[Terrapreta] Fwd: Fwd: Global Carbon Cycle

[Duane Pendergast]

Lou, Kevin,

 

If the mature trees in forests are harvested and the lumber goes to houses
you have established a carbon sink and made more room for younger trees to
grow.  When the houses are scrapped the wood could be turned into charcoal
for terra preta.  The forest has thus become a long term sustainable sink.

 

For a submission to Canada's Parliament related to the first step see;

 

http://www.computare.org/Fora%20Input.htm   down the page at  "February 21,
2005 - Brief on the Role of Forests in Canada's Greenhouse Gas Inventory"

 

Duane

 

-----Original Message-----
From: terrapreta-bounces at bioenergylists.org
[mailto:terrapreta-bounces at bioenergylists.org] On Behalf Of lou gold
Sent: June 5, 2007 9:47 PM
To: Kevin Chisholm
Cc: Terrapreta at bioenergylists.org
Subject: Re: [Terrapreta] Fwd: Fwd: Global Carbon Cycle

 


Hello Again,

I have to admit that I haven't understood all aspects of these system so
please let me off the hook of defending them all. I want to focus on just
one:



Consider a "mature" forest. By definition, a "mature" forest has 0
Annual Increment... there is no net gain or loss of biomass... the
forest mass lost by dying trees is made up for by new growth from 
younger trees. If the trees are cut and used for building, then the
carbon content of the wood is sequestered in a building, and new space
is freed up for growth of new trees to take Carbon out of the
atmosphere. A mature forest does nothing to alleviate the Greenhouse 
Effect, and as far as I can see, saving Mature Forests is a blatant
Carbon Credit Scam.


It works this way. 20% of Brazil's carbon emissions is smoke from
deforestation. Then there is the added emissions of whatever is released
from the denuded soil. Then there is whatever is  burned for fuel. Then
there is the life-cycle releases as products become wastes. The point is
that the natural carbon sink retains its carbon much longer and in decay
slowly contributes to ecosystem functions such as creating habitat,
filtering water and building new soil. Indeed the quickly growing young
plantation draws down CO2 much faster, but it is nowhere near the pace of
the release in deforestation. 

There are two processes we want to reward. 1) Slow the release into the
atmosphere of carbon from wherever it is "sunk" and 2) retrieve from the
atmosphere into new sinks in many forms (like terra preta). The thought is
that it will take public policies to incentivize these processes. 

 

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: /pipermail/terrapreta_bioenergylists.org/attachments/20070605/17c8b343/attachment-0001.html