Logging Boreal Forest Could Detonate Massive ‘Carbon Bomb,’ Says Report
OTTAWA - Canada’s boreal forest is a ticking “carbon bomb” and its continued logging could trigger a massive release of greenhouse gases, says a new report.
A Greenpeace study released Thursday says cutting down trees in the boreal forest is exacerbating climate change by releasing stores of greenhouse gases trapped in soil and vegetation.
It also found that logging makes the forest more susceptible to insect outbreaks and wildfires which, if widespread, could cause a spike in greenhouse-gas emissions - the so-called “carbon bomb.”
And the report says a warmer climate melts permafrost, releasing methane, a greenhouse gas 21 times more potent than carbon dioxide.
“The idea is that if the current trends continue … what could happen is a sudden and massive release of greenhouse gases from the forest caused by a rapid outbreak of forest or peat fires,” said Greenpeace’s Christy Gerguson.
Canada’s boreal forest stores 186 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide, the report says - about 27 times the world’s yearly fossil-fuel emissions.
About 80 per cent of the carbon is stored in the soil as dead organic matter. The rest is stored in the forest’s evergreen trees, moss and peat.
Older, untouched parts of the forest tend to store about three times more carbon than younger trees planted to replace logged ones, Gerguson said.
The boreal forest cuts a swath from Canada’s Far North down to British Columbia and all the way across to the east coast. Most of the untouched parts of the boreal forest are located in the northern parts of Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Ontario and Quebec.
The federal government’s national forestry database shows about 900,000 hectares boreal forest are logged each year.
There’s some debate, however, about how much carbon is actually released through logging.
The Greenpeace report, a collaboration with University of Toronto researchers, says logging removes about 36 million tonnes of above-ground carbon annually.
That would be more yearly carbon emissions than all the passenger vehicles in Canada combined, according to an Environment Canada report on greenhouse gas sources.
But Natural Resources Canada released a report last year saying the bulk of carbon from logged trees stays in the forest after they’re cut down, and the rest stays in logs that are taken to mills.
The Natural Resources report acknowledges that disturbing the soil during harvesting can release carbon dioxide, but generally “forest management practices do not result in substantial emissions.”
A spokeswoman for Natural Resources Minister Gary Lunn did not respond to requests for comment.
Gerguson says forests continue emitting carbon up to 10 years after they’ve been logged as their remnants decompose and decay.
In some cases, she says, those emissions outpace the amount of carbon absorbed by young trees planted to replace the logged ones.
“Research is starting to show that the boreal forest is tipping from being a overall carbon sink to an overall carbon source,” Gerguson said.
Greenpeace isn’t suggesting Canada halt all logging of the boreal forest, she said. The group wants the untouched parts of the forest kept that way.
The head of the Forest Products Association of Canada agrees.
Avrim Lazar says the association, which represents wood, pulp and paper producers, has agreed there should be no logging in the untouched parts of the forest without adequate planning.
But he says stopping all logging is unrealistic.
“Shutting down logging of the boreal will create a huge market opportunity for the deforesters and the illegal loggers, and will have the perverse impact of trashing the boreal to increase climate change,” Lazar said.
“But if people aren’t buying it from Canadian places, they’re just going to buy it from somewhere else. If you stop harvesting from the boreal, are people going to stop paper or wood? There’s no evidence of that.”
© 2008 The Canadian Press
This is one of the most beautiful forests on the planet, its an important part of the earth ecosystem. It’s like anything else, it needs sensibly managed. It needs to harvested on a sustainable basis. Clear Cutting is most widely used and destructive proceedure for the Planet. I destroys the natural habitat, the soil and the streams and most of the wildlife that depends on them. Its time for people in Canada and around the world to demand sustainable forestation procedures from their governments.
The other day, Daniel David, I believe it was, brought up an excellent point about forestry. Along the lines of, a well tended forest absorbs more CO2 than a mature forest. Biodiversity issues aside, there is good sense to this, old trees do not grow very quickly, and do not consume much CO2. Harvested and used wood is a carbon-sink, and rejuvenating a forest is a positive step.
~~Avrim Lazar says the association, which represents wood, pulp and paper producers, has agreed there should be no logging in the untouched parts of the forest without adequate planning.~~
We must stand firm on what “adequate” means - Will this planning be done by scientists without finacial constraints on the “results” of their work, or stinkin’ MBA who’d spin anything to pump up some bottom lines?
Another, maybe more immediate “Carbon Bomb” is the massive dead pine forests of British Columbia, killed by pine beetles which have flourished as a result of climate warming.
the huge fires of a few years ago may be a prelude.
There’s slippery language on both sides in this piece.
The pro-logging voice talks about ‘forest maangement practices.’ Nice in theory, but if you followed the actual loggers into the forest, do they really do this? My guess is no if there’s not someone looking over their shoulders making them do it. A piece of paper in a file in an office doesn’t automatically translated to it being done that way in the field.
Meanwhile the Greenpeace voice talks about “In some cases, she says, those emissions outpace the amount of carbon absorbed by young trees planted to replace the logged ones.” Well of course, you’ve got two curves where the emissions or absorbtion rates change with time. The emissions from the logged area would decay with time, as all those branches and other tree remnants left behind decay. And the tiny trees planted at first would absorb only a little carbon, but more each year as they grow to a decent size.
