Combating Climate Change: Farming Out Global Warming Solutions

[RestoreGore]

Why can't Congress go with something as simple as a tree planting initiative in this country instead of all the schemes being thought up by those looking to profit most from this crisis? How ironic would it be to see that this was the true solution all along besides conservation and people simply waking up to their moral conscience? WASTE and GREED are causing this planet to now be on life support. We are killing her and only we can bring her back. The initiatives mentioned in this article make good sense and common sense, but of course require we humans to implement them. WHY then is it taking so damned long for the outrage about what we are doing to this planet to sink in?

Just think, planting trees and taking new measures regarding agricultural (regarding irrigation especially) and forestry management would do more for cutting carbon emissions and would be cheaper than building tons of nuclear power plants that expend more CO2 in their construction, or construction of coal fired plants that bring us nothing but cancer, dirt, and closer to the tipping point. But of course, that wouldn't please the lobbyists and energy corporations and their friends in D.C. looking to profit from this crisis, now would it?

If people really wanted to solve this crisis it could be done so quickly and easily. I just read a mail sent to me from Tree-nation (whose site is in my signature as I am hoping to help them plant more trees in the desert of Niger,) and the UNEP which is their partner just met its pledge to plant a billion trees. Yet, that is seen as nothing to many even though it is a huge step forward in mitigating not only carbon emissions and bringing our planet back to health, but a huge step in also mitigating poverty that is also dessimating many developing countries in that part of the world due primarily to climate change. But no, instead people want to clog up the planet with even more toxic nuclear waste in our water that kills MILLIONS of fish annually and puts peoples' lives at more risk all for the sake of their precious dollar. They want to build more coal fired plants to make their benefactors happy. They are dragging their feet on implementing any real strict rules for CAFE standards in an effort to placate automobile manufacturers. They cower to the coal industry in seeking sequestration legislation that puts mandatory caps on what they spew into our air. They would rather spend time bickering about who has the better plan to pump all they can get out odf an "election" year instead of implementing one NOW.

Yet, how simple it is to do no till farming? To have drip irrigation? To actually learn to conserve? To take the moral high road and the initiative to plant trees? But there are no big corporate profits in those initiatives, so they are tossed to the side as unimportant to the whole. Well, we as a global community better get with the program soon instead of just looking at our wallets or all of this talking will be for nothing. Cutting down trees out of greed and waste is like cutting the heart out of a human being. Trees are the lungs of this planet that regenerate soil, give us sustinence, reduce carbon emnissions, give shelter and life to other species to keep the web of life going, and allow us to live in the beautiful world we were meant to have untainted by the toxic waste that humanity brings with it, and their importance in the chain of life on Earth has been absolutely downplayed to turn this crisis into a money making scheme. That to me does not bode well for the future sustinence of this planet. Perhaps it is as simple as simply getting back to basics in order to allow us the time to then think of other solutions. Oh well, there goes that ability to reason again.

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=C4B62D71-E7F2-99DF-3C3B53587E1B5AC2&chanID=sa007

May 25, 2007
Combating Climate Change: Farming Out Global Warming Solutions
Changes to agricultural practice and forestry management could cut greenhouse gas emissions, buying time to develop alternative technologies
By David Biello

Saving the trees could slow climate change, new research shows. Each year, nearly 33 million acres of forestland around the world is cut down, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. Tropical felling alone contributes 1.5 billion metric tons of carbon—some 20 percent of all man-made greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions—to the atmosphere annually. If such losses were cut in half, it could save 500 million metric tons of carbon annually and contribute 12 percent of the total reductions in GHG emissions required to avoid unpleasant global warming, researchers recently reported in Science.

Forest depletion ultimately contributes more GHG emissions than all the cars and trucks in use worldwide, says Werner Kurz, a forest ecologist with Natural Resources Canada, who was not involved with the study. "What we are doing in these tropical forests is really a massive problem."

Changes in forest management and agricultural practices could significantly reduce the threat of global warming much more quickly than can technological solutions such as carbon capture and storage (CCS) from coal-fired power plants, according to experts. "We don't know how to do CCS. These are things we could do today," says Bruce McCarl, an agricultural economist at Texas A&M University in College Station. "They are a bridge to the future."

