Who would have ever guessed trees store carbon by utilizing the gas of plant photosynthesis, carbon dioxide, and in an “immense, profound” way? From the Institute of Arctic Biology, where they seem to see no positive benefit to this, but worry about fires and insect damages instead. In a previous story, it was shown by NASA that the biosphere is booming thanks to CO2.
World’s forests role in carbon storage immense, profound
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
14 July 2011
FAIRBANKS, Alaska — Until now, scientists were uncertain about how much and where in the world terrestrial carbon is being stored. In the July 14 issue of Science Express, scientists report that, between 1990 and 2007, the world’s forests stored about 2.4 gigatons of carbon per year.
Their results suggest that forests account for almost all of the world’s land-based carbon uptake. Boreal forests are estimated to be responsible for 22 percent of the carbon stored in the forests. A warming climate has the potential to increase fires and insect damage in the boreal forest and reduce its capacity to sequester carbon.
“Our results imply that clearly, forests play a critical role in Earth’s terrestrial carbon balance, and exert considerable control over the evolution of atmospheric carbon dioxide,” said A. David McGuire, co-author and professor of ecology at the University of Alaska Fairbanks Institute of Arctic Biology and co-leader of the USGS Alaska Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit.
The report includes comprehensive estimates of carbon for the world’s forests based on recent inventory data. The scientists included information on changes in carbon pools from dead wood, harvested wood products, living plants and plant litter, and soils to estimate changes in carbon across countries, regions and continents that represent boreal, temperate and tropical forests.
The authors note that understanding the present and future role of forests in the sequestration and emission of carbon is essential for informed discussions on limiting greenhouse gases.
– 30 –
ADDITIONAL CONTACTS: A. David McGuire, professor of landscape ecology, Institute of Arctic Biology, USGS Alaska Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit, 907-474-6242, admcguire@alaska.edu
AUTHORS: USDA Forest Service, Newtown Square, PA, USA. Key Laboratory for Earth Surface Processes, Ministry of Education, Peking University, Beijing, 100871 China. State Key Laboratory of Vegetation and Environmental Change, Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100093 China. Woods Hole Research Center, Falmouth, USA. University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland. Natural Resources Canada, Canadian Forest Service, Victoria, Canada. School of Geography, University of Leeds, LS2 9JT, UK. International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), Austria. Global Carbon project, CSIRO Marine and Atmospheric Research, Canberra, Australia. Laboratoire des Sciences du Climat et de l’Environnement (LSCE) CEA-UVSQ-CNRS, Gif sur Yvette, France. Duke University, Durham, NC, USA. Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, USA. U.S. Geological Survey, Alaska Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit, University of Alaska, Fairbanks, AK, USA. Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Oak Ridge, TN, USA.
NOTE TO EDITORS: Email is the best method for contacting McGuire. The abstract for the paper, “A Large and Persistent Carbon Sink in the World’s Forests,” is available at: www.sciencemag.org/content/early/2011/07/13/science.1201609
No sh[*]t Sherlock…
[Language .. Robt]
This focus on Co2 as the basis of all funding and research is going to be the undoing of most of the Western Economies.
All decisions seem to be based on the idea of the influence or manipulation of Co2 in some way.
The contradictions of logic and thinking flow like rivers.
This has surely got to end in tears. Probably ours.
No wonder the knight wanted a shrubbery…
All I see here is a paper that will be used to make rich countries pay even more in REDD (pay countries with huge forests to store our excess carbon) wealth transfers.
The Warm Is Bad meme is very strained. This story illustrates how idiotic it is.
Well, soon enough they’re going to figure out what life is all about…
“Until now, scientists were uncertain about how much and where in the world terrestrial carbon is being stored.”
Unitl now? Sorry. They are still unsure.
All of this global warming based faliling about is assinine absent a closed carbon budget, which we aint got within 25%. Half of the carbon that we think we are releasing into the atmosphere every year doesnt show up in the atmosphere, and nobody knows where it goes.
