What's new
By:
USCHO Fan Forum

This is a sample guest message. Register a free account today to become a member! Once signed in, you'll be able to participate on this site by adding your own topics and posts, as well as connect with other members through your own private inbox!

  • The USCHO Fan Forum has migrated to a new plaform, xenForo. Most of the function of the forum should work in familiar ways. Please note that you can switch between light and dark modes by clicking on the gear icon in the upper right of the main menu bar. We are hoping that this new platform will prove to be faster and more reliable. Please feel free to explore its features.

climate change times are a changin'

Status
Not open for further replies.
Re: climate change times are a changin'

The Sicatoka said:
"Remember that all models are wrong; the practical question is how wrong do they have to be to not be useful." -- George E. P. Box

How wrong do they have to be to not be useful? Did any of them predict the worldwide "flat decade"?
Click to expand...

Sorry, leaving for a Brewer game but I think these two videos may help. Not sure if you have watched any of potholer 54s video but he is pretty decent to examine where claims come from. Sorry to punt, but some people are better at things than I am :)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xvMmPtEt8dc&list=PL82yk73N8eoX-Xobr_TfHsWPfAIyI7VAP

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_PWDFzWt-Ag&list=PL82yk73N8eoX-Xobr_TfHsWPfAIyI7VAP
 
Re: climate change times are a changin'

walrus said:
What technology allows us to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and what do they do with it once removed?
Click to expand...

Technology: Photosynthesis. Anything with chlorophyll does it (not just trees).

What do they do with it: Grow. Flower. Reproduce. Die. Rot.


Trees (all plants with chlorophyll) are just giant air filters. Someone want to come over later and mow my air filter and trim the branches on my air filters?
 
Last edited:
Re: climate change times are a changin'

dxmnkd316 said:
Trees.

Burn them.
Click to expand...

Ok:) I already do that, heat with wood, own wood lot. I saw someone(FF) say it was cheap to remove already present Carbon Dioxide from the atmosphere and I was wondering how they did that? I've seen blurbs about storage but math eliminates that from what I saw at least at present production.
 
Re: climate change times are a changin'

walrus said:
Ok:) I already do that, heat with wood, own wood lot. I saw someone(FF) say it was cheap to remove already present Carbon Dioxide from the atmosphere and I was wondering how they did that? I've seen blurbs about storage but math eliminates that from what I saw at least at present production.
Click to expand...

A coal plant in Saskatchewan is getting subsidized to test a process to capture CO2 and send it to the Bakken to be injected down into wells. This, in turn, will boost production from the well.

However, as with anything ... the other side of the sword.
 
Last edited:
Re: climate change times are a changin'

walrus said:
Ok:) I already do that, heat with wood, own wood lot. I saw someone(FF) say it was cheap to remove already present Carbon Dioxide from the atmosphere and I was wondering how they did that? I've seen blurbs about storage but math eliminates that from what I saw at least at present production.
Click to expand...
I'm still wondering.

Per a professor from a fine institution in Central New York, an acre of mature trees can process 40,000 lbs of CO2 per year. Worldwide man-made CO2 emission totals 37.7B metric tons, or 83T pounds. So alls we need to do is plant 2.1 billion acres of trees. That's an area about 13% larger than India, so it doesn't sound particularly cheap or easy to me.
 
Re: climate change times are a changin'

walrus said:
I saw someone(FF) say it was cheap to remove already present Carbon Dioxide from the atmosphere and I was wondering how they did that? I've seen blurbs about storage but math eliminates that from what I saw at least at present production.
Click to expand...

Right. Trees, bushes, shrubs, flowers, grass, all plants remove CO[SUB]2[/SUB] from the atmosphere. That makes deforestation a huge problem in climate change modeling / prediction. People who own greenhouses actually pump CO[SUB]2[/SUB] into the atmosphere to promote better plant growth, and for much of prehistory, the earth was warmer than it is now, had higher levels of CO[SUB]2[/SUB] in the atmosphere than we do now, and had much more abundant plant growth than it does now.

If we want to remove CO[SUB]2[/SUB] from the atmosphere, we grow tremendous amounts of trees, and then build stuff with the wood so that the CO[SUB]2[/SUB] trapped in the wood stays out of the atmosphere.

This is actually quite feasible and realistic response. According to the Arbor Day Foundation (print brochure from membership when I joined many years ago), if each one of us planted 10 trees that grew to maturity, we would totally offset our CO[SUB]2[/SUB] deficit.
 
Re: climate change times are a changin'

LynahFan said:
I'm still wondering.

Per a professor from a fine institution in Central New York, an acre of mature trees can process 40,000 lbs of CO2 per year. Worldwide man-made CO2 emission totals 37.7B metric tons, or 83T pounds. So alls we need to do is plant 2.1 billion acres of trees. That's an area about 13% larger than India, so it doesn't sound particularly cheap or easy to me.
Click to expand...

But you can cut down the trees and keep planting new ones. The CO[SUB]2[/SUB] remains trapped in the ones already cut down. Also, that is not the only way to remove CO[SUB]2[/SUB] from the atmosphere. One also can trap it on the way out of smokestacks, etc. as well. Developing that kind of technology seems far more feasible to me than asking people to reduce their standards of living drastically.
 
