, no more no less. If my house doesn't fit the cookiecutter mold, it might make my neighbors' less valuable if mine is worse or more taxable if mine is better.

Re:We knew this 20+ years ago...

[Anonymous Coward]

story

I'm sure you are just repeating what you were told in school. Here is a tip, a lot of what you were told in school is outright wrong, especially public school in the US. I actually believe every history class I took was a propaganda program with very little of it actually being accurate.

Re:We knew this 20+ years ago...

[Anonymous Coward]

Why live in a place with such draconian laws?

Re:We knew this 20+ years ago...

[Qzukk]

Because your choice is to live in the middle of nowhere, where you can have whatever trees you want and enjoy blistering fast dialup speeds, or you can live in the city where you have zero trees, or you can live in suburbia where you can do whatever the real owners of the land tell you to do.

Re: Humans are oxygen sinks

[tompaulco]

I had no illusions that the hope applied to me. The change definitely did, but I was anticipating a change for the worse, and true to his word, he brought it.

Tiny carbon sink compared to algae in the sea

[Anonymous Coward]

If we just pump in some more fertilizers the algae will take care of it.

Climatedot. What a joke.

[Anonymous Coward]

Why not just rename this site "Climatedot" and have done with it? There is no such thing as 'catastrophic man-made global warming', which is why the liars responsible for this huge SCAM renamed it 'climate change', and then started to use the term 'climate change' instead of 'catastrophic man-made global warming', even though they want you think they are referring to 'catastrophic man-made global warming' every time they say 'climate change'. But 'climate change' doesn't mean 'catastrophic man-made global warming', does it?

www.climatedepot.com
www.wattsupwiththat.com

etc. The game is up. Why are most people on Slashdot so incredibly stupid, and incapable of rational thought?

Morons in General

[Anonymous Coward]

Yet even if we ceased all carbon emissions today, the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere is already high enough that it is likely to result in long-term catastrophic effects.

Never mind it's been many times as higher in the past with no "catastrophic effects".

Fucking Moron.

Re:Morons in General

[gweihir]

Well, yes. But you are not one bit smarter, as the catastrophic effects are indeed ensured, but the CO2-levels are just one piece op the puzzle and by themselves they are meaningless.

$1 / tree

[Charliemopps]

In my lifetime I've planted over 80,000 trees. How's that for a carbon sink? :-p
A relative of mine bought some land that had a huge open farm field out front and back in the 80's he decided to build a house there and didn't want to see the road. So we rented a tree planter (a terrifying, arm severing device, if you ever see one) and we filled quite a few acres with trees. It's now basically a small forest.

I've continued planting them all over the place... at every house and even apartments I've lived at. It's funny, if you plant a tree, put an orange flag next to it and surround it with chicken wire... everyone leaves it alone and even the property owners don't bother it.

Anyways... if you'd like to plant trees to. Go here: http://www.arborday.org/index....
The Arbor Day foundation membership is $10, and you get 10 free trees with the membership. Then you can buy trees for between $1 and $10 delivered to your door. Pines are easy and grow fast... Arborvitas grow at Insane rates, but if you really want to sequester CO2, pines are not a good choice. They have a high mortality rate. Plant hardwoods like Walnut and Oaks (depending on your Zone) 2 full sized Oaks would likely be enough to sequester all the CO2 you produce in your lifetime. So pick a place you know they wont get messed with. Public parks, etc...

Also, before you get the wrong idea... I'm not a big Carbon credit nut. I doubt all of us planting lots of trees will make much of a difference. I just like trees and they take a while to grow. So get planting.

Re:$1 / tree

[Anonymous Coward]

Pine trees suck. They're ugly, the wood is crap for most stuff and they smell funny.

Re:$1 / tree

[geekoid]

"In my lifetime I've planted over 80,000 trees. How's that for a carbon sink? :-p"
poor.
Since all the matter the falls of rots and returns CO2 to the air. +1 feels good -3 doesn't actually work.

Please learn what the Carboniferous era was befor replying with the obvious knee jerk answer.

Build a bog, instead

[Rambo Tribble]

This study suggests peat is much better at storing carbon than trees: http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-30448519

Trees are expensive?

[morgauxo]

I never got the "trees are expensive" argument.

It's great that there are organizations like the Arbor Day Foundation that will give you trees to plant. But.. why is that even necessary?