So, the Greenpeace point is technically accurate, but the way its phrased, a less than careful reader could get the impression that this isn’t the short-term effect that it in reality probably is.
Of course, then there’s the pure junk from the logging advocates at the very end of the piece. Neither statement has to be true. Law enforcement can crack down on illegal loggers if they want (the sound of chainsaws and lots of big logging trucks on the road are not hard to find). Its just a question of whether the government is willing to spend the resources to do it.
And for the second point, there’s always the old classic law of supply and demand. If you start to limit supply, then prices rise. As prices rise, consumers react. Restrict the supply when there’s a good reason, and people will indeed use less paper and wood in reaction to the new prices.
Cute the way the corporate media slides these two complete garbage points in at the end without giving the opposing voice any chance to make the rather obvious responses.
PS … if you haven’t seen a clear cut right after the loggers leave, you should. It would make anyone who’s not getting rich from the destruction cry. The destruction is as if a giant bomb went off. Its unbelievable. And there’s so much debris left behind by the loggers that it can be almost impossible to walk through such an area.
Good posts here so far on this excellent article. Thanks ~Big Money~ COMark and ~MIC~.
The most important subject touched upon in the article, is the methane gas in the Arctic.
The Arctic methane is the MOST serious issue facing mankind. Once the methane begins to “burp” out into our atmosphere, there is no turning back, no do-overs. Once it begins to escape from the perma-frost in earnest, as it has done twice previously in Earth’s history, it will not stop. We humans will then be history. Time is running out and if you have children and love them, you should be very concerned.__ VERY.
Here is a three minute read on the subject, written by a very highly regarded by his peers, geologist. You may find it is worth your time to read it.
http://www.energybulletin.net/3647.html
mf - actually, I thought that was what this article was going to be about. Like a time bomb, that could go off at any moment, with sudden catastrophic results.
MF, your post came on as I was writing mine, a hearty “thank you” to you also.
What we are witnessing, is the last decades of the planet as we have enjoyed it. The more mankind disturbes the delicate balance that has been constructed over billions of years by the wisdom of evolution, the sooner we’ll see our demise.
When another species rises up from the cinders, and that group digs up the remains of our civilization, they will discover two things:
1- we let assholes be in charge
2- we shit in our own nest
Good luck protecting the environment when someone stands to profit at its expense. The only way your gonna stop this (or the conversion of tropical rainforests into cattle farms) is to revalue paper and wood (or cattle) to include the cost of lost opportunity (CO2 uptake, aesthetic/ tourism benefits) and the cost of environmental damage (CO2 release, death of adjacent plants and critters, the landfill where the trees will eventually end up). Then consumption will drop, alternatives will be created, and we’ll have less forest destruction. Good luck legislating anything of the sort.
The boreal forest is only “one of the most beautiful forests on the planet” from a distance. I happen to live in it. Up close, it is a bunch of raggedy white spruce trees mixed with a few birch on the better soils and endless acres of truly scraggly black spruce (’Nature’s matchsticks’) on the worser soils (of which there is a LOT).
Not that the boreal forest isn’t important, it is, and I love it. But we shouldn’t go mythologizing it. The trees are dying from spruce beetle infestations, then they are burning and succession takes over. Is it wrong to harvest them while they’re still useful ?
Growth is slow in the subarctic, I don’t think we will see reestablishment of the same ecosystem because the climate is changing. We are seeing this in our own little landholding, we lost both our patch of boreal forest (mature white spruce) and our cabin to a huge wildfire (the Wolf Creek Fire, caused by a lightning strike — ended up consuming some 800,000 acres) in 2004. Already the successional species are well established and rather than big spruce with a mossy undercover, we now have open grassland. I must say the view is much improved.
Forest fires release huge amounts of carbon too — in that year alone a total of something like 6 million acres burned in Alaska. Huge fires in Siberia also. That is the nature of things.
Our arctic indigenous peoples have survived for millenia by adapting to extreme climate changes in the course of every individual year — changes more extreme than anywhere else on the globe — from midwinter’s minus sixty to midsummer’s plus ninety in perhaps four or five months (from February to June). We had all better learn to do likewise. (Lots of us really like the huge seasonal cycle here, it’s like living in a variety of places without having to go anywhere).
As you can imagine, not all of us up here think that global warming is a Bad Thing. Even if we sink into the melting permafrost while cheering it on !
You need to ask yourself who owns these forests???
It is my understanding that like many of the Alaskan wilderness areas containing minerals and timber your “owner” is China.
When I say owner it means that as long as the money is good enough for the states to sell it it doesn’t matter who “owns” it. The end result is the “buyer” owns it.
China owns much of our resource and is buying more as we type.
We are screwed folks……The dollar has become the overiding concern. Empire needs dollars. Lots of them. Earth community dies when Empire thrives.
Stupid foolish Americans
The problem of global warming is really the ability of species to adapt to changing circumstances. The more that humans exacerbate the problem, the more that we see feedback loops start to kick in which continue to change the climate at extra-natural rates. This dooms many species on this planet to extinction. The pace of climate change if it continues in this manner can outstrip the ability of species to adapt to it. What we’re really talking about is dooming millions of species that form an unbroken chain to the beginning of life on this planet to complete annihilation. This would be the first time that one species was at fault for utter degradation and destruction of this many other species. This is heartbreaking to any that believe in the sacredness of life, and also heartbreaking to any who understand the myriad ways that these other species help us as humans to survive.
