climate change

Happy Lammas Day!

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lammas shoots

If you took tree or plant physiology, you may remember lammas shoots. According to Kozlowski here it’s because in England they occur around Lammas Day, the first of August. Also according to Kozlowski, they are called “Johannastriebe” in German and St. Martin’s shoots in France, after those saints feastdays.

Here is a recent (2011?) poster studying lammas shoots in Norway spruce. Because a variety of genetic groups were planted at different locations, they can parse out the genetic and environmental components.

Give Forests to Local People to Preserve Them

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Fred Pearce from New Scientist…Here’s the link.

The best way to protect rainforests is to keep people out, right? Absolutely not. The best way to keep the trees, and prevent the carbon in them from entering the atmosphere, is by letting people into the forests: local people with the legal right to control what happens there.

Given the chance, most communities protect rather than plunder their forests, says a new study by the World Resources Institute and Rights and Resources Initiative, both in Washington DC. The forests provide food, water, shelter, medicines and much else.

The report, Securing Rights, Combating Climate Change collates many existing studies. It concludes that forest communities only have legal control over one-eighth of the world’s forests. The rest is mostly controlled by governments or leased for logging or mining, often in defiance of community claims.

But community-owned forests are often the best-protected. In the Amazon rainforest, deforestation rates in community-owned areas are far lower than outside.
Hand it over

Since 2000, annual deforestation rates in Brazil have been 7 per cent outside indigenous territories, but only 0.6 per cent inside. The report estimates that indigenous territories in the Brazilian Amazon could prevent the emission of 12 billion tonnes of CO2 between now and 2050.

Brazil’s indigenous territories are an important reason why deforestation rates there have fallen by two-thirds in the past decade. The country is a leader in handing over forests to local people, having recognised some 300 indigenous territories since 1980. Almost a third of all community forests are in Brazil.

Likewise, in Guatemala’s Peten region, which includes the Maya Biosphere Reserve, deforestation is 20 times lower in community areas than those under government protection. In Mexico’s Yucatán state, deforestation is 350 times lower in community forests.

“We can increase carbon sequestration simply by transferring ownership of forests from governments to communities,” says Ashwini Chhatre of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, who was not involved in the report. He led a 2009 study that reached similar conclusions (PNAS, DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0905308106).
Not happening yet

However, global progress on recognising community claims has slowed since 2008. Governments, especially in Asia and Africa, are reluctant to give up control. In Indonesia, which recently overtook Brazil as the country that is deforesting fastest, the report found that only 1 million of its 42 million hectares of forests are formally under the control of their inhabitants.

“No one has a stronger interest in the health of forests than the communities that depend on them for their livelihoods and culture,” says Andy White of the Rights and Resources Initiative. “It is tragic that this has not yet been fully adopted as a climate change mitigation strategy.”

That could change. This year’s round of international climate negotiations will be in Lima, Peru, near the Amazon. Agreeing how to protect forests and the carbon they contain will be a central focus. “Strengthening community forest rights is critical to mitigating climate change,” says Jennifer Morgan of the World Resources Institute.

South on Wildfires and Climate Change

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Pages from south on fire

Thanks to the SAF Linked-In group for this one. Here is a link to a story about Dr. South’s testimony to the Senate Energy Committee.

Here are a couple of excerpts:

Untrue claims about the underlying cause of wildfires can spread like “wildfire.” For example, the false idea that “Wildfires in 2012 burned a record 9.2 million acres in the U.S.” is cited in numerous articles and is found on more than 2,000 web sites across the internet. In truth, many foresters know that in 1930, wildfires burned more than 4 times that amount. Wildfire in 2012 was certainly an issue of concern, but did those who push an agenda really need to make exaggerated claims to fool the public?

Here is a graph showing a decreasing trend in wildfires from 1930 to 1970 and an increasing trend in global carbon emissions. If we “cherry pick” data from 1926 to 1970 we get a negative relationship between area burned and carbon dioxide. However, if we “cherry pick” data from 1985 to 2013 we get a positive relationship. Neither relationship proves anything about the effects of carbon dioxide on wildfires since, during dry seasons, human activity is the overwhelming factor that determines both the number and size of wildfires.

(I (SF) would argue that changes in suppression tactics/capabilities/technology are difficult to separate from other factors over time).