Sure, going to the local nursery and buying some really pretty ornamental can be expensive. You are purchasing something that has probably been imported from some far away land, bred through many generations and carefully nursed in a greenhouse for the first few years of it's life already. Is that where carbon eating forests come from?

Just pick up a tree seed for free and plant it. It isn't that hard! Where I live maples are native and common. Every other year they drop seeds like mad and those seeds are really easy to grow. In the city these pretty little imported Japanese Maples are popular. They are expensive to buy. People plant them by the sidewalk. Just grab a few seeds as you walk by. Evergreens are common here too. The seeds don't litter the ground like the Maples do. Just grab a pinecone. There will be hundreds of seeds inside, pull down on the petals to find them.

It's neither expensive or hard.

Re:Trees are expensive?

[wakawakka]

And if you want a really fast, almost instant tree, harvest a small branch (10 cm long, 2 cm diameter approximately) of willow or poplar (most Salicaceae will work, hybrids are the best) in the spring before leaves come out, submerge it in water for a few hours than plant it straight into the ground (or a nursery pot). The same year it could gain a meter, and the second year it will be two meters tall and thriving. This works even in the cold climate of Québec.

AGW BS - read the NIPCC reports

[Anonymous Coward]

Enough with the Slashvertisements pushing the leftist agenda (carbon taxes). Read the NIPCC Reports for the truth. They follow the exact same structure (table of contents) as the IPCC reports, use the exact same source material (thousands of research papers from around the world), and expose how the IPCC cherry picks and twists data in favor of their political agenda.

Plant a tree

[Curunir_wolf]

Won't someone please think of the children? Plant a tree today!

Hemp farming

[Anonymous Coward]

I've read that in one growing season and one acre of land you can grow the same amount of hemp pulp that it that takes 4 acres and 20 years for wood pulp (trees) to grow. Hemp can be used for paper, clothing, plastics, oils, paints, protein powder, etc. I've read that it used to be the #1 crop grown by Americans long ago, including American Presidents. Canada legalized hemp production under strict regulation. It will be interesting to see if the world will move from clear cutting hundreds of acres of trees and inefficient cotton crops to hemp in the future. Hemp is your "carbon sink" if you believe that CO2 is a pollutant causing global warming rather than a natural life giving nutrient. If it really is a polutant that requires leftist carbon taxes then I want to tax the NFL, NBA, NHL, all gyms, all joggers and all cyclists for exhaling more than their fair share.

Re: likely to result in long-term catastrophic eff

[Anonymous Coward]

Slashdot has sunk to a new low. How are you getting modded up? Clearly, you are confused.

Taxing is some weird thing all countries on the planet do. Direcly or indirectly, governments get funded by them. And Katrina that you mention resulted in $100 billion of federal spending... http://www.cbo.gov/publication/44601

Storm surge is caused by wind inducing pressure gradients on water, and has nothing to do with rain. Since you mentioned Katrina, storm surge was around 8 meters... http://www.wunderground.com/education/Katrinas_surge_contents.asp

IAACE... I am a coastal engineer. (And I don't live in the US presently, like you seem to suggest.)

Listen to environmentalists

[loufoque]

All you need to do is get rid of your useless technology and go live in mud huts!
Also we should cover all deserts with solar panels! Look at Germany, they're living entirely off of green energy already!

Maybe we could install natural organic solar panels inside of trees next!?

Blue Green Algae

[zerosomething]

Cyanobacteria is actually a better plan. It lives, takes in CO2 dies and sinks to the bottom of the ocean taking much of the CO2 with it. It's how some of the coal, oil and gas were made to begin with, along with a lot of limestone.

Premises

[rs79]

"Yes, carbon levels in our atmosphere are rising,

True.

"it's causing the Earth to warm"

True, but in such a tiny amount it's not measurable.

"and the climate to change"

This has never been shown.

Re:Premises

[Anonymous Coward]

True, but in such a tiny amount it's not measurable.

If it's not measurable, how do you know it's true?

This has never been shown.

False

Re:Premises

[Alef]

"it's causing the Earth to warm" True, but in such a tiny amount it's not measurable.

Oh, really? I'm confused now... How come thousands of meteorologists and scientists from all over the world are showing us measurements of steadily increasing temperatures, then?

"and the climate to change" This has never been shown.

I can see the effects of a changing climate with my own eyes regularly. But that's not very important; this question is really just an extension of the previous one.