Attempting to count all of the carbon in the world is an arrogant exercise, and pretending to have done it to any useful degree of accuracy is deceptive.
I think papers like this one which really just quantify the size of the elephant in the room really puts the “settled science” into its true perspective.
To stay on theme, I am reminded of the mouse who lusts after an elephant. The “settled science” mouse is so conceited not only that it imagines the elephant reached a climax thanks to its “skill”, it really thinks it has got the elephant pregnant.
Methinks the elephant is about to take a dump.
Oh my! So, if we convert the trees into paper, use that paper, and bury it in land fills, we’re sinking carbon dioxide?
Meanwhile, back at the obvious!
If we accept that man made CO2 is responsible for global warming (and I don’t). Then all we have to do is preserve the forests that we have already and plant new ones. The trees will provide valuable wood which can be harvested and the world will be a much prettier place. It seems to me to be more logical to have a mechanism to remove existing CO2 in the atmosphere than to try to slow down it’s addition,
I keep telling people that the easiest way to do buried carbon sequestering is to put tree byproducts into a landfill. Stop recycling that newspaper! Start carbon sequestering it!
In related news, food production is up significantly. Scientists are concerned that this may encourage higher population growth leading to worldwide famine.
Quit slipping into the Warmist’s trap, folks. CO2 has MINIMAL impact on the climate and MAXIMUM impact on the carbon (life) cycle. Our atmosphere isn’t that far above the CO2 threshold for life, and given the slightest opportunity, these life-sucking warmers will make it even more difficult by getting us all to voluntarily support their insidious plan. They’re death mongers, and we should be against ’em every step of the way.
@Jeff +1
I’ll believe they’re serious about AGW when they stop paper recycling and start cutting down the old growth forests for cheap toilet paper. Don’t forget that termites produce far more CO2 than humans do!
Next they will re-discover that Carbon and oxygen are absorbed from the air, six molecules of water plus six molecules of carbon dioxide produce one molecule of sugar plus six molecules of oxygen.
Or maybe next they’ll start to re-discover some of the animal species that they have “thought” (claimed) to have become extinct.
Oh Waite!!
“Extinct” rainbow toad spotted after 87 years
“…straight out of every scientist’s sweetest dream. Yes, researchers recently found three living rainbow toads that were previously thought to be extinct in the jungles of Borneo.”
http://www.tgdaily.com/general-sciences-features/57242-extinct-rainbow-toad-spotted-after-87-years
But reintroducing extinct species can cause mayhem…
The extinct species back from the dead and causing mayhem
The reintroduction into the wild of creatures like the beaver and sea eagle that had previously died out in Britain is endangering the countryside, an influential group of vets has warned.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/conservation/8642359/The-extinct-species-back-from-the-dead-and-causing-mayhem.html
And according to trends, it seems the king of the jungle is next on their list to go extinct, for awhile at least, before becoming a miraculous “back from the dead” news story in a fue decades.
Lions Could Be Extinct in 10-15 Years!
“…they are lovable, too. But, unfortunately, there’s some really bad news: their numbers have been shrinking tremendously over the last 50 years! While, in 1960, there were a healthy 450,000 lions in wild, in 2010, were only 20,000! If that trend continued, lions would become extinct in just just over 10 years.”
http://uk.ibtimes.com/articles/20110718/lions-could-extinct-years.htm
Yes, we learned that when I was in Grade IV (in 1946). We also learned that much of the carbon-dioxide had been converted millions of years into Carbon that many of our fathers dug out of the coal mines in which they worked, with the evidence being in the form of the imprints of exotic plants, such a some ferns, that could be found in the coal they mined. Moreover, we learned that things no longer grew so well or at all where we lived on account of it being so much colder.