And

Untrue claims about the underlying cause of wildfires can spread like “wildfire.” For example, the false idea that “Wildfires in 2012 burned a record 9.2 million acres in the U.S.” is cited in numerous articles and is found on more than 2,000 web sites across the internet. In truth, many foresters know that in 1930, wildfires burned more than 4 times that amount. Wildfire in 2012 was certainly an issue of concern, but did those who push an agenda really need to make exaggerated claims to fool the public?
Here is a graph showing a decreasing trend in wildfires from 1930 to 1970 and an increasing trend in global carbon emissions. If we “cherry pick” data from 1926 to 1970 we get a negative relationship between area burned and carbon dioxide. However, if we “cherry pick” data from 1985 to 2013 we get a positive relationship. Neither relationship proves anything about the effects of carbon dioxide on wildfires since, during dry seasons, human activity is the overwhelming factor that determines both the number and size of wildfires.

Anyone is welcome to find other quotes of interest.

When I was at work, I often wondered “what difference does it make whether and how much current fires conditions are caused by climate change or not?” (Many climate scientists say it is too late to fix short-term changes). Would it make a difference in the 1) fire resilience planning for communities? 2) strategy for fuel treatments? 3) fire suppression? If so, how?

Note:I’m not picking on Dr. South here, the question has been raised by journalists and others, so a debate needs to happen. My point is: given that all this is extremely complex, what difference would different answers make in practice?

What Actions Should Be Taken To Counter Global Warming and What Are The Consequences?

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We have just had a warm dispute about Global Warming. We discussed whether or not mankind has lived through much worse global warming than the present, contradictions in data and interpretation of the data as well as the validity of man made global warming and projections of the same.

Many feel that we have sufficient science to dictate that there is a very strong urgency to do something right now and others think that there are too many contradictions and differences of opinion to leap before we have more science because of the unintended consequences of acting on bad data. So let’s leave further discussion of what is the truth and what isn’t to the post linked to in the first sentence of this post.

LET US NOW ASSUME THAT GLOBAL WARMING IS AN INCONTESTABLE SCIENTIFIC FACT AND THAT THERE IS NO QUESTION THAT IT IS DIRECTLY RELATED TO EMISSIONS OF CO2 AND OTHER GREENHOUSE GASSES. Let us assume that global temperatures will warm 4.8 degrees centigrade over the present with no action per the Copenhagen Accord. That is significantly higher than the previous high temperatures over the last 11,000 years in the Samarian and Iron ages. Let us also assume that the change will occur over a shorter time period due to the modern man made influences causing the change to be complete by 2100 as stated in the Copenhagen Accord.

LET US CONSIDER THE ACTIONS NECESSARY TO KEEP GLOBAL TEMPERATURES FROM CLIMBING ANY MORE THAN 2.0 degrees centigrade per the target in the Copenhagen Accord. LET US CONSIDER THE CONSEQUENCES OF THOSE ACTIONS.

Let’s consider things like:

Do we move people into large cities and revert to bicycles? Does that increase the spread of infectious diseases?

Are we going to permanently clear National Forest ridges on the Pacific coast and load those ridges up with wind farms to increase our sourcing from wind farms to a significant level from the current 4% supplied to the grid. There are already groups complaining about their placement in the desert and their impact on endangered species. What are the consequences?

Are we going to excavate large newly found rare mineral deposits in Minnesota (or wherever they are) that many are already lining up to oppose in order to make the large solar farms and battery storage necessary to produce more than the 0.2% percent that solar panels currently supply to the grid. Or are we going to continue to rely on China for those rare earth minerals. What are the consequences?

What industries do we cut out? What are the consequences? What do we do with those who won’t have a job?

How long can we print money before the world devalues our currency? There is plenty of talk about that already and when interest rates go up we will end up with our whole budget going to repay debt or devalue our own currency. Actions are already being taken to cut Social Security and Medicare. How are we going to add more people to the dole? Who is going to subsidize the scaling up of this new technology and remove all of the environmental impacts?

Do we really expect the 110 countries to keep these commitments made on the basis of a wing and a prayer? Are the commitments glibly made by politicians who want to look good. Is it kind of like “We’ll have to pass it to find out what’s in it”? If we don’t impose and control this on a global scale will our US improvements make any significant difference?

Are we going to control the exponential growth in population in order to avoid the exponential increase in co2 emissions. Talk about consequences – think death panels and Obama Care. Are we going to put a cap on how old people can be to get medicine or surgery? Some expectations are that population growth will slow but we have already gone from 2 billion to 7 billion in my 68 years on earth.

