because it's just trees that sequester carbon, right?
crops, grass, weeds, livestock....useless to compare?
Climate Change- CSIRO
- Thread starter josko
- Start date
because it's just trees that sequester carbon, right?
crops, grass, weeds, livestock....useless to compare?
That's easy to solve ... we'll close all our coal fired power stations and open a swag of nuclear ones instead. How's your backyard looking?
Hmmm - we'll also move you into a nice little two up/two down house with no aircon and give you a bicycle to get everywhere as the public transport sux.
I did read that something like 20% of Australia's total emissions are released in the Latrobe Valley in Vic.
They operate the only power stations in the developed world that still burn brown coal, which is basically like hard peat.
Of course if we were allowed to build a dam to establish another hydro scheme we could close them down couldn't we
Reading further it seems that SA actually has the "dirtiest" power station, maybe a nuclear plant on the Bass Strait could supply both states
They operate the only power stations in the developed world that still burn brown coal, which is basically like hard peat.
Of course if we were allowed to build a dam to establish another hydro scheme we could close them down couldn't we
Reading further it seems that SA actually has the "dirtiest" power station, maybe a nuclear plant on the Bass Strait could supply both states
It is not actually about young trees.
I know what you are getting at but a tree growing in an established forest makes no difference to carbon sequestration and I think thats what you meant anyway i.e. adding new trees.
If any particular young tree does not grow another will in its place grow and only another will grow when this young tree dies and releases its carbon. On aggregate the forest has its store of carbon and it will only change if the environment changes.
Trees only sequester new carbon when they are new trees in an area where there is otherwise no trees to begin with if that makes any sense.
If you cut down a tree and dump it deep in land fill you would be some chance of actually sequestering the carbon and allowing new trees to take their places back in the forest. I have heard of Roman timber fortifications that were subsequently buried and still remain in tact to this day when exposed. The Romans in effect sequested this carbon and allowed new trees to take up where these trees were cut down in the forest when they allowed these forts to be buried.
Don't know if the green party would be all for this one in tasmanias old growth forests? Bring in the front end loaders!
Imagine how many we could cut down if we only had to push them into holes?
So even a big tree growing will be sequestering carbon if it is growing in a place where there would otherwise not have been a tree to begin with, i.e. planted by man or allowed to grow where currently there is only grass or some other lesser carbon sink. Cutting down an old growth forest and allowing it to rot on the ground will release the carbon stored in it.
I hope I do not sound like a stickler but it is all about more trees than before rather than young ones if we want to change the carbon balance.
Some good advice for spludgey considering he said this...
Well you don't get more home than at home.
I wonder how many Greens/Labor voters have made more than token changes (if that) to reduce emissions
.I agree our high consumption lifestyle puts us up in the high carbon stakes but we are particulalrly high against the west at large because;
We rely mostly on coal
We are a vast continent with much distance between people
As others have said we are a primary producer and miner
then look to lower carbon economies like France.
They use nuclear initially not out of some desire to be green but because for them it is efficient. They do not have coal to the degree we do.
It is easy for Europeans to bring in carbon taxes because they will become more competitive in a post carbon tax world. We become less competitive if you believe we have at this time picked the most efficient utilisation of resources which appears to focus here on coal.
If I was living in France I would want a carbon tax too.
Exactly. Not everywhere do trees grow best. Naturally, land that was originally forest, grows good trees. But grassland has few trees, and was covered in grass and other herbage. So it grows grass best. So that's most pastures, crops, lucerne, etc. Most of the plains around here were originally treeless. Waste of time trying to grow trees on it. Pasture or crops would leave trees for dead on this type of land.
See ya's.
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I reckon give it time and there will be some noxious weed geneticially developed by "green" scientists to sequester carbon that will grow anywhere.
With the dry season hardiness of a prickly pear and speed of infestation of crofton weed plus the final grown characteristics and appearance of a camphor laurel it will be a sure fire remedy to the worlds carbon issues.