I always though that it would be so much nicer if we would have such a beautiful warm climate and no one would have to bother with mining and burning coal to heat homes for so much of the year. But what did I know? I was only a ten-year-old kid and had no idea yet that, just 50 years later, CO2 in the air would be identified as a villain so bad that even just a little more of it would kill us, contrary to all evidence of much yearned-for comforts.
Good thing that there are so many learned people now to set anyone straight who still thinks that having tropical growth all around is not comfortable but sure to be Hell on Earth. Maybe they should all spend more time living where Hell freezes over for most of the year, every winter, North of the 49th and farther up North. I think that it was a smart move to leave most of that for the British.
Meanwhile, we have enough coal here to last at current rates of mining for at least another 1,500 years. You want some of it? Burn and recycle it. It’ll make the trees grow.
Maybe the global warming people have it all wrong – it is not the emissions that are causing global warming, it is the deforestation. Since the rate of deforestation is (supposedly) declining this could explain the resent leveling off of the temperature.
“A warming climate has the potential to increase fires and insect damage in the boreal forest and reduce its capacity to sequester carbon.”
A warming climate also has the potential to remove the fundamental growth constraint on the Boreal forests that these guys think hold all of the land based carbon – the length of the growing season. In fact, the ‘we are all going to die from global warming’ computer models predict exactly that: that the boreal forests will benefit from warmer temps, longer growing seasons and increased moisture predicted by the GCMs. Their growth rate (i.e. carbon sequestration rate) is expected to increase – I belive by 15-20% in the boreal forest that I live in.
So how come these clowns chose to comment only on bugs and fires instead?
B…I…A…S.
The ‘warm is bad’ meme certainly is wearing thin. Fearmongering masquerading as science.
Makes sense…..
Around 400 million years ago, CO2 levels tanked when plants took over.
Then tanked again around 50 million years ago when grasses started spreading……..
Plants can keep CO2 levels low enough that it’s limiting to plants.
Could I also add, not only do they store carbon, but TREES ARE NOT THERMOMETERS.
This may be a case where “stimulus spending” actually works. We stimulate the carbon based lifeforms of the world with cheap (waste) CO2 and we get increased production of shrubbery.
The number reported in the Supplemental as the annual average over 2000 to 2007 (in billions of tons Carbon):
Sources:
Fossil Fuel and Cement +7.6 bt
Tropical Deforestation +2.9 bt
Total Sources: +10.5 bt
Sinks:
Oceans (net) -2.3 bt
Tropical Forest regrowth -1.7 bt
Non-Tropical Forest growth (net) -2.3 bt
Total Sinks: -6.3 bt
Net Addition to the Atmosphere (rounded): +4.1 bt
(Each 2.13 billion tons of Carbon equals 1.0 ppm in the atmosphere)
(Multiply the above numbers by 3.67 for billion tons of CO2 versus just Carbon alone).
(Each 7.8 billion tons of CO2 equals 1.0 ppm in the atmosphere).
I thought almost all life on earth was carbon based. Doesn’t organic chemistry refer to carbon compounds? Don’t green plants require CO2 for photosynthesis? When I read articles like this I wonder where in the world did the authors of these studies go to school. I’m an accountant and I’m beginning to realize I’ve probably learned more about chemistry and biology in the few courses I took in high school and college than all these so-called scientists. Where are these people getting their masters degrees and PhD’s? And who are the idiots that think these people deserve funding? If the American taxpayer is paying for this garbage, then Speaker Boehner and the rest of the House Republicans should have an easy time identifying things to cut in the budget!
Ian H says:
July 18, 2011 at 4:11 pm
In related news, food production is up significantly. Scientists are concerned that this may encourage higher population growth leading to worldwide famine.
Brilliant!
You can’t make this stuff up. Well, you can, but it will seem as if it wasn’t made up.
HypoCarboneum – Fear of carbon.
The Aliens have landed, and begun their Phase I of their conquest plan by brainwashing the Earthlings into burying all their carbon. When the food chain collapses, they’ll move in for the Phase II kill.