Methane Gas is the second most prevalent green house gas. Are we going to triple the price of milk by requiring that all bovines be equipped with leak proof methane gas capturing devices?

Please add to the list. Talk is cheap so we all can chip in. 🙂 I plead ignorance. I only have questions. Shouldn’t we be asking these questions?

Finally, who will have the say as to what is done and how it is done. Won’t any such efforts be even more controversial and ineffective than our current policies regarding the managing our national forests? If we can’t agree on the long term consequences of current forest and endangered species policies, how are we going to agree on policies to limit global warming and the consequences? Will legal and analysis paralysis combined with everyone demanding their way or the highway only hamstring good intentions by trying to manage by an all inclusive committee? Lives will be much more impacted by global warming control measures than they are by forest policy. Will we see all of the states break off from the nation to protect the interest of their people? Uncle Sam won’t be able to do anything to stop it – no war, no nothing just everyone withdrawing in mass. Will D.C. muster an army to keep all of the other states in line?

Do we really know enough to make all of these decisions ASAP as some insist we must? Let’s classify the proposed actions as to 1) Quick and Easy, 2) Obama Care Tough and 3) Dismembering the Union.

Does George Carlin ring true on anything? At least it is a sad laugh.

SUPPOSITION OR SCIENCE – GLOBAL WARMING

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A Linked-in contact posted this VERY INTERESTING testimony of John R. Christy from the University of Alabama in Huntsville to the Subcommittee on Environment Committee on Science, Space and Technology on 11December 2013 titled “A Factual Look at the Relationship Between Climate and Weather”

Please note: The author does not claim to prove or disprove global warming. He is merely pointing out the Faux Science behind many of the claims and demands for immediate action. Excellent data graphs are included to illustrate the points. Many of these points have been made elsewhere on this blog based on other references. This author is well credentialed and is not just some outlier. Some quotes include:

Page 1:

– “As the global temperature failed to warm over the past 15 years, it became popular to draw attention to the occurrence of extreme weather events as worrisome consequences of postulated climate change due to increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases.”

– DROUGHT – “… we know our nation experienced droughts in the 12th century, the so-called mega-droughts, which were much worse than any we’ve seen in the past century. Thus, droughts of the past 50 years are not unusual and obviously not “unprecedented” as shown …”

Page 2:

– “A 500-year history of moisture in the upper Colorado River basin (below) indicates the past century was quite moist while major multi-decadal droughts occurred in all four prior centuries … These and other evidences point to the real probability that water supply in the West will see declines simply as a matter of the natural variability of climate.”

– “In the Great Plains, the period from 3000 to 1500 years ago saw a drier and warmer climate during which a significant parabolic sand dune ecosystem developed, especially in western Nebraska and NE Colorado”

Page 3:

– AVG. DAILY TEMPS – “It is true that the number of records in 2012 was quite high, thanks to a very warm March and a hot Mid-Western summer. However in comparison to the heat waves of the 1930s, the summer was not the “worst” for heat. 2012 finished in 8th place on the list, …” going back to 1895

– TORNADOS – “NOAA indicates we are in a very low tornado period in our country – in fact the current year (right, black line) is the lowest year-to-date (Nov.) value in the 60 year history. … It is simply a recognition that the number of tornadoes can vary significantly from year to year and there is no long term trend”

– WILDFIRES & SNOWFALL – 2013, “The current year has included the huge Rim Fire in the central Sierra Nevada of California, but, on the whole, the year is well below average as shown … A related metric is total snowfall in the Sierra of California which has also shown no trend since the Southern Pacific Railroad Company began measuring snowfall in 1878”

Page 4:

– ANTARCTIC – this warming trend is not unique. More dramatic isotopic warming (and cooling) trends occurred in the mid-nineteenth and eighteenth centuries suggesting that at present, the effect of anthropogenic climate drivers at this location has not exceeded the natural range of climate variability in the context of the past ~300 years

Page 7:

– MODELS – “the IPCC relies on climate models to distinguish “natural” from “human” caused climate change because instruments can’t. However, as demonstrated, these same models on average fail by a significant amount to reproduce the climate of the past 35 years”

Page 8:

– “Now, it is true that in the models, most of the warming in the past 50 years is due to greenhouse gases, but since the model-based warming did not occur in reality (by a significant amount), how can one claim that reality was driven by greenhouse gas warming?”