I canvass on issues on a day to day basis, and the reality to me is that we might not be able to stop global warming, but if we’re going to go down, we might as well go down with the metaphorical non-violent gloves on. We should not cede to the forces of corporate greed that will let the world burn so that they can upgrade their yachts and take more vacations in fortified compounds that cater to their desires in developing nations.
The biggest forest destroyer in the Boreal is Kimberly-Clark, the maker of Kleenex, Scott, and Cottonelle. This company is responsible for much of the Boreal destruction, which they use to make pulp for one-time use disposable products. The reality is that when we use these products we are blowing our noses, or wiping our tushies on virgin forests, forests that have never been cut before. So if you want to do something to help stop Boreal destruction, boycott this company, tell your friends, coworkers, and the person on the bus. If it’s necessary, buy these types of products, but the brands that are recycled material. If you want to get radical, work to help bring back the hankie, the original reusable facial tissue.
Cheering it on ALASKAMAID???
When the Arctic perma-frost melts you won’t be doing ANY cheering. The ONLY ones who will bear witness to that coming disaster, will be the humans left in the space station. I can guarantee you of that. Read that link I offered at 12:11pm.
It isn’t my opinion that means squat. The global warming is as real as the daily sunset, so is the methane gas release because of it. ___ “Deny and die”.
Logging is not a net positive as regards carbon sequestration.
At commercial rotation ages of 50-100 years, only around 1/3 of the tree mass is contained in the “bole”, or trunk that is logged. Another third resides in the branches, and the remaining third in the root system, both of which will release their carbon in short order after the tree is cut down.
To net a positive carbon capture, the logs would have to be buried in deep water, where high pressure and low temperature would keep them from rotting before they had been preserved in sediment for long-term sequestration. The carbon needed to transport and sink such logs might be comparable to the carbon in the logs themselves, especially for smaller-diameter second-growth stands.
Old-growth stands would be a better strategy for carbon sequestration, as well as for ecosystem health. The older the tree, the larger the share of the (above surface) mass locked up in the bole, as opposed to the branches.
And canadian boreal forests are being used largely for disposable products like diapers and single-use pallets, which is close to criminal from an environmental and carbon standpoint.
funny thing is, is that it’s really not the tree’s their after, it’s the oil under them, encased in sand. it’s called ” The Oilsands Project”. it’s one of the largest clear cuts in the world…and all the oil is pumped south.
“As you can imagine, not all of us up here think that global warming is a Bad Thing. Even if we sink into the melting permafrost while cheering it on !”
I hear people in Canada saying the same things…as if we will suddenly turn into a tropical paradise. They think the only problem will be a few more insects…and maybe some problems with crop insurance from a few extra droughts (That was actually in a newspaper article). As if the drought will not be a worldwide occurance, as if nobody in the arid wastelands to the South will come here seeking shelter, or our water or our food…As if our own mid-west will not be Arid wasteland.
So, you don’t think it is a bad thing…well, not if you consider a massive culling of the human population on this planet to be good…along with the ongoing extinction of many life forms unable to adapt at a rate sufficient to survive.
And all of that is without considering the methane problem…or the risks of a new mini-ice age starting as a result of changes in currents or too much fresh water entering the North Atlantic.
How is it that so many people can be so delusional?
Who owns the Boreal Forest? Six Nations People do. Much of this land was never sold or leased to the crown by the Indians. Canada just takes it by raw power, the same way they do the tar sands oil. The Six Nations Peoples do not wish the Boreal to be disturbed, yet Canada continues to illegally lease the property to commercial interests often poisoning the environment. Support the Indian claims to this land and the problem goes away. You may also want to stop worshiping the British Crown, they are behind it all. This is just another example of continuing genocide.
These operations poison the water and this poison water is injected back into the earth. This is crazy to poison the earth, the water, the nations of the earth.
Read a National Geographic article a few years ago that made the obvious point that young growing forests sequester more carbon than mature forests. Makes sense. Wood is a wonderful resource and it is mangable and renewable, but it appears from some of the posts here that there is more going on with the area in question.
Is this really just the clearcutting for going for more oil sands? We are really determined to have our oil in the worst way.
Just keep collecting your BigOil permanent Fund check, Alaskamaid, until it’s all over–it won’t be long at this rate…. talk about delusional–Jeebus!
Alaskamaid wrote:
“and rather than big spruce with a mossy undercover, we now have open grassland. I must say the view is much improved.”
That is exactly what strip miners in West Virginia say - “look we are removing all these boring, eastern hardwood covered hills and hemlock-forested creek-hollows (probably a hundred different tree spieces - but who cares) and turning it into sweeping views of semi-arid grassland like the great American West!”
Ken Patrick should just include links to his innumerable other postings on the same subject every time CD prints an article even remotely pertaining to his numero uno obsession. And wow, this link is only 4 years old:
“Humans appear to be capable of emitting carbon dioxide in quantities comparable to the volcanic activity that started these chain reactions.”
The same holds true for those humans capable of emitting methane gas by talking out of their asses.
