From: spike66 (spike66@attbi.com)
Date: Sun Dec 01 2002 - 21:27:14 MST
Ramez Naam wrote:
> From: spike66 [mailto:spike66@attbi.com]
>
>>But Robert (J not N), you have flown over this country
>>and looked down, you know how much empty wasted space
>>there is. We *can grow* ten billion new trees, honest
>>we can.
>
>
> Uh-oh, I've discovered some data that makes this plan a bit doubtful.
> As I posted earlier, your proposal is basically to double the mass of
> forests on earth. However, I made a calculation error in that post.
> Total US land area is roughly 900 million hectares, not *9 billion* as
> I previously posted. Of that area, 300 million hectares are already
> forest land. So in the US you're talking about taking the % of land
> that is forests from 33% to 66%. That's not realistic.
Ramez I may be over my post limit for today, so do let
me summarize everything in one post. I argue it is
possible to fix arbitrarily much carbon in trees.
I do not calculate from the existing mass of wood
in existing forest land, for I argue that forest
can be created with far higher wood density than
currently exists in US forests. We can use species
that grow faster and denser than our current pine
forest, assuming plentiful water. This is accomplished
by proper water control, which we currently do not
do at all.
Go back to my calculation that all carbon we would
need to fix would be contained in 10 billion big
trees, which could be placed on 10 meter centers,
assuming the right kind of trees and plenty of
water. Not pines, they cannot grow nearly
densely enough. They arent the right kind of
trees for this purpose.
As for the argument that much of the land in
the world is not arable, I argue that it can
be made so. Given plenty of water, some tree
species can grow in very poor soil. We have
also in our bag of tricks redistributing soil
from places where it is plentiful to where it
isnt. Redistributing water will do most of
the magic.
Regarding your calculation of existing wood
mass vs existing forest, you did not take into
account the possibility of replacing existing
forest with other tree species that grow more
densely. If you are in Taxifornia, look me
up and I will take you to a dense stand of
Eucalyptus trees more dense than the meter
diameters on 10 meter centers that I proposed
in an earlier post.
If we got carried away, I could easily see
where we would soak up so much CO2, plants
would be gasping for the stuff, more than
they already are. Fortunately we could
easily re-liberate it by putting a torch
to one or more of the forests.
Of course it is an ambitious project, but there
is no hurry. We do not need to have it finished
before the singularity. It can be a 300 year
project, eh? Or 3000.
spike
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