It took me a while to get here to comment on the post that Wharfie put up of the old growth tree that had been cut down.
Just a couple of things.
A lot of the old growth trees - Redwoods and others - can easily live 2 or 3 hundred more years (or more) even if they are hollow inside. You can see that happening down in the Redwoods where there are quite a number of still very alive trees that you can walk inside of through an opening at the base.
The other thing that is an issue is that old growth trees -- especially immense ones -- sequester a huge amount of carbon -- not just in the upper part of the tree, but also in the roots and the earth around the roots. When a large tree like that is cut down, the carbon it has been sequestering is released and goes up into the atmosphere. The argument is made that, if you cut down a tree and use the wood to build something, the carbon is still sequestered in the wood, but that ignores the loss of carbon that was in the roots and earth. The roots usually die and begin releasing carbon and also can decompose and release methane as well.
Then we get to the "other" part of the whole old growth tree thing -- and that is that a lot of these trees are not being harvested to use as lumber. They are being shipped to pellet plants where they are made into fuel that is shipped to Asia and the UK and Europe to burn as fuel for generating electricity. This is being done to meet targets for creating "renewable energy". Except that it's basically an accounting trick. These countries can count this fuel as creating renewable energy, but that is ignoring the loss of the trees in the country of origin, and also the energy that was required to harvest the trees, turn them into pellets at big pellet facilities, then ship them across the ocean in fossil-fuel powered freighters, and then hauled to generating plants such as the huge DRAX generator in the UK (used to be the biggest coal fired plant but now it burns trees instead -- trees from Canada and the United States).
I could give you some good links about this. There is plenty on the internet about it. Rachel Carson Council has been posting a lot about it as there are so many forests in the eastern U.S. being cut down for pellets, but this article might be a good place to start.
UK burning Canadian Forests For Fuel
I don't think most people realize just how many wood-fueled electrical power generating plants there are in the world. It's a huge industry and the biomass (pellet) companies have pie-in-the-sky projections for how much more wood they will be burning within the next 5 years. Can the forests around the world that are being savaged already keep up with the demand? I'm quite sure they can't.
croc |