Numbers: How many trees would it take

[Phronesis]

The US greenhouse gas emissions are equivalent to about 6 billion metric tons per year of carbon dioxide. Each tree you plant offsets about 1 metric ton of CO2 over its lifetime, so that means we need to plant 6 billion trees every year.

If we figure that the trees would be planted at an average stand density of 200 per acre, that comes to 30 million acres of new forest that we'd have to plant every year, or 47,000 square miles. To put this in perspective, this means covering an area the size of Pennsylvania with new forest every year.

On another note: Some people point to algae or plankton. Globally, land plants remove 45-68 billion tonnes of carbon from the atmosphere every year, compared to 45-50 billion tonnes removed by phytoplankton, so it's not true that plankton remove more carbon than land plants.

Re:Numbers: How many trees would it take

[Phronesis]

Correction: I put the wrong URL in the links about plankton. The correct URL for the paper comparing plankton to land plants is http://plankt.oxfordjournals.o...

Re:Numbers: How many trees would it take

[geekoid]

From your link:

" On average, one broad leaf tree will absorb in the region of 1 tonne of carbon dioxide during its full life-time (approximately 100 years).""

I notice they leave out the part where it returns to the atmosphere through tree rot.

Re:Numbers: How many trees would it take

[Phronesis]

I notice they leave out the part where it returns to the atmosphere through tree rot.

You can preserve the wood in dry or anaerobic conditions to prevent rot after the tree is harvested, but that would take extra effort and energy.

However, it's not unreasonable to imagine that in 100 years the energy for doing that sort of thing might be available from renewable or nuclear sources.

Also, if you replant a new tree where the old tree stood, the new tree could absorb the CO2 emitted by the old tree's rot. But you would have to understand that the replacement tree is just preserving the sequestration that the older tree accomplished, not adding any new sequestration if the old tree is allowed to rot. Thus, if we were to go on using fossil fuels there would be a tradeoff between the energy and effort required to preserve old wood and the land required to keep expanding the forests.

Re: Numbers: How many trees would it take

[ceoyoyo]

1) you don't need to absorb all of the yearly emissions, just the excess that isn't absorbed and goes into increasing the atmospheric carbon concentration.

2) the proposal, which even Starts With a Bang manages to get p relatively clear despite his penchant for long emotional "arguments" is to temporarily increase carbon absorption to blunt the current increase and allow time for long term emissions reduction to take effect. You're quite right that if emissions aren't decreased, planting trees won't help.

trees in SPAAAAACEEE! (or: stagetrees for all!)

[Thud457]

How many gigatons of carbon nanotubes is it going to take to build a space elevator?
Maybe we should really be worrying about Elon Musk's carbon harvester bots coming after us as a readily available source of carbon.

Eat a beaver

[RudyHartmann]

That will save alot of trees ;-)

Why trees?

[Anonymous Coward]

Trees grow slowly, why not something that grows fast, like bamboo?

Re:Why trees?

[Anonymous Coward]

Because the article is an advertisement for the arbour day foundation, and doesn't even pretend to be science.

I'm sure you can find a bamboo flooring distributor with an "article" that you'd like. There are no doubt countless stoner sites extoling the magical properties of hemp.

Re:Yes,the only geoengineering that makes sense ..

[bigpat]

... with one condition: don't all plant the same kind of tree! Use a variety.

Yes, people go on these tree planting binges for arbor day or whatever and we end up with tens of thousands of sometimes genetically identical clones of the same damn tree being planted over and over again. What we need is more sustainable biodiversity not just more trees.

Still ineffiecient

[Anonymous Coward]

Because the CO2 problem has become tied to traditional "green" environmentalists, many of whom are anti-human Luddites. They really don't want to solve the problem any way other than less - less energy, less consumption.....less people. If someone invented a commercially viable fusion reactor tomorrow that could replace the world's current energy production in 5 years they would find a reason to protest that.

Riddle me this? Why don't you see AGW alarmists protesting every nuclear reactor that's shut down or hydroelectric damn that is destroyed? Because these are part of the green agenda, which is far more important than actually solving the problem.

trees are nice. plankton absorb CO2

[Anonymous Coward]

Planktons are among the best carbon sinks, according to Russ George, and was the motivation of the bio-engineering he did 2 years back:
http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/the-first-geo-vigilante

And we could eat more

[clovis]

And we could store carbon on our bodies.
6 billion people gaining an easily attainable 100 pounds each would store 300 million tons. Most of that mass would be carbon.
Every bit helps, I'm sure.

