CO2 and Deforestation: Back of the envelope calculation.

On Jul 9, 6:57*am, Mike Collins wrote:
Brad Guth wrote:
On Jul 9, 4:52 am, Mike Collins wrote:
"Al" wrote:
"Mike Collins" wrote:

"Al" wrote:
"Mike Collins" wrote:

But it's easy to cut down the use of fossil fuels. Just stop the
conspicuous waste of driving a souped up farm truck with only one or two
people inside when a smaller car gives better fuel economy and performance.
This doesn't mean a Prius. I get over 60 mpg from a supermini (That's the
true fuel economy over the 4 years I've had the car).

But it could mean a Prius. *:-) * Hybrids give you the best of both worlds:
supermini economy with the comfort and space of a larger car.

But a Prius is twice the price of a supermini.

Indeed. *It all depends whether you consider the extra space, comfort, features,
quietness, prestige etc. to be worth the extra outlay.

There's not enough difference in comfort between a high spec supermini and
a Prius to justify the difference in price. Space is not a consideration
when the car will usually have only one or two occupants.
Prestige! You seriously think that a Prius brings enough prestige to
justify the extra cost . Except for celebrities who want to be seen as
green in cars they never use!

A 30 mpg form of car/truck transportation is about as good as most of
us can afford to buy into and use. *The better hybrid stuff is just
too spendy to buy and own unless the price of fuel goes to $10/gallon,
and those all-electric alternatives are at least twice too spendy to
own and operate once the cost of electricity for recharging and their
battery replacements are honestly taken into account.

*http://groups.google.com/groups/search
*http://translate.google.com/#
*Brad Guth,Brad_Guth,Brad.Guth,BradGuth,BG,Guth Usenet/ Guth Venus

Rubbish!
Buy a Ford Fiesta.
Then lobby VW to sell the Polo and Fox.
Or try a Mini.

Death via crunchmobile isn't a good option.

A real car or truck of any use has to have some size and structural
mass, unless you're just using it on a golf course.

"Sam Wormley" wrote in message
...

On 7/11/12 5:39 AM, Marvin the Martian wrote:
Actually, he would give them a trial for a capital crime.

When it comes to climate change,

================================================== =================
It would be so nice to be able to turn to sci.astro.amateur
without some ****wit ranting about climate change, you CRETIN!
**** OFF!

On Jul 4, 1:07*pm, bjacoby wrote:
Back of the envelope cutting TREES and CO2
===http://www.globalchange.umich.edu/globalchange2/current/lectures/defo...
40 million acres per year. Trees destroyed each YEAR!

CO2 stored per acre per year: 3.67 metric tons CO2 .

Calculation of CO2 in atmosphere.

http://micpohling.wordpress.com/2007...h-co2-by-weigh...

1750-1960 *Produced *1190 million tons CO2 per year into atmosphere.

*From 1960 to 2007 produced 12,127 million tons per year.

For drill we will assume that trees are on average 50 years old and all
CO2 stored in trees ends up being freed by burning, decay etc.

40 x 3.67 x 50 = *7140 million tons of CO2 EACH YEAR produced by Forest
destruction!

Note that this is 60% of the CO2 increase that is being claimed as ONLY
due to fossil fuels.

And there is one more thing: The trees cut down are no longer sucking up
CO2 so their YEARLY UPTAKE must be ADDED to the total which is another
150 million tons per year.

The point of this exercise is not to produce an exact theory of CO2 and
deforestation but simply to do a quick calculation to show that
deforestation is likely a MAJOR cause if not THE major cause of the
alarming, dramatic and accelerating CO2 levels in the atmosphere that is
being attributed to fossil fuel use.

I’d say we are damn lucky CO2 does NOT cause “global warming”!

I have always been curious to the question, which produces more
oxygen, the virgin forest that it once was- or the cultivated crop
created? Are humans good for the environment?

On 11/07/2012 23:26, GogoJF wrote:

I have always been curious to the question, which produces more
oxygen, the virgin forest that it once was- or the cultivated crop
created? Are humans good for the environment?

The virgin equatorial forest makes more oxygen and by a very large
margin. Forests also provide significant ground shade and cooling by
transpiration of water and their roots hold the forest floor together.
Remove the forest and you often lose the soil pretty quickly.

