Trees vs. Atmospheric Carbon: A Fight That Makes Sense? 363
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.
Forest Land Area from 1630 to 2002 (Score:5, Informative)
http://forestry.about.com/library/bl_us_forest_acre_trend.htm
European Settlements Impact Forest Area
Growth of the very earliest European settlers in North America initiated large land clearing efforts which had a great impact on forest acreage - especially in the new colonies. Lumber was one of the first exports from the New World and these new English colonies produced great quantities of quality wood for England, mainly ship building.
Until the mid-1800's most of the wood cut was used for fencing and for firewood. Lumber was only made from the best trees that were easiest to cut. Still, there were nearly one billion acres of forests in what was to be the United States in 1630 and stayed that way until the end of the 18th century.
The 1850 Timber Depletion
The 1850's faced a major boom in cutting trees for lumber but still used as much wood for energy and fences as ever. This depletion of the forest continued until 1900 at which time the United States had fewer forests than ever before and less than we have today. The resource had been reduced to just over 700 million forested acres with poor stocking levels on many, if not most, of the Eastern forest.
Fledgling government forestry agencies were developed during that time and sounded the alarm. The newly formed Forest Service surveyed the Nation and announced a timber deficit. States became concerned and formed their own agencies to protect remaining forest lands. Nearly two-thirds of the net loss of forests to other uses occurred between 1850 and 1900. By 1920, the clearing of forests for agriculture had largely subsided.
Our Present Forest
About 30 percent of the 2.3 billion acres of land area (745 million acres) in the U.S. is forest today as compared to about one-half in 1630 (1.0 billion acres). Some 300 million acres of forest land have been converted to other uses since 1630, predominantly because of agricultural uses in the East.
The forest resources of the U.S. have continued improving in general condition and quality, as measured by increased average size and volume of trees. This trend has been evident since the 1960s and before. The total forestland acreage has remained stable since 1900.
Re:Forest Land Area from 1630 to 2002 (Score:5, Interesting)
However the US has outsourced at least in part its deforestation to countries like Canada (where my wood pellets come from) and Brazil (where mcmeat comes from).
Re: Forest Land Area from 1630 to 2002 (Score:3)
The forested area of Canada has been stable for a long time and is currently increasing, much as it is in the US. Canada exports a lot of wood products but forests are managed and foresters are required to replant.
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Either Or Switch India and China Over To Rootbeer (Score:2)
temporary (Score:3, Insightful)
By default, when the tree dies, it will rot and return all that CO2 back to the air. So it's not really a solution unless you sequester the wood after the tree dies.
Re:temporary (Score:5, Informative)
By default, when the tree dies, it will rot and return all that CO2 back to the air. So it's not really a solution unless you sequester the wood after the tree dies.
One of the more crazy ideas I have read is to make charcoal then bury it in old coal mines!
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One of the more crazy ideas I have read is to make charcoal then bury it in old coal mines!
It's totally off the nut, bananas crazy, unless the plan is to use thermal solar to cook the charcoal, and to capture the released gases (including CO2!) somehow and use them for something. But hey, maybe that is the plan. Wood gas is a thing. Maybe making charcoal and cooking that stuff out and using it for power is still a good way to sequester carbon.
On the other hand, why would you bury the charcoal? There's lots of demand for it. Then we can stop doing whatever we're doing for charcoal now, which is ob
Re:temporary (Score:4, Insightful)
I think old forests are stable CO2-wise but a growing one is capturing CO2, and a shrinking one is releasing it - from fire and the rot going away.
So I would think reforesting does work, albeit it cannot cope at all with human emissions at current levels either now or for coming centuries if they were to remain stable.
Re:temporary (Score:5, Informative)
Parent beat me to this, but has score zero. Trees are great. But trees (and plants) are not carbon sinks. To be a carbon sink, you got to cut it down and bury it so deep that it'll never come out again in geological timescales. Like the abyssal ocean. Into a subduction fault. Turn it into limestone. Clathrate.
Some dead plants turn into peat. This is a great carbon sink, for millions of years, until some humans find out you can burn it. Or global warming melts the permafrost and it starts to rot. Most plants don't keep for millions of years, they just rot right away.
