Tree hugger? Your wooden harem is much bigger than thought Tree-lovers rejoice! It turns out there are really hugely more trees on planet Earth than anyone had thought. In fact, a new study just published says that there are no fewer than three trillion huggable woody trunks alive on the planet today – roughly seven and a half times as many as the previous best guess of just 400 …
I haven't hugged any trees recently, but judging by the state of my patch of forest (aka "the back yard") trees are doing rather well. As I am fond of explaining to the strange woman living at my house (aka "the wife"), this all has to do with the increased demon gas (aka CO2) in the atmosphere. More CO2=more plants, and that means trees. Quite the conundrum for tree-hugging anti-CO2 Watermelons (aka green on the outside and red on the inside).
Apparently the CO2-is-bad brigade have found a loophole in the CO2--is-yummy-plant-food argument.
I was told by one of these anti-CO2 people that the extra CO2 was causing plant obesity and this puts stress on the internal processes of the plant, causing them to be less healthy. He didn't quite go as far as to say that being fat would cause the plants to get diabetes, but the parallel running through his mind was obvious.
I suggested that he could start handing out pamphlets to the plants to suggest plenty of exercise and outdoor activity.
I was told by one of these anti-CO2 people that the extra CO2 was causing plant obesity and this puts stress on the internal processes of the plant, causing them to be less healthy.
Every bit as valid as any of the carbophobes' other dogma.
Did (s)he then attempt to tempt you with an aura enhancing crystal bottle of organic snake aloe oil and lifetime fellowship of the cult of feargnorance?
Anyone else find it deeply depressing how this sort of fear/superstition seems to persist through history with such uncanny consistency?
Need a witch burning icon --->
Nature is published online, and most scientists read it that way.
It's pretty expensive either on paper or online, so the big advantage of the online version is that as long as your institution has bought a site license, a scientist can read the new issue of Nature without having to use one of the one-three copies the library can afford. So all the scientists can read it at once.
This is true of pretty much all the major academic journals now.
We've removed 8 dead/dying cedars from our yard, and are planting 4 red oaks, 3 linden and 5 or 6 (not sure if I'm getting the plum or not) fruit trees. The damn cedars were a haven for mosquitoes and gnats that made the backyard dangerous. It DID however encourage the local dragonfly and bat population to hang about ... which made for interesting evenings. (Yes, its a big yard)
Lewis, shame on you pointing our that the anti CO2 green blob now have problems because all those extra trees are adding to the CO2 in the atmosphere (shown by satellite readings).
On second thoughts that might be the reason they have converted efficient coal fired power stations to very inefficient wood pellet burning ones - to reduce the number of CO2 exhaling trees.
dear Electorn Shepherd,
I think you will find that living things with an oxygen metabolism shed CO2 as part of the process of living. This includes plants and other organisms using light capture as their primary method for energy fixation in carbohydrates. It's simply that for plants the equilibrium is shifted to a net O2 production when sufficiently illuminated.
In fact, you will find that in the entire life cycle of a plant, actual CO2 capture is minimal, as upon death the plant will get recycled into its component parts by microorganisms, especially in the so-called Rainforests, which tend to have a more or less zero-sum profile when it comes to CO2 capture.
If you're looking for carbon capture through plants you're looking at peat bogs, sub-arctic prairy environments, and other places where microbial decomposition does not have time to fully take place before the next layer arrives. But that's less Glamorous than Rain Forests, isn't it?
"If you're looking for carbon capture through plants"
Can we get partial credit for hauling the carbon out of the forests with logging trucks before the trees fall down and rot? As long as the wood is converted efficiently into houses and furniture and buried instead of burned when the structures are retired?
Sometimes, poor people in developing countries spend time converting wood into charcoal for later use in their cooking. Charcoal is essentially pure carbon made (by trees and humans) from CO2 in the atmosphere.
While carefully avoiding deforestation, we need to buy charcoal by the giga-tonne from the world's poor and tip it into the nearest abandoned mineshaft.
Carbon sequestration.
especially in the so-called Rainforests, which tend to have a more or less zero-sum profile when it comes to CO2 capture.
So by chopping them down and burning them for useful energy we're not actually making things worse for the atmosphere, but gain in terms of fossil fuel deplacement?
If you're looking for carbon capture through plants you're looking at peat bogs, sub-arctic prairy environments, and other places where microbial decomposition does not have time to fully take place before the next layer arrives. But that's less Glamorous than Rain Forests, isn't it?
Yes, but it did give us all the fossil fuels we need today. zero-sum profile again?
"So by chopping them down and burning them for useful energy we're not actually making things worse for the atmosphere, but gain in terms of fossil fuel deplacement?"
It depends how you look at it. Plants need time to regenerate, and a young forest system does in fact fix pretty substantial amounts of CO2, as opposed to a mature one like a rainforest. It's why "sustainable forestation" is a pretty safe bet when it comes to Sensible Greenery. ( amongst other things. There's soil fixation, desertification, and a number of other factors in play as well.) Our use of energy is far greater than the regenerative capacity of plant growth, so that would put a crimp on things right there..
The other problem is the Coriolis effect, effectively segmenting our atmosphere in separate zones, which severely limits transfer of a lot of things, including CO2. It's one of the reasons why the whole "Carbon Bond" idea is pretty much ridiculous. CO2 generated in the northern hemisphere does not magically end up in the Amazon, or other equatorial rainforests, however much Politicians and Hippies wish it so. So if you're taking a lot of carbon from below the equator, and burn it up north, you're effectively creating a localised effect in greenhouse gases.
