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Climate change

Perhaps Silvaire.
If a tree dies in the forest, does it release the CO2 it has captured within it?
Forests need to be managed if they are to survive. So why not make use of what would otherwise be a waste product.

France

Have you taken a look on a heatmap of the world with deforestation? We are chopping trees down at an enormous rate.
If we plant a tree for every tree we burn (which we absolutely do not by any measure) it would still be a negative balance until a couple of decades later when the new tree has grown enough.

If we let the tree rot in the forest it does let out its CO2, but at a much much much slower rate than burning it (which only takes seconds, not decades). That’s the way to actually save CO2 and not another excuse to get subsidies and making money of other people (governments run by ideology-driven people not people who actually know how their certificate system and the athmosphere work together).

Basically chemistry just works: CO2=CO2 and there is no way around that, no matter the subsidies or ideology.

Austria

IMO its the balance that is important. The problem with idealogues is they do not believe in balance, everything is black or white.
Yes planting trees is important, but some seaweeds/plants capture more CO2 faster than trees.
The world needs CO2 it just not need too much of it.
But the world also needs energy, in some parts of the world to heat and to cook.
Fossil fuels are time limited and release CO2 which has been captured for millenia, and will take millenia to recapture the amount it has released.. Burning wood does indeed release CO2 faster and trees recapture CO2 faster than gas or coal. But trees also need pruning to survive and grow. It is the growth that captures CO2 faster. The product of the pruning would be wasted if not used.
A downside of climate change is wildfires which are growing in intensity. The fires produce huge amounts of C02 alongside other pollutants.
Forests are a huge spreader of wildfires. Their intesitybis such that they are much more difficult to control than wildfires in other types of vegetation. So the forests and the surrounds of forests have to be managed in such a way as to limit the spread. Also some trees burn faster than others so again our forests need to be a more varied mix. Oak releases tar, chestnut spits sparks and flames a large distance risking alighting materials eg houses, the other side of fire breaks.
These are all reasons one needs balance. Like we need to balance our diets to keep healthy. We can not ignore any sort of energy and that means ignoring idealogues. It also means restricting wild profiteering.
Idealogues need to accept that people want and need energy and any attempt to change people’s way of living, without consent, or offering a reasonable alternative, will be met with obstruction.
Profiteers need to realise that those profits can only continue if they plan for the future.
Here in France most farmers have long had the habit of planting 2 trees for every one theý cut.
And it has been customary for centuries for people to plant a fruit trée when a child is born.

France

I’m sure you guys must be aware that the number of trees on earth is increasing, not decreasing. Link

ASW22 wrote:

We are chopping trees down at an enormous rate. If we plant a tree for every tree we burn (which we absolutely do not by any measure)

In Sweden we absolutely do! And your example was from Sweden.

it would still be a negative balance until a couple of decades later when the new tree has grown enough.

In Sweden it would not as logging here is at the very least in a stable state and have been for a very long time.

ESKC (Uppsala/Sundbro), Sweden

Silvaire wrote:

I’m sure you guys must be aware that the number of trees on earth is increasing, not decreasing

I sure am! But maybe that’s because I live in a country where forestry is one of the major national natural resources.

ESKC (Uppsala/Sundbro), Sweden

Regarding the article about deforestation from Silvaire:
Very interesting literature. But it clearly states that tree cover and deforestation don’t couple in a linear way.
If you chop down a forest that grew for a hundred years and plant something that grows in 10 years (i.e. palmoil, et al), it still counts the same way even through the densitiy, height and volume are widely different from the original forest and its amount of CO2.

Regarding Sweden:
Yes, my example was from Sweden and yes I wasn’t exact on what I meant on a global scale and what was done in Sweden respectively – my mistake.
Nevertheless it doesn’t matter – simple question: do you want to set the least amount of CO2 free? If so, don’t burn trees that have the the capacity to store it as long as it stays in the forest. If you burn wood you set CO2 free in that moment. There simply ist no way around it and there never will.
However the case could be that the tree captured the CO2 first before setting it free again while burning. That’s practicaly the same for everything (for example with cement this is true at a rate of almost 70%).

Just for some perspective:
In our neighbourhood is a company that makes glue for wood. Because glue has way more CO2 than cement per ton and they have way less restrictions that one glue company sets off more CO2 than all of Austrias concrete-industry combined, but is regarded as “green” in our media.

I am truly sorry, but it is all show. It is only another means to make money.

Conclusion: only way to “save” CO2 is to just stop doing things (working, building, eating, etc.). The rest is just another form of trying to say that there is good and bad CO2.
THE ENVIRONMENT DOESN’T CARE! CO2 JUST IS CO2 and that makes ihre planet a little bit warmer.

Austria

Well done Sweden and any other countries that have had the similar foresight to balance the commercial needs of a country with the environmental needs of the planet.
What the richer more enlightened countries need to do now is to persuade countries like Brazil and Indonesia that they can be economically better off if they stop their deforestation.
But we should also remember that trees not only capture CO2 they also use CO2 on their growth process, turning it into oxygen.
We need CO2, why else do you tell people to breath into a bag when they are hyperventilating?
As I have written before its all a question of balance. More trees, more seaweed, less use of fossil fuels, all contribute to aiding the balance.
We must also be aware that nature itself often throws us with volcanic eruptions and wildfires.
IMO the green lobby sometimes overstep what the people of the world are prepared to accept.
They put up ideological targets which can only make matters worse. It was the green lobby which was behind the near annihilation of the nuclear industry. And look where we are now and what those very same greens are saying.
But it is no good telling people they need to stop doing this or stop doing that. Get rid of their pets, walk everywhere, live in a cold damp house, eat raw vegetables etc. Idealogues need to get real. It isn’t going to happen, especially overnight.

Last Edited by gallois at 14 Oct 07:21
France

gallois wrote:

Well done Sweden and any other countries that have had the similar foresight to balance the commercial needs of a country with the environmental needs of the planet.

To be honest, it is not a question of foresight but of economic necessity going back to the start of industrialisation. Actually even before that as Sweden was a major naval power and needed a steady supply of wood to build warships, so forestry was regulated by the government quite early on.

ESKC (Uppsala/Sundbro), Sweden

Exactly.

Wood producing countries and lumber companies replant to create a sustainable business. Virtually every North American house is framed in wood and they have been ‘forever’. The lumber industry is thereby huge and the supply is maintained for home construction etc indefinitely. It’s been done that way for a long time.

Meanwhile more trees are growing and at higher latitudes than they used to, which is why there are more of them in total than there were decades ago. The concern with deforestation in South America nowadays appears to be related to removing the biodiversity of old forests, which is a different issue.

The one area of the lumber business that I recall being really messed up years ago was high quality Sitka spruce for aircraft (EuroGA relevant) which was over-harvested during WWII and has apparently never recovered. Obviously in terms of numbers of trees this is small issue relative to the volume of Douglas fir etc for home construction.

Last Edited by Silvaire at 14 Oct 15:05
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