Plants are carbon neutral. That's why bio-fuels are a (marginally) good idea, if you can, grow, harvest, and transform the plants into biofuel using only biofuel and renewable sources.
Re:temporary (Score:4, Interesting)
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)
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Why geological timescales? Seems like that is setting the bar higher than any solution can meet.
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Timber? Wood has been 'sequestered' by civilisation for millennia.
As long as you plant more trees than you cut down and don't use it as a fuel source.
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Re:temporary (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
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By default, when the tree dies, it will rot and return all that CO2 back to the air. So it's not really a solution unless you sequester the wood after the tree dies.
Sounds like you are not seeing the forest for the trees...
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By default, when the tree dies, it will rot and return all that CO2 back to the air. So it's not really a solution unless you sequester the wood after the tree dies.
Epic fail in the most simple of logic: every living tree sequesters CO2, more forest area means more living trees. (Or, in other words, in a forest, when one tree dies, others grow.)
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I have argued for the planting of fruit trees in our cities.
I speak often of a citizen's dividend: of removing half our taxes (covers the $1.28 trillion of welfare paid out of the federal pocket, of a total $1.62 trillion of welfare) and slapping on a separate tax to collect what amounts to a social security payout for all natural-born Americans over the age of 18 and resident in the country, providing every individual just barely enough to live on. This is not my only plan, however; there are other ways
I have a lot of sympathy for planting fruit trees (Score:3)
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 plant
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Grow POT (Score:2, Flamebait)
it grows faster than trees, and has 10000 uses, and is fun to smoke.
Get a clue govts
Is Betteridge's Law Applicable Here? (Score:2)
Answer: No
Feh (Score:3, Insightful)
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."
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And this summarizes the crux of the whole problem quite nicely. Everyone thinks something should be done about the problem, and everyone thinks that the problem is best solved by OTHER people doing whatever should be done about the problem.
Note that mostly they're right. The problem should be solved by other people. Specificall
What happens to the CO2 when the tree dies? (Score:2)
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What happens to the CO2 when the tree dies?
That depends on the rate and therefore type of decomposition. In anaerobic decomposition, the kind that happens when the biomass falls rapidly and covers up other biomass which isn't done decomposing, most of the carbon is released again. However, this doesn't happen until (as you note) the tree dies, which is expected to be decades or even centuries (for some species) into the future. In aerobic decomposition, more of the carbon becomes other solid stuff, and less of it becomes part of a gas. Consequently,
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What happens to the price of beef when grazing land is reforested?
There are more important issues at hand than being about to buy a burger for a buck, like whether production of burgers will even remain a viable proposal for, say, the next generation.
This sounds like a call for farm intensification
Nope. This is a call to graze cattle on native grasses on slopes. And if that means less beef is produced, and it costs more, you're just going to have to get comfortable eating other things — or spending more money on beef. But there's no particular reason why beef should destroy the biosphere.
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Unfortunately, algae's rate of conversion has been harmed by increased UV exposure, the algae near the surface is dying off. Most UV is absorbed by the first foot of water, so algae below that are doing fine, but they don't get nearly as much gas exchange there. Oceanic algae is where pretty much all our O2 comes from, in fact, so it's an issue for some significant concern.
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My guess would be that a fair bit of the CO2 will be released into the atmosphere but probably not all of it. An interesting thing to consider though is that trees do reproduce on their own if given an appropriate environment. If a forest is created where there was no forest before then the CO2 associated with those trees will be pulled out of the atmosphere. Eventually the forest region will probably reach an equilibrium with the environment: absorbing CO2 to produce new trees while at the same time emitt
Dubious Article (Score:5, Insightful)
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A: Slashdot is dying. These articles are the cause of the funny smell coming from the bandages.
Exercise Less (Score:2)
With carbon-nuetral energy, sequestration (Score:5, Interesting)
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 [youtube.com] and see my letters on energy,
To The Honorable James M. Inhofe, United States Senate [scribd.com]
To whom it may concern, Halliburton Corporate [scribd.com]
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If you're proposing wind and solar as that energy source, you may as well start planting trees. For all the good it will do. And there's only one possible source of energy that could scale and meet these challenges:
Claiming that wind and solar can't do this job is spectacularly stupid because this is a job ideally suited to wind and solar. They don't necessarily blow when power demand is highest, but that doesn't matter if you're using the power to make fuel, because the fuel will wait for you.
