Re: Off Topic: NMD/Environment was: (Re: Ada and the NMD)

[Leif Roar Moldskred <lrm@huldreheim.provida.no>]

Darren New <dnew@san.rr.com> wrote:

[SNIP]

> Sorry? The embarrassingly silly argument that forests consume CO2 and
> produce O2? Or the embarrassingly silly argument that petrochemicals
> came from plants, and animals that ate plants, and animals that ate
> animals that ate plants?

[SNIP]

> I'd *love* to see a study that says plants don't consume CO2.

In this context, for all intent and purposes they don't. A living
plant converts CO2 into O2 and carbon, but when it dies and rots (or
when it's eaten by an animal, or thrown on a fire) the carbon in the
wood is combined with 02 back into C02. So over its entire life-cycle,
a plant does not consume CO2. So that a forest in equilibrium releases
back into the atmosphere as much CO2 as it consumes.

In other words, the image of the world's forests being "lungs" is
wrong.

A _growing_ forest consumes (a net worth of) CO2, while a forest in
equilibrium _stores_ a non-trivial amount of carbon as cellulose,
effectively keeping it out of the system, and unable to contribute to
global warming.

On of the issues at Kyoto was if planting new forests,
i.e. effectively increasing the total amount of cellulose / carbon,
should count as a reduction in net release of CO2 or not.


-- 
Leif Roar Moldskred
not a biologist, nor do I play one on TV.