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
The same mindset is running the UN’s World Health Organisation [WHO]. This is the result.
Sadly, I was a member of the UCS 20 years ago. When some new information came out that a certain aspect of AGW was not as damaging as previous information indicated, the Union of Concerned Scientists sent me a letter saying just the opposite and asking for more money to fight the noble cause. I sent them a letter referring to the new, more accurate study to which they replied: “Okay, but what if this new information is wrong?”
I immediately canceled my membership and felt stupid for being duped.
Re: “A typical mower emits 20 pounds of carbon dioxide per gallon.”
To put this in perspective…
A typical person exhales 2.3 pounds of CO2 per day.
A typical gas mower has a gas tank capacity of about 1.5 quarts.
For my lawn (about 2/3 acre) I never use more than about 2/3 of a tank (or 1 quart = 0.25 gallons) per mowing (every 7 – 10 days).
So using the UCS inflated figure for CO2 production by gas mowers, I am generating only about 5 lbs of CO2 per mow. In the 7 days between mowings, I will exhale about 16 lbs of CO2 (note – I’ll be running a marathon at the end of this month, so my CO2 production will be increased dramatically ;^).
“I’ve been screaming continuously in terror since Dr. Hansen’s first presentation to Congress in 1998. Should I take a breath?”
my finger slipped, meant 1988. All these years of doom-saying and no doom. It wears on one.
Ummm…as a water/wastewater design engineer in the United States I typically use 8.34 lbs per gallon as the weight of water, but 8.33 is probably close enough (been many years since I derived the actual weight but as I recall it is around 8.335 or so, for fresh water mind you).
The “A pint’s a pound the world around” saying my dad taught me is a decent enough rule of thumb for back-of-the-napkin type calculations (ease of math) but I’ll happily fly in the plane with the flight engineer using 8.33 lb/gallon and let someone else fly in the plane that is using 8 lb/gallon for the weight of water.
And gasoline / diesel / oil definitely float. The cruiser I served on many years ago used seawater compensated fuel tanks, and central to their operation was the concept that fuel floats on water (the tanks were always full of fuel and water, with the seawater coming in as the fuel was consumed to fill the void which (a) increased ship stability, and (b) decreased free gaseous space to reduce any potential risk of explosion). Also, as an aside as I recall the deep diving bathyscaphe Trieste used gasoline for bouyancy:
(“The Trieste consisted of a float chamber filled with gasoline for buoyancy, with a separate pressure sphere. This configuration (dubbed a bathyscaphe by the Piccards), allowed for a free dive, rather than the previous bathysphere designs in which a sphere was lowered to depth and raised from a ship by cable.”)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bathyscaphe_Trieste
Murray Carpenter says:
May 11, 2010 at 1:32 am
@L You are wrong, Gasoline does float on water. Try it!
Before aircraft take off, the pilots drain some of the lower liquid from each fuel tank. The heavier stuff that signals danger is water. Water is more dense than Avgas.
Bill Tuttle says:
May 11, 2010 at 1:01 am
UK Sceptic May 10, 2010 at 10:56 pm
These people are SCIENTISTS?
Who else would think anything north of the Florida border actually *grows* in the winter?
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UHMmm Bill, I am in North Carolina and we grow winter wheat, oats and rye in the winter. I over seed my bermuda grass with grazing rye (abruzzi) every fall for winter pasture. So yes you can over seed in the winter if the summer crop is harvested soon enough in the fall. Rye is the seed of choice since it will germinate in about a week and grow whenever it is not freezing
“Compared to other cereal grains, rye grows faster in the fall and produces more dry matter the following spring–up to 10,000 pounds per acre, although 2 tons is more typical in the Northeast. Rye is the most winter-hardy of all cereal grains, tolerating temperatures as low as -30°F once it is well established. It can germinate and grow at temperatures as low as 33°F, but it sure won’t grow very much when it’s that cold.” http://www.uvm.edu/vtvegandberry/factsheets/winterrye.html
On the issue of over seeding bare fields in the winter, I am afraid I have to agree with them as much as I hate too. My farm lost over two to three feet of topsoil since the 1940 soil survey because it was rented tobacco fields and no one bothered with a cover crop. I have seen a heavy rain remove 2″ of topsoil (and my seed) in a couple of hours. I lost 4″ of CLAY in my sacrifice area this winter due to the heavy rains and constant mud. This winter was so bad I could not put my animals out to pasture as I usually would without killing my pastures.