Thorium has become sort of a in-joke around here
Yeah, if by "around here" you mean "on earth".
Because of mass (Score:2)
trees are nice. plankton absorb CO2 (Score:3)
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.
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Trees turn CO2 into wood, then we can use the wood, sequestering the carbon. Plants are made mostly out of carbon, virtually all of which comes from the air even in the case of "heavy" soil carbon users like corn.
On the other hand, bamboo would be a lot better, because it grows a lot faster.
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Bamboo doesn't grow well here but there are other interesting alternatives
Bamboo grows well in the USA, well up into Oregon. Not all varieties work everywhere, but that's hardly an indictment against bamboo, since there are many varieties.
You do need water, but it doesn't need to be clean, and we can supply dirty water about as fast as you like.
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Trees! (Score:2)
If you harvest it, it’s not neutral. (Score:2)
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
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Not many tree farmers are emotionally keen on that, though.
You might be surprised there. Lots of wood burners up where I live and pellet stoves are increasing in popularity.
To the point that they're actually an air hazard.
Yes,the only geoengineering that makes sense ... (Score:2)
... with one condition: don't all plant the same kind of tree! Use a variety.
Still ineffiecient (Score:4, Interesting)
We knew this 20+ years ago... (Score:2)
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Sorry, my subdivision bylaws say there is to be exactly one tree in my backyard, no more no less. If my house doesn't fit the cookiecutter mold, it might make my neighbors' less valuable if mine is worse or more taxable if mine is better.
$1 / tree (Score:2, Interesting)
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
Build a bog, instead (Score:2)
Trees are expensive? (Score:2)
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 forest
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Plant a tree (Score:2)
Won't someone please think of the children? Plant a tree today!
Blue Green Algae (Score:2)
Premises (Score:2, Insightful)
"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.
It's true (Score:3, Funny)
....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!
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Hmm... Planet ... beer ... planet ... beer...
One question, did they manage to brew in space?
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There are few scientists with maths as poor as gweihir.
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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.
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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.
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You looking on Wikipedia is convincing nobody.
Re:Morons that cannot do math.... (Score:5, Funny)
Soda (Pop).
Air guns.
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Or Canadian
Re: Morons that cannot do math.... (Score:4, Informative)
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.
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If the greenies and those making billions off of CO2 hysteria, like Gore,
1) Citation needed.
2) What about the billions that ExxonMobil and BP are making off of denying climate change?
3) If AAAAALLLLL GOOOOORRRRRE! took a wrecking ball to his mansion, composted the shards and retired to a hippie commune, would you trade your Hummer for something that gets at least 30 miles per gallon?
Re:Morons that cannot do math.... (Score:4, Interesting)
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/... [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... [wikipedia.org]
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... [wikipedia.org]
and
http://www.epa.gov/climatechan... [epa.gov]
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/... [eenews.net]
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
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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.
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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.
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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.
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And where would we be without ACs making shit up?
Re: Money quote (Score:2)
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.
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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
Re:That's revolutionary (Score:4, Informative)
They are very inneficient carbon sinks. The problem is that they do eventually die and decompose. Decomposition is essentially a very slow fire, and most of the carbon is converted back into CO2. It takes millions of years for the trees to capture enough CO2 to make a difference. The idea that we can grow trees over the necessary time span to make up for the current burn rate of petro-chemicals is a bit naive.
Re:That's revolutionary (Score:5, Insightful)
well, what it really is, is a good reason to cut down as many trees as you can and make buildings, furniture or whatever using the wood instead of letting it decompose - and then plant new trees. so tree farms to rescue! and landfills where paper diapers are buried.
Re:That's revolutionary (Score:5, Interesting)
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!
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And still have enough chairs left to build a full suite of chairfurniture for each one.
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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)
Re:That's revolutionary (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm actually curious about the balance here. When a tree dies and is left on its own, what percentage of its carbon ends up permanently in the soil vs. returning to the atmosphere after decomposition? I'm sure it varies greatly from forest to forest, of course - things like peat bogs having little decomposition, but probably much more efficient decomposition in rain forests. And how does this compare to, say, grassland? Or perhaps more to the point, how does it compare to the typical modern practice of sending your grass clippings to the municipal dump where they'll be entombed in a low-oxygen environment?
