Now Trees are bad

If they're so bad, why do global average co2 levels drop as our deciduous trees leaf out in the warmer months and rise when these trees no longer hold their leafs?

If placed properly, trees can also reduce heating and cooling costs to a significant degree thereby also reducing additional greenhouse gases from these sources.

The planting of trees may not be a viable consideration for carbon offsets, but they serve other vital functions and should not be discredited.

 

Oh, so perhaps the answer to global warming is to continue to slash and burn all the rainforests, until all those bad trees are gone?

Excuse me while I go laugh my nice person off at the pure stupidity of it all....

 

I guess I agree with them here.
Not that trees are bad, but as a carbon offset, it is very disengenious.
I could plant 50 trees in my yard, what does that offset? There's not enough space for them to grow to maturity, so they'll never actually offset anything. Saplings do very little in the way of carbon sequestration. It takes 40 years to get to maturity. This no trees ruling is just closing of a likely loophole that would defeat the purpose of the carbon offset.

There are plenty of other reasons to plant trees, and we should do so. But as an official carbon offset, its a little shady.

 

Then they are stupid and should have a tree fall on them as they are cutting them down to "save the earth". JK!

They could have done a better job of explaining their reasoning, while preserving the "pro tree" stance, I'll give you that. But they are completely right, in that a bunch of tree seedlings do NOT offset carbon. Most won't make it to maturity, and the benefit takes decades, so it is not a true offset.

 

The British Navy used to make a practise of planting trees on far off islands, so that --one day-- if a passing ship was dismasted, there would be material present to reconstruct the rigging.

They also used to plant cabbage and lettuce, so that perhaps later, scurvy-ridden mariners would discover greenstuff to keep them healthy.

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The builders of a cathedral in the UK planted a stand of trees so that, when the building needed maintenance (it was constructed in the Fifteenth Century) there would be the same kind of wood at the ready. Now, it's actually being used. (but will they plant another stand of trees? remains to be seen).

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So what if trees don't offset immediately?

It's like the old story: an elderly homeowner said to his gardener, "I'd like a giant oak tree in my front yard." The gardener explained that it'd be hundreds of years before the tree reached maturity.

"Well, we'd better plant it today" was the homeowner's reply.

The trees we're discussing would mature far faster than the one in my example.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(efusco @ Aug 1 2007, 10:34 AM) [snapback]488602[/snapback]</div>

Well, FWIW I did a fairly in-depth study of Terrapass in a thread here about a year ago on carbon offsets, and I decided that they do not in fact provide any quantitative reduction in carbon emissions. Purchasing a Terrapass ought to be viewed in the same light as making a small charitable contribution toward the development of green energy. As far as I could tell, at the time, Terrapass was largely a green-tag retailer, purchasing "green tags" from low-carbon electrical generation and retailing them to consumers. But their purchase of the "green tags" did not cause the low-carbon electricity to be created or sold, so their purchase of them has, as far as I can tell, essentially no (short-run) impact on the amount of "green" (low-carbon) electricity being produced. They merely claimed "ownership" of part of an existing stock of green electricity that would have been produced regardless of the Terrapass purchase.

So in my opinion it's a bit of the pot calling the kettle black for them to say that planting additional forests is not a feasible means of (at least short-term) carbon sequestration. They need to demonstrate empirically that their main line of business -- green tag retailing -- results in reduction in carbon emissions first. Then then can talk about alternatives.

 

http://www.tufts.edu/tie/tci/carbonoffsets...oncompanies.htm

msantos posted that on cleanmpg, research on what offset companies do.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(douglas001001 @ Aug 2 2007, 03:35 PM) [snapback]489494[/snapback]</div>

Thanks, that's a good link. They recommend Terrapass "with reservations", but their description of Terrapass does not match my understanding of what Terrapass largely does. This study describes Terrapass as, among other things, funding and structuring wind power projects. But the Terrapass website makes it clear that, for the wind projects, they purchased some green tags from existing up-and-running wind farms. The dollars involved per KWH seemed trivial to me, not nearly enough to make or break the decision to produce the clean power. So, for them to claim the carbon offset for the wind KWH seems incorrect, to me. Yes, they bought the green tags. No, that made no difference whatsoever in the amount of wind energy those farms produced and sold. Maybe they've moved on since I last looked at them.

