From: spike66 (spike66@attbi.com)
Date: Sun Dec 01 2002 - 10:21:18 MST
John K Clark wrote:
>
> ...I don't know of anyone who claims the Kyoto Protocols even if followed
> to the letter will significantly slow global warming...
> this is the most expensive one in the history of the world, so expensive it
> will keep millions in poverty who need not be... John K Clark
I see nothing wrong with being proud of a government
that refuses to go along with a bad agreement, just
because a lot of others are following like a procession
of catatonic quaalude quaffers.
Without doing any involved math, we know the mass of
the atmosphere is about 10 meters of water, so thats
about 11 meters of wood. The big hoot is over the mass
of carbon dioxide rising from a historic 300 parts per
million to a current 360 ppm, so thats equivalent of a
column of wood less than a millimeter thick, once you
account for the fact that CO2 is mostly oxygen and wood
is nearly all carbon. The total addition of carbon to
the atmosphere in the industrial revolution is less than
a millimeter thick coating of wood over the entire surface
of the planet.
So fer cryin out loud, how hard would that be to undo
that? We can come up with 1% of the earth's surface
somewhere and park the equivalent of 10 cm of wood
there, cant we? Hoerkheimer! Why would we need to
slow down emissions?
OK, I will do a little math. I do a quicky calculation
and see that the atmosphere contains about 7.5E14 kg of
C02, so thats about 2E14 kg of carbon, or wood. I have
seen a eucalyptus tree grow to well over a meter
diameter and 20 meters tall in ten years. Model that
as a cylinder, and just say a square meter at the base
and 10 meters tall and with the branches thats about 10
cubic meters or 1E4 kg, so we only need 1E10 of those to
contain half the carbon in the atmosphere. A square array
of trees 100k on a side would get us our 1E10 trees. Well,
I know those could be grown on 10 meter centers easy, so a
eucalyptus tree farm 1000 km on a side would do it.
The earth's surface is 5E8 km^2, and a quarter of that is
dry land so it would require less than 1% of the land in
new trees. Wyoming alone is over a quarter of that, and
there is nothing out there but cows and cow pokes. Hell,
there are ranches in Australia bigger than that, with
nothing but quaalude-quaffing wallabies hopping around
out there (or whatever wallabies actually do, if anything.
Perhaps they poke cows.)
Pipe in fresh water and a fire suppression system and no
more global warming.
Of course this all assumes we decide we dont like global
warming. Poor Anders is up there freezing his Viking fanny
off, and we are down here worrying about where we are going
to have the winter olympics. Kyoto schmyoto! Its a bad
political solution to a relatively easy technical problem,
and I commend those governments who just said no.
spike
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