Page 9:

– HISTORY OF GLOBAL WARMING FORECASTING – “The current record is now twice as long as was available when I testified in 1996 and the models are more complicated, expensive and numerous, representing an industry unto itself. The comparison shows that the very latest climate models’ tropical response to CO2, on average, is still 2 to 5 times greater than reality, just as it was in 1996”

– “Unfortunately, as demonstrated here and discussed in the literature, climate models have not demonstrated acceptable skill in terms of depicting even very fundamental, large-scale climate variations, and thus are unable to identify natural versus human-influenced events on regional scales.”

 

So where do I (Gil) stand – This paper has only enforced what I already believed – We just don’t know what we are talking about as of yet. GLOBAL CHANGE IN UNDENIABLE but predicting where it is headed other than up and down and about the same over undetermined time periods is pure speculation until we gather the facts, quit playing Chicken Little, and approach this based on the scientific method as opposed to the same kind of elite group think that has resulted in a net negative by messing up our national forest ecosystems without accomplishing the objective of saving the NSO. The difference between this and the NSO fiasco is that the consequences are much greater.

Taxpayer Science: Global Warming is Killing our Forests with Fire

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More publicly-funded political science, this time from the University of Utah: http://www.livescience.com/44947-western-wildfires-bigger-more-frequent.html

Here’s a quote: “It’s not just something that is localized to forest or grasslands or deserts,” said lead study author Phil Dennison, a geographer at the University of Utah. “Every region in the West is experiencing an increase in fire. These fire trends are very consistent with everything we know about how climate change should impact fire in the West,” Dennison told LiveScience.
 
Actually, this type of taxpayer-funded BS is NOT “consistent with everything we know about how climate change should impact fire in the West,” despite Dr. Dennison’s assertions. It’s not even consistent with “anything we know” at all, except that unmanaged forests in the western US will predictably burn in place if they are not actively managed. It is a fuel management problem — as I have pointed out for many years — clear and simple, and I have publicly predicted these fires for more than 20 years for that reason alone.
These fires are predictable and preventable and seem to mostly take place on passively managed public lands. Seasonal weather patterns are an important factor and “climate change” is a paid-for conclusion. Untended fuels are the real problem, and addressing those would put thousands of people to work and billions of dollars into our treasuries. Apparently that is not a good thing. Big Timber doesn’t like competition.
 
There is a reason that Democrats pay for and swallow this stuff while Republicans remain skeptical. It’s a political issue, not scientific. My principal concern, though, is not the waste of taxpayer dollars promoting a political agenda so much as actual scientific methodology is being publicly degraded in the process. As evidenced by these kinds of statements and conclusions. Maybe there’s a pony in there somewhere.

Half Empty or Half Full: Science and Biodiversity

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Professor Thomas
Professor Thomas

I’m trying to catch up on New Scientists and serendipitously ran across this interview with ecologist Chris Thomas by Fred Pearce. I think it’s an interesting thought-piece because I think it tries to distinguish scientific facts from normative ideas that have crept in to “scientific” discourse, and even legislation. An ESA with these ideas might be designed differently, IMHO. Also it’s interesting he says that we know more about extinctions than new species..of course, what we know about is what we pay scientists to study. So when we say “science says” there are many social forces influencing that, within and without the science biz.
Also, it is interesting to think about these ideas and the spotted and barred owls.. interesting juxtaposition with what Bob just posted about the NW Forest Plan.


Here’s the link.

A decade ago, ecologist Chris Thomas warned that climate change would wipe out a quarter of all species. Now he tells Fred Pearce that we might actually end up with more species than before – and this isn’t a contradiction

Are you no longer concerned about extinctions?
We worry about extinction of species in the era of humans. But at the same time we are seeing an evolutionary surge. The seeds of recovery are already visible. New species are beginning to emerge. Of course many will fail, but others will become the lineages of the future.

This seems light years away from your forecast in 2004 that a global temperature rise of 2 °C would commit millions of species to extinction. Surely you cannot hold both views?

Actually, yes. I’m not arguing that extinctions won’t happen as humans mess up habitats, move species round the globe and change the climate. As I said 10 years ago, climate change will probably cause a mass extinction. I wish this wasn’t so. But I am saying that this is only one side of the coin. These processes also provide ecological opportunities – for species that already exist, and for new forms of life to evolve to exploit the changed environments.

