[ShortcutToMoncton]

A little Ars Technica article on distributed computing's effect on climate change modelling. Just another little note for all those "conservative politicians armed with studies from industry-funded think-tanks and a healthy dose of congnitive dissonance" we see around this place.


OoooooOOOO! I can't wait for the guy who posts "BUT WE ONLY KNOW THE TEMPERATURE SINCE 1850 WTF!!!!!!!!OMG!!!!!!!!" He's ALWAYS a riot!

greg

[wdlove]

Research is important, the more data the better chance for validation. Burying into the Arctic ice allows for the study of the temperature over multiple centuries.

[Mastrap]

But I feel safer in my SUV. Surely that's more important than the stupid climate.

[Sherwin]

Originally posted by Mastrap:
But I feel safer in my SUV. Surely that's more important than the stupid climate.

Yeah. It's all the car's fault.
Nothing at all to do with chopping down entire continents of trees so you can have your hamburgers grown.

Sarcasm aside, I've been wondering about this recently. Politicians going on about meeting CO2 targets and stuff. They always seem to approach it from a "generate less CO2" viewpoint and never seem to come out with the obvious "trees like CO2 and make O - we should plant some trees!". Puzzles me. Maybe I'm undereducated in the matter.

[ShortcutToMoncton]

That is true, but on the other side of the coin there's only so many trees you can plant. Most modern cities (at least in Canada that I've seen, anyway) do spend quite a decent bit of space on parks and tree growth. (Of course, I do live in Edmonton, which I think has the most green space in North America, but still.) We're a growing population, and we've gotta live too.

Of course all the environmentalists and whatnot are horrified at this chopping down of the rainforests and all the clearcutting that goes on there, but they often forget that we pretty much did the same thing in many parts of North America. I guess because it was x number of years ago and now it's "really farmland" it doesn't matter, but I think it's still a bit hypocritical.

Anyways, I'm tired, it's -20 out, and I'm gonna go turn up the heat. Go Canadians and our highest per capita energy use in the world!

greg

[chabig]

The United States has more forests today than it did 100 years ago.

[sugar_coated]

Such research is very important! I hope they continue to do good research and prove their theories.

[Sherwin]

Originally posted by chabig:
The United States has more forests today than it did 100 years ago.

However, places like Europe and South America don't.

A few hundred years ago, the whole of Europe was one big forest. Now it isn't. Surely this must have had some effect on the climate?

And of course, we know for sure that large areas of rainforest are being felled daily to make way for hamburger grazing land.

-----
Assuming that the "it takes 16 times more land to produce a pound of beef than the nutritional equivalent in non-meat food" is correct:

1/16 of the current crop-capable grazing land to crops.
2/16 of the current crop-capable grazing land over to spare land for the three-year crop rotation method (still the best way of crop farming).

That's 13/16 of the current crop-capable grazing land available for tree plantation - a lot of CO2 absorption/O production.

-----
But when one has a burger in one's hand, it's just much easier to blame SUV owners for the problem, no?

[Mediaman_12]

The problem is that a Tree absorbs the most CO2 as it is growing, A fully grown Tree doesn't absorb much CO2 (relatively). Also a tree only 'stores' the CO2, and once it's dead it starts to emit the CO2 back, ether by rotting in the ground, by being burnt even using the wood for other things (paper, carving etc) releases some of the stored CO2, and the process also usually produces loads of additional CO2.
Trees are NOT the answer.

[ShortcutToMoncton]

Originally posted by Mediaman_12:
The problem is that a Tree absorbs the most CO2 as it is growing, A fully grown Tree doesn't absorb much CO2 (relatively). Also a tree only 'stores' the CO2, and once it's dead it starts to emit the CO2 back, ether by rotting in the ground, by being burnt even using the wood for other things (paper, carving etc) releases some of the stored CO2, and the process also usually produces loads of additional CO2.
Trees are NOT the answer.

May or may not be true. For example, the boreal forest (which covers a large part of the Northen Latitudes) are relatively a massive sink of CO2, due to their slow decomposing processes.

greg