Among proposed changes: more widespread adoption of so-called no-till farming, a practice that involves leaving unharvested crop stalks and other plant matter behind in the field undisturbed by plows and other soil-agitating instruments. "Anything that reduces soil disturbance increases carbon storage," McCarl notes.

Basically, the carbon stored inside the remains sinks into the soil instead of being stirred up and into the atmosphere when the soil is prepared for planting using conventional means. Such no-till farming provides a double benefit for farmers: improved soils and reduced fuel use, because it negates the need to harvest the stalks with tractors and other equipment (although it can lead to short-term reductions in crop yields) says Chuck Rice, a soil scientist at Kansas State University in Manhattan, Kan.

more at the link.

[NNadir]

1. Actually research shows that poverty leads to deforestation.

I don't expect you to be interested in this discussion but there is an excellent BBC discussion of this subject on the BBC featuring the prominent primatologist, Jane Goodal, the famous Kenyan anthropologist/conservationist Richard Leakey, the geneticist Richard Dawkins and the naturalist David Attenborough.

The two African workers remark quite tellingly on poverty and its roll in climate change - much of it about people having to burn wood just to live. Dr. Goodal in particular remarks on how the forest around her famous Mountain Gorilla preserve has been totally destroyed, totally and in "down to the last tree."

Have you ever heard of that? Have you heard of poverty?

Leakey by your standards is immoral, since he comes out and tells the truth about nuclear power, remarking with more than some disgust to western middle class paternalism and suggesting that Kenya's best shot would be to use nuclear energy. The hour long panel discussion is available here:

http://throwawayyourtv.com/2006/06/selfish-green.html

It's called, amusingly enough, "The Selfish Green."

If you don't address poverty - and let's be clear that poverty is very much defined by lack of access to energy - you cannot have a moral position on climate change.

[RestoreGore]

2. I do have a position that I have made very clear

But since you have a bug up your ass where I an concerned because it doesn't concern nuclear which is really why you posted this and not out of some great moral epiphany no, I am not interested in anything you have to say to me here.

[NNadir]

4. But I am interested in what you say.

You say that climate change is addressed simplistically.

I am very interested in that opinion, since it effects all of humanity, regrettably in a pernicious way. I believe that the enormous danger represented by this "plant a couple of trees, build a couple of windmills and all will be well," is a moral issue.

For a long time people, people were silent in the face of this kind of thinking. As the AIDS activists used to say SILENCE = DEATH.

As Leakey points out, people cannot be interested in climate change if they have never seen clear, clean water in their lives, and whether or not you like it, it needs to be said.

[RestoreGore]

7. So is poisoning fish and wateways with nuclear toxic waste a moral issue

But that doesn't seem to bother you so spare me your holier than thou responses. And I NEVER stated that planting trees was ALL we needed to do. It however is a viable solution in many areas of this world regarding mitigating deforestation as this article and other reports already have proven whether YOU like it or not.

[greenman3610]

3. It's simple.

build a nuclear plant, then everyone in the third world will just buy
Amana radar ranges at their local wal Mart, and , poof,
no more problem.

[NNadir]

5. Leakey, who is Kenyan, who saved Keyna's elephants from poachers

understands the issue far better than you do.

According to Leakey, the poaching problem - for Ivory - and the deforestaton problem are intimately connected.

A hot plate and a nuclear power plant and maybe a light bulb would make a world of difference to his country. Since he has direct experience with Kenyan life and issues, he probably has some credibility on the issue.

I think he has a somewhat different opinion than middle class "greenies" who drive to the mall at Christmas in their Mercury Mountaineers to pick up a Sierra Club Calendar made from recycled paper, but that's just my opinion.

[RestoreGore]

6. Give them time

The World Bank isn't doing enough to bring poverty to the third world. Once the nukes come they won't only have poverty but toxic waste in their rivers which are dwindling already.

[amandabeech]

8. No-till farming requires lots and lots of herbicides to keep the weeds down.

In conventional farming, tilling puts the weeds under and used to mix in organic fertilizer, also known as cow and chicken manure.

If you worry about nuclear waste in streams, surely you worry about Roundup and its friends.

There really are no easy answers.

As to poverty in Africa, I have read that large population increases also increase pressure on forests. The Africans don't have much else to use as fuel.

Perhaps simple solar cookers would help there. I have read that they are much more efficient in locations closer to the equator. There has been success in India.