I'll have to go back and read this as I find the time, but the study seems to be a real believer in the Chicago climate exchange. So maybe I just fundamentally disagree with the premises of the study, because as far as I could tell, the original partners in the CCE were, in effect, adopting a way to minimize total carbon reductions and cost, subject to their voluntary pledges to reduce carbon emissions by a fixed percentage. Instead of every partner reducing C02 by at least 4%, say, which would have entailed larger reductions than that at some establishments, by trading the credits, only the average had to fall 4%, yet each partner could individually claim a 4% reduction. And once it spread beyond the original partners, where people could buy the credits and remove them, and you have things that are not actual trades of carbon reduction credits, all voluntary, its tough to figure what impact, if any, this has, except as the C02 equivalent of the good housekeeping seal of approval. Which is worth something, but is not the same has having a known, quantified reduction in C02 emissions.

Basically, it all boils down to this: does your dollar of spending cause a carbon-reducing action to happen, that would not have happened otherwise in the absence of that spending? At least in the long run? If you plant a tree that would not otherwise be grown, or put PV on your roof, then you know. I buy wind energy through my utility (VEPCO) because I think that financial arrangement actually does result in more wind power being used, at least in the long run. I buy the wind farm's output (by proxy), and this directs significant revenue per KWH to the wind farm. Though, really, there is no way for me to know for sure that it has an impact. And I don't buy from green-tag retailers because I think, by and large, in the typical case, that does not cause more green electricity to be produced and used. Or at the least, it's hard to tell, and I'd bet that most of those purchase do not result in more green electrical output. But again I have no way to know for sure.

Here's a DOE website that gives some perspective on green tags, I think.


http://www.eere.energy.gov/tribalenergy/certificates.cfm

They describe projects chosen to be good examples of how green tags work.

One example was a one time payment of $100 per PV installed KW, in return for the green rights, for home and other small producers. That $100 is pretty small compared to the roughly $7,000 cost of an installed KW of PV. I don't think that payment caused any additional PV to be installed. It's a charitable contribution, not a payment for a defined offset.

The second is the selling of the green rights to a small wind turbine. If you look at their example, and assume the wind turbine produces one-third of peak output on average, then the "green tags" sold for about a half-cent per KWH. If average output is higher, price per KWH is lower. That's nontrivial but it's not a lot of money. It's not clear that the anticipation of a half-cent per KWH did or did not affect the decision to put up the wind generator.

But the discussion also says: "Although green tag marketers rarely disclose the amount of money they are paying for the green tags, they are currently selling them for as low as 1.5 cents per kilowatt-hour or as much as 4 cents per kilowatt-hour." OK, if somebody offers 4 cents per KWH, I could see where the green tag revenue might be a make-or-break revenue source for a project -- where the tag sales make the project happen, and the project wouldn't happen in the absence of the sales.

So I think that for a lot of this, you really can't tell whether the carbon reduction would or would not have occurred in the absence of your carbon offset dollar. Despite the attempts at rating the offerers.

Which is a pity, because this has tremendous potential to maximize carbon reduction per dollar if it were organized properly. I guess ratings like the one above are a good step, but somehow I wish there were a way to bring more certainty to the product you think you're purchasing when you buy from a carbon-offset provider.

Anyway, back on point, if a company plans to establish forest in perpetuity in an area that would not otherwise be forested, then I would feel far more confident about the impact of funding that company, than I would about the ultimate impact that results from my purchase of a Terrapass.

 

Planting trees=good

Setting an arbitrary limit on something, then allowing folks to sell of their unused "somethings" for a profit=bad.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Darwood @ Aug 1 2007, 04:28 PM) [snapback]488819[/snapback]</div>

OK. As a forest owner I must weigh in. These figures are from the
EPAhttp://www.epa.gov/sequestration/rates.html

Representative carbon sequestration rate in U.S.(Metric tons of C per acre per year)
Time over which sequestration may occur before saturating (Assuming no disturbance, harvest or interruption of practice)


Afforestation a) (planting trees on unforested land)
0.6 – 2.6 b )
90 – 120+ years
Birdsey 1996

Reforestation c)
0.3 – 2.1 d)
90 – 120+ years
Birdsey 1996

Changes in forest management
0.6 – 0.8 e)
If wood products included in accounting, saturation does not necessarily occur if C continuously flows into products
Row 1996

0.2 f)
IPCC 2000

Conservation or riparian buffers
0.1 – 0.3 g)
Not calculated
Lal et al. 1999

Conversion from conventional to reduced tillage
0.2 – 0.3 h)
15 – 20 years
West and Post 2002

0.2 i)
25 – 50 years
Lal et al. 1999

Changes in grazing land management
0.02 – 0.5 j)
25 – 50 years
Follet et al. 2001

Biofuel substitutes for fossil fuels
1.3 – 1.5 k)
Saturation does not occur if fossil fuel emissions are continuously offset
Lal et al. 1999

Having swung a bush axe, chain saw, clearing saw, piled brush manually and with the hydraulic help of my tractor front end loader I can say that in no time plant material, here in NC, really produces a large amount of mass in a short amount of time. There are hundreds of trees on a forested acre. IMHO planting trees in a suburban yard has a significant positive cumulative effect.