To amicus curiae ….
” Bt isnt the Bt that the greener growers use, its a lb rat variety many thousands of times stronger and sorry but I for one do NOT want to be ingesting it in the food I buy.”
Are you talking about Bacillus thuringiensis? Or a variety of? I suppose you eat organic grown food all you can. Remember that crop yields are dependant on the use of fertilizer and herbicide/pesticides. Yields decrease with the reduction of said usage. Lower yields lead to higher prices and lower availability to consumers. Look at yourself in the mirror and smile as you tell yourself the poor appreciate your efforts. Food shouldn’t be only for the rich.
Too bad these guys are serious. Now, if they included tips as to how I can cheaply and easily increase the CO2 levels around my plants then the writers would be on to something. Maybe I should get a gas mower…
Ok, that was a painful article to read. I think the best use for it is to collect any printed copies, shred them, and use it for my worm bin.
http://whatcom.wsu.edu/ag/compost/easywormbin.htm
“A typical mower emits 20 pounds of carbon dioxide per gallon”. This is idiotic on several levels. First, the number is wrong. Autos, which are far more efficient, oxidize perhaps 99% of the gasoline and emit about 19.4 lbs. of C02. The typical mower oxidizes perhaps 75% of the gasoline, and thus emits much less C02, perhaps 15 lbs. The C02 of course is not only completely harmless, but in fact beneficial, so they are worrying about exactly the wrong thing. The problem with mowers is the actual pollutants they emit, which contribute to smog particularly in urban areas. Additionally, there is a great deal of spillage, much of which winds up in groundwater.
The union of concerned scientists is a leftist maybe even communist front organization. They are responsible for such things as the Alar scare and others.
Scarlet Pumpernickel says:
May 11, 2010 at 2:29 am
How do I control my lawn so that it doesn’t upset the balance of the planet?
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I would say get a goat or sheep, but livestock are EVIL so I guess you have to capture in the wild and turn loose a bunch of rabbits…. no that won’t work either because you have to have a wild life rehabilitation license…. Do you have any nail clippers???
I think these folks who wrote the article should bid on items from Ed Begley’s garden, as a message, where he minimizes his carbon pollution by recycling his human feces for fertilizer. Don’t they do that in Mexico and isn’t that a bad thing?
Beth Cooper says:
May 11, 2010 at 4:22 am
I have planted hundreds of trees along the railway line as a wild life corridor, (even got on a tv gardening program,) but I am an AGW sceptic …
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Good for you. Only idiots think skeptics are not concerned with treating the earth “with kindness” Planting trees and flowers along the railroads and highways are good for the animals and good for the human soul. Planting trees and grass buffers became mandatory in the USA after the dust bowl days blew the great plains top soil all the way to Washington DC. see: http://www.livinghistoryfarm.org/farminginthe30s/water_02.html
Green living as the elites see it: Morning: Serf gets up hooks wife and kids to the plow.
Plows field for the Lord and Lady (think Prince Charles and Camillia or Al and Tipper)
Then they pick the bugs off the plants for the Big House’s Kitchen (Arugla comes to mind). As they are doing that, the Lord and Lady ride by in their Horse driven Coach.
“Serf’s Up!” say the lady to the lord as they ride by, then they go to the Stable, get out of the Coach out of site of their rabble, and get into the H3 Hummer and drive to the
Airport, not to worry about air traffic as they and certain others are the only ones to be allowed aircraft. They are on their way to Cancun to the newest UN/World govn’t
Environmental congress. As they land they are cut off in the pattern by JohnTravolta in his Boeing 707, but they are ok with that- as he does that. In Cancun, the congregants are taken to the meeting in Sedan chairs and Rickshaws. (There is
a woman who runs a Pedicab here in my home town.) They listen to the New UN head
man-AlGore as the is blaming Global Warming for the Glacier that justs slicked off
Chicago.. This is what “Green” living means to me….
‘Sight” -darn it not enough coffee..
” Frank K. says:
[…]
16 lbs of CO2 (note – I’ll be running a marathon at the end of this month, so my CO2 production will be increased dramatically ;^).”
This could explain why people feel so hot after running a marathon. Greenhouse effect. Plus, they sweat – high water vapor! Do you observe desertification or rising sea levels during a run?
