From a press release from the Union of Concerned Scientists, we learn that you don’t need to worry anymore about global warming, we can just garden our way to carbon nirvana, that is, if the bugs don’t eat it. -Anthony
WASHINGTON (April 26, 2010) Home gardeners can avoid contributing to climate change by using certain techniques and tools that are more climate-friendly than others, according to a new gardening guide released today by the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS). The science-based guide explains the connection between land use and global warming, and offers recommendations for conscientious gardeners to maximize the amount of heat-trapping carbon dioxide their green spaces store and minimize the other global warming gases gardens can emit.
“Many Americans understand that powering our cars and computers overloads our atmosphere with heat-trapping gases like carbon dioxide,” said Karen Perry Stillerman, a senior analyst with the UCS Food and Environment Program. “With the right practices, farmers and gardeners can lock up some of that carbon in the soil.”
When too much carbon dioxide and other global warming gases, such as methane and nitrous oxide, are released into the air, they act like a blanket, trapping heat in the atmosphere and altering weather patterns around the world, Stillerman explained. Unchecked climate change will have serious consequences for public health and the environment.
Although agriculture can store carbon and reduce other emissions on a much larger scale, gardeners can help. The Climate-Friendly Gardener: A Guide to Combating Global Warming from the Ground Up (www.ucsusa.org/gardenguide) offers five recommendations for gardeners.
1. Minimize Carbon-Emitting Tools and Products. Gasoline-powered lawn mowers and leaf blowers are obvious sources of heat-trapping carbon dioxide. A typical mower emits 20 pounds of carbon dioxide per gallon. Synthetic fertilizers and pesticides, which require a lot of energy to produce, also contribute to global warming. The new guide provides several tips for avoiding garden chemicals and fossil-fuel-powered equipment.
2. Use cover crops. Bare off-season gardens are vulnerable to erosion, weed infestation and carbon loss. Seeding grasses, cereal grains or legumes in the fall builds up the soil, reduces the need for energy-intensive chemical fertilizers and pesticides, and maximizes carbon storage. The guide recommends that gardeners plant peas, beans, clovers, rye and winter wheat as cover crops and explains the specific advantages that legume and non-legume cover crop choices have for gardens.
3. Plant Trees and Shrubs Strategically. Planting and maintaining one or more trees or large shrubs is an excellent way to remove more heat-trapping carbon dioxide from the atmosphere over a long period of time. A recent study estimated that the trees in U.S. urban areas store nearly 23 million tons of carbon in their tissues every year. That’s more than all of the homes, cars, and industries in Los Angeles County emit annually, or about as much as all of the homes in Illinois or Pennsylvania emit every year. Well-placed trees also shade buildings from the summer sun or buffer them from cold winter winds, reducing the need for—and cost of—air conditioning and heating. UCS’s guide discusses the most suitable types of trees for a climate-friendly yard.
4. Expand Recycling to the Garden. Yard trimmings and food waste account for nearly 25 percent of U.S. landfill waste, and the methane gas released as the waste breaks down represents 3 to 4 percent of all human-generated heat-trapping gases. Studies indicate that well-managed composted waste has a smaller climate impact than landfills. The UCS guide describes how to create a climate-friendly compost pile.
5. Think Long and Hard about Your Lawn. Residential lawns, parks, golf courses and athletic fields are estimated to cover more than 40 million acres—about as much as all the farmland in Illinois and Indiana combined. A growing body of research suggests that lawns can capture and store significant amounts of carbon dioxide, but some newer studies warn of the potential for well-watered and fertilized lawns to generate heat-trapping nitrous oxide. The science is unsettled, but there are practical things gardeners can do to maximize lawn growth and health with a minimum of fertilizer and water. The new UCS guide summarizes the science and offers tips for homeowners to make their lawns truly “green.”
“Gardening practices alone won’t solve global warming, but they can move us in the right direction, just like installing super efficient light bulbs and using reusable bags,” said Stillerman. “Seventy percent of Americans garden, and they can have a positive impact. Our guide shows them how.”
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h/t to WUWT reader Milwaukee Bob
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See? I’m saving the planet without doing a thing – I hate gardening.
Perhaps there is a gardening technique that could utilize the used bull food AGW promoters produce so much of?
I bet if this technique was developed, it would not only cure AGW but it could feed the world, as well.
Union of Concerned Scientists? There’s a point at which advocacy becomes so obvious that even a retarded monkey catches on. Are these guys really serious?
Mark
Heaven knows vegetation hates warmth and CO2.
Why do articles like this make me feel like I should be wearing a babushka while harvesting wheat by hand?
My god is there no depths to which they won’t sink to flog their dead horse? I love gardening and they can go pound salt! UOCS? Useless Over Creative Slaves! Slaves to money at their trough to publish such tripe.
Seriously these people just lose whatever credibility they have when they open their mouths. Next time I pick and eat my raspberries I’m going to fart loudly in their general direction!
I think these guys meet in Ed Begley Jr.’s treehouse.
I am an avid home gardener and never thought I would end up sick of the word “green”, but here I am today sick of all references to green and all of the other holy bs.
“A typical mower emits 20 pounds of carbon dioxide per gallon. ”
?
“Many Americans understand that powering our cars and computers overloads our atmosphere with heat-trapping gases like carbon dioxide,”
They do? Oh come on, they’re not that stupid.
Most of the problem is the city folk greenie weenies that know it all and live in urbasn 15 story concrete bunkers. They need to get out in the fresh air. Raise goats that mow the lawn and chickens thatt table scraps.