A few years down the track after the trees development and scientists bunkering down into the pro release and anti release and when the debate around whether to release the tree has run it's course in the public with the two camps for and against it set in their ways it will be finally said by both of the parties: "There will be no infestation from a new genetically engineered tree species in a government that I lead."
But you can never really trust them...
After we have run our other secondary industry based export industries into the ground with strange economic reforms this new tree species will be let loose so that all our grassland and prime farmland is wall to wall chockers with nice dense timber and by extension carbon. Only then we can truly say we have done our bit for the world.
with the IMF owning and logging the Amazon basin, surely a good portion of blame can be attributed to them?
http://www.smh.com.au/environment/e...t-hits-par-with-coal-fuel-20110817-1iybc.html
Solar costs hit parity with Coal fired energy.
Solar costs hit parity with Coal fired energy.
I think our high CO2/population has more to do with our low population than our high CO2 output. No other theory makes sense to me.
We are not bigger consumers than the US or China. But they have a higher critical mass of people in a smaller geographical area to reduce this particular measure of pollution.
That to me is not parity.
When it costs the same to produce solar energy as it does to produce coal power I will say it has hit parity and then people will naturally build solar plants.
Not when individuals get paid the same per kW hour back into the grid as they pay for their coal power.
Untill then it hits parity only becuase of subsidies and taxes, which is parity sure but it is not the cheapest more productive option.
Tom and tigger,
Great debate! And some common sense.
If you (metaphorically speaking)believe that CO2 is the problem...if there is a problem...
What we need to do in relation to CO2 is figure out how we can counter it/reduce it/use it while still staying competitive with the rest of the world...ESPECIALLY while in the middle of a Global crisis.
While Wayne Swan continues to tell Joe Blow that we are "well placed" to withstand the European/US crisis....we should not stick our heads in the sand and continue down a path that is proving beyond doubt, economically to be destructive.
Consumers are not spending because they are still looking over their shoulders at GFC1. Small business is not growing because they are also looking at the past and cannot grow because they fear new paycheques and the banks won't loan them money because they are too busy laying off staff...(So to speak)
The pollies can lash out at Qantas all they like, but when the big end of town, including Westpac start laying off ALOT of staff...do you think it's because they are worried about CO2 levels?
They and Joe Blow are alike. They are protecting their own ***.
I saw over 5000 people protesting for their democratic rights because: in my words:
Something is up with this Carbon Dioxide tax...and it's not the temperature of the Globe.
Regards JO
Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/environment/e...h-coal-fuel-20110817-1iybc.html#ixzz1VNGpYQ3s
No, there is something wrong with this report. In no way is solar power presently as efficient or as cheap as electricity. There is more to this story.
Ask any consumer that does not have a subsidy from the NSW Government.
Regards JO
Compare the CO2 per capita with the SQM per capita and i am sure you will also see a correlation.
Tigger Industrial agriculture, which I think is a ******s term , so agriculture is a large part of the solution. Improved pastures sequester 8% more carbon than trees, native pastures also sequester carbon. Cropping systems over the last 20 years(No till) have been based on building organic carbon levels in the soil, and allowing carbon capturing microbes to build up. It is called the carbon cycle. It allows farmers to reduce nitrogen fertilizers and eventually elimiinate them , while the build up in fertilty allows continuos cropping and better plant growth so increasing carbon storage. Pasture and crops create a better carbon sink than a forrest. It has recently it has been discovered that trees release epoxides, microscopic particles that through a complicated process turn into CO2. I read where forest fires are responsible for 10% of CO2, and rotting leaf litter is another source of CO2, In one study after 15 years a forrest had released 76% of the carbon it had taken up. Young trees dont stay young. AS one poster said you really do need to get out and have a look at what is going on.
If pasture and crops create a better carbon sink than a forest, then isn't it ironic that we seem to be selling off our prime agricultural land to China and our own pursuit of Coal Seam Gas.