How do we know that there will be opportunities for new life?
People say we are in the throes of the sixth great extinction – as big as when an asteroid killed off the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. The jury is still out on that. It might take human numbers in the billions for a thousand years to do that much damage. But all past extinctions were followed by a burst of evolution. Disappearing dinosaurs created space for mammals to evolve. So why not this time? The flip side of a new great extinction would eventually be a new evolutionary explosion. A new genesis, if you like.

Is this increase in diversity happening already?
Yes. Genes are jumping around. Molecular genetics is finding that hybridisation between species is more common than previously suspected. Darwin talked about a tree of life, with species branching out and separating. But we are discovering it is more of a network, with genes moving between close branches as related species interbreed. This hybridisation quickly opens up evolutionary opportunities.

How do the alien species we introduce change different habitats?
Non-native species are a big part of this revolution. Most conservationists fear these invaders taken round the world by humans – sometimes with good reason. Kudzu vines, zebra mussels and cane toads, not to mention rats and rabbits, can displace native species and transform established ecosystems.

But often when alien species come into contact with related native species, hybrids result. And you get evolutionary divergence, too. After a species has been moved from one place to another, it may start to evolve into a novel species. Native species also evolve under the influence of aliens.

Are there examples of these types of changes?
In Britain, hybridisation involving introduced plant species seems to be happening at least as fast as native species are going extinct. For instance, European rhododendrons have hybridised with cousins from North America to generate a thriving wild population. As for changes in native species – insects change to live off new plants. For instance, a hybrid of two species of fruit fly in North America has evolved to colonise invasive honeysuckles.

What about fears that hybridisation changes and weakens native species genetically?
There are examples when native species can be genetically swamped by a more numerous invader. But new genes from alien species usually only invade the genome of an existing species if they confer some advantage. They often help them thrive.

So what should conservation involve, then?
It could help species take advantage of new opportunities. In a time of climate change, it is silly to try to prevent species moving, for example. We should be making it easier for them. Some people want to create migration corridors, so that whole ecosystems can move. Here in York we have gone one step further. We have been experimenting with taking butterflies north and releasing them. It works.

What about the charge that you are messing with natural ecosystems?
Nothing is entirely natural any longer. And ecosystems don’t have some preordained cast list. We know that at the end of the last ice age, the last time we had big climate change, tree species migrated north as the ice retreated, reclaiming old territory. But they didn’t go back at the same speed, or to the same places. Different combinations of species emerged. It will be like that again. The world is already full of ecosystems that have never existed before. They work just fine.

Does all of this mean that we should learn to love alien species?
Alien species can alter local ecosystems and be very inconvenient for humans. But only a few dozen of the many thousands of species we have transported around the world have actually driven another species extinct. Most don’t. In most countries, they increase biodiversity.

Plant diversity has increased by about a fifth in the continental US states as a result of new arrivals. Britain has more than 1800 non-native species, but as far as I know they have caused no extinctions.

So should we just let nature take its course?
Not entirely. Personally, I think we should do everything we can to minimise habitat loss and climate change. But not every change can or should be resisted. We shouldn’t confuse change with damage, or think of alien species as bad and natives as good. Some aliens are definitely a nuisance from a human perspective, but so are some native species. We are a part of the global system.

Part of the problem is that things are happening so fast that we see big ecological transformations in our individual lifetimes. It is human nature to be worried about that. I sometimes pull up alien weeds that I see in the fields around where I live. But that is an emotional response. Intellectually, I see nothing wrong with most of them.

Won’t extinctions always outpace evolution?
For the time being, but not always. If nature can bounce back from an asteroid hit, it can probably bounce back from us.

Why aren’t scientists talking more about all this good news?
We are always quantifying extinction, but we still know very little about the reverse process. It is only recently we have come to realise quite how much evolutionary change is going on. It is starting to look very much like a global acceleration of evolutionary rates.

Some scientists worry that, if we start working on this, it suggests we don’t care about extinction. That doesn’t follow. I think we should see this evolutionary novelty as an exciting research priority.


So, ultimately, most of this change is good?
Good and bad is irrelevant. It is wrong to believe we have a duty to resist all change in nature. Nature is always changing. Species are going to have to move to survive. New species and ecosystems will be created along the way. Dynamic alien colonists, and the evolution they kick-start, will be a part of the mix.

A narrow preservationist agenda will reduce the capacity of nature to respond to the environmental changes that we are inflicting on the world. We need to think less about keeping things just the way they were – not least because it’s impossible and virtually nowhere is pristine any more – and more about promoting the new.

