Beam Me to Planet Gore !
Posted on 01/02/2009 4:12:32 PM PST by decimon
it appears that the timing of the article was missed by the author, it would have been much more entertaining to see this article released just prior to the Ace Age Cometh article - sad thing is an editor actually approved the story anyway.
“Snetsinger noted that eventually, over the course of a generation, some of the dying forests will begin to regenerate and once again begin storing more carbon than they release. “
(even WITH increased “global warming” and even WITH lack of insect infestation treatment - go figure)
LOG BABY LOG !!
That's ICE volume, not water volume. Water in the frozen state takes up more volume than in the liquid state. So global sea level change from this amount would be about knee-high to a beetle bug.
I have extensive experience with “Dendroctunus Ponderosa” or Mountain Pine Bark Beetle in Colorado where the fires of 2003 have caused tree losses to increase to nearly 2 million per year here. A natural forest renewal provided by the good Lord, Yellowstone is recovering from its fires of the late 1980s (one of my favorite places), and has suffered much of the same. The lesser beetle, the Pine Engaver or “Ips Pini” flies as much as 5 times a year while MPB flies once. With Yellowstone as a guage of what to do...nothing, I’d say we just need to live a while longer if it bugs you enough.
Pine beetle infestations are a natural part of nature’s cycle. Pine beetles generally infest trees that are drought stricken or competing too heavily with other trees for water and nutrition. The pine beetle causes the affected trees to weep sap, which in turn dries these weaker trees out. Eventually, a forest fire or heavy storms will reduce the over-population of pines allowing the stronger trees to prosper.
Stop reading. Next thread ...
Instead, some scientists argue for more extensive logging of the remaining commercial forests so that older forest stands, which are most vulnerable to insect infestations and have nearly reached their carbon-storage capacity, can be replanted with younger trees that will take in even more carbon during their growing years.
This, the last paragraph of the article.
Livestock and fowl are routinely slaughtered (harvested) in the earlier stages of their natural lifetimes because the growth curve is steepest then. That is, uptake and catabolism of nutrients per unit is most rapid then, thereby getting the most meat per unit feed.
I will bet anyone, and take on any botanist or journalist, that young forests, that is those which have been logged and in the stages of regeneration, are more efficient per unit of planet surface at assimilating Carbon Dioxide than any other forest management option. And I'll bet there are multiple studies that prove that.
In other words, if we logged all the forests totally, and used the product in long term carbon-stored products, such as building studs, while the logged areas are simultaneously proliferating with young growth, there would be higher net absorption of Carbon Dioxide, per unit planet surface per unit time, than if left alone in their so-called carbon storage reservoir.
I have seen this logical flaw over and over in the academic community, for example in ground water hydrology, where the dynamic is ignored in deference to the static data.
Similarly, not speaking as an expert, I'll bet the so-called climate models are so far off the dynamic pathways really extant across the comprehensive earth-solar interactive system, that they AIN'T worth the paper they're inked on.
Sounds right.
All of the former desert known as Southern California, has been infested by a green growth that is consuming massive amounts of Carbon Dioxide.
The Carbon Dioxide reduction is further causing a great increase in the pollution of oxygen added to the atmosphere.
Many of the cities are pushing for the removal of this green menace and replacing it with mulch or painted rocks
You beat me to it.
Actually it is simply a mass balance. The CO2 from the atmosphere in converted into Carbon in the cellulose.
Large trees gain more mass than small trees, converting more CO2 into Carbon in the cellulose.
Smaller trees grow more as a percentage but not in absolute mass.
Of course this could be optimized by selective harvesting and planting.
Let’s see, you cut down a bunch of trees and use the lumber to build a bunch of houses and furniture. That keeps all that carbon from returning to the atmosphere for a good long time (baring house-fires).
Then, you plant a bunch of new trees which suck up carbon out of the atmosphere at a much higher per-tree rate than old trees do; they need to, to create all that growing lumber.
Seems pretty simple to me.
But hey, what do I know? After all, I’m not a CLIMATOLOGIST!!!
I can’t make any sense out of this article.
The trees have started giving off carbon because of a beetle infestation and warmer winters?
And reducing logging will fix this?
The rest of the article completely contradicts this statement. Just a couple of paragraphs down
So therefore, even if you accept the highly-politicized premise of this study as fact, it's not happening now and will not until some unspecified time in the future. But simply reporting that was deemed insufficiently scary.
Really, there is very little difference in form between our current media and the Volkischer Beobachter.
Try saying this to an environmentalist. Just make sure there's space in the room for the newborn cow.
"Old growth forests" are the holy of holies for the environmentalists and their Gaia-worship.
Yup. They're saying that cold winters kill off many of these insects and suppress fires. Probably both true. But if we're in a trend of warmer winters is not established and fires are likely a healthy part of a cycle of growth and regrowth in the forests. Fires keep down the populations of harmful insects like these beetles.
And reducing logging will fix this?
They're saying that logging further stresses the forests. If they were talking about clear cutting large areas of forest then I'd agree. But I doubt that clear cutting is allowed anywhere in Canada.
I think old growth forests are good for some wildlife. But nature doesn't allow for eternal forests. The trees eventually burn, rot or petrify.
Here in the northeast, woodpeckers have been increasing in number. That's been attributed to what they are calling the 'second growth' of cleared farmlands now returning to nature. Those second growth trees are becoming the older trees needed by woodpeckers.
The Gaia worshippers are nuts but not always entirely wrong.
Does it have anything to do with cheese?
What, did a beetle eat your moose? No, it has nothing to do with cheese. ;-)
Bummer. ;)
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