However, let’s be clear here, while the arctic methane/seabed clathrate bomb problem could indeed wipe out humanity, it is not going to do so in a time frame of people being born today. It will instead be a slow, multi-generational descent into increasingly hot, malnourished, nasty, brutish and short lives until few or no people, and most other complex life spiecies are left.
This of course does not diminish the seriousness of the problem, but produces an intractable political problem, because humans societies - especially capitalist ones, just aren’t geared to caring about the welfare of humans hundreds to perhaps a thousand of years hence. I suspect only do due to my Geology education which gives one a proper perspective of time - particularly how short a thousand years really is.
So yes, I find Alaskamaid’s views pretty objectionable.
The analogy that comes to my mind when someone says they are looking forward to global warming - especially the oil companies who are eagerly awaiting ice free arctic seas is a heroin addict who appetite for smack becomes even more ravenous as the fatal terminal point of the addiction is reached.
So many posts, so little time.
Kem Patrick writes “methane begins to “burp” out into our atmosphere, there is no turning back, no do-overs. Once it begins to escape from the perma-frost in earnest, as it has done twice previously in Earth’s history, it will not stop. We humans will then be history. Time is running out and if you have children and love them, you should be very concerned.__ VERY.”
Kem, with all humility, i say, don’t resist this. The human race is due for the wakerupper that peak oil is bringing. There is nothing that will wake the sleeping denier faster than reality brought on by global warming. First the big mammals will become extinct. Then the trees will be gone. The honeybees will wave bye-bye as they fade into the sunset.
Man will be left alone, if he remains on this course, naked and alone. Who will want to live here when nature becomes extinct????? Who will save the humans?
I think Alaskamaid was indulging in a little end of the long hard winter humor. Everyone on this post is so angry! What gives?
Ever seen the gypsy moth devastation along the Blue Ridge Parkway (Virginia)? It has to be similar to the pine beetle infestation, and it was a sad sight when I was down there about 10 years ago.
We can only make “educated guesses” about the effects of all this, but that CO2 hockey stick graph keeps climbing, and climbing faster.
Kimberly Clark, mentioned above, should be held responsible for sustainable forestry, which should help with a carbon deficit. Are they? How can they balance carbon if diapers, tissues… all end up in landfills turning into methane? Sounds like a consumer awareness thing, but the stuff is so darn convenient!
USAn: The mining is wrecking the water quality in both W VA and Alberta, too!
If you cut down trees and preserve them, and replace the trees you will reduce carbon in the atmosphere. Notice how the carbon Greenpeace is talking about is if there’s a fire or the soil disturbed. The important one is the burning and the decay of wood. We don’t need to have forest fires. If we had the same enthusiasm for building water bombers that we have for building regular bombers we would have squadrons of bombers putting out forest fires. Instead you will see one or two. The logging issue seems rather mixed up. The permafrost and methane problem seems more significant to me.
Brian Brademeyer: Your post refutes mine beautifully. Thank-you. I will change.
The soldiers in Afghanistan and Iraq should be civilians. They should be employed by the Forest Service removing dead wood from U.S. forests and grinding it up into useful products. This would remove the hazard of serious fires that blaze in the crowns and destroy forests. It would also give useful employment to soldiers and mercenaries in Iraq. The forests should be managed like eternal gardens, not like strip mines.
The trouble with the naive fringe programs I urge is that they do not funnel huge sums of money to a few individuals like George Bush and his friends. Instead, they distribute the benefits of our labor to society as a whole.
remember when all the new tech computers etc hit every business they said it would save paper and the forests. Well almost every company now says it uses 4 times as much paper as before. Where does this paper come from? Just look at the amount of ads, junk we get in the mail box daily
Brian Brademeyer: Excellent case, thanks.
I am glad I plant trees on my farm. So far I am up to 1700 trees my kids and I have planted. I have another 300 to plant this spring.
BUT if I cover the farm land with trees where will I plant the corn for food?????
You beat me to it, Brian Brademeyer. Yet another thanks. I’ll also add that the amount of time it takes a newly planted forest to accumulate as much atmospheric CO2 that the old-growth forest held is…is never granted to those newly planted forests in the first place. Sequestration levels drop, and then bounce up and down at a very low level as the plot is “farmed.” Nevermind the rate comparison, because the total amount sequestered is so different as to make rate comparisons pointless.
Oh, and “good luck,” what kind of trees are you planting? May I suggest sugar maple, black walnut, apple, and cherry?
Conservation, not conservatism.
Conservatism is ecocide.
Thank you, bbr-001
If people read my post objectively, they would see the major point I’m making is that we have to be flexible. And yes, the view is definitely improved, altho I really miss picking lowbush cranberries in the moss under the spruce trees. The fire was not started by humans and was definitely unstoppable.
Succession happens. I didn’t say that I specifically was cheering on global warming, just that we don’t all think it’s a Bad Thing. Personally, we would like to be able to raise hemp rather than hay. And I wouldn’t mind a few grape vines.
We are used to extremes, I am just suggesting the rest of you should think in terms of more extreme climate variability too (one of the symptoms of ‘global warming’). As we sink into our thawing, methane-burping permafrost . . .
C’mon, lighten up, don’t project your own fears, do something useful instead !
My posts disturb you ~MISANTHORPE~. Don’t read them.
Methane gas was one of the subjects in the article and I posted an important link pertaining to that very serious subject matter, as there may be some who read the article and the comments and are not aware of that most serious problem. BTW, I could care less of what you may think of me ~Messanthorpe~.
