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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.
Trees are carbon sinks?!? Who knew?
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.
Yep, I never spell check.
More incorrect spellings can be found he
So are the Dems. Look how many people believed Mr. Obama was gonna bring "hope and change" to the world. Lol.
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).
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)
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
<blink>down the rabbit hole</blink>
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.
Therefore, by the (faulty) logic you're using, you're just a cow with a keyboard - osu-neko (2604)
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.
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.
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
Even when the experts all agree, they may well be mistaken. --- Bertrand Russell.