Wood burning stoves - Radio 4 programme (CO2 and going green etc)

What about, if you fell & burn a 20 year old tree, but you planted another

Oddly enough, a few years ago I was involved in the development of a magic effect - which went nowhere in the end.

The concept was to allow a spectator a 'free' choice of any page in a London A-Z. The performer would then be able to describe exactly what the spectator was looking at, even though his back was turned or he was blind folded.

The performer didn't actualy know which page the spectator was looking at, but knew that only certain pages with common features could have been selected. Using a technique known as the Rashomen Effect and a little cold reading, a seemingly spot on revelation could be made.

A typical revalation would have been " I see a major road running diagonally across the page, there is a tube station, there is a very large open space coloured green - a park or heath....

The effect never went anywhere because virtually evey single page in the London A-Z features a very large open space coloured green. That bit made it too obvious.

London has huge areas of open space full of trees & grass, I'd bet more of the area is open land than built on. Have a look, its quite an eye opener.

In message , David W.E. Roberts writes

But then again, you could dig a hole, seal yourself in a plastic bag and jump in

fairly carbon neutral that

Hardly huge

Huge seems to be a d*****ad who has just killfiled me

It does seem to be fairly well accepted by those with a clue

In denial, are we ?

And you think I give a f*ck ?

In message , Andrew Gabriel writes

Well, yes it is

\Yes but this is a very slow process

The problem is the amount being stuffed into the atmosphere at the rate of burning

All that seems ultimately important is the amount of CO2 (and other gases) currently being ploughed into the atmosphere - where it comes from is not really important

Errm right so were there any other subjects that you failed at school besides Physics, Chemistry and Biology?

geoff coughed up some electrons that declared:

Sorry if I've missed this: what's the basis of the assertion that the world's doomed in less than 20 years?

Cheers

Tim

Well the current science basically says that if growth of CO2 is not halted and reversed within that period, drastic, more or less irreversible and serious climate change will happen, to the point where the ability of the planet to support its current population is in considerable doubt.

On Tue, 14 Apr 2009 23:12:18 +0100 someone who may be "mark" wrote this:-

No, that's what you claim the anti-plastic bag lobby tell us.

....

Well, it rains a lot and there were oak forests when the Romans arrived.

Colin Bignell

David Hansen posted

What do they really tell us, then?

The only direct evidence I have seen of what the plastic lobby tell us is a bloke who was speaking for them on Breakfast TV. He said saving plastic bags wouldn't actually do any good except that it was "symbolic" and would get people into the right "mindset" for what we had to do.

I was not impressed with the idea that they are trying to force us to suffer considerable inconvenience for something that is merely "symbolic" and "mindsetty".

In message , geoff writes

I may have ignored the original assertion.

Yes. A certain amount of carbon released in running round to plant as well. However, burning the original tree is no worse than burning the equivalent coal.

Right. I'm with world wide investment in fusion but I also think population restraint is important.

regards

geoff posted

I never said it was, I was just describing the carbon economics of the forestry industry.

The fact is that (according to the manmade global warning lobby) we have both an immediate problem and a longer-term problem. Substituting tree-planting for fossil-burning is not going to solve the immediate problem but it might contribute to solving the longer-term "sustainability" problem, if we can get over the immediate problem.

Try it then. FInd a landowner and say, Excuse me I'd like to plant a load of trees on your land. You'll find he'll say, Well actually I'm using that land for something else at the moment. Go and find somewhere else.

Doubtless, but just because there are big carbon absorption mechanisms that we cannot change doesn't mean we should ignore the smaller ones that we can change (for some values of big and small).

I don't get your point ...

Rotting timber releases about 8 times more CO2 per year than all of the world's fossel fuel burning in a year. Of course, it's balanced by the CO2 absorbed by growing plants, and if it didn't happen, plants couldn't grow because they'd run out of carbon (and other nutrients).

All vegitation alive today will release its carbon into the atmosphere, mostly within 100 years. If there was a way to harness this, it provides us with 8 times the energy we currently use from fossel fuels, for no carbon increase.

Well if there weren't tropical rain forests, where did all the coal come from. Plenty in kent at least..once..

We haven't lived 'sustainably' for 10,000 years plus.

And we probably never will.

Absolutely.

even when you find marginal land that isn't much use for anything..think Forestry commission - the temptation to plant acres of conifers is large..followed by an outcry of 'destroying some habitat'

Curiously, there are probably more trees in the UK than 200 years ago.

A point made by some bloke on the telly, who went to try and view all the sites of constables landscape painting, and discovered most of the scenery was now obscured by...trees.

Trees are good things. They cool the ground underneath, they absorb excessive water flow in heavy rain,and they act as windbreaks, and stop avalanches.

But they are in competition with food crops.

Britain once was almost all woodland. When it had a population of 10,000....

At various times, or so we're told, the UK has been a desert, a jungle, a swamp, under the ocean, above the ocean, covered in ice, and anything else you can think of. A rain forest is probably well on the cards.