On another note, the article shows people planting trees in a field next to a forest. You don't have to do anything except stop mowing the fields. The trees will fill it in on their own.
Oh, and kill all the elephants. They eat trees.

As for the trees decaying and returning the carbon to the atmosphere, all we have to do is regularly paint the dead trees to keep them from decaying. A layer of tar might work even better.

I blame the paper-less office initiative

[OneSmartFellow]

Imagine if we had never invented the paperless office. Think of the millions of tons of carbon that could be sequestered in printed documents being stored away in huge underground vaults for eternity.

Bring back the carbon copy !

Re: likely to result in long-term catastrophic ef

[mSparks43]

trouble is. as I'm sure you realise. environmental issues are all local in nature.

and all this sky is falling nonsense and funding takes money away from fixing very very real local environmental issues.

but those issues aside the rest of it is something of a joke.

Or subscribe to a dead-tree newspaper

[alispguru]

The vast majority of newspaper ends up buried in landfills, where it essentially never breaks down.

Pointless

[Anonymous Coward]

Scientists have been saying for a long time that, for global warming prevention, planting trees is pointless, unless you plant them near the equator:

    http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2006/dec/15/ethicalliving.lifeandhealth

I'm surprised these guys are still trying to sell the idea.

Misguided

[pubwvj]

The About Forestry link is a questionable graph.

Forests soak up a _lot_ less carbon than pasture lands.

Forests also have low biodiversity of both plants and animals, especially temperate and northern forests.

If you want to sequester carbon then the best thing to do is create savannah style pasture lands which maximize carbon and nitrogen sequestering as well as producing meat from livestock and a far greater biodiversity of wildlife than forests.

The solution is to buy meat from local pasture based farms which supports their maintaining pasture. That maximizes carbon sequestering while also feeding the world. Small farms can feed the world.

Re:Misguided

[geekoid]

Trees(plants, really) have been carbon neutral since after the Carboniferous era.
During the Carboniferous Era, tree's and plands didn't rot. Eventual 'bugs' evolved to take advantage of the energy in pulp. Now that trees rot, they are carbon neutral.

The only way to use trees to trap carbon would be to grow them, cut them down, then seal them in some sort of wrap, then store them in a sealed granite cave.

Re:Misguided

[geekoid]

SOrry for the follow up:
"Small farms can feed the world."
no, they can't. Somehting we've seen over the last 100 years.

Re:Misguided

[Vegan Cyclist]

Savoury has been thoroughly debunked.

http://www.inexactchange.org/blog/2013/03/11/cows-against-climate-change/

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/georgemonbiot/2014/aug/04/eat-more-meat-and-save-the-world-the-latest-implausible-farming-miracle

Just think about it: already the majority of land used by humans is dedicated to livestock, and is a leading cause of deforestation. You'd have to cut down even MORE forests to make room for what he's talking about. It's an utterly ridiculous concept, and if he had his way could be arguably as bad as his slaughter of elephants. This guy is a quack of the highest possible degree.

Re: Misguided

[ceoyoyo]

Much easier - dump them in the ocean and make sure they sink.

Already planting the trees

[Anonymous Coward]

Red China to the rescue! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-North_Shelter_Forest_Program Don't forget Africa! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Green_Wall

That will NOT WORK

[geekoid]

Trees have been carbon neutral since after the Carboniferous era.

Carbon is a trailing indicator!

[Anonymous Coward]

Carbon is a trailing indicator. And the world has been getting COOLER for the last 2000 years.

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2014/12/vostok-ice-cores-and-the-8000-year-lag.php?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+powerlineblog%2Flivefeed+%28Power+Line%29

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2014/12/earths-climate-shows-2000-year-cooling-trend.php?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+powerlineblog%2Flivefeed+%28Power+Line%29

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/12/18/new-study-two-thousand-years-of-northern-european-summer-temperatures-show-a-downward-trend/

Re: Humans are oxygen sinks

[ShanghaiBill]

so perhaps two party systems no longer serve democracy.

Most democracies don't have two party systems. Those that have proportional representation, or some other system that encourages multi-party democracy, don't seem to be doing any better. There is little reason to believe that the "two party system" is at the root of our problems.