The standard way to clearcut tropical forests seems to be steal all the
decent old growth timber first and then torch the rest. The poorest
practitioners skip the first step. I remember flying over the big fires
in Indonesia and we had wood smoke in a 747 cruising at 33,000+ feet.

The crops typically grown in clear cut forest are high value short term
and they wreck and erode the soil pretty quickly and then move on.
Organic material in the soil decays releasing CO2 and the nutrients wash
out in the high tropical rainfall. It is a lose lose scenario. It is
ironic that the market for biofuels is encouraging this behaviour.

There is no reason why a managed forest could not be as good as virgin
forest at least in principle but cash crops will never come close. Sugar
cane and other C4 metabolism plants would be the least bad.

--
Regards,
Martin Brown

On Jul 12, 4:17*am, Martin Brown
wrote:
On 11/07/2012 23:26, GogoJF wrote:



I have always been curious to the question, *which produces more
oxygen, the virgin forest that it once was- or the cultivated crop
created? *Are humans good for the environment?

The virgin equatorial forest makes more oxygen and by a very large
margin. Forests also provide significant ground shade and cooling by
transpiration of water and their roots hold the forest floor together.
Remove the forest and you often lose the soil pretty quickly.

The standard way to clearcut tropical forests seems to be steal all the
decent old growth timber first and then torch the rest. The poorest
practitioners skip the first step. I remember flying over the big fires
in Indonesia and we had wood smoke in a 747 cruising at 33,000+ feet.

The crops typically grown in clear cut forest are high value short term
and they wreck and erode the soil pretty quickly and then move on.
Organic material in the soil decays releasing CO2 and the nutrients wash
out in the high tropical rainfall. It is a lose lose scenario. It is
ironic that the market for biofuels is encouraging this behaviour.

It has been estimated that it would require 400 years to grow enough
biofuel to equal current world consumption of oil and other fuels,
assuming that all arable land was used to grow it. IOW, not enough can
be produced to meet even the needs of the "greenest" individuals.

There is no reason why a managed forest could not be as good as virgin
forest at least in principle but cash crops will never come close. Sugar
cane and other C4 metabolism plants would be the least bad.

Old growth and natural forests are more diverse, healthy and resilient
in ways other than just CO2 uptake.

On Mon, 9 Jul 2012 17:47:13 -0700 (PDT),
wrote:

On Jul 4, 3:21*pm, David Friedman
wrote:
In article ,

*bjacoby wrote:
And there is one more thing: The trees cut down are no longer sucking up
CO2 so their YEARLY UPTAKE must be ADDED to the total which is another
150 million tons per year.

That part of your analysis is wrong. A forest in equilibrium isn't
"sucking up CO2," since the total mass of carbon locked up isn't
changing.

The trees and plants in many, if not most, of the areas that we might
call "forest" are still growing, still taking up CO2, and NOT in
equilibrium.

You "know" this how, exactly?

NASA remote sensing shows photosynthesis has been declining
globally for the past 11 years:

http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/fea...t-decline.html

http://www.nasa.gov/pdf/476572main_NPP_Audiofile.pdf

Overall, forests themselves are currently declining.

Yes indeed.

The REAL concern should be loss of habitat and biodiversity, not CO2.

Increased CO2 has caused and is causing loss of biodiversity:

http://www.pik-potsdam.de/news/event...iller_2007.pdf

http://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/83/1/thomascd1.pdf

http://ieg.ebd.csic.es/pdfs/2005/Ham05a.pdf

ftp://ftp2.fs.fed.us/incoming/r5/Sci...v ersity).pdf

The single largest science organization on the planet regarding
biodiversity has conferences on the subject:

http://www.cbd.int/climate/

Even addressing the human element in th loss of biodiversity due
to human-released CO2 is studied:

http://planet.botany.uwc.ac.za/nisl/...0 hotspot.pdf
http://www.discoverlife.org/pa/or/po...d_Yohe2003.pdf


--
"I’ve become less conservative since the Republican Party
started becoming goofy." -- Judge Richard Posner

On Jul 13, 8:51*pm, Desertphile wrote:
On Mon, 9 Jul 2012 17:47:13 -0700 (PDT),
wrote:

On Jul 4, 3:21*pm, David Friedman
wrote:
In article ,

*bjacoby wrote:
And there is one more thing: The trees cut down are no longer sucking up
CO2 so their YEARLY UPTAKE must be ADDED to the total which is another
150 million tons per year.

