I apologize the environmentalist off-topic, but really I cannot avoid writing this.
2011/8/19 Harry Veeder <[email protected]>: > Another good reason to move to vertical farming, which I > hope will be made affordable by CF technology. > Also desert farming is plausible alternative. It does not cost much more to cultivate in the arid regions, but all the most fertile land is cleared for agriculture, because it is a little bit cheaper. But indeed, it necessity to try to replace as much as possible traditional agriculture, because agriculture is the most intensive destroyer of nature. === Nick, you are thinking too much of yourself, but actually your understanding is thinner than you might think. For example, IPCC does not differentiate old growth forests from modified forests and not even from forest plantations, although old growth forest can store up to one order of magnitude more carbon than what IPCC has valued. Temperate forests store more carbon than tropical forests, finds study http://news.mongabay.com/2009/0717-forest_carbon.html Rhett A. Butler, mongabay.com July 17, 2009 This article states quite clearly that IPCC's evaluations are severely off the mark. What IPCC thinks to be 200 tons per hectare, may actually be 2000 tons per hectare, for temperate eucalyptus forests. And indeed, IPCC has not done much to prevent old growth eucalyptus forests from logging, because IPCC thinks that they are replaced by fast growing young forest. Problem with this thinking is, that young and commercially exploited forests can only store around 10-50 tons of carbon per hectare, where as old growth forest can store 500-3000 tons per hectare. Because of this false reasoning, that young forests are better carbon sink, as they supposedly absorb faster carbon from atmosphere, we are failed completely to prevent extensive logging all around the Earth. Instead, IPCC has recommended to clear the forest for biofuel plantations. And we know, that in short term, biofuel plantation releases ca. 500 tons of carbon per ha into atmosphere (e.g. in Borneo) and replaces perhaps just 2-10 tons of fossil carbon in the first 10 years. This means that in practice biofuels are releasing 250-1000 times more carbon emissions than fossil fuels! This is because it may take up to 500-1000 years, for old growth forest to regain it's ability to store carbon. (These figures are strongly depended on forest type what biofuel plantations are replacing) 2011/8/19 Nick Palmer <[email protected]>: > > Try looking at the latest (2007) IPCC report on mitigation of climate > change http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg3/en/ch9.html - this > link destroys your whole case because it includes a LOT about forestry > practices, afforestation etc. It is no where near enough. IPCC estimates the effect of old growth forest conservation wrong by up to one order of magnitude. And also, tropical rainforests are not best carbon sinks, but moist and temperate forest. For example, Great Britain forests could negate all the local carbon emissions. But instead of letting forests to grow there, they are building windmills there. And as forests are competing with wind resources, it is better to clear the remaining old growth forests from britain. Although I doubt that there is anything left. > That you said that > www.skepticalscience.com is "perhaps the worst quality > page on climate > science!" shows that you REALLY don't know what you are talking about. > I really would not like to bother point out all the logical flaws that the site contains. So please spare me from that. (One ludicrous example from skepticalscience.com: "Biofuels: One wedge of biofuel would be achieved by the production of about 34 million barrels per day of ethanol in 2054 that could displace gasoline, provided the ethanol itself were fossil-carbon free. This ethanol production rate would be about 50 times larger than today’s global production rate, almost all of which can be attributed to Brazilian sugarcane and United States corn." This kind of statements, should lead to imprisonment, from assistance for brutal murdering of orangutan. > Your maths relating to trees may be OK but mere arithmetic, without a > sensible or rational context, is a waste of time. > > You claim (about me) - "But, you yourself proved that you do not have any > mental resources to do the math and calculate how much carbon 3 gigahectares > of forest could store" > What you think is proof shows exactly how good your > judgement is! > Just do the math yourself, you might surprise, that some times it is better to work out the numbers by yourself. Link I provided, gives you enough material. You may want to know, that boreal old growth forest can store into soil more carbon that was previously estimated, because they can be carbon sinks up to 1500 years, therefore proper value is perhaps more close to 300 tons per hectare than estimated 100 tons per hectare for boreal old growth forests. > You haven't though through your ideas about forestry. From the IPCC document > paragraph 9.2.1: > > "The global forest cover is 3952 million ha (Table 9.1), which is about 30 > percent of the world’s land area" > That is false statement. Majority of those so called forests are modified forests. They have lost the significant part of their ability to store carbon. Often they can store mere 10% of that of what old growth forests could store. E.g. in Europe there are real forests left only in some distant parts of Lithuania and Poland. The real primary forest is remaining just 36% of that figure and even this does not include all as old growth forests. But primary forest is defined to be forest that has been free from human industrial exploitation for 25 years. This is of course insufficient definition, because it takes up to 600-1500 years for old growth forests to maximize their ability to store carbon. > Your point seemed to be that we could soak up all the excess greenhouse > gases by starting to create 3 giga hectares of forest and, for the purposes > of this argument, I will temporarily assume that is correct (by ignoring > many inconvenient factors you obviously did not consider). Let me just ask > you - where will the trees go? Most of the land that we currently use for > agriculture (approximately 4.8 giga hectares - about 38% of global land > surface area) is cleared forest. Does your oh-so-smart head care not that, > although we will have stabilised the climate, we won't have anything to eat > because trees will have displaced food crops? > Most of the food grown in the fields goes for overproduction (due to agricultural subsidies), livestock feedstuff and for biofuels. Also paper industry is one of the major cause for deforestation. If we get rid of the most livestock; ban all of the biofuels and agricultural subsidies; and set up 70% environmental protection tax for paper; and move into direction of desert or vertical agriculture, we could easily conserve enough forests that all anthropogenic carbon emissions would be negated. > Perhaps in future, before you pontificate with your eccentric, impractical > and misleading ideas, and insult people who don't deserve it, you ought to > re-evaluate just how valid your views are and start by applying maths in a > rational fashion. > I hope that it is now clear, that it is you, whose understanding of rational environmental protection was limited to mere close minded propaganda and single variable understanding of environmentalism. –Jouni