Bamboo Is Better

[JimSadler]

Bambo is super fast growing and is a carbon dioxide catch basin until it reaches about five years of age. At that point it can be harvested and used in numerous ways and replanting will not be required as it will spring back into action very quickly. Still the ultimate solution is to limit reproduction of people. Polution is the inevitable result of human activities. Less population means less polution of all types. If we have strick birthing controls we can reduce the current population numbers by 90% if we like. Florida alone could plant many tens of thousands of acres in bamboo as could rain forest areas already destroyed by burn and slash farming. Cold areas can also grow bamboo. But in South America one might grow a 30 foot bamboo stalk in a single month.

EVEN BETTER

[Anonymous Coward]

if we all planted marijuana it would piss of the governemnt and solve the problem marijuana has one of the highest metabolic rates of any plant and can filter an above average amount of carbon for its leaf volume...

if you want more filtration plant more marijuana!

Re:Cut Down Humans; That's revolutionary

[BoRegardless]

Figuratively speaking of course. Doubling the world population to 14 billion is going to wipe out any effects trees might have.

Re:Humans are oxygen sinks

[Opportunist]

There's no time to discriminate and be partisan now, we need bi-partisan engagement. Just round them up and ... what's the most carbon-neutral way to exterminate vermin?

Re: Humans are oxygen sinks

[Opportunist]

Well, I wouldn't say that. With a much lower bar than 50% of the votes to actually play any significant role in politics (usually around 3-6% in most countries having a proportional model), people are more likely to vote for parties that really represent them instead of fearing they "waste their vote" and instead turn to the lesser evil.

The problem is rather that there are in very few countries any parties that are not just the lesser evil, no matter how many there are.

Re: Humans are oxygen sinks

[Anonymous Coward]

At least democrats claim to be for the little guy. The republicans have no qualms about admitting who they are for. Take your pick and understand neither side care what your want or think.

If this 'could work'

[Anonymous Coward]

We would have to plant more trees than the ones being cut down. So planting a single tree, by each American, I'm afraid would not accomplish anything.

Re: Humans are oxygen sinks

[Sardaukar86]

At least democrats claim to be for the little guy.

That's a relief because as we all know, a politicians' claim is as good as their word.

Carbon Fiber

[wezelboy]

We should sequester our carbon in carbon fiber. If someone can come up with an efficient way to make carbon fiber out of CO2, we could have massive solar farms provide the energy to pump the stuff out and use it to build all kinds of things like bridges, skyscrapers, space elevators, and fake christmas trees.

I have a lot of sympathy for planting fruit trees

[PeterM from Berkeley]

But I don't think it's a practical solution to apply on a large scale in cities.

On my own property, if I'm going to water it, I'm going to eat it. But I take care of my trees and manage pests and clean up after them. I pick up every last fruit that drops. I put nets on the trees to keep the birds away so they don't damage 20x the fruit they eat.

I don't think we'd like what would happen to rodent and pest populations in cities if we didn't manage the fruit trees actively. Plus, with such widespread planting and without adequate systematic disease control, fruit tree diseases would become rampant and reduce your production greatly and perhaps even damage commercial production by supplying a large pest and disease reservoir.

I think it makes sense to plant fruit trees where you can convince locals to take over maintenance and management such that these are up to adequate levels. It'd be a good addition to the standard landscaping tree mix.

But the indiscriminate use of fruit trees that you're advocating would probably generate a counter-reaction as the nuisance consequences of unmanaged fruit trees builds up.

--PM

Actually, most of that mass would be oxygen.

[PeterM from Berkeley]

You are mostly water, 70%. Most of water by weight is oxygen by far. (16 parts in 18). So your heavy people plan would mostly sequester oxygen, temporarily.

--PeterM

Re:Actually, most of that mass would be oxygen.

[clovis]

You are mostly water, 70%. Most of water by weight is oxygen by far. (16 parts in 18). So your heavy people plan would mostly sequester oxygen, temporarily.

--PeterM

True for the whole body, but fat is only about 10% water. Adipose tissue will have a higher water content due to contained blood supply, and water content of the fat cells goes up if the person is in the process of losing weight during a diet. But generally speaking, fat is about 10% water in people.

I'm for planting trees

[PeterM from Berkeley]

But a major constraint to planting trees, at least in my area, is water. It's not like I can just stick them anywhere and they'll grow.

The arid conditions here pretty much preclude widespread reforestation.

As it is, the only trees I plant are trees that I will water, take care of, and eat the fruit from.