Here we are in the middle of Global Warming/Man-Made Climate Change panic....and we are digging up prime agricultural land to mine coal seam gas....at what seems to be an alarming pace. Why the rush?
It has unknown factors and if there is a potential for its extraction to impact on ground water and land, it's by-product water, is not drinkable....and so we have a byproduct that needs to be disposed of....like Nuclear power.....then why the rush?
The CO2 tax. Gillard and Brown are closing down brown-Coal powered stations with their eyes firmly on black coal, the CO2 tax is coming and GAS is now an enhanced form of cleaner energy. Now more than ever.
What worries me, is that we are going to be living in a world 50 years for now having neglected food and agricultural neccessities, neglecting the plantation of trees and forests...in our ever ending bid to supposedly rid the world of CO2.
Carbon dioxide contributes less than one percent to the greenhouse effect as compared to water vapor. If we harness the "contaminant" in CSG by-product...then what effect will this then have on our global climate? Are we creating a worse so-called monster than CO2?
When the CSIRO was based on scientific research and it's benefit to Australia and it's economy....we might have had a realistic answer.
When the CSIRO has to report to Management Teams, so that their work might be manipulated and an answer that was "possibly" or even "most likely" becomes "conclusively" and "evidently", then we can't rely on the CSIRO to give us the facts.
When a scientist is told he may lose his job...we can't rely on the scientist.
TIMES Magazine 1974 - How to Surve the Coming Ice Age....
[QUOTE]“American Far West, while New England and northern Europe have recently experienced the mildest winters within anyone’s recollection.
when meteorologists take an average of temperatures around the globe they find that the atmosphere has been growing gradually cooler for the past three decades. The trend shows no indication of reversing.
“Man, too, may be somewhat responsible for the cooling trend. The University of Wisconsin’s Reid A. Bryson and other climatologists suggest that dust and other particles released into the atmosphere as a result of farming and fuel burning may be blocking more and more sunlight from reaching and heating the surface of the earth.
“Whatever the cause of the cooling trend, its effects could be extremely serious, if not catastrophic. Scientists figure that only a 1% decrease in the amount of sunlight hitting the earth’s surface could tip the climatic balance, and cool the planet enough to send it sliding down the road to another ice age within only a few hundred years.
“University of Toronto Climatologist Kenneth Hare, a former president of the Royal Meteorological Society, believes that the continuing drought and the recent failure of the Russian harvest gave the world a grim premonition of what might happen. Warns Hare: ‘I don’t believe that the world’s present population is sustainable if there are more than three years like 1972 in a row.’ “[/QUOTE]
Ah! It's all about the money...and the more I reasearch the more the bottom line is:
MASS MANIPULATION = MONEY!
Regards JO
Here we are in the middle of Global Warming/Man-Made Climate Change panic....and we are digging up prime agricultural land to mine coal seam gas....at what seems to be an alarming pace. Why the rush?
It has unknown factors and if there is a potential for its extraction to impact on ground water and land, it's by-product water, is not drinkable....and so we have a byproduct that needs to be disposed of....like Nuclear power.....then why the rush?
The CO2 tax. Gillard and Brown are closing down brown-Coal powered stations with their eyes firmly on black coal, the CO2 tax is coming and GAS is now an enhanced form of cleaner energy. Now more than ever.
What worries me, is that we are going to be living in a world 50 years for now having neglected food and agricultural neccessities, neglecting the plantation of trees and forests...in our ever ending bid to supposedly rid the world of CO2.
Carbon dioxide contributes less than one percent to the greenhouse effect as compared to water vapor. If we harness the "contaminant" in CSG by-product...then what effect will this then have on our global climate? Are we creating a worse so-called monster than CO2?
When the CSIRO was based on scientific research and it's benefit to Australia and it's economy....we might have had a realistic answer.
When the CSIRO has to report to Management Teams, so that their work might be manipulated and an answer that was "possibly" or even "most likely" becomes "conclusively" and "evidently", then we can't rely on the CSIRO to give us the facts.