The reason I often post that link, is because it is the __’very most’__ important issue humanity faces. There are hundreds of other articles available on the net concerning methane gas, one can read them by Googling Arctic methane gas.
Global warming is a fact and the fact is, it is going to allow the (400 gigatons) of Arctic methane gas to release into our atmosphere and when it suddenly does, it will be over-night, the end of almost all life on our water-world planet. Some deep sea creatures, plankton and bacteria may survive.
~Misanthorpe~ has often been critical of me here over the months, for whatever reason he or she may have.___ The FACT is, We must begin a massive world-wide effort to solve the global warming issue. Time is fleeting and if you have children or grandchildren and you wish for them to have any fair chance of a future, you may be inclined to agree that we should at the very least, attempt to avert the disaster of the methane gas escaping into our atmosphere. ___ It can be averted but we humans have to work quickly to do so.
Or, we can ignore the issue, deny it and criticize any who bring it up, as ~Misanthorpe~ chooses to do. I’ll be so bold as to post the link again, as it truly is our MOST important issue.
http://www.energybulletin.net/3647.html
This report is just a bit exaggerating on the high end of a quite legitimate carbon bomb threat.
It’s painful to rein in the outliers, and I’d classify myself as a high-end outlier all the way through the growth of global warming awareness, but there’s no guarantee of a full-tilt carbon bomb.
There’s a perfectly good threat of a half-tilt carbon bomb. Scientists have gone to Siberian permafrost puddles and lakes and have measured the methane coming up several years ago.
One reason to talk about a half-tilt carbon bomb is because it’s something humanity can fight and solve. Similarly, a 50 foot rise in sea level is something New Yorkers can run away from if necessary, but the locals would grieve for their subways and roads. A full-tilt carbon bomb wiping out 99% of humanity is only a reason to have a big party now.
~ALASKAMAID~ Who sounds like a very decent person, but not educated about the serious nature of the problem.
You say, “lighten up and don’t project your own fears, do something useful.”
Well, what is useful, is to attemt to insure our elected know about this issue and perhaps they will become well educated and work with other nation’s leaders to solve the man-made global warming problem.
If you knew for certain, that a deranged madman was coming to attack your home and kill everyone there, would you do something about it? ___ Or, would you ignore it and say, “I’m not going to project my fears, I’m gonna lighten up.”
That’s a serious question Alaskamaid, think aboutt it.
~USAn~ posted at 4.45pm, that the methane gas release may be a serious problem, but it won’t occur in our lifetimes.
Well, several thousand scientists who have spent their entire adult lives studying our planet disagree with you ~USAn~. Some give us a hundred more years, most say from 50 to a 100, and some say 10 to twenty, maybe even less. Most all agree it’s going to happen, they just don’t all agree on the time frame.
Just recently, the scientists who study the enviroment were “astounded” at the rate of the ice melt in Antartica and Greenland. Time is not on our side. We can act, or we can deny and hope. ___ Hope is good, but actions are far better. ___ Denying that which is painfully obvious is not so good, or even smart.
Logging is not the only activity that threatens the Canadian forests. Go to Google earth and enter these coordinates: 56 56.2571′n, 111 23.5281′w
This is just north of Fort McMurray Alberta, Canada where there is extensive strip mining for tar sands. Zoom in and you will get an upclose picture of absolute destruction. Zoom out and explore the area - you will see thousands of square miles of land that have been gridded for mining. All of this for “OIL”.
Following is an article that lays out the positive and negatives of this devastating activity.
http://www.rigzone.com/news/article.asp?a_id=30703
MISANPATHROPE
‘and wow, this link is only 4 years old.’ that’s the whole point that you don’t seem to grasp. scientists have been talking about this methane for a long time, but no-one seems to be addressing the problem……………..as for obsessions: what harm is it doing you that KEM takes this matter seriously?
Does “KEM take this matter seriously”, -coco?
If he truly does not understand that his “the sky is falling” tone and barely on topic or in context repetitive technique are doing “this matter” more harm than good than I feel a bit sorry ol’ KEM PATRICK.
I can understand -misanthrope-’s exasperation.
When I read this headline, I actually said to myself “I wonder how many posts before KEM PATRICK mentions the Killer Artic Methane Gas?”.
How ’bout just one suggestion as to what we can do my capitalized friend?
Pretty Please? Cherry-full-of-deadly-methane on top?
-matti.
As for the topic of the Article, I think USAn made a good point about the “tricksy tactics” the groups involved seem to employ.
Also what’s up with the Lead Headlines always being “mainstream” here at CD?
Or can I even write that about a Canadian paper?
-matti.
reminds of a tombstone inscription I read on Boothill: “I told you I was sick”.
Help me understand the argument that forest managed to produce lumber is not a net absorber of carbon. If you build relatively perminent structures with the wood, does’nt that sequester the carbon for a long time? If you keep the planting and harvesting cycle going, where does all the new carbon come from that is replacing the carbon sequestered in the lumber? Areyou saying that processing and transporting the lumber releases more atmospheric carbon than is in the lumber that is used to build the structures?
Mr. Obvious, 2/3 of the carbon in tree-farmed “forests” is lost immediately (a few years) after logging by decay of the roots and branches. Very little of the canadian boreal forest is used for dimensional lumber (it is scrub spruce).