Earth is saved only by the ineptitude of the sequesting plan. The CO2 won’t stay put, and leaks spring up everywhere.
Send lots of Green Money, and I’ll hire George Lucas to make the blockbuster Sci-Fi thriller.
Next up:
Dihydrogen Monoxide: The Deadly Killer
Now they’ll have to direct their scientific attention (and research dollars) to figuring out the reason why trees grown those green things on their branches each year!
Professor of ecology?
Really?
So because we haven’t been able to have informed discussions, all those studies before now have been irrelevant. Thanks!
If I could tell co-author McGuire one thing it would be that vegetation burns. I am personally afraid for our land and home because over the past 50+ years there has been a tremendous addition to the load of fuel in the riparian areas around us. Much of this is because of the removal of cattle and the introduction of homes.
Of interest regarding fires in Canada:
This reminded me of an event (Sunday, September 24th, 1950) when the afternoon sky hazed-over, the sun turned red, and the sky went dark as night. My sister and a couple of cousins have been sorting our recollections about this via email. We lived in western Pennsylvania about 65 miles NNE of Pittsburgh, PA. Cousin Ethel (now age 93) was so taken by the darkening sky that she saved newspaper clippings in daughter Pat’s baby book. With the scant details from those, finding additional information via the “web” is quite easy. Our dark-sky/red-sun event was caused by a number of large fires in northern B.C. and Alberta, 2,000 miles to the west (& north). Scars show on satellite images today.
Another tale:
http://the-red-thread.net/dark-day.html
Search with: Alberta fires 1950; one of many hits
http://www.canada.com/news/1950+monster+fire+burned+into+history/4823685/story.html
The earth’s capacity to lock up carbon in biomass is enormous. Put more carbon in the atmosphere, and plants will say thank you very much…who’d thought it?
A related article appeared in the Edmonton Journal on July 15. See:
http://www.edmontonjournal.com/technology/Forests+saving+world+from+climate+disaster+study/5106677/story.html
Two sample paragraphs:
“That one-third taken up by the forests would otherwise be in the atmosphere,” said Werner Kurz of the Canadian Forest Service, co- author of the report published Thursday in the journal Science.
The oceans suck up another 20 per cent of the emissions, which means “we have basically been getting a 50-per-cent discount on all our fossil fuel emissions,” said Kurz.”
Are they now starting to look for excuses as to why there has been slight cooling for the last ten years?
New title for article: World’s forests role in carbon storage immense, profound, obvious, DUH!
“A warming climate has the potential to increase fires and insect damage in the boreal forest and reduce its capacity to sequester carbon.”
I suppose there is that potential, but have they quantified this damage?
And have they then quantified the potential for increased growth rate for longer growing seasons and northward migration of faster growing and larger biomass species?
Me guesses not.
quote “…that forests account for almost all of the world’s land-based carbon uptake.”
I thought grass uptake was even faster than trees.
I have no idea about the total mass comparison between trees and grass though.
Richard Feynman on how trees and CO2 interact. Excellent explanation that just about anyone can understand:
4:43 video
This is just groundwork for REDD – look it up, its the heart of the global wealth redistribution machine.
I”an H says:
July 18, 2011 at 4:11 pm
In related news, food production is up significantly. Scientists are concerned that this may encourage higher population growth leading to worldwide famine.”
NZ has a lot of forestry.
We’ve just had the highest inflation rate in 21yrs.
The increase in GST ontop of ETS has been a contributing factor.
Shoppers, motorists and mortgage payers have known it for months, and now it’s been confirmed – prices are rising at their fastest rate for 21 years.
Petrol went up by 20 per cent, food by 7 per cent and electricity by 7.8 per cent as the consumer price index rose 5.3 per cent in the year to June 30, the biggest rise since 1990.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/the-press/business/5304781/Highest-inflation-rate-in-21-years
Normally, I would say an article like this is amazing that it would take lord knows how much money and research to come up with such a “profound” conclusion… but I’m finding it pretty typical of the US Govt…
Bugs and Forest Fires? really… Come On..