When a scientist is told he may lose his job...we can't rely on the scientist.
TIMES Magazine 1974 - How to Surve the Coming Ice Age....
[QUOTE]“American Far West, while New England and northern Europe have recently experienced the mildest winters within anyone’s recollection.
when meteorologists take an average of temperatures around the globe they find that the atmosphere has been growing gradually cooler for the past three decades. The trend shows no indication of reversing.
“Man, too, may be somewhat responsible for the cooling trend. The University of Wisconsin’s Reid A. Bryson and other climatologists suggest that dust and other particles released into the atmosphere as a result of farming and fuel burning may be blocking more and more sunlight from reaching and heating the surface of the earth.
“Whatever the cause of the cooling trend, its effects could be extremely serious, if not catastrophic. Scientists figure that only a 1% decrease in the amount of sunlight hitting the earth’s surface could tip the climatic balance, and cool the planet enough to send it sliding down the road to another ice age within only a few hundred years.
“University of Toronto Climatologist Kenneth Hare, a former president of the Royal Meteorological Society, believes that the continuing drought and the recent failure of the Russian harvest gave the world a grim premonition of what might happen. Warns Hare: ‘I don’t believe that the world’s present population is sustainable if there are more than three years like 1972 in a row.’ “[/QUOTE]
Ah! It's all about the money...and the more I reasearch the more the bottom line is:
MASS MANIPULATION = MONEY!
Regards JO
Josko.
I cannot agree with you around your assertions on coal seam gas.
Minerals are not the property of the property owner. The current movements around this scare me as like for windfarms the coal seam gas projects will still go ahead all that will happen by giving owners a right to veto is effectively giving them ownership.
You have your usual green suspects at these protests of course but for the most part it is land owners thinking they are getting a raw deal. Sure this is not how to politically sell the issue but you have to be realistic enough to understnad the mineral resource is worth far more than the land in its current use and the transition must not be made innefficient or we risk turning mining like residential development.
The amount of land being effected is limited when you contrast it to the amount of land being used for agricultural pursuits. I am concerned about water table and ground water quality but this is only because I do not know enough about it to put this issue to bed in my own mind. I suspect though the government when granting leases would consider such risks?
This will create yet another inneficiently in the one industry we are efficient at and transfer ownership of the mineral prior to leases being drafted from the people to the land owner. The miner will be left paying for the mineral to the landowner and again to the taxpayer in royalties.
This is why I might be scared of Julia Gillard but Tony Abbot after his comments on this may even be worse?
Owners should be justly compensated when minerals are discovered on their property but they should not have a right to veto giving them in practical terms an effective ownership of the resource.
I cannot agree with you around your assertions on coal seam gas.
Minerals are not the property of the property owner. The current movements around this scare me as like for windfarms the coal seam gas projects will still go ahead all that will happen by giving owners a right to veto is effectively giving them ownership.
You have your usual green suspects at these protests of course but for the most part it is land owners thinking they are getting a raw deal. Sure this is not how to politically sell the issue but you have to be realistic enough to understnad the mineral resource is worth far more than the land in its current use and the transition must not be made innefficient or we risk turning mining like residential development.
The amount of land being effected is limited when you contrast it to the amount of land being used for agricultural pursuits. I am concerned about water table and ground water quality but this is only because I do not know enough about it to put this issue to bed in my own mind. I suspect though the government when granting leases would consider such risks?
This will create yet another inneficiently in the one industry we are efficient at and transfer ownership of the mineral prior to leases being drafted from the people to the land owner. The miner will be left paying for the mineral to the landowner and again to the taxpayer in royalties.
This is why I might be scared of Julia Gillard but Tony Abbot after his comments on this may even be worse?
Owners should be justly compensated when minerals are discovered on their property but they should not have a right to veto giving them in practical terms an effective ownership of the resource.
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