The mass of carbon held in the “bole” of the tree can increase basically linearly for several hundreds of years (the mass in the roots and branches essentially stops increasing after around a hundred years for pines, which can live for 700-800 years).
Logging is a short-sited loser, with essentially NO environmental benefits compared to leaving the forest alone.
Brian - Is this specific carbon balance specific to the boreal forests, or does it also apply to lumber harvested for lumber? I ask because selective harvesting of hardwood species is commonly practiced by my neighbores and I have been approached as well (although I love the big trees and will not sell them for asthetic reasons).
I think that Gaia has a lethal infection and there is no cure, unless the extraterresterials abduct all the humans and dump them on Mars, where we’d probably repeat the process. No wonder George Carlin is actively rooting for our destruction.
Mr Obvious,
Good question. I am thinking primarily in terms of conifer forests, those that I am locally familiar with. Hardwoods are slower-growing than conifers, so I think the argument would be similar, but the time frame would be longer.
The main point is, Mother Nature has given us these beautiful organisms that remove carbon from the atmosphere (plants) for free!. Cutting down the tree (any tree, I believe) interrupts this organic carbon-sequestration process, and resets it to zero, with a net loss of around 2/3 of the carbon currently sequestered in that tree ( its trunk, roots, and branches).
Letting new-growth trees again mature in a cropping cycle never gets you back to where the original tree was when you cut it. And not even close to the stage that tree would be at if you had simply let it keep on growing, and keep on sucking carbon out of the atmosphere.
The goal should be to keep as many (large) trees alive, for as long as each can possible live, before the inevitable decay cycle consumes (recycles) their remains.
Hope this helps, and I hope that you keep the hardwoods currently growing on your property for your, your children’s, your grandchildren’s, and your great-grandchildren’s lifetimes for them all to enjoy.
Brian - I was with you until the last post. I am really looking for scientific answers not neo-pagan belief stuff. I plan to keep my trees, but I do not place my faith in nature to solve a man-made problem. What force would drive any particulare ecosystem to optimize itself for CO2 sequestration? We see lots of different “natural” ecosystems and it seems likely that they are continually changing (albiet slowly) in response to the continuous climatic changes that have occured over the ages. I appreciate your attention to my questions but I think that I will explore this deeper in the scientific literature. It seems to me that forces that prevent carbon release for extended periods would be best for sequestering carbon. One good forest fire and any available carbon would be back in the atmosphere. The best systems for carbon sequestration must be those that place this carbon where it will not be metabolized or burned.
if the foresters of the world would follow the mimic nature ideals of Victor Schauberger there would be a hope for modern man. When are we gonna learn that you can’t push nature around? sunlight on the forest floor kill microrganisns that are essential to healthy soil and water. The wood for building everything time has come to an end.
“When all the trees have been cut down:
When all the animals have been hunted
When all the waters have been polluted
When all the air is unsafe to breathe
Only then will you discover, you cannot eat money”
Victor Shauberger
KEM,
The first step in adressing a probelm is understanding the problem.
Young people alive today will see a lot of dramatic changes. And thanks to our economic systems inability to distribute resources equitably, 90% of the suffering and death will be the poor nations, while the rich nations only “get their hair mussed up” a bit as Gen. Turgison says.
The truly catastroohic changes, that can be predicted from similar events in the geologic record - tropical poles, uninhabitably hot mid to lower latitudes, dramatic drops on atmosphereic oxygen, mass extinctions of most species, are not going to take place in the next century - but there are good chances of such truly world-ending things taking place over a several hundreds to thousands of years or so.
But, your reaction to my stating this is EXACTLY MY POINT. You are stuck in a mindset that leads you to think that I was trying to diminish the problem by saying it is in the “distant” (to non-geologists) future. But it does not diminish the direness of the situation at all! If I know with high certainty that my reckless actions will lead to the a miserable death of someone (actually many) 100,000 years from now, what is the difference between this and comitting reckles homicide right NOW? None at all!
So the problem is how do we make distant future generations “real” in peoples minds. One way is to make the very distant past “real”. When I contemplate a fossil craature I plucked out of a rock ledge, suddenly the life of that formerly anomynous trilobite or brachiopod is influencing my life right NOW 500 million years later - usually the fossil is found along a trail in a quiet spot amenable to a bit of walking meditation (never was into that lotus position stuff) and with this meditiation, this great gulf of time, and times I imagine far into the future, collpase. singularity like into this now-moment, which is ultimately the only thing that really exists anyway.
And no, there is nothing “new-age” in my digression to this “now moment” stuff - it has a long history among religious and philosophical thinkers going back thousands of years.
~MATTI~ My “sky is falling tone” is not because I personally wish to write about the serious nature of the methane gas, it is becuse many qualified scientists have and are warning us that it is going to happen once again. It was also subject matter of this article. I don’t care if you like what I post or not.
In spite of ~USAn’s~ last post here, which had a lot of fancy talk, but didn’t address the issue at all of how very soon the methane may escape into the atmosphere, or what should be done to prevent it, his opinion and that of ~Matti’s~ and some others who don’t want me or any to talk abut it, is precicely the type of attitude the world governmet’s leaders display and they are not taking steps to reduce the amount of Co2 in our atmoshere.