Balanced Post-fire Treatments in the Rim Fire

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I ran across this excellent article from  Eric Holst, Senior Director of the Environmental Defense Fund’s “working lands program”.

Here’s the link: https://www.edf.org/blog/2014/02/18/after-rim-fire-surprising-role-salvage-logging

P9132046-web

This picture is a view looking down into the Tuolumne River Canyon, from the “Rim of the World” overlook. Down there is where the fire started. I’d bet the spin on this wildfire would be VERY different if it was ignited by lightning.

Holst is showing some excellent judgement in looking at the bigger picture of the realities of the Rim Fire, seeing that “letting nature take its course” isn’t the way to go on every burned acre.

The Forest Service recently proposed to conduct salvage logging – removal of dead trees – on about 30,000 of the 98,049 acres of high intensity burned area and remove hazard trees along 148 miles of high use road in the burn perimeter. While it may seem counterintuitive for a conservationist to do so, I support this effort. In the high intensity areas, the Rim Fire burned so hot that it not only killed every tree but the top inch or two of soil with critical soil microfauna, and seed stocks were also sterilized. Fire of this intensity has been relatively rare in the moist middle elevations on western slopes of the Sierra Nevada and the native forests are not adapted to bounce back from this type of fire.

There are also some “interesting” comments, and a hint of “eco-bickering”. In those comments is also a return of the “Chapparalian”, using his actual name (instead of one of his many pseudonyms and even fake names). There are also some other interesting names commenting about these issues. John Buckley, a local leader of an environmental group comments with an open mind and a dose of reality. Others continue to spout the misguided idea that leaving the Rim Fire alone is the only way to go. Some commenters talked about the reality that we have plenty of BBW habitat, protected within the National Park. One reality not covered is that re-burns cause extensive damage that is very difficult to recover from, especially in areas left to “recover on their own”.

I still see that post-fire management is essential to getting big trees back on the land. We already have site-specific evidence that forests didn’t return when post-fire management was excluded, 40 years ago. We ended up with old growth brushfields, and a few stunted trees. Those old brushfields burned at moderate intensity. We have a big variety of landscapes, with differing burn intensities and site-specific conditions. This partial comment is spot-on, regarding these facts

It is interesting to see how many comments Eric’s post attracted from authors who are vehement that absolutely nothing except ‘let nature takes its course’ on National Forest lands. Since we have 100,000 acres of National Park land for that experiment, it would be more interesting to apply some other options on the National Forest lands. In the climate change debate, we continue to witness the rapid expansion of vocal people so sure of their own story that they refuse to even consider the possibility that it is worth learning more about the changing earth. Hopefully, this fate will not befall the response to the Rim Fire.

It seems pretty clear to me that a few open-minded people from both sides are seeing the realities of the Rim Fire, and its future.

The bonfire of insanity: Woodland is shipped 3,800 miles and burned in Drax power

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Screen Shot 2014-03-17 at 8.25.54 AM

This weekend an article ran in the UK titled “The bonfire of insanity: Woodland is shipped 3,800 miles and burned in Drax power.”  The article was written by David Rose and provides an additional look into the issue of cutting down forests in North Carolina, chipping those forests into pellets and then shipping those pellets nearly 4,000 miles across the Atlantic Ocean to be burned in the United Kingdom.  Some previous NCFP posts on the topic are here, here, here, here, here and here. 

Snip:

But North Carolina’s ‘bottomland’ forest is being cut down in swathes, and much of it pulped and turned into wood pellets – so Britain can keep its lights on.

The UK is committed by law to a radical shift to renewable energy. By 2020, the proportion of Britain’s electricity generated from ‘renewable’ sources is supposed to almost triple to 30 per cent, with more than a third of that from what is called ‘biomass’.

The only large-scale way to do this is by burning wood, man’s oldest fuel – because EU rules have determined it is ‘carbon-neutral’.

So our biggest power station, the leviathan Drax plant near Selby in North Yorkshire, is switching from dirty, non-renewable coal. Biomass is far more expensive, but the consumer helps the process by paying subsidies via levies on energy bills.

That’s where North Carolina’s forests come in. They are being reduced to pellets in a gargantuan pulping process at local factories, then shipped across the Atlantic from a purpose-built dock at Chesapeake Port, just across the state line in Virginia.

Those pellets are burnt by the billion at Drax. Each year, says Drax’s head of environment, Nigel Burdett, Drax buys more than a million metric tons of pellets from US firm Enviva, around two thirds of its total output. Most of them come not from fast-growing pine, but mixed, deciduous hardwood.

