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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.
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.
If 2 billion more people drank root beer, the situation would stabilize itself.
Priest: "Universe from nothing, no laws of physics, sped up time"+ huge discrepancies. Creationism? No. Big Bang Theory
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.
Soda (Pop).
Air guns.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
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!!!.
....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!
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.
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?
it grows faster than trees, and has 10000 uses, and is fun to smoke.
Get a clue govts
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
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
Answer: No
Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
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."
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
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.
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.
Or Canadian
What happens to the CO2 when the tree dies?
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.
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.
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.
So are the Dems. Look how many people believed Mr. Obama was gonna bring "hope and change" to the world. Lol.
The less you exercise, the less CO2 you exhale. Or, if you are *that* conscientious about the environment, you could just stop breathing altogether.
And where would we be without ACs making shit up?
Tubby or not tubby. Fat is the question
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.
*Repent!Quit Your Job!Slack Off!The World Ends Tomorrow and You May Die!
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>
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.
That's how we got into this mess in the first place!!!
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
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.
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.
Indeed! It's a debate that has provided the trees with ample fertilizer.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
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.
... with one condition: don't all plant the same kind of tree! Use a variety.
"Consensus" in science is _always_ a political construct.
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.
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.
I am a proud traitor to my species in alliance with my mother the Earth in opposition to those who would destroy her.
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.
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.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
I knew that my babie one day saves the world, but I never guessed it was so early in my little sunshine's life.
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.
There are few scientists with maths as poor as gweihir.
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.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
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.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
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?
Ooh, moderator points! Five more idjits go to Minus One Hell!
Delendae sunt RIAA, MPAA et Windoze
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
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.
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?
I am a proud traitor to my species in alliance with my mother the Earth in opposition to those who would destroy her.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
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.
if you see me, smile and say hello.
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.
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.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
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?
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.
Watch this Heartland Institute video
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.
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.
This study suggests peat is much better at storing carbon than trees: http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-30448519
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.
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.
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!
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
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.
Won't someone please think of the children? Plant a tree today!
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
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...
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.
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.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
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!?
They can't be carbon sinks - everyone knows that wood floats
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.
It all starts at 0
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.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
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.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
So, now you just need to make about 29 gigatonnes of archery cases a year.
Better get to work straight away.
Watch this Heartland Institute video
"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.
Need Mercedes parts ?
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.
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
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.
Will
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.
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.
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.
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.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
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.
That will save alot of trees ;-)
Oh, yeah! Wise guy, huh? Woob woob woob woob! Nyuk! Nyuk!
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.
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.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
Isn't algae susceptible to mass die offs?
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.
Will
... 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.
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.
Will
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.
---
"I can't complain, but sometimes still do..." Joe Walsh
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 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.
They also make a great fuel supply! /jk
You have the right to remain sentient. If you give up the right to remain sentient, you will be elected to public office
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.
Linux, you magnificent bastard, I read the fucking manual!
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.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
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.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Taking cold showers might also reduce their reproductive drive, which seems to be a good thing.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
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 !
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.
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.
The vast majority of newspaper ends up buried in landfills, where it essentially never breaks down.
To a Lisp hacker, XML is S-expressions in drag.
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.
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.
Trees have been carbon neutral since after the Carboniferous era.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
The best thing you can do for the children? Don't have any children.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
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.
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.
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.
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.
-1, Too Many Layers Of Abstraction
Figuratively speaking of course. Doubling the world population to 14 billion is going to wipe out any effects trees might have.
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?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
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.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I get it that I may shoot you when you try to flee the rising water levels and try to climb my mountain?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
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.
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.)
-1, Too Many Layers Of Abstraction
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
..Mullah or Pope, Preacher or Poet, who was it wrote: "Give any one species too much rope and they'll fuck it up"?
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.
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
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
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...
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
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
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.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
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.
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
People around me would probably eat the fucking branches off the trees. You don't know what it's like here, man.
Support my political activism on Patreon.
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."
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
I just really liked the idea of building houses out of chairs :)
Linux, you magnificent bastard, I read the fucking manual!
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.
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.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
Your guess isn't far off, TFA says that an acre of trees sequesters 2.6 tons of carbon per year.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
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.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
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.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
"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.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
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.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
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.
Seems we're doing pretty good at it.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
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.
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.
Actually, compared to when he started, the world is much better. So is america.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
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).
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
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.
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 ?
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
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.
You looking on Wikipedia is convincing nobody.
Nope, one party system.
You got the Demopican from looking at the rectal end of the animal.
*Repent!Quit Your Job!Slack Off!The World Ends Tomorrow and You May Die!
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.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
How we stopped the ice age? We didn't. We're in an interglacial period, that's all, and that's perfectly natural.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
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.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
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This is true for ANY organic organism, not just trees.
... "When you pry the source from my cold dead hands."
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.
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.
Go to Heaven for the climate, Hell for the company -- Mark Twain
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.
Go to Heaven for the climate, Hell for the company -- Mark Twain
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.
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...
Glad you finally came round to my way of thinking.
It'd be an interesting place for a bar fight... and you'd have lots of kindling afterwards
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
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.
Learn to love Alaska
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.
*Repent!Quit Your Job!Slack Off!The World Ends Tomorrow and You May Die!
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.
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.
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?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
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.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
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?
*Repent!Quit Your Job!Slack Off!The World Ends Tomorrow and You May Die!
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.