--PM

Re:I'm for planting trees

[onepoint]

yes that's a constraint, but all you need to do is look for a suitable plant for that environment

Japan has managed to reforest

[PeterM from Berkeley]

The rest of the world could do that too, but shouldn't do it the way Japan has done. They planted a monoculture of cedar trees, which produce lots of pollen and do little for biodiversity, and water retention. But they do a lot to promote allergies in the Japanese, 10% of whom now suffer from pollen allergies.

Instead of only planting economically useful trees, a good ecological mix should be planted....

--PM

Um - No

[WillAffleckUW]

Is it simple to solve it?

Yes.

Can you solve it by planting a tree personally. Mostly true.

Will that solve it for the entire world and the pollution causing the glaciers to melt, your state to become a desert, and the oceans to rise in both temperature and sea level? No.

Let's be crystal. We're lazy. We're spending 3.5 percent of US GDP to subsidize fossil fuel exploration, drilling, processing, shipping, and use. With our tax dollars, our public lands, our infrastructure priorities. Just getting rid of all the tax subsidies, the artificial low land and sea lease rates for drilling, the tax incentives for business, would mostly fix it.

Flying less, on a personal level, would help a lot. Using a 787 Boeing or a turboprop when you do fly would fix half of that. Using a high speed train would also fix half of that (if you had one).

But, all the changes aren't that hard to do. Buying the $10 LED 3 pack of dimmable lights (got 3 packs) at Costco both saved me money (kaching) and reduced my emissions for the next 20-40 years. Less power plants making that energy.

Next time you were buying a car (don't buy them more often, the manufacture of each car generates a lot of emissions, even if it's an electric or hybrid) getting one that gets 40 mpg instead of 20 mpg, or a truck that gets 20 mpg instead of 10 mpg - that helps.

Lots of stuff helps. Trees help. But just doing the one thing won't fix it. At all. Sending our tax-subsidized coal and oil and tar sands distillates to China and Korea and Malaysia makes it worse.

Re:Um - No

[carbonates]

"We're spending 3.5 percent of US GDP to subsidize fossil fuel exploration, drilling, processing, shipping, and use. With our tax dollars, our public lands, our infrastructure priorities. Just getting rid of all the tax subsidies, the artificial low land and sea lease rates for drilling, the tax incentives for business, would mostly fix it." Citation required. Revenue from oil and gas alone is the second largest source of revenue to the Federal government behind the IRS. Most states also earn huge portions of their revenue from taxing oil and gas directly as it is produced in the form of severance taxes. I am unaware of any tax policy that grants favor to oil and gas operators that is not also available to other businesses that are not producing oil and gas. Some studies show that the oil and gas industry employs over 5% of the US workforce and creates about 7.5% of US GDP. Yet, you somehow think that half of that is being thrown into tax subsidies that you probably cannot reference.

Re:Um - No

[WillAffleckUW]

citation - Wall Street Journal online, 12/29/2014.

Buy a print edition.

Suck on that fossil fuel crony.

Re:I have a lot of sympathy for planting fruit tre

[bluefoxlucid]

People around me would probably eat the fucking branches off the trees. You don't know what it's like here, man.

CCC

[tverbeek]

Is it time to revive the Civilian Conservation Corps, which put jobless youth to work planting trees (among other things) during the Great Depression? It famously "brought together two wasted resources, the young men and the land, in an attempt to save both."

Here is a similar project

[Anonymous Coward]

Project green hands, they are in Guinness book for planting most number of trees in single day (million or so).
http://www.projectgreenhands.org/

Freeman Dyson made this argument

[Anonymous Coward]

Freeman Dyson made this argument some time ago. As I recall, he started from the seasonal wiggle in the plot of increasing CO2. The wiggle
is caused by the northern hemisphere growing season. From that magnitude of the wiggle he calculated the length of time that CO2 remains in the
atmosphere, and from that he calculated the amount of forest we would have to plant to bring atmospheric CO2 back to a reasonable level.
As I recall, it was a technical tour de force, based on a simple observation.

The argument is at
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0360544277900330
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2008/jun/12/the-question-of-global-warming/
both behind paywalls

As I recall, it was about a 1/3 of the primordial forest needed to be replanted. He seemed to think this was easy to do, but in many places we cant even slow the rate of deforestation, let alone reverse it.

