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California Fires and Pollution

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Hazmatt_(The Underdog)

Thu Oct 25 2007, 08:41PM

Registered Member #135 Joined: Sat Feb 11 2006, 12:06AM
Location: Anywhere is fine
Posts: 1735

I know most of you guys don't really care but I thought I would start this thread because I have always known that fires were much worse contributers to air pollution then the knee-jerk reaction of cars and their emissions.

The fact is that 25% of our yearly production of CO2 has come from our fires burning alomst 500,000 acers in only a couple of days.

That is something that cannot be written off or ignored, not even by Al Gore.

101111

Thu Oct 25 2007, 09:43PM

Registered Member #575 Joined: Sun Mar 11 2007, 04:00AM
Location: Norway
Posts: 263

Those 25% is something mother earth can take.

Sometimes fires occur in very dry woods without help by human.

Coyote Wilde

Fri Oct 26 2007, 01:33AM

Registered Member #175 Joined: Tue Feb 14 2006, 09:32PM
Location: Sudbury, ON
Posts: 111

Are we going to have another Global Warming Fight Thread?
I'm sure we've done this before.
Those fires don't go constant year after year-- and the regrowth which invariably follows the fires sinks the same amount of carbon. A forest fire, in a forest that will naturally catch fire, is carbon neutral.
In places like Amazon, on the other hand, where the forest fires are for land clearing and the jungle cannot regrow, then obviously my statement doesn't hold. But it's still something that can't be written off or ignored, not even by Hazmatt.

Now before we get into a slugfest over this, riddle me this: what do you have to lose from less air pollution? Even if climate change isn't human-sourced, part of some 'great cycle' of climactic variation, whatever your pet rebuttal is, what possible, logical reason can you give for becoming more clenly and energy efficient as a species? We can husband our resources better, and the appalling respiratory disease rates amongst the kids growing up in our cities will go down. Industry can flourish cranking out new technologies, etc.
If global warming turns out to be a myth and junk science, I don't much see the downside. If, on the other hand, on that off chance that an overwhelming majority of climatologists and men with shiny new Nobel Prizes is actually right, we may just be saving the species a heck of a lot of grief.
So there's not much reason to fight over it, is there?

Eric

Fri Oct 26 2007, 03:14AM

Registered Member #69 Joined: Thu Feb 09 2006, 07:42AM
Location:
Posts: 116

All I know is that the air quality blows. The moon is not supposed to look orange. Hopefully it'll clear up soon.

Global warming is about the last thing anyone should be worrying about. How you're going to live without fuel/food/money is something to consider though.

No, you can't have my tin foil hat, make your own.

Hazmatt_(The Underdog)

Fri Oct 26 2007, 03:16AM

Registered Member #135 Joined: Sat Feb 11 2006, 12:06AM
Location: Anywhere is fine
Posts: 1735

I will restate my point before I am misunderstood:

I am pointing this out because I'm sick of hearing "Cars are bad" and not hearing "Fires are bad too".

I am waiting for self appointed experts to be consistant, either wrong or right, I am just sick of inconsistancy.

I hope that's simple enough that I am not misunderstood.

AndrewM

Fri Oct 26 2007, 03:31AM

Registered Member #49 Joined: Thu Feb 09 2006, 04:05AM
Location: Bigass Pile of Penguins
Posts: 362

I am pointing this out because I'm sick of hearing "Cars are bad" and not hearing "Fires are bad too".

But thats not true, as has already been said. Even if the powers-that-be do absolutely nothing with the burned land, its going to regrow all by itself and consume an equivalent (or greater) amount of carbon as was released. The fire is carbon neutral.

Its cars that pull sequestered carbon out of the ground and release it.

Full disclosure: I fucking hate hippies. This, however, is just a fact. Here's another one: old growth forests don't sink any new carbon. Cutting them down, building a house/paper out of them, and letting them start over, sinks a shit-ton of carbon.

Hazmatt_(The Underdog)

Fri Oct 26 2007, 03:40AM

Registered Member #135 Joined: Sat Feb 11 2006, 12:06AM
Location: Anywhere is fine
Posts: 1735

Then I was concerned for nothing, which is okay.

...

Fri Oct 26 2007, 03:52AM

Registered Member #56 Joined: Thu Feb 09 2006, 05:02AM
Location: Southern Califorina, USA
Posts: 2445

I see how you say that forest fires are 'carbon nuetral' but the fact remains that by burning the trees a ton (well, many tons for that matter) of carbon was released into the air... Now lets say instead we ground those trees up, made paper/houses/etc out of it, and then buried it directly.

Now we are OK to dig that much carbon out o the ground and burn it, no? Assuming of course that we planted new trees in the forest.

ragnar

Fri Oct 26 2007, 08:24AM

Registered Member #63 Joined: Thu Feb 09 2006, 06:18AM
Location:
Posts: 1425

Ah, something that really annoys me is people who refer to "Carbon" and "Carbon pollution."

Since when did we stop calling it carbon dioxide?

Grr.

Coyote Wilde

Fri Oct 26 2007, 03:46PM

Registered Member #175 Joined: Tue Feb 14 2006, 09:32PM
Location: Sudbury, ON
Posts: 111

Well when it's in tree form it's not really CO2, likewise oceans, fossil fuels, etc... I think it goes back to the whole Carbon Cycle. Its only CO2 in atmo, so you're leaving out the rest of the cycle (the parts getting overwhelmed by human activity)
Besides, have you seen what a diesel belches out? Carbon emissions. Pure unadulterated particles of C settle deep down into your lungs and do... well, probably nothing, but they do clog the works up some. Newer diesel just have smaller particles, but research suggests that those just settle deeper and that the lungs have an even harder time dislodging them there.

Since everyone here hates hippies and cancer victims, I won't go for the biodiversity argument against cutting down what few old-growth forests remain (have you ever been on clear-cut land? It isn't pretty, and don't fool yourself, because they don't do much other kinds of logging anymore. You suddenly gain a whole new appreciation for the hippie mindset, or some of it at least, standing in the middle of tortured wasteland that used to be forest. It's worse than fire; I've seen both and I can't tell you why, but the gut reaction is way stronger.)
When you cut down a tree, you're emitting CO2. Your chainsaws, your skiffs, your draggers-- your helicopters if you happen to be in that business-- and when the tree dies, it belches out a whole bunch more. Obviously most of the carbon remains sinked as Cellulose, but! You can't ignore the belch.
Most paper products, sadly, still end up in landfills-- "buried"-- which you'd think would be good, right? But they're buried and there's anaerobic respiration going on down there, and that carbon they contained ends up seeping out of the landfill as Methane, which is a worse greenhouse gas than CO2, until it breaks down (to CO2 and H2O) -- of course, if we trap this methane, and burn it, we're carbon neutral on that ground, but we can't dig up any more.
And it's not going to release enough methane to power the chainsaws and the skidders and the Sikorsky Skycrane you needed to kill the old growth forest. You have to take into consideration the whole process.
The older forests, as I understand, are a less-efficient sink than new-growth, not carbon neutral, anyway. Part of the reason international groups are begging Canada to preserve more of the ever-shrinking Boreal forests, Brazil the Amazon, etc.

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