Instead of harping about my posts, why not read that link I offered and offer arguments to it and the author if you disagree with his analysis and seriousness of the problem. You must think the coming methne “burps” is not a problem, because you don’t wnat to hear about it and are disgusted that I post it.
You know what ~MATTI~, you are really showing a great deal of stupidity and ignorance.
You don’t want to believe it, and so you attempt to kill any messengers. I’ve posted what I believe should be done to prevent it. You post nasty remarks about me and you don’t even know me.
Perhaps it would benefit Earth if Homo Sapiens were just to disappear - because vanish we will.
And ~USAn~ you state it is not gong to happen for hundreds or even thousands of years.
Really, how qualified are __YOU__ to state that? The author of the article I posted is totally wrong in YOUR opinion. ___ Is he really? ___ Show us, prove it.
He states it may happen any time soon and it’s our MOST deadly serious problem.
Get serious USAn, fancy words are not going to help anyone. Put up or shut up is an appropriate phrase for both you and ~Matti~.
I cannot fathom your ignorance on the subject unless you didn’t bother to read the article I offered.
TWY:
I plant different types of trees each year. This year is Birch and Maple, Next will be 2 differnt types and so on. I have from Oak, pine, spruce, cherry, apple, popular, just about any type that grows good. Been doing it for 20 years now so it is nice to look at trees that are over 60 feet high you started from a 6 inch whip. As soon as the trees produce seeds then you get a mix between types in an area. This also attracks birds and animals. Not unusual to see wolf or coyote tracks and hear them at night. Next year will be 300 more as my farm has lots of room. Everyone reading this go plant a tree even it is out in the woods in a clearing. It there is a tree planting club join it or start one you will feel great you did. Lots of local gov have programs, just pick up the phone. Beats sitting in front of the computer
GL.
need help planting your trees?
Mr. Obvious, please let us know what you find in your survey of the scientific literature regarding sequestration rates, limits, and totals in old-growth forests vis-a-vis tree farms. I’m extremely grateful to both you and Brian for the lively and informative discussion in these comments. I’ve learned a lot, and hope to learn more.
thewonderingyou - From a quick search:
Journal of Environmental Management
Volume 67, Issue 1, 1 January 2003, Pages 77-86
Maintaining Forest Biodiversity
Carbon management and biodiversity
Michael A. Huston , and Gregg Marland , 1
Environmental Sciences Division, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Oak Ridge, TN 37831-6335, USA
“The use of bio-based products such as paper and construction lumber could yield carbon credits in two ways. First, biomass products often require less fossil-fuel energy for their production and use than do the products for which they substitute. Second, long-lived biomass products can be produced on a sustained yield basis. If some of the harvested material is stored as long-lived products such as construction lumber, the stock of carbon stored in products will increase with time, which is, by definition, carbon sequestration.”
good luck - You are not alone. My wife and I have planted over 20,000 trees on our farm, and just finsihed planting 900 more this week (every one planted by hand - no machines)
thewonderingyou - some additional surprises:
Environmental Science & Policy
Volume 2, Issue 6, December 1999, Pages 427-437
Wood-based building materials and atmospheric carbon emissions Andrew H. Buchanana, , and S. Bry Levineb
“This study investigates the global impact of wood as a building material by considering emissions of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. Wood is compared with other materials in terms of stored carbon and emissions of carbon dioxide from fossil fuel energy used in manufacturing. An analysis of typical forms of building construction shows that wood buildings require much lower process energy and result in lower carbon emissions than buildings of other materials such as brick, aluminium, steel and concrete. If a shift is made towards greater use of wood in buildings, the low fossil fuel requirement for manufacturing wood compared with other materials is much more significant in the long term than the carbon stored in the wood building products.”
Latitudes farther from the equator hold less potential to sequester carbon in plant/soil matter, but other reasons combine to make old growth forest protection important.
Brian Brademeyer said trees sequester about three times the carbon in the useful lumber, one third in the roots, one third in the unused branches. Some of the root carbon stays in the ground, some leaks to the atmosphere and of that much is reabsorbed by new forest growth. The much greater carbon loss occurs in clearing forest for annual crops and animal pasture. These plants sequester almost no carbon. And intensive farming methods eventually depletes the soil of its carbon store which is smaller but comparable to the forest store. Stores are greater around the equator so clearcutting and intensive farming there lose a lot more carbon to the atmosphere.
Mr Obvious quotes that building with wood emits much less carbon than concrete, fired brick, aluminum and steel. Shifting food production from annual plants to perennials, especially large trees, and planting many more trees in urban/suburban areas offer opportunities to sequester more carbon, with many other benefits including climate regulation and soil preservation.
Mr Obvious, I cant find your two citations above online, except as references in forest products industry online brochures.
Could you please provide a more direct link to the articles you found in your science search?
rtdrury - I also believe that old-growth forests are more valuable than their carbon sequestering value. We have a number of large trees on our farm that the sawmills want, but I have no interest in selling them. We are not in an urban area but have planted over 20,000 trees on our farm. We put in 900 more this Spring. Some things don’t have to be money-making endevours. We like trees. hopefully our children and grandchildren will too.
Brian - These links should take you to the abstracts. You may need to purchase the whole articles (not sure).