That part of your analysis is wrong. A forest in equilibrium isn't
"sucking up CO2," since the total mass of carbon locked up isn't
changing.
The trees and plants in many, if not most, of the areas that we might
call "forest" are still growing, still taking up CO2, and NOT in
equilibrium.

You "know" this how, exactly?

Most of the stable, old growth forest worldwide is gone. What we
mainly have are areas that are slowly returning to something
_resembling_ a natural state.

(Irrelevant links deleted)

One should be far more concerned in the short, medium and long term
about the poaching of rare animals (tigers, rhinos, etc.,)
deforestation (especially of old growth,) destruction of habitat,
introduction of invasive species, etc., all of which reduce the
biodiversity of ecosystems, making them less able to respond to
"climate change," natural or otherwise.

On 7/14/2012 11:54 AM, wrote:

One should be far more concerned in the short, medium and long term
about the poaching of rare animals (tigers, rhinos, etc.,)
deforestation (especially of old growth,) destruction of habitat,
introduction of invasive species, etc., all of which reduce the
biodiversity of ecosystems, making them less able to respond to
"climate change," natural or otherwise.

There are of course other serious problems. Poaching being one. But then
"poaching" is little different than than the same human greed with
disregard for effect that destroys forests. Forest destruction is STILL
going on for the most part. Burned rain forests do NOT grow back. They
don't even raise cattle except for a few years and then more needs burned.

Yes, Maintaining species is important, and is the "NEW" AGW thrust
unless the "heat wave" records give a new boost to the old doctrine, but
the subject was CO2 and Trees. Killing trees makes CO2 increase. And
that includes deforestation, continuing urbanization and other loss of
habitat.

I don't agree with your suggestion that deforestation is "over". That
would be like me claiming since there are now "national parks" that
poaching is over.

Plausible is not facts.

On Jul 14, 1:11*pm, bjacoby wrote:
On 7/14/2012 11:54 AM, wrote:

One should be far more concerned in the short, medium and long term
about the poaching of rare animals (tigers, rhinos, etc.,)
deforestation (especially of old growth,) destruction of habitat,
introduction of invasive species, etc., all of which reduce the
biodiversity of ecosystems, making them less able to respond to
"climate change," natural or otherwise.

There are of course other serious problems. Poaching being one. But then
"poaching" is little different than than the same human greed with
disregard for effect that destroys forests. Forest destruction is STILL
going on for the most part. Burned rain forests do NOT grow back. They
don't even raise cattle except for a few years and then more needs burned..

Yes, Maintaining species is important, and is the "NEW" AGW thrust
unless the "heat wave" records give a new boost to the old doctrine, but
the subject was CO2 and Trees. Killing trees makes CO2 increase. And
that includes deforestation, continuing urbanization and other loss of
habitat.

I don't agree with your suggestion that deforestation is "over".

Where did I suggest _that_?

On Jul 14, 1:11*pm, bjacoby wrote:
On 7/14/2012 11:54 AM, wrote:

One should be far more concerned in the short, medium and long term
about the poaching of rare animals (tigers, rhinos, etc.,)
deforestation (especially of old growth,) destruction of habitat,
introduction of invasive species, etc., all of which reduce the
biodiversity of ecosystems, making them less able to respond to
"climate change," natural or otherwise.

There are of course other serious problems.

Problems that are in fact more serious and to a large extent
demonstrable, quantifiable, predictable and often irreversible.

Poaching being one. But then
"poaching" is little different than than the same human greed with
disregard for effect that destroys forests.

Such as misdirected concern that causes people to try to "cash in" on
the biofuel fad.

Forest destruction is STILL
going on for the most part.

We can all see that, so what else is new?

Burned rain forests do NOT grow back.

Let's direct more concern towards preserving those, and less towards
dubious "plant-a-tree/carbon-offset" scams.

They
don't even raise cattle except for a few years and then more needs burned..

Yes, Maintaining species is important, and is the "NEW" AGW thrust
unless the "heat wave" records give a new boost to the old doctrine, but
the subject was CO2 and Trees.

Strictly speaking, the group from which I post is about amateur
astronomy.

Killing trees makes CO2 increase.

So does just about everything humans do, except planting trees and
even that is suspect.

And
that includes deforestation, continuing urbanization and other loss of
habitat.

The worst effects of deforestation are the losses of habitat and
biodiversity, by far.