Vegans better watch their food choices! Every time one dines upon carbon storing plants rather than tastey carbon emitting foods with faces, the earth’s fever increases.
Gee, and all this time I thought that trees simply sucked up carbon through their roots. I mean carbon comes from rocks doesn’t it ?
Yesterday, I had a (very) credible Nobel Physics Laureate tell me that he believed that both coal and oil/natural gas bore distinct signatures of biological origin. So he would not be a supporter of abiotic oil. So before life on earth, presumably we still had screeds of carbon, and it most certainly wasn’t all in the atmosphere as CO2, or even as Methane.
So it would seem natural that trees must suck carbon up through their roots. Who would have guessed they might take it out of the air.
Do you think that the rise in CO2 in the air is many because there are lest trees now than 100 years ago?.
I do as lest trees means lest CO2 is been taken out of the air.
Jeff in Calgary (Alberta) says: “I keep telling people that the easiest way to do buried carbon sequestering is to put tree byproducts into a landfill.”
True, in a sense, but a bit of lateral thinking leads to an even better way:- burn them. The energy generated can replace some energy that would otherwise have been provided from fossil fuels, and two sets of overheads are avoided/deferred. Plus, those unused fossil fuels will be much easier to tap into tomorrow, when needed, than the buried tree byproducts.
Gee, if all the new trees will just be eaten by bugs and/or burned by forest fires, we should pre-empt the little buggers and burn the trees ourselves, for heat and electricity.
Hmm. Study co-author A. David McGuire may want to watch out for Sierra Club hit men! 🙂
Here is a picture of Al Gore sequestering carbon:
How many Nobel Prizes will they hand out for this one?
There are loads of studies by forest institutes that clearly identify the benefits of climate change for wood production and carbon sequestration in boreal climate. See e.g. this study:
Effects of forest management and climate change on
energy biomass and timber production with implications
for carbon stocks and net CO2 exchange in boreal forest
ecosystems
Ashraful Alam
snip…
In summary, the interaction between forest management and climatic conditions has not
only a vital role in maintaining forest growth in forest ecosystems, but also it is highly
relevant for energy biomass production, integrated with timber production and carbon
storage, in the context of the climate change mitigation. In the future, the climate change
may require the current forest management to be adapted in order to utilise the higher
growth rate and thus, increased carbon sequestration and production potential of the forest
ecosystems in boreal conditions. On the other hand, a warmer climate could also increase
carbon loss from the ecosystem through decomposition. Thus, this could partly limit the
climate change benefits in the context of ecosystem carbon exchange and fossil fuel
replacement by energy biomass. In this work, it was found that it is possible to
simultaneously increase the growth and energy biomass and timber production as well as
carbon stocks in the forest ecosystem by changing the forest management in terms of
increased thinning threshold and initial stand density.
http://www.metla.fi/dissertationes/df117.pdf
Sorry about the spelling the word is less.
No sh[*]t Sherlock…
[Language .. Robt]
I have to take umbrage at this – Sh*t IS NOT A SWEAR WORD. It’s actually very disappointing to see such a learned site acts so ignorantly. Did you not know it is an acronym for Store High in Transit? meaning the crate must be above the water line in the hull of the boat.
I don’t understand any of this – isn’t fossil fuel just ancient forests that took their CO2 underground with them? Has this changed? Do trees now eat compost perhaps?
I only recently understood the reason for huge trees and huge animals to graze on them during the dinosaur eras – 5,000 parts per million CO2 in the atmosphere, which gradually became sequestered until we now have only a measly 388ppm. Now these idiots want to get rid of even more CO2, thus eventually depriving us of greenery, grain, grass and shortly afterwards, life as we know it.
