Posted on 02/13/2009 12:11:15 AM PST by ApplegateRanch
VICTORIA'S bushfires have released a massive amount of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere - almost equal to Australia's industrial emission for an entire year.
Mark Adams, from the University of Sydney, said the emissions from bushfires were far beyond what could be contained through carbon capture and needed to be addressed in the next international agreement.
"Once you are starting to burn millions of hectares of eucalypt forest, then you are putting into the atmosphere very large amounts of carbon," Professor Adams said.
In work for the Bushfire Co-operative Research Centre, he estimated the 2003 and 2006-07 bushfires could have put 20-30million tonnes of carbon (70-105 million tonnes of carbon dioxide) into the atmosphere.
"That is far, far more than we're ever going to be able to sequester from planting trees or promoting carbon capture," he said.
[snip]
Carbon emissions from forest fires are not counted under the Kyoto Protocol. But he said he thought it likely they would be in future agreements.
"All informed scientific opinion suggests that whatever new protocol is signed (at the UN summit) in Copenhagen or elsewhere will include forest carbon, simply because to not do so would be to ignore one of the biggest threats to the global atmospheric pool of carbon dioxide, the release of carbon in fires."
(Excerpt) Read more at theaustralian.news.com.au ...
PING!
So what are the idiots going to do, come out in favor of fighting fires, or insisting that all Australians stay at home for a year and not run their economy?
What I’m wishing for is a big volcano to go off. These folks will all drop dead. Then we can get back to a sane world for the rest of us.
Probably ban unlicensed fires. At least that sounds stupid enough to be their response.
This story shows a basic misunderstanding of science. Whether the plants burn now or die and rot later, the amount of carbon released is the same.
“What I’m wishing for is a big volcano to go off.”
I was thinking about volcanoes too (along with forest fires).
Does Gaia have a carbon credit account with ALGORE?
2) The hundreds of people who died don't rate a mention in this piece.
3) "I think we are ignoring critical areas of research in favour of a technological solution. In this case, we need to better understand the natural cycles."
Ya think?
A Professor is wrong about science? How can that be, when he also agrees with a Nobel, Oscar, and Grammy winning expert?
Oh, wait; it is BECAUSE he agrees with the guy who flunked his science classes!
Yeah, rapid combustion, or slow oxidation, it is still the same amount of carbon and oxygen involved.
In fact, this way, they probably came out ahead, since any methane that would have resulted from slow decay is eliminated.
They don't call him a "dispassionate scientist" for nothing!
Uh, they make fire extinguishers that use CO2 to put out fires. Easy to clean up and turns out to be a fertilizer.
http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,,25046286-25717,00.html
Excerpt:
Bizarrely, Mitchell Shire Council even made a ratepayer, Liam Sheahan, pay $100,000 in fines and costs for clearing his own fire break, which last weekend saved his Reedy Creek home from the fire storm which destroyed many houses around it.
And Nillumbik Shire, which contains Kinglake, last year warned ratepayers it had just fined two people for clearing trees from around their own homes, and another for simply picking up dead wood from the roadside.
Comment: Has the world gone nuts?
I'll be the first to say it. The BUSH fires are ... Bush's fault.
Don't confuse the poor dears with the chemistry of decomposition. :)
That’s it, boys, time to ban lightning!
EnviroNazis are extremely stupid people....
I don’t know. Al thinks they’re on a first name basis, but I’m not so sure Gaia knows who Al is.
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