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6VP6-3YJYHVT-2&_user=10&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_sort=d&view=c&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=80b3788f7be0589ae576c702fa3226d1
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6WJ7-47YY3DB-1&_user=10&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_sort=d&view=c&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=4fb438138b218b525e3a1f82b8d46daa
Kem Patrick — actually, I have thought that a deranged madman was going to destroy us all ever since I was a kid during the Cuban Missile Crisis. That particular deranged madman is still out there, in case you haven’t noticed. And that particular demise would be totally human- caused. Why are you not up in arms about the still/ever present nuclear threat ? You paid your taxes this year, didn’t you ? Some of that money goes into our nuclear arsenal.
I am not misinformed or especially underinformed. We could be hit by a space rock tomorrow (google the Tunguska Event for info on what happened in Siberia 100 years ago this June); the supervolcano that we call Yellowstone could blow up; some insane plague could race through the entire 6 billion of us and wipe us out; etc. etc. The ‘methane threat’ is only one of many.
What I am saying is that change happens, maybe the methane threat will do us in, maybe there is some ameliorating process which we are not yet aware of which will counteract it. Having lived in the Far North for most of my life (my husband has lived here all his life), you learn that 1) nature generally gets its own way in the long run; 2) it is in your best interest to not put yourself in an adversarial position towards the natural world and 3) what you do IS important in ways you may not even realize. This is of course a paradox. It is resolved by the realization that we are in a participatory process of manifestation. What is ‘out there’ is a reflection of what is ‘in here’ and vice versa.
We are in the midst of tremendous energetic change, not just this planet but the entire solar system and perhaps beyond. Let’s stop trying to put new wine (awareness) into old skins (paradigms) as per Jesus’ sage advice from 2000 years ago.
Redirecting our taxes to meet local, immediate human needs rather than global corporate greed might be a good start. And useful, too.
Mr Obvious, thanks for the links to the abstracts. You were right, they want $31.50 per article to access each piece.
From the abstracts, both papers specifically state they are focusing on industrial-forestry practices on high-productivity lands, not the low-productivity marginal lands that the Canadian logging article is about. Industrial forestry has its own problems, besides whether it is more efficient than manufactured products in some sector of the economy in some attributes.
And the Buchanan and Levine paper states in its abstract that natural forest growth on low-productivity lands (such as virtually all of our public lands) is where remaining biodiversity is concentrated and where natural carbon sequestration should be promoted. This I agree with.
Brian - We mostly agree on what actions are desirable, but I think we are “playing with a different set of cards”.
Mr 0
That’s great I have to leave the land for farming open but the tree lines around the farm and separate each field is doing great. I will be over 2300 and all by hand. It is the trees that grow from the ones planted I enjoy the most.
A question and it maybe was asked or answered before. When a tree dies it rots and goes back into the earth so wouldn’t that make any carbon it sucked up go back into the ground making it s zero reduction of carbon? Or if you burn it are you not just returning into the air the carbon that was taken in?
As for all the people talking numbers I just say go plant a tree , it will be one more that wasn’t there before.
Fat Lady, I can always use the extra help, sounds like you enjoy getting your hands dirty. L
Hi ALASKA MAID,. Certainly there are natural disasters to be aware of,
I don’t happen to beleive the current globlal warming is a natural cause.
I agree with the scientists who state it is man made and began in ernest
some 200 years ago when the industrial revolution began and we humans
began to burn coal and oil in great quantities. I belelive we can stop it,
and if we don’t we will suffer the consequenses.
BTW, speakng of the Cuban Missile Crisis, I was in SAC at the time and the
number of radio calls coming in for bomber refuels over Spain that last day,
was mind boggling. We came so close to WW-3 it still frightens me. If it were
not for a Russian Sub commander disobeying his orders, because he lost radio
contact with his home base, we would have done it. We were ten minutes from
Armageddon. He waited ten minutes after the time he’d been ordered to fire his
missles and he instead surfaced and called base. He was then ordered to stand down.
But that and taxes is not the issue, the Arctic Methane Gas is currently the
most serious threat to all of mankind and we CAN at least attempt to correct it.
We can’t stop an earthquake, or probably a huge asteroid or comet strike,
or a volcanic eruption. ___ We can stop burning coal and oil.
We probably won’t.
good luck - I am guessing that our farming operation is very different from your’s. Grain farming is about acres, whereas high-intensity vegetable farming for farmers markets is about labor and crop management. This high-intensity allows us to covert most of our land to natural habitat (even though we rotate our crop on a four-year cycle which requires 4x our annual land use to be reserved for agriculture - reduces diseases and use of fungicides).
If a tree dies and rots this is process whereby decomposing animals, bacteria and fungi “eat” the tree. The respiration of these creatures is the same biochemical process that large animals use, so the product is CO2 that is released into the air. However, some of the tree tissue may stay in the soil as organic matter (e.g. deep roots). Burning does return the carbon right back to the air if it is complete, but the roots are spared. The idea of fuel from crops is to have no net production of CO2 since first it is captured and then released. The rub is efficiency and the loss of more natural habitat to disruptive agriculture. As long as a tree is growing, more CO2 is being sequestered. Trees offer many benefits beyond CO2 sequestration, so keep up the great work. Hopefully the trees will not take to much out of the yields at the field edges. If all the bloggers on this site would plant a 100 trees every year, then we might really accomplish something!