Drax and Enviva insist this practice is ‘sustainable’. But though it is entirely driven by the desire to curb greenhouse gas emissions, a broad alliance of US and international environmentalists argue it is increasing, not reducing them.

In fact, Burdett admits, Drax’s wood-fuelled furnaces actually produce three per cent more carbon dioxide (CO2) than coal – and well over twice as much as gas: 870g per megawatt hour (MW/hr) is belched out by wood, compared to just 400g for gas.

Then there’s the extra CO2 produced by manufacturing the pellets and transporting them 3,800 miles. According to Burdett [Drax’s Head of Environment], when all that is taken into account, using biomass for generating power produces 20 per cent more greenhouse gas emissions than coal.

And meanwhile, say the environmentalists, the forest’s precious wildlife habitat is being placed in jeopardy.

Drax concedes that ‘when biomass is burned, carbon dioxide is released into the atmosphere’. Its defence is that trees – unlike coal or gas – are renewable because they can grow again, and that when they do, they will neutralise the carbon in the atmosphere by ‘breathing’ it in – or in technical parlance, ‘sequestering’ it.

So Drax claims that burning wood ‘significantly reduces greenhouse gas emissions compared with coal-fired generation’ – by as much, Burdett says, as 80 per cent.

These claims are questionable. For one thing, some trees in the ‘bottomland’ woods can take more than 100 years to regrow. But for Drax, this argument has proven beneficial and lucrative.

Dr. Law: Role of Forest Ecosystems in Climate Change Mitigation

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Dr. Beverly Law recently gave a presentation titled, “Role of Forest Ecosystems in Climate Change Mitigation.”   Here’s some information on Dr. Law’s background, education and area of expertise, via  Dr. Law’s website at Oregon State University:

Dr. Beverly Law is Professor of Global Change Forest Science in the College of Forestry, and an Adjunct Professor in the College of Oceanic and Atmospheric Sciences at Oregon State University. She is an Aldo Leopold Leadership Fellow. Her research focuses on the role of forests, woodlands and shrublands in the global carbon cycle. Her approach is interdisciplinary, involving in situ and remote sensing observations, and models to study the effects of climate and climate related disturbances (wildfire), land-use change and management that influence carbon and water cycling across a region over seasons to decades. She currently serves as the Chair of the Global Terrestrial Observing System – Terrestrial Carbon Observations (supported by UNEP, UNESCO, WMO), and on the Science/Technology Committee of the Oregon Global Warming Commission.

You can view a PDF copy of Dr. Law’s presentation right here. Below, the text-only version of Dr. Law’s presentation does a nice job of summarizing the myth and reality regarding “thinning,” bioenergy/biomass and climate.

Role of Forest Ecosystems in Climate Change Mitigation
B.E. Law – Oregon State University, February 23, 2014

Key Points:

Activities that promote carbon storage and accumulation are allowing existing forests to accumulate carbon, and reforestation of lands that once carried forests.

Natural disturbance has little impact on forest carbon stores compared to an intensive harvest regime.

Harvest and thinning do not reduce carbon emissions. Full accounting shows that thinning increases carbon emissions to the atmosphere for at least many decades.

Carbon returns to atmosphere more quickly when removed from forest and put in product chain.

1. Role of forest ecosystems in mitigating climate change – Carbon storage and accumulation

Allowing existing forests to accumulate carbon is likely to have a positive effect on forest carbon in vegetation and soils, and on atmospheric carbon. Wet forests in the PNW and Alaska have some of the highest carbon stocks and productivity in the world. Fires are infrequent in these forests, occurring at intervals of one to many centuries. Old forests store more carbon than young forests. Old forests store as much as 10 times the biomass carbon of young forests (Law et al. 2001, Hudiburg et al. 2009). The low hanging fruit is to allow these forests to continue to store and accumulate carbon.

A key objective is to reduce GHG emissions. Changes in management should consider the current forest carbon sink and losses in the product chain when evaluating management options.

2. Role of natural disturbance in forest carbon budgets
Natural disturbance from fire and insects has little impact on forest carbon and emissions compared with intensive harvest.