I bet over 50% of politicians worldwide cannot answer the question why no ground disappears from the pot in which the tree grows up. They should not be allowed to say anything about CO2 in the first place.
did something similar on this:
http://justmeint.wordpress.com/2011/07/18/duh-who-would-have-known/
Now let me see who was it said to me planting forests would not be any good in reducing the CO2 levels. You’ll probably find the rise in CO2 is mostly all down to deforestation. It all began when the chainsaw was invented!
Errr, no they are wrong. Most trees do not lock up and store any CO2 whatsoever, which is why I would never contribute to those ‘offset’ scams, even if I believed that CO2 is a problem.
Most trees nowadays are used as lumber. And at the end of that wood’s useful life, it is invariably burned – giving back its CO2 to the atmosphere. Even wood left to rot in the forest will give its CO2 back to the atmosphere. Thus trees are only a temporary CO2 store, and not a solution to high atmospheric CO2 levels.
You need very special conditions, to produce a coal seam, and really store the CO2. You may find that northern bogs are better than trees, in that respect.
.
@Dave the Engineer says:
July 18, 2011 at 4:35 pm
This may be a case where “stimulus spending” actually works. We stimulate the carbon based lifeforms of the world with cheap (waste) CO2 and we get increased production of shrubbery.
“”————————“———————-
this is the definitive example of stimulus spending.
Here, the carbon based lifeforms being stimulated are eco-mentalist professors/researchers/”scientists” and the stimulus is our money, The increased production involves either Statements of the Bleeding Obvious, or complete and utter carp.
And I thought forests frequently thrived after fires, with some species of tree actually highly dependent upon the effects of lightning induced fires?
The capacity for these idiots to find a negative in amongst the positives is utterly breathtaking
Are these people getting paid for this junior school lesson 1 stuff?
Trees use up carbon dioxide? Who’d a thunk it? I’m amazed!
Sarc/
“And for their next
trickpeer reviewed scientific paper, ladeez ‘n’ gennelmen, the team will study forest fires and reveal … Trenberth’s Missing Heat!”Ta-Daaa!
I hear a lot about forests absorbing CO2 (tropical and other)
My thought is that there a lot af grass about ,but I see no referance to that as a CO2 sink.
But what would I know I am only an old calipygian.
Warmistas seem to have real trouble dealing with negative feedbacks. It’s almost like a third rail, or no-go zone, because once they acknowledge one, who knows where it might lead?
Can anyone who has read Primo Levi’s part biographical narrative, ‘The Periodic Table,’ forget his final chapter imagining the story of an atom of carbon,the element of life . Levi traces its history from its imprisonment in limestone congealed in the monotony of an eternal present, ‘an imprisonment, for this potentially living personage, worthy of the Catholic Hell,’ to its escape into a lime kiln and out in a gaseous cloud, riding for eight years upon the wind, until it comes to rest upon a vine leaf where it is miraculously transformed into part of that permanent life store ‘upon which all that grows draws, and the ultimate destiny of all flesh’. Continuing its many transmutations , it has now entered a human cell, the cell belongs to a brain, and it is Primo Levi’s brain and the cell is in charge of his writing, making his hand ‘run along a certain path on the paper’ marking it ‘ with these volutes that are signs’…guiding’ this hand of mine to impress on the paper this dot, here, this one.’
Bill Illis says:
July 18, 2011 at 4:48 pm
Sorry, your calculation is missing important figures and is therefore misleading (ie cherry-picking …)
The sources that you specify are soley man made and cover only a fraction of the total carbon cycle. Include the largest and most important source (“forgot“?) and discover that there are more missing …
Even an important sink is missing – plants (in addition to previously mentioned forests) – which also includes phytoplankton. Phytoplankton only are considered to generate half of the oxygen present in the atmosphere, so the equivalent amount of carbon dioxide molecules are “consumed” in the process …
And still, the carbon dioxide promotes the Earth (which was taught during the 1970s and 1980s in the Swedish schools, before the Left wing changed its politics and managed to cause enough damage …)! The more carbon dioxide, the more oxygene, the more merrier …
But you know this, don’t you?