And back to trees, are there processes one can use to increase the amount of carbon stays in the soil? For example, does making biochar increase or decrease the sequestered carbon?
Re:That's revolutionary (Score:4, Informative)
Living in a temperate rain forest, after 10000 years since the glaciers left, there's only a few inches of soil over most of the ground. Exceptions are in depressions and such where you have the cycle of ponds slowly turning into meadow and then forest but most of the trees seem to rot pretty quick. Then there are fires that periodically go through (90 years ago here since the last big fire). Vancouver Island as an example seems to get thoroughly burned about every thousand years based on the shade intolerant tree species.
As for the municipal dump, the one here is now in the business of building and selling soil. Huge chipper chips all green waste as well as lumber and reduces everything to small particles when it is mixed with chicken shit, composted fast in big plastic tubes with huge fans driving air through so it rots in a couple of weeks. I'd guess much of the carbon would go back into the air but a good chunk would get sequestered, especially if the soil is laid down thick. There are a lot of bacteria, fungi and such that will eat the soil and release the carbon.
Re:That's revolutionary (Score:5, Informative)
Biochar converts roughly 1/3rd of the dry woody input to charcoal through pylorisis, the rest is consumed-- often as the fire that heats the retort. Biochar is charcoal that preserves the microstructures of the plants. Of itself, when added to soil, it is basically chemically inert and stable for 10k+ years. However its physical structure retains water and many plant nutrients like a sponge, and it acts as a slow release reservoir that benefits crops.
The biochar structure also acts like a reef providing microenvironments that foster rich and complex soil ecologies. So in addition to the carbon directly "sequestered" in making biochar, there is also the increased carbon absorbed by the enriched soil ecology.
A deciduous forest dumps tons of dead leaves every autumn. These leaves naturally compost, in a process broadly similar to biochar production but over a period of a couple of years where biochar batches are done in a couple of hours. The end result is the same though: a fraction of the carbon in the fallen leaves becomes a chemically inert but highly structured physical ammendment to the forest soil.
So far as I know, no one has attempted as yet to quantify how much more biomass biochar or compost produces when it is added to a soil. As a wild ass guess, perhaps in a poplar forest every year every 10 tons of autumn leaves produces 1.5 tons of finished compost (with the rest of the carbon leaving as CO2 during the winter rotting period). Between the inorganic soluble nutrients retained as the leaves rot, and the physical improvements with respect to drainage and environments conducive to soil microbes, the compost will at least double the amount of carbon that is "sequestered". So (again as a WAG) an acre or so of poplar forest that produces 10 tons of dry dead leaves each year could be sequestering 3 tons of carbon each year. Every year. For thousands of years.
"Sequestered" as used in the above refers to carbon that is removed from the daily CO2 cycle to some longer term cycle that is measurable in tens of thousands of years. These would be the lifetimes of entire forest ecologies. What we have been doing for the last century or so is moving carbon from very long term cycles of millions of years and pumping it into the daily CO2 cycle. What we can do (we've got the technology yaddayadda) is move more carbon from the daily CO2 cycle into cycles of 10k+ years. It is a matter of identifying the forest types that are best for over-all carbon absorption and then getting down on our knees and planting some trees.
Re:That's revolutionary (Score:5, Interesting)
Then there's the matter of lignin [wikipedia.org]. 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.
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We don't need to allow the trees to decompose. They can be buried (effectively putting petrol back into the earth), or converted into charcoal. I don't know how feasible it this though. My guess is that it is technically possible but that it would require measures so drastic that it won't be done.
Re:That's revolutionary (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
trees in SPAAAAACEEE! (or: stagetrees for all!) (Score:3)
Maybe we should really be worrying about Elon Musk's carbon harvester bots coming after us as a readily available source of carbon.
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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.
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They can't be carbon sinks - everyone knows that wood floats
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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.
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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 scien
Re: Humans are oxygen sinks (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Re: Humans are oxygen sinks (Score:4, Insightful)
You didn't think he was talking about you, me, and the rest of the peasants did you? HAHAHA
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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.
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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.
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