 

The real world is always a little more complicated than we think it is.

Trees are good carbon sequestration machines, but you need to back off and consider the original problem. That would be global warming. That is what we would like to mitigate. The carbon dioxide content of the atmosphere is only one part of the equation.

Trees do three things: take in and convert carbon dioxide (global cooling, due to reduced greenhouse gases), put out water vapor (global cooling, due to increased clouds reflecting light), and decrease the albedo of the surface (global warming, due to decreased reflection of light, and the resulting conversion of the absorbed sunlight into heat). When taking all three into account, it turns out that the effectiveness of a tree at reducing global warming depends on where you plant it:

Plant a tree and save the Earth?

In short, plant them in the tropics, but not in the mid or high latitudes. For the latter, the albedo effect will cancel or more than cancel the other effects, not decreasing global warming. Reforesting the tropics on the other hand will decrease global warming.

It's always in the details.

As for the original topic on what sort of carbon offsets you should buy, I think that they're all rather questionable, not just the tree planters. The companies that sell them today are selling mainly guilt offsets, not carbon offsets. If there are people out there willing to buy something, you can be sure that there will be those happy to sell it to them. Considering how intangible this particular product is, it deserves an extra double dose of caveat emptor.

In the long run though, I would expect this market to mature, especially when the feds start setting limits on carbon emissions. Then there will likely be a brisk market in carbon offsets.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(madler @ Aug 24 2007, 03:00 AM) [snapback]501441[/snapback]</div>

I needed more information. Here's an example of terrestrial albedo effect from the great wikipedia.

"The classic example of albedo effect is the snow-temperature feedback. If a snow covered area warms and the snow melts, the albedo decreases, more sunlight is absorbed, and the temperature tends to increase. The converse is true: if snow forms, a cooling cycle happens. The intensity of the albedo effect depends on the size of the change in albedo and the amount of insolation; for this reason it can be potentially very large in the tropics."

The majority of trees on my place are pine trees...evergreen. I don't believe there is a total loss during the winter months. If one lives in a temperate region perhaps one should plant an evergreen.

 

I saw a program about char carbon sequestration last night, works like this.
Grow trees and grasses that grow quickly
Cut down trees and chip. Cut dry grass
Heat chips and grass in a kiln with no oxygen
Draw off combustible gas
Use gas to run chipper, heat kiln and generate power
Product left in kiln is char, like charcoal but chipped
Spread char over fields and plough in as it improves soil water retention and fertiliser effectiveness
plant food crops and trees
Cut down and chip trees and stubble of food crops
etc

The carbon put in the soil will stay there, it never releases carbon into the air unlike trees which fall down and rot down eventually unless made into something permanent.
I'm no expert but there are plenty of areas of baron ground that could use improved water and nutrient retention.

I think we need a multi facetted approach to carbon control

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(madler @ Aug 24 2007, 03:00 AM) [snapback]501441[/snapback]</div>

I also remain skeptical since the urban heat island concept points directly to the "insulating" effect of vegetation. Heat absorbtion of urban areas can raise temperatures as much as 10 degrees farenheit.

Here's some info from the epa.
"The term "heat island" refers to urban air and surface temperatures that are higher than nearby rural areas. Many U.S. cities and suburbs have air temperatures up to 10°F (5.6°C) warmer than the surrounding natural land cover.

The heat island sketch pictured here shows a city's heat island profile. It demonstrates how urban temperatures are typically lower at the urban-rural border than in dense downtown areas. The graphic also show how parks, open land, and bodies of water can create cooler areas."

The epa solution set includes green roofs and tree planting.

Visit the site at: http://www.epa.gov/heatisland/about/index.html

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Suburban600 @ Aug 25 2007, 11:22 AM) [snapback]502048[/snapback]</div>

Absolutely if you have a choice between planting trees and planting urban areas, you should plant trees!

The choice being discussed though was the choice between bright, reflective higher latitude relatively empty land, and that same land with trees planted on it, lowering the albedo.

By the way, I haven't seen any numbers, but I suspect that our urban areas in total contribute relatively little to global warming. Of course, the contribution to local warming is significant. Interestingly, there are places where it is globally beneficial to plant trees to reduce global warming, but where those trees increase local warming.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(madler @ Aug 25 2007, 08:37 PM) [snapback]502157[/snapback]</div>

Where does planting trees increase local warming? Just asking. An interesting phenomena I'd like to learn more about.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Suburban600 @ Aug 25 2007, 07:47 PM) [snapback]502177[/snapback]</div>

Up north. Boreal forests and the like. The trees absorb more energy than the surrounding terrain.