I see one possibility (probably the only) to regulate the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and that is to regulate the amount of forest. Not only the the rainforest, but all forests.
Has anyone compared how human spread geographically and evolved on Earth (with deforestation), with the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere? (Although it probably doesn’t matter, from a historical point of view …) [Hope I’ve got this right …]
But if more trees are grown, won’t that lead to an increase in the number of Ursidae? The latter are alleged to have methane-releasing habits in arboreal environments.
There’s a lot of carbon stored in grass as well – I’m pretty sure some of these warmistas must be releasing it when they smoke the stuff… How else can they be arriving at some of their conclusions?
The problem Anthony is that there is far more carbon in the atmosphere than can be absorbed by trees, the oceans or the soil. We’ve reached a saturation point, it seems. Additionally, the northern forests are being devastated by worms and beetles which are multiplying in an out-of-control fashion, in the absence of cold weather which would otherwise kill them in the winter months The combination of drought conditions, and dying (dead) forests, contribute to a much higher risk of wild fire devastation, as can be seen in many parts of the world as we speak.
With the passing of the 30 year warming cycle and the start of the cooling cycle Australia this past twelve months has seen a return of plentiful rains. The flora is almost totally drought and fire proof. they just get by. This years the eucalyptus and the native shrubs and grasses have gone feral. They usually flower once for a week or so then put on new leaves and growth. This year continuosly in a short cycle they have flowered and grown repeatedly for nearly the entire year. Thus our forests and scrub lands have gorged themselves on the food of life. Billions of tons of new growth and our stupid government is bringing in a tax on carbon dioxide. Australia has sucked in this year more than we have ever produced!!
Re: To myself:
Has anyone compared how human spread geographically and evolved on Earth (with deforestation), with the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere? (Although it probably doesn’t matter, from a historical point of view …) [Hope I’ve got this right …]
No, I didn’t! It should have been something like this:
Has anyone compared global deforestation with the (global) level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere? (Although it probably doesn’t matter, from a historical point of view …)
The Koch bros are due an apology. They own Georgia Pacific and plant massive numbers of trees every year. They will save the planet.
On the other hand, it is getting smaller but the New York Times annual subscription was running 570 pounds of paper. it takes a lot of energy to harvest, process, print and deliver paper. That is enough for the bottom of a lot of bird cages.
@Ralph says “at the end of that wood’s useful life, it is invariably burned”
Well, no, it’s not. Much waste/demo’d wood is landfilled and most landfills today allow for little decompostion. Landfills are “carbon capture facilities”.
Serious “carbon capturing” advocates should call for the landfill of all wood products and an immediate ban on paper recycling. (Please, please realize that trees are grown like any other crop and recylcing paper to “save the trees” makes as much sense as recycling bread crumbs to “save the wheat”.)
And here I finally got my arms around trees as thermometers bits.
Next we will get a paper that trees store water, where will it end.
@Hugh Pepper says:
July 19, 2011 at 4:29 am
The problem Anthony is that there is far more carbon in the atmosphere than can be absorbed by trees, the oceans or the soil. We’ve reached a saturation point, it seems. Additionally, the northern forests are being devastated by worms and beetles which are multiplying in an out-of-control fashion, in the absence of cold weather which would otherwise kill them in the winter months The combination of drought conditions, and dying (dead) forests, contribute to a much higher risk of wild fire devastation, as can be seen in many parts of the world as we speak.
***********************************************************************************************
LOL – Hugh, you really do believe that, don’t you?
Years and years of chanting the mantra and you have lost all capacity for rational thought. If we had reached saturation point with “carbon” in the atmosphere it would not continue to increase at the “alarming” rate so beloved of the AGW believers. If it is at saturation point now, how come it has been many times higher in the past?