Henry chance says:
May 10, 2010 at 9:17 pm
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.
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Gee Henry,
A lot of farmers do indeed compost as well as feed scraps to the girls who also do a bit of composting while enduring the wait for the egg song sing-a-long.
BTW: Goldie, Red, Ebony, and Ivory wanted you to know that.
amicus curiae says:
May 11, 2010 at 5:37 am
I support the union of CC in their fight against GM crops and the lies that the agricorps are pushing, I am saddened that they have hopped on the idiots bandwagon though….
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amicus, you might be interested in this.
“Horizontal Gene Transfer from GMOs Does Happen. Recent evidence confirms that transgenic DNA does jump species…” http://www.i-sis.org.uk/horizontalGeneTransfer.php
The idea of GMOs has never bothered me but the slipshod nod to safety and environmental concerns definitely does. When Mike Taylor as the “FDA” stated there is no difference between GMO and normal food crops [“substantial equivalence”] and therefore no testing is need and then goes to work for Monsanto you know concern for safety had nothing to do with FDA policy.
“It is not our purpose to endanger the financial interest of the pharmaceutical companies.” FDA Commissioner Dr. Charles C. Edwards
http://www.communicationagents.com/sepp/2003/11/30/fda_monsanto_dangerous_relations.htm
Bios of Taylor:
http://www.organicconsumers.org/articles/article_18866.cfm
http://www.fda.gov/AboutFDA/CentersOffices/OC/OfficeofFoods/ucm196721.htm
Taylor’s connections: http://www.politicalfriendster.com/showPerson.php?id=2590&name=Michael-Taylo
When I was a lad just after the Great Depression and World War II “green” meant inexperienced, unseasoned, misguided, clueless, or in the pre-politically correct idiom of the time “didn’t know one’s arse from a hole in the ground”.
The offering by UCS confirms it still does.
How many pounds of matter can be derived from 1 pound of gasoline after combustion in an a lawnmower engine?
Sean Peake says:
“So does gravy, very small rocks, apples, and a duck.. so logically… gasoline is a witch!”
Sean, in order for gasoline to be a witch it must do more than float, it must weigh the same as a duck!
But I appreciate your having brought the Pythonian theorem to this thread. After all, a technical question requires a technical answer! 😉
I grow my own vegetables because they are fresher than those bought in the shops, FAR tastier, but I am not sure they are cheaper. I dread to think how much I spend on horse muck and seeds and potting compost. And I have just put up a fabulous new greenhouse to start things off early. I am also plaqued by flipping birds – pigeons, pheasants, partridges – deer, rabbits and mice (probably rats too but I don’t look too hard) and have resorted this year to using horticultural fleece to fend the blighters off and give the seeds a chance to get going. We are harvesting asparagus for the first time this year, having nurtured the crowns when planted 3 years ago, putting loads of muck on the bed each year. So, I would say, after a little reflection that it must be more expensive but I love gardening, so who cares.
I usually sow broad beans in the autumn so that they get cracking earlier in the year but for the last two years I have had to re-sow them in the spring as our harder winters have killed them off. Must have been all that hot air coming from the concerned scientists, do you think?
I learned most of my gardening “skills” from my parents who were avid gardeners so I’m just continuing their traditions, including making my own compost. Nothing new here.
My husband mows the lawn. He sings maniacally as he does it so perhaps there is something in that nitrous oxide argument.
“Adam Smith was convinced that nothing but the waste of war and the fault of seasons…had ever created a dearth, the violence of well-intentioned governments however converting dearth into famine.”
Steve Keohane says:
May 11, 2010 at 6:38 am
For people concerned with spreading so much crap around, the UCS knows so little about crap, perhaps they know nothing at all. I love the idea of growing ground cover under snow, brilliant, who else could have dreamed this up? What literally fertile minds!
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Steve you plant winter rye. It germinates down to 33F (1C) and has a very aggressive root system. You plant it in the FALL and it will grow whenever it is warm enough. Although it is an annual, temps down to -30F do not kill it and if there is snow cover lower temps (cold snaps) won’t touch it either. If the snow melts and the temp warms it will happily continue to grow. It is a great plant and if you keep it grazed or mowed or till it under so it does not go to seed and produce “weeds” (yes I really do love the stuff, it saves me lots of money)