Farmers do not compost. They feed the chickens which crank out plant food in 24 hours. Much smarter and more efficient.
Because the Union of Concerned Scientists is called the the Union of Concerned Scientists it leaves the impression that its members are all scientists. But they are not.
From their web site:
“…..is now an alliance of more than 250,000 citizens and scientists….”
Note they put the word ‘citizens’ first before the word ‘scientists’.
http://www.ucsusa.org/about/
It is an activists group. It is not a group of scientists. I am wondering if it violates some sort of law to give the impression to the public they are all scientists.
April E. Coggins says:
May 10, 2010 at 9:05 pm
LOL
Don’t forget the blue scarf and apron dress.
I do believe this is the most pathetic thing
I’ve ever read.
hunter,
Would that be watermelons supplying the wherewithall to grow mushrooms?
“A typical mower emits 20 pounds of carbon dioxide per gallon”
Can anyone explain how to turn 10lb (Imperial Gallon) into 20lb Co2?
In simple terms please, I do horticulture, not physics.
Union of Concerned Scientists?
Sounds more like a new religion to me that is out there to ban everything that is fun for a lot of people. I mean come on gardening, in most parts of the world it is also known as food production and only in the richer and more developed countries it becomes what can be described as gardening because people actually have time and money to spare to indulge in a bit of fun like gardening.
Not any more then, don’t anger the climatechange gods and their high priests is the new word, gardening is a sin and therefore bad, now redeem yourself and plant your garden in such a way as the holy scriptures demand.
This would be funny if it was not for the ridiculous amount of thinking and effort that went into all of these recommendations.
Life is certainly not this complicated.
It is only the A retentive people who think we have to plan every little thing we do. This borders on obsessive behavior.
Sure, it is good to be efficient and not use too much of anything and to not pollute, but planting cover crops every time you turn around with the “hope” that it “might” make a difference regarding a supposed, unestablished problem does not make sense.
Why not have goals that are real and forget the stupid idea of avoiding releasing a gas that is good for us and the plants? It is plant food and the plants make our oxygen from it. Why would these people be against having more oxygen?
We are at a relatively low, almost alarmingly low, concentration of CO2 – below 280 and plants are in danger of really suffering. I think it would be a very good thing to be far from that lower range.
In short, CO2 is our friend.
Sometimes I think I could toss my own poop in a box, slap a “green” label on it, and sell it as environmentally-friendly mulch on ebay.
Mike’s Green Poop-In-A-Box for Home Gardens: For the “Concerned” Among Us.
Here is a member of the Union of Concerned Scientists, Bill Nye, debating Richard Lindzen. The Union of Concerned Scientists comes up. Bill Nye brings it up and gives the appearance in what he is saying that this is a group of scientists and they are worried over global warming.
20 lbs per gallon of CO2?
If gasoline is 6.073 lbs per gallon (Wikipedia) and heptane is 100 g/mol, then there are 18.7 lbs of CO2 produced per gallon.
NO alarm here, its good stuff and never hurt anybody unless they put a plastic bag over their head for too long.
Its scarcely credible that PhDs in the sciences can make such ridiculously unscientific statements like that. Blankets don’t warm via this mechanism. Nor have weather patterns been altered.
Its a perfect storm of how money and not science does all of the talking.
We need a Union of Unconcerned Scientists!
2. Use cover crops. Bare off-season gardens are vulnerable to erosion, weed infestation and carbon loss. Seeding grasses, cereal grains or legumes in the fall builds up the soil, reduces the need for energy-intensive chemical fertilizers and pesticides, and maximizes carbon storage. The guide recommends that gardeners plant peas, beans, clovers, rye and winter wheat as cover crops and explains the specific advantages that legume and non-legume cover crop choices have for gardens.
Maybe that’s fine in FL and CA and other warm places. But when you take yer carrots off on October 10 and then get winter for 7 months before you plant yer next crop of carrots, there ain’t a ton o’ time for cover crops. What utter nonsense that is just more “feel good” crap that the eco weenies eat up as if they actually care while driving their Beemers 50 miles one way to work each day from the burbs. “But we mulch … pass the sushi and Perrier.”
It is just like the rest of the “green” advertising we are being bombarded with these days. “Green” electric lawnmowers that don’t use gasoline…they get their power from coal where I live. ☺ “Green” subdivisions with 3,500 sq. ft. houses. Okay fine. Recently, a local company sponsored a series of radio spots on “going green” house construction. They listed some “going green” recommendations such as “buy local construction materials” followed by “consider bamboo for you new home.” Bamboo?!? Not a lot of local bamboo here in the Frozen North. ☺ (Where I live in southern Alberta, crop planting is THREE WEEKS behind because of the recent snows and unseasonable cold here in Western Canada. Bah.)
I digress … ☺ Feels better.
Clive
Warren says:
May 10, 2010 at 9:26 pm
“A typical mower emits 20 pounds of carbon dioxide per gallon”
Illl wager they are throwing in the “carbon” from the decomposition o the mowed grass…. same as they do when they are showing the carbon foot print from agriculture(never mind the fact the carbon is there from photosynthesis and is essentially carbon neutral)
They just seem to bounce from one scam to the next, with out any concern that their lies are destroying the profession of science with the public.
People have always planted things, humans like plants, for some reason.
Astounding that such a report should make a link to backyard gardening. Pity they didn’t compare backyard activity with deforestation and CO2 emission from other sources.
This ranks up there with dietary advice to help cut down on methane emissions.