by Michael Smith
Now, what a good idea. This could put forestry really back on the map.
The world and the human race, in short all of us, must urgently embark on a massive program to power civilization from wood to stave off catastrophic climate change, one of the world's top scientists said recently.
Twenty years ago, Professor James Hansen was the first leading scientist to announce that global warming was taking place. Now he has issued a warning that a back-to-the-future return to one of the oldest fuels is imperative because the world has exceeded the danger level for carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Current targets on emissions are 'a recipe for global disaster, not salvation' he said.
We have recently only made mention of this, that is to say, that the burning of wood is much better than the burning of anything else for heating and, so I am sure, powering electricity generation. Here especially via CHP plants.
Growing trees, which absorb the gas from the air as they grow, burning them instead of fossil fuels to generate electricity, and capturing and storing the carbon produced in the process is needed to get the greenhouse effect down to safe levels, he says.
The dear professor talks about storing the carbon produced from the burning. May I ask what for? If we grow trees for burning then all we release is the carbon that the trees absorbed over their lifetime and the carbon released will “feed” other trees which, in turn, will be going the same way, e.g. into the furnaces.
We must not, however, grow special woods for this but should and must use the wood from the current forests and woodlands that are being managed. No, dearest misguided eco warriors, we must not leave the woods and forests unmanaged. On the contrary, they will only thrive if they are managed and especially if they are managed as a means to reduce our impact on the global climate. Forests and woodlands, properly managed and cared for, are our best insurance policy.
We also must plant new forests and woodlands urgently, but those must, as I said before, made up of a mixture of woods and not be mono-cultures.
The level of carbon dioxide stands at 385 parts per million (ppm), about 100ppm above what it was at the start of the Industrial Revolution. It is rising by about 2ppm a year. The most ambitious international efforts focus on stabilizing it at 450 ppm, though few see this as achievable.
One can but wonder as to whether anybody has ever though of linking the fact that the carbon dioxide level has risen that much with the fact that ever since the Industrial Revolution we have been cutting down trees as if there is no tomorrow and where we do not cut them down now we let them rot. The process of wood rotting also releases carbon dioxide, namely that which the tree, over its lifetime, stored.
Aside from the fact that climate change is a natural cycle of the Earth, the increase in CO2 is more than likely due to the fact that the world's carbon sinks, the forests, have been shrinking ever since the Industrial Revolution because of our insatiable hunger for wood (later to a degree to be replaced by coal and then oil) and when it comes to the large forests in Canada that are cut down to be made into paper tissues and paper towels (whatever is wrong with a cloth handkerchief and a cloth towel?) by the likes of Kimberley Clark, the producers of Kleenex and other brands, and the wholesale slaughter of trees in the Rainforests of the world, now even in the pursuit of a green goal, that of bio-diesel, are still shrinking at an alarming rate today.
There is but one answer: stop cutting down all the forests willy-nilly and turn them into sustainable management, to be managed for all our needs, be this furniture and building wood, firewood and others products. We also must get away from the notion of the “habitat piles” of wood to be left rotting in the woodlands and forests. They release CO2 back into the atmosphere without benefiting anyone and in addition to that much of the wood that is left “as habitat”, which would years ago have gone to homes as firewood, is in fact creating a danger for the woods and forests, in the form of fire hazards as well as a haven for tree diseases.
But Professor Hansen says that he is convinced that 350 ppm is the absolute maximum that will avoid the loss of the polar ice sheets and other disasters. He says that all coal power stations must be phased out by 2030, unless they are equipped with special "carbon capture and storage" equipment that stops the gas escaping into the atmosphere. If that was done, the level could be stabilized at 400 ppm. After that, a vigorous program of planting trees to suck up carbon dioxide – coupled with the use of carbon capture equipment when the trees are burnt, and improvements in agricultural practices – could get levels down to 350 ppm "within a century".
As I stated above, there is no need to capture the carbon from the burning of the trees as the CO2 thus released will be absorbed again by the new trees that are being planted and those that are still growing normally. Carbon is the natural food of the trees and therefore there is no real need to use any carbon capture when wood is being burned.
However, we need more trees and more other green plants, plants which will absorb CO2 as food.
© M Smith (Veshengro), September 2008
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Phase out coal and burn trees instead, a leading scientist urges