Re: Humans are oxygen sinks

[david_thornley]

Even if there's a party that represents you well, if it's small it won't have much influence. In most parliamentary democracies, the government will be run by a majority of the legislative body, which means one majority party or a coalition. A minority party that isn't necessary for the ruling coalition will have very little power.

Re: Humans are oxygen sinks

[ShanghaiBill]

Even if there's a party that represents you well, if it's small it won't have much influence.

This is exactly backwards. In proportional representation, you often end up with kooky fringe parties that have disproportionate influence, and are essentially kingmakers. Israel is one example of "rule by kooks" but there are many others.

There are many democracies with proportional representation. There are many others (including America) that have plurality voting. I don't see any correlation between either system and "good government" or "bad government". Most people that complain about the "two party system" have some delusion that we would live in either a socialist utopia or libertarian paradise if not for that dang two party conspiracy holding us down. Whatever.

Re: Humans are oxygen sinks

[WindBourne]

Actually, compared to when he started, the world is much better. So is america.

Which tree DNA grows fastest

[Taco Cowboy]

If we are to get the trees to absorb the carbons from the air we might as well plant trees that grow the fastest

So ... which kind of tree has the most effective DNA to suck carbons from the air fastest ?

Re: Humans are oxygen sinks

[flyneye]

Nope, one party system.
You got the Demopican from looking at the rectal end of the animal.

Back of the Envelope

[Anonymous Coward]

If a young tree sequesters 20 kg of CO2 per year and humans produce 35 Pg of CO2 per year, then we would need to plant about 250 trees to every person on earth to be carbon neutral.

Terra preta

[Anonymous Coward]

If you make the coal as a biproduct while extracting heat (burning of the fumes) it's not polluting or waste. Then the coal is used as soil improvement. Done today by hobbyist gardeners.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terra_preta

Re: Humans are oxygen sinks

[david_thornley]

I should have been clearer. The influence a party in such a system depends on how many coalitions it is necessary for. If it's small enough that it can't change any possible coalition, it has approximately no power, but if it does, it can have a lot of power.

Consider a 100-member parliament with 45 Liberal, 45 Conservative, 7 Wacko, and 3 Intelligent members. The Intelligent party has no influence, since there's no coalition with it that gets a majority that doesn't get a majority without it. The Wacko party can ally with either the Liberals or the Conservatives to form a government, and has a great deal of power. If the Liberals and Conservatives aren't going to ally with each other, the Wackos have the most power of any party.

If parties had influence in government proportional to their numbers, proportional representation would be a Good Thing. They don't.

Sequestering Carbon with Trees

[servant]

Part of the problem with trees, is we need to grow them, and once they are grown, we need to cut them down and plant new ones. To keep the wood from rotting, we need to sequester it, like bury it in old salt mines, or at least re-fill old coal pits that we want to 'reclaim'. They also need to be sealed from the general atmosphere so they don't rot or decay and turn back into free carbon available for being used even for nature made carbon based substances. ... Making useful stuff we keep around (longer than houses in the USA - 20 to 50 years) makes sense too. Burning the wood or wood products just returns the carbon to the atmosphere.

.

This is true for ANY organic organism, not just trees.

Wow, how brilliant.

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, I get it. You want me to give you money. Not as altruistic as you sound, if you read the article/advertisement.

not stupid, but not realistic either

[carbonates]

This idea would help, but relies on oversimplification of the carbon cycle. Fossil fuel only adds about 4-5 gigatons of carbon per year to the atmosphere. Soil is actually the source of about 61-62 gigatons of carbon per year. That is a far larger source, and if you add another 2 gigatons that are directly from burning trees for deforestation, the major source of carbon in the atmosphere is actually from natural decomposition and oxidation of the biosphere. Then you add another 50 gigatons from respiration of biologic organisms (which includes plants) and the reduction of carbon by trees and other plants balances out to a negative number, with the resulting input of carbon to the atmosphere almost equal to the 4-5 gigatons from fossil fuels. If agriculture were practiced differently, it might be possible that the 5 gigatons of carbon sourced from fossil fuels, along with the 4-5 gigatons sourced from soils and the biosphere could probably be offset simply by better soil practices. Agriculture and poor soil conservation practices are possibly the largest impact on global climate, since they also impact other heat balances like albedo.

If you really want to reduce carbon from the carbon cycle, find a way to increase the numbers of ocean plankton, along with other marine organisms that have been responsible for sequestering 99.9% of the carbon on the entire planet into the form of sedimentary rock.

