Careful Where You Put That Tree 190
Ant writes "Wired News is reporting that according to Stanford University's atmospheric scientist Ken Caldeira, forests in the wrong location can actually make the Earth hotter. From the article: 'Plants absorb large amounts of carbon dioxide during photosynthesis, so scientists and policy makers have long assumed new forest growth helps combat global warming. At an American Geophysical Union conference in San Francisco earlier this month, however, Caldeira rolled out a provocative new finding: Trees may be good at capturing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, but their dark leaves are also very efficient at soaking up sunlight, which is later released as heat. At certain latitudes, the net effect of these two processes is warming, rather than cooling.'"
duh (Score:2, Insightful)
All other problems are just secundary manifestations of this one.
right but.. (Score:5, Insightful)
a big part of their argument is that the smog acts almost as if its sunblock.. ultimately making the temperature on earth cooler.. but you can't honestly say, that we need to pollute more, just so we can have our sunblock on ;-) we need to be thinking LONGTERM which is the most important factor.. yes, if we slowly decrease our use of gas-guzzlin' bitches, it will get hotter on earth.. if we plant trees, it will clean up the polluted air which acts as our sunblock, making the earth much hotter.. but hey, we better start now, because it'll be twice as hot, if we wait too long..
Trees are also good because (Score:4, Insightful)
"planting trees has a variety of environmental benefits unrelated to global warming, such as restoring threatened animal habitats and preventing the erosion of topsoil."
-- Carbonfund spokesman Craig Coulter
Re:I'm so torn (Score:3, Insightful)
Except that it won't.
a) Rising ocean levels mean less total landmass.
b) For every bit of cold region that becomes livable due to global warming, there's an equal if not greater amount of landmass that gets turned into unlivable and unfarmable desert.
c) Even small increases in temperature can cause significant changes in the weather. One word that sums this up well: Katrina.
Re:I'm so torn (Score:2, Insightful)
- the polar ice caps will melt and coastal areas will vanish undersea,
- thousands of species will find their habitat inhospitable and may go extinct,
- tropical storms will become much more intense,
- diseases like malaria will spread over wider areas,
- and many more bad things will happen [wikipedia.org].
I think that's a bit of a heavy price to pay just for warming up your winters a little. Man, just wear a sweater or something.Don't worry, be happy! (Score:2, Insightful)
Someone still has to explain to me how Mars has a Global Warming issue while neither or the Republicans have ever set foot on the red planet.
Re:I'm so torn (Score:1, Insightful)
tradeoffs.... (Score:2, Insightful)
Oh, come on. (Score:3, Insightful)
What Kind of Trees? (Score:3, Insightful)
but their dark leaves are also very efficient at soaking up sunlight, which is later released as heat. At certain latitudes, the net effect of these two processes is warming, rather than cooling.
What sort of trees did they use in their simulation? Did They reforest with an even mixture of what trees where natively found in the region? Or even the altitude? The article doesn't say.
Anyone who has spent some time in the woods knows a forest is diverse system. within a few miles walk in New England, you can found varieties of spruce, maple, cherry, oak, among others. All prospering in environments suitable for each. Did their simulation reflect this? Did their simulation reflect "natural" clearing? (Forest fires, die off, etc etc)?
IANAG (not a geologist), but wouldn't there be evidence that North America would've been actually warmer some 400 years ago? I've read that the early settlers would say a squirrel could go from Maine to kentucky, and never touch the ground. Isn't earth warming currently at fractions of this rate? (with all of man's humble efforts?).
Bad, Good, Bad, Good.. (Score:4, Insightful)
That's interesting. (Score:5, Insightful)
That aside, this is a very interesting finding. There's no doubt in my mind that the logging industry will use this as an excuse to ramp up production in the face of opposition from environmentalists, but it could also be useful in helping us understand how to control our own climate naturally. Maybe certain kinds of trees and plants reflect more heat than others. Maybe certain arrangements and placements of trees and plants are cooler or hotter than others. Landscaping for climate control, anyone?
shady research (Score:2, Insightful)
happy christian bastardized pagan holiday.
its really siberian shaman reindeer piss drinking day.
My experience (Score:2, Insightful)
The whole point of this (besides the fact that I make a killer mole), is that a case can be made for either side of the argument, and there is so much money at stake the powers-that-be, if they wanted to, could buy any results they needed to make their case: Science is just another whore these days. My personal position is that no matter what the theory du jour is global warming is a fact, and two degrees F. is enormous. So put things back the way they were: more trees, fewer poor people farming inefficiently and way fewer European-derived malicious idiots driving SUVs and trucks that don't do real work.
Of course there are powerful interests whose power and fortunes lie in continuing on the present path and they don't care because they'll always have the money to buy food and air conditioning. But history shows that such interests always fall. The manner of their ending is up to them, but their end always comes, it's a cycle of history that has never been disrupted. Things here won't change until a majority of people in the world stop believing that they'll be swept off to some perfect place and they can defile their current location with impunity.
Re:I'm so torn (Score:3, Insightful)
Tho I feel compelled to point out that both the somewhat warmer climate of the early middle ages, and the "Little Ice Age" that followed (and helped bring on the "Dark Ages") happened before most of these primeval forests were cut.
How many more contradictions can the theory of locally-controlled global warming support, before the sun gets disgusted with the whole idea and fries all of us to a crisp?
Re:Someone tell the UAE (Score:3, Insightful)
How would that heat be utilised by the trees? (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm sure there's logging lobbyist groups creaming themselves over this. But the article seems, at least to me, a statement that nature is an increasingly complex and delicate system that we may never fully understand. But even for those that aren't biologists, even the most base layman can understand that you don't need to be a mechanic to know that if you throw a wrench into a running engine, it will come to a grinding halt.
The last line of the article sums it up the best: "The less we interfere with the system, the more likely we are to have a healthy planet."
Re:so let me see if I understand.... (Score:1, Insightful)
It is possible to aim towards Kyoto targets and make Western industrial societies (I'd argue anyway that the West is rapidly heading towards post industrialism anyway) more productive and profitable.
An example is in office building. The USA, UK and many other nations have guidelines for energy efficient office builds. A 2% extra capital expenditure yields 30% less recurrent energy use offsetting the extra capital cost in around 3 years after which the building is cheaper to run meaning lower costs.
In energy production in an era of higher potential oil costs countries such as France with extensive nuclear and other non oil sources may end up with economies less suceptible to oil costs. A side effect is less CO2 production. (However Italy has the lowest CO2 production per unit in GDP in the OECD, excluding the smallest nations).
Bottom line (Score:4, Insightful)
But, honestly, even though it may be true, and if it's a lie, then in every lie there's a bit of truth... it just sounds more like an excuse for ecoligal negligence more than anything.
"Hey check it out, SOME trees COULD be bad, so feel free to cut 'em all".
Re:I'm so torn (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:so let me see if I understand.... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:It's not the trees indeed. (Score:3, Insightful)
I find this article rather dubious.
Liquid-cooled trees (Score:3, Insightful)
The problem with the theory is that each leaf is part of a massive liquid cooling system. The heat is far more likely to be transported into the core of the tree, along with the products of photosynthesis, than it is to be reradiated.
If you roll around on a green lawn in summer, the grass is cool. Leaves on a tree are also cool, in my experience, it's just rather difficult to roll around on them because they're so spread out.
But dead grass? Not cool. No water flow, so no cooling.