( El Reg had a lovely article, with video, about NASA showing that effect over a couple of years a couple of months ago. It also shows you how the Russian Taiga waking up for spring literally gulps down the "excess CO2" from Western Civilisation, except for the bits that bleed through to the polar belt, making the CO2 level ( and greenhouse effect) rise ever so slightly there... )
"Yes, but it did give us all the fossil fuels we need today. zero-sum profile again?"
Only if you're talking geological timescales, which is a bit long-term , especially if you consider the absolute guarantee of the disappearing of us naked apes anyway when you take that long a view ;)
"a new study just published says that there are no fewer than three trillion huggable woody trunks alive on the planet today... it's now clear that there are approximately 422 trees for every human being, rather than a comparatively paltry 61."
If we don't immediately take forceful and energetic measures, they are going to take over the entire planet!
"In fact, a new study just published says that there are no fewer than three trillion huggable woody trunks alive on the planet today"
have they all got email addresses? Or is that still just Melbourne?
Our several acre lakefront estate has on the order of thousands of tree, or on the order of tens of thousands of wee little seedlings.
There's an uncertainty of about an order of magnitude depending on if you're willing to get down on your hands and knees and look closer.
When a wee hurricane blew through, it knocked over roughly 200 trees (big ones). Took several years to clean up. Thankfully it was but a fraction of our flock. It's nice living in the forest.
I think the article meant 3 billion trees (3*10^12) as against a human population of , what is it now, about 7 milliard (7*10^9?) Come on, El Reg, let's be using PROPER terms for big numbers here!
(I was thinking of starting a campaign for real numbers, but there's rather a lot of those around already. More than ManyLots.)
While I'd once have agreed with you, I think the argument has been utterly lost in terms of real-life usage. I can't think of a single case where I might use (eg) a 10^12 "billion" instead of a 10^9 one without also having to explain what I meant. IMO, you may as well try to argue against the primary modern usage of the word "gay".
Might I suggest that a better strategy would be to argue for the SI prefixes instead? Hence 3 Peta-trees vs 7Giga-humans.
@Paul Kinsler - so far as I'm aware, it's still the case that most of the world uses the 'long' format naming system, and it's only the UK that's switched from that system to the short one favoured by the US - and that only because our politicians didn't want to confuse the US politicians when it came to our repaying war reparations, erm, sorry, loans, dating back to WW2. (This may be somewhat amiss; If wrong, please correct me). So I'm sticking to my guns on this one, but that said, I do very much like your 3 Peta-trees vs 7Giga-humans too! :-)
Local ABC reported the source article as "bad news" IMHO. Half the trees of the planet have gone. Oh sin and and shame. Forgot to mention the increasing value of forests since 19th century and the abandoning of low productive farmland has increased forests in North Merkinland. Some evidence from explorers logs in Oz that forests in north have spread too. All I can attest is that the northern desert where I lived 40 years ago is getting heavy tree growth along creeks but don't tell greenies. Poor things go red in face. In the meantime my 3000 new trees are doing well. So are the birds that have colonised the area.
Ref. PBS Nova TV show 'Earth from Space' of something like that.
Some satellite or other was monitoring the atmosphere and noticed that the Amazon rain forest was breathing in and out and having very little net effect. Just offshore, the blooms of plankton (or something green) were breathing in more than out.
So the conclusions were that the Amazon Basin is more of a CO2 store than a net CO2 sink, and if you're looking for a net CO2 sink then look at the ocean.
Something like that.
Well, far be it for me to be the bearer of bad news but if the trees produce too much O2, insects will get bigger due to the richer O2 content in the air. Imagine your house millipedes as big as you. And you worry about that scuttling sound in your loft now.....
As for mossies, soon they'll the size of eagles and those puny mossie nets won't really protect you now will they?
And I think we can blame the Andrex puppy for the (soon to be) demise of the humans - planting 3 trees for every one they cut down. How near sighted can they get?
Nuking the forests - that's answer to saving mankind.
a quote from
http://jpe.oxfordjournals.org/content/5/1/109.full
Australia is among one of the world’s wealthiest nations; yet, its relatively small human population (22.5 million) has been responsible for extensive deforestation and forest degradation since European settlement in the late 18th century. Despite most (∼75%) of Australia’s 7.6 million-km2 area being covered in inhospitable deserts or arid lands generally unsuitable to forest growth, the coastal periphery has witnessed a rapid decline in forest cover and quality, especially over the last 60 years. Here I document the rates of forest loss and degradation in Australia based on a thorough review of existing literature and unpublished data.
Important Findings Overall, Australia has lost nearly 40% of its forests, but much of the remaining native vegetation is highly fragmented. As European colonists expanded in the late 18th and the early 19th centuries, deforestation occurred mainly on the most fertile soils nearest to the coast. In the 1950s, south western Western Australia was largely cleared for wheat production, subsequently leading to its designation as a Global Biodiversity Hotspot given its high number of endemic plant species and rapid clearing rates. Since the 1970s, the greatest rates of forest clearance have been in south eastern Queensland and northern New South Wales, although Victoria is the most cleared state. Today, degradation is occurring in the largely forested tropical north due to rapidly expanding invasive weed species and altered fire regimes. Without clear policies to regenerate degraded forests and protect existing tracts at a massive scale, Australia stands to lose a large proportion of its remaining endemic biodiversity. The most important implications of the degree to which Australian forests have disappeared or been degraded are that management must emphasise the maintenance of existing primary forest patches, as well as focus on the regeneration of matrix areas between fragments to increase native habitat area, connectivity and ecosystem functions.
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