Andrew and list (cc Andy Rivkin) This is to urge replacement of your " controlled burns, bulldozers, etc. " in your final sentence, "Or would management of fire on the ground with controlled burns, bulldozers, etc . be better? " with " biopower, biofuels, biochar , etc : Controlled burns and bulldozers are far from optimum approaches.
The subject of precautionary removal (thinning and perodic, appropriate-width fire breaks) is often mentioned in biochar literature. The intent is to show this as a way to up the often-too-low projections. The main additional rationales for precautionary action I have seen are not smoke minimization, but rather lowering property damage and insurance costs. If we are at all interested in AGW, we need to both be replacing fossil fuels and practicing CDR - and must think about state and national forest land that is rarely managed for either carbon neutral or carbon negative purposes. This is not in current national planning in the US. In Colorado, there is a great deal of beetle killed pne, which is sure to cause some future renewed interest in precautionary action. Just a few months ago, more than 350 homes and $110 million were lost on the outskirts of Ft. Collins, Colorado. Thinking about these near-urban regions (such as Vail and Aspen) in fire minimization terms is a must - limited now by not having figuring out how to pay for it. Carbon credits could make some of the difference. But even better is the development of new technologies that can bring cost effective conversions to the resource, rather than the more expensive converse. I am particularly thinking of the brand-new technology for a drop-in gasoline (with equal biochar production) seen at www.coolplanetbiofuels.com . Smoke also will be reduced and that will be much appreciated - but there are many other reasons to think harder about forest and fire management.. Ron From: "Andrew Lockley" <andrew.lock...@gmail.com> To: "Andrew Revkin" <rev...@gmail.com> Cc: "geoengineering" <geoengineering@googlegroups.com> Sent: Wednesday, September 26, 2012 1:17:30 AM Subject: [geo] Re: nuclear winter, from the archives One interesting aspect of this discussion is effect on global climate of catastrophic forest fires Vizy et al, and other authors, have looked at biome scale wildfires, notably in the Amazon region. These have the possibility to affect global climate severely, and potentially (I suggest) induce a sudden disruption to the hydro cycle that may trigger further wild fires. This would appear a sensible target for geoengineering, and 'de smoking' could be a new sub discipline. Does anyone have any ideas? Would cloud seeding or ionization be possibilities worth investigating? Or would management of fire on the ground with controlled burns, bulldozers, etc. be better? A On Sep 26, 2012 4:59 AM, "Andrew Revkin" < rev...@gmail.com > wrote: Just in case it's of interest to those pondering nuclear winter in relation to the issues at hand, here's what may be a useful benchmark - my 1985 cover story on nuclear winter science - first time it's been digitized. Some familiar names quoted. http://www.slideshare.net/Revkin/hard-facts-about-nuclear-winter-1985 -- _ ANDREW C. REVKIN Dot Earth blogger, The New York Times http://www.nytimes.com/dotearth Senior Fellow, Pace Acad. for Applied Env. Studies Cell: 914-441-5556 Fax: 914-989-8009 Twitter: @revkin Skype: Andrew.Revkin -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "geoengineering" group. To post to this group, send email to geoengineering@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to geoengineering+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/geoengineering?hl=en. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "geoengineering" group. To post to this group, send email to geoengineering@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to geoengineering+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/geoengineering?hl=en.