Re: climate change times are a changin'

FreshFish said:
But you can cut down the trees and keep planting new ones. The CO[SUB]2[/SUB] remains trapped in the ones already cut down. Also, that is not the only way to remove CO[SUB]2[/SUB] from the atmosphere. One also can trap it on the way out of smokestacks, etc. as well. Developing that kind of technology seems far more feasible to me than asking people to reduce their standards of living drastically.
Click to expand...
Why would you cut down a mature tree which is capturing many pounds of carbon per year and replace it with a sapling that will store a few ounces? That makes no sense.

Edit: when I was at Sequoia National Park, I remember reading a plaque which said that the General Sherman tree adds essentially the equivalent of a mature oak tree to its bulk each year. Healthy, mature trees have the highest growth rates (in terms of mass per year), so that's what you want for your carbon sequestration forest. Obviously, get rid of any dead/dying trees or ones whose growth was being choked out by neighboring trees, etc, but cutting down perfectly healthy ones to replace them with younger trees would be completely counterproductive - you'd have to cover the whole world with saplings to get the same carbon capture effect that 2.1B acres of mature trees would provide.
 
Last edited:
FreshFish said:
But you can cut down the trees and keep planting new ones. The CO[SUB]2[/SUB] remains trapped in the ones already cut down. Also, that is not the only way to remove CO[SUB]2[/SUB] from the atmosphere. One also can trap it on the way out of smokestacks, etc. as well. Developing that kind of technology seems far more feasible to me than asking people to reduce their standards of living drastically.
Click to expand...

How would one encourage such technology? Perhaps by putting a cost to emitted CO2, thereby encouraging companies to reduce their CO2 output and/or plant trees? Just like we did SO2? Hmmm...
 
Re: climate change times are a changin'

Maine is 95% or close to that forest already. Guess we ain't helping
 
Re: climate change times are a changin'

unofan said:
How would one encourage such technology? Perhaps by putting a cost to emitted CO2, thereby encouraging companies to reduce their CO2 output and/or plant trees? Just like we did SO2? Hmmm...
Click to expand...

how are we going to get india and china to buy into that is the bigger question?
 
Re: climate change times are a changin'

The Sicatoka said:
A coal plant in Saskatchewan is getting subsidized to test a process to capture CO2 and send it to the Bakken to be injected down into wells. This, in turn, will boost production from the well.

However, as with anything ... the other side of the sword.
Click to expand...
Again, math gets in the way when talking about putting CO2 into the earth at present production or at least from what I've heard or read. Maybe someone can refute that?. I think conservation is the cheapest way to curb CO2 production yet never see much about that in lame stream media
 
Re: climate change times are a changin'

unofun said:
How would one encourage such technology? Perhaps by putting a cost to emitted CO2, thereby encouraging companies to reduce their CO2 output and/or plant trees? Just like we did SO2? Hmmm...
Click to expand...

That would work great in theory. The problem is in the practical details. The government shouldn't get any of that money; we just cannot trust them with it. Look at how the tobacco settlement has been used for all sorts of things other than smoking-related illnesses, for example, or how the social security "trust fund" has been raided to finance the federal deficit.

Especially with the current administration, which has repeatedly failed to keep its word or to follow the laws as enacted. any kind of program that you describe is off the table at least until 2017. That's a natural consequence when you say one thing and then do another, people stop trusting you.
 
Re: climate change times are a changin'

LynahFan said:
Why would you cut down a mature tree which is capturing many pounds of carbon per year and replace it with a sapling that will store a few ounces? That makes no sense.

Edit: when I was at Sequoia National Park, I remember reading a plaque which said that the General Sherman tree adds essentially the equivalent of a mature oak tree to its bulk each year. Healthy, mature trees have the highest growth rates (in terms of mass per year), so that's what you want for your carbon sequestration forest. Obviously, get rid of any dead/dying trees or ones whose growth was being choked out by neighboring trees, etc, but cutting down perfectly healthy ones to replace them with younger trees would be completely counterproductive - you'd have to cover the whole world with saplings to get the same carbon capture effect that 2.1B acres of mature trees would provide.
Click to expand...

I think we are saying essentially the same thing in different words. Mature trees eventually die and are replaced.

We also are not limited only to trees. Any kind of plant growth will work just fine, though I'm not quite ready to cover the surface of the oceans with algae just yet. and ideally a combination of emissions reductions and atmospheric CO[SUB]2[/SUB] removal will work best.
 
Re: climate change times are a changin'

FreshFish said:
I think we are saying essentially the same thing in different words. Mature trees eventually die and are replaced.
Click to expand...
Right, but the point is that you need 2.1B acres of mature trees at all times - you can't just re-use the same acre 2.1B times.

We also are not limited only to trees. Any kind of plant growth will work just fine, though I'm not quite ready to cover the surface of the oceans with algae just yet. and ideally a combination of emissions reductions and atmospheric CO[SUB]2[/SUB] removal will work best.
Click to expand...
While we might not be limited to trees, my guess is that they are some of the best plants out there for CO2 removal in terms of mass per time per acre. Maybe I'm wrong and grass (or corn or wheat, etc) grows so quickly that its absorption rate per acre exceeds that of trees, but I doubt it. Conservation/reduction absolutely has to be part of the story.

Best way in the world to reduce carbon production: replace coal plants with nuclear ones. Hmmmm....maybe we'd better start planting those trees!
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top