Re: Humans are oxygen sinks

[romons]

True. When he tried, the Republicans beat him to a pulp. He learned that the assholes were not going to meet him halfway, or at all, really. Not even when he was hawking the same health care plan they had been hawking only months before. Not even when the financial stability of the country was at stake. Not even when he was giving them what they said they wanted for the "grand bargain'. They just stood proudly, with their chests puffed out, and went back on their word.

Now, the idiots will find out what it feels like. Obama doesn't care, he can smoke their agenda with the bully pulpit. Harry Reid just wants revenge, so he will enact the" McConnell Defense" and block every bit of legislation he can. The next election is slanted left. They have screwed themselves.

Re: Humans are oxygen sinks

[nickrao]

I assume that a benevolent dictator is the right solution to our failed democracy. Grow up! The founding fathers were so distrustful of a strong central government that they put safeguards in place to protect us. However over the almost 2 1/2 centuries, we've managed to screw it up. People must accept compromise.

Wrong on a lot but planting trees is smart

[Anonymous Coward]

Okay almost every single statement made in that opening paragraph is totally WRONG.

> Yes, carbon levels in our atmosphere are rising,
Why yes it is and about 1-2 PPM per year is probably due to humans.

> it's causing the Earth to warm and the climate to change,
Now they go off the rails. The earth has been cooling for thousands of years since the Holocene maximum ~5k-9k ago.

> and our dependence on fossil fuels isn't going away anytime soon.
Especially in China, India and the rest of the third world. Coal is plentiful, cheap and we know how to make electricity so lets focus on getting clean coal tech to the third world. You can burn coal so that only CO2 comes out and the mercury, sulphur and nitrous are almost non-detectable.

> Yet even if we ceased all carbon emissions today, the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere is already high enough that it is likely to result in long-term catastrophic effects.
Total and complete nonsense. Those doomsday scenarios are all from models which have NEVER been able to predict accurately. If you want to read a great explanation of why the IPCC models are broken beyond belief there was a great article describing that and all the other problems with climate science by Dr Brown of Duke university

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/10/06/real-science-debates-are-not-rare/

Re: Humans are oxygen sinks

[flyneye]

Dumbass, that's like saying " my car has a flat tire, so I must accept it".

            You must actually get off your ass, out of the car and DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT.
Accept it, jeez, what a total fucking idiot.

It's a no-brainer...

[iq145]

An old Cree Indian Prophecy: Only after the last tree has been cut down, Only after the last fish has been caught, Only after the last river has been poisoned, Only then will you realize that money cannot be eaten.

Re: Humans are oxygen sinks

[nickrao]

Ignoring your offensive vulgarity, you are a rock thrower with no solutions. Just keep issuing your filthy invective, your sure to garner a lot of support.

Re: Humans are oxygen sinks

[Opportunist]

That depends. Looking back at Israel in former days (I don't know what it's like today), you had an interesting constellation where two parties held about 45% of the votes each who could not agree on anything AT ALL, while the religious nutjob party had like 6% but was willing to suck up to either.

Can you imagine just how much power those measly 6% held?

Re: Humans are oxygen sinks

[Opportunist]

Ah, I should read the other comments before making one of my own. :)

As for the second part of your posting, no, I doubt that a different system is the solution to everything, but it would surely mean that other ideas but a right wing agenda (and, sorry, from an Euro's point of view the US has a liberal right wing party and a conservative right wing party) might have room. In the 80s in Europe, nobody in the established parties gave a shit about the environment, long enough for the Greens to come into existence. And only when they started to gather votes the established wanted to get their votes back and incorporated some Green topics into their agenda.

I hope for the same to happen with copyright issues and the Pirate Party. Yeah, one may dream. But without the chance of such a fringe group "stealing" votes and becoming a party on its own, there is little to no incentive for an established party to pick up the agendas.

Re: Humans are oxygen sinks

[flyneye]

Accepting compromise and further dilluting what we have with Repubmocrat mis-management is no solution.
Support comes from anyone who hates the political party from the left or the right. They only have to see it is the same creature.
But nothing will keep you from being an idiot. How were your parents related?

Re: Humans are oxygen sinks

[nickrao]

Yes they were and you are still a rude and insulting twerp. Get out from behind your anonymity and engage in the world. Hopefully you will do some good. It is better than hurling bags of excrement from under rock.