Although wildfire smoke looks impressive, less carbon is emitted than previously thought (Campbell et al. 2007). In PNW forests, less than 5% of tree bole carbon combusts in low and high severity fires (Campbell et al. 2007, Meigs et al. 2009). Most of what burns is fine fuels in low and high severity fires, making actual carbon loss much less than one might expect. For example, from 1987-2007, carbon emissions from fire were the equivalent of ~6% of fossil fuel emissions in the Northwest Forest Plan area (Turner et al. 2011). If fire hasn’t significantly reduced total carbon stored in forests, it isn’t going to materially worsen climate change.

In the western states, 5-20% of the burn area has been high severity fire and the remaining burn area has been low and moderate severity (MTBS; www.mtbs.gov). In the PNW, 50-75% of live biomass survived low and moderate severity fires combined, which account for 80% of the burn area (Meigs et al. 2009). Physiology measurements show that current methods used to determine if trees are likely to die post-fire lead to overestimation of mortality and removal of healthy trees (Irvine et al. 2007, Waring data in Oregon District Court summary). Removal of surviving trees from a burned area will reduce carbon storage, and in many cases regeneration.

The release of carbon through decomposition after fire occurs over a period of decades to centuries. About half of carbon produced by fires remains in soil for ~90 years, whereas the other half persists in soil for more than 1,000 years (Singh et al. 2012). Similarly, after insect attack and tree die-off, there isno large change in carbon stocks. Carbon stocks are dominated by soil and wood, and wood in trees that are killed transfers to dead pools that decompose over decades to centuries.

3. How do forest management strategies such as thinning affect carbon budgets on federal lands?

Forest carbon density could be enhanced by decreasing harvest intensity and increasing the intervals between harvests. For example, biomass carbon stocks in Oregon and N California could be theoretically twice as high if they were allowed to continue to accumulate carbon (Hudiburg et al. 2009). Even if current harvest rates were lengthened just 50 years, the biomass stocks could increase by 15%.

Harvest intensity – The Northwest Forest Plan (NWFP) was enacted to conserve species that had been put at risk from extensive harvesting of old forests. Prior to enactment, the public forests were a source of carbon to the atmosphere. Harvest rates were reduced by ~80% on public lands, which led to a large carbon sink (increase in net ecosystem carbon balance, NECB) in the following decades. Direct losses of carbon from fire emissions were generally small relative to harvest (Turner et al. 2011, Krankina et al. 2012).

Thinning forests – Landscape and regional studies show that large-scale thinning to reduce the probability of crown fires and provide biomass for energy production does not reduce carbon emissions under current and future climate conditions (Hudiburg et al. 2011, Hudiburg et al. 2013; Law & Harmon 2011; Mitchell et al. 2009, 2012; Schulze et al. 2012; Mika & Keeton 2012). If implemented, it would result in long-term carbon emission to the atmosphere because many areas that are thinned won’t experience fire during the period of treatment effectiveness (10-20 yrs), and removals from areas that later burn may exceed the carbon ‘saved’ by reducing fire intensity (Law & Harmon 2011; Campbell et al 2012; Rhodes & Baker 2009). Thinning does not necessarily reduce fire occurrence, particularly in extreme weather conditions (drought, wind).

Slow in and fast out – opportunity cost. Today’s harvest is carbon that took decades to centuries to accumulate, and it returns to the atmosphere quickly through bioenergy use. Increased GHG emissions from bioenergy use are primarily due to consumption of the current forest carbon and from long-term reduction of the forest carbon stock that could have been sustained into the future. The general assumption that bioenergy combustion is carbon-neutral is not valid because it ignores emissions due to decreasing standing biomass that can last for centuries.

Bioenergy still puts carbon dioxide in the atmosphere when a key objective is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The global warming effect of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere does not depend on its source. Per unit of energy, the amount of carbon dioxide released from biomass combustion is about as high as that of coal and substantially larger than that of oil and natural gas (Haberl et al. 2012).

Summary
Comprehensive assessments are needed to understand the carbon consequences of land use actions, and should include a full accounting of the land-based carbon balance as well as carbon losses through the products chain. In mature forests, harvest for wood product removes ~75% of the wood carbon, and 30-50% of that is lost to the atmosphere in the manufacturing process, including the use of some of that carbon for biomass energy. The remainder ends up back in the atmosphere within ~90-150 years, and there are losses over time, not just at the end of the product use). These loss rates are much higher than that of forests. Full accounting of all carbon benefits, including crown fire risk reduction, storage in long- and short-term wood products, substitution for fossil fuel, and displacement of fossil fuel energy, shows that thinning results in increased atmospheric carbon emissions for at least many decades.