Which northern forests are being devastated? Which northern forests are avoiding the extremely cold winters of recent years, and are being devastated by worms and beetles multiplying in an out of control fashion? Drought conditions and dying/dead forests? Come on – which ones?
Stop chanting and come up with some real, irrefutable facts.
There is no-one more ridiculous than a chanting believer….
@Hugh Pepper says:
July 19, 2011 at 4:29 am
The problem Anthony is that there is far more carbon in the atmosphere than can be absorbed by trees, the oceans or the soil. We’ve reached a saturation point, it seems.
===================================================================
Not true. The oceans have a vast capacity to absorb CO_2 and are nowhere near saturated.
Hugh Pepper apparently doesn’t understand what saturation means.
This whole carbon cycle, where it is stored in biomass is a wonderful form of solar energy and recycling. The CO2 is converted to a carbon fuel through photosynthesis by means of solar energy. When the fuel is converted back to CO2 it releases the stored solar energy and the cycle can begin anew. A perfect form of recyclable solar energy. Whats not to like?
In other news, researcher have found that 1+1=2…..
SasjaL says:
July 19, 2011 at 3:56 am
Bill Illis says:
July 18, 2011 at 4:48 pm
Sorry, your calculation is missing important figures and is therefore misleading .
———————
Oceans annual should be more like:
Absorption: 94 bt
Release: 91.7 bt
Net: -2.3 bt
Forests/Vegetation annual (deforestation included) should be more like:
Absorption: 124 bt
Release: 122.9 bt
Net -1.1 bt
———————-
Has anyone compared how human spread geographically and evolved on Earth (with deforestation), with the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere?
Might be a very small signal starting about 4,000 BC but it was more when the Industrial Revolution started around 1780 that CO2 started going up alot. There is also a clear temperature signal with the LIA, MWP, Roman Warm Period and the Dark Ages showing up in the trends.
CO2 back to 1500 and to 10,000 BC
http://img225.imageshack.us/img225/7021/co210kbc.png
http://img829.imageshack.us/img829/6318/co21500ad.png
I have often wondered why they don’t have plantation timber and food crops around the power stations. Capture the CO2 and pipe it to the crops at ground level so it filters upwards.
The trees and crops would LUV it !!
For a long time the plants and CO2 have been on a balance, if the CO2 dropped a bit, plant life struggled and reduced. Natural releases of CO2 from volcanoes etc allowed plant life to make some headway until the balance point was reached again. The standard food vs population scenario.
Then along came man, and started digging up long buried carbon deposits that were once on the surface when plantlife flourished in abundance. The balance is again tipped in plant life’s favour, and it shall flourish once again..
I should also add that burning wood has basically no impact on environmental CO2. That wood would eventually die and release its CO2 anyway (unless it got buried first).
It is the digging up of long buried timber in the form of coal and other deposits that is returning the atmosphere to its more natural level.
Even better would be to dig the coal to roast limestone and maximize CO2 release. It’s time we fauna made up for past parasitic laziness.
Bill Illis says:
July 20, 2011 at 8:15 am
My primary point was that you left out the major source of carbon emissions – volcanoes. These cozy items are leaking out carbon dioxide whether they are active, passive (dormant) or “dead” … (Wikipedia | Vulcano: “Volcanic activity releases about 130 to 230 teragrams (145 million to 255 million short tons) of carbon dioxide each year.” Oops! Somebody needs to censor this … [/sarc])
From a statistical (and scientific) point of view, “your” graphs are incomplete and therefore faulty and misleading! (Similar to “PhD” M.E. Mann’s hockey stick …)
If the scale of the y-axis is limited, the perspective becomes distorted and as a result many misinterpret it. The lowest value should (must) be set to zero …
The same applies to the x-axis, where the start value should (must) be the time when the earth got its climate … (Earlier and larger peeks are missing …)
Only then, we can take a look at it …
Btw, where in the graphs it is possible to see the lagging (approximately 800 years) of the carbon dioxide level relative the temperature level? (Most important!)