On Thu, 14 Jan 2010 06:07:34 -0800, delboy wrote:

On 13 Jan, 13:42, Martin Gregorie wrote:
On Wed, 13 Jan 2010 01:00:11 -0800, delboy wrote:
This is interesting as well:

http://blogs.nasa.gov/cm/blog/whatonearth/posts/
post_1262880533072.html

Deforestation not only reduces CO2 capture from the atmosphere (and
Oxygen release), but if the wood is burnt much CO2 is released (and
O2 consumed). A case for building log cabins perhaps?

Another implication is that 'offsetting your carbon footprint' by
paying to plant forests is pretty much garbage. The tree is only a
temporary CO2 store because the carbon it captures is released when the
wood is burnt or the tree dies and rots.

Which was why I was suggesting building eco-friendly log cabins (or
houses), which would tie up carbon for a further period. Much better
than burning the unwanted trees.

The problem I was trying to point up is that fossil fuel is putting CO2
back into the air that has been locked up for geological ages, while
wooden buildings have a miniscule life by comparison: there will be
almost none in the USA that are over 250 years old. The oldest wooden
building I know of in the UK is roughly 1200 years old. That's the Saxon
church in Greensted, Essex: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greensted_Church
and even there much of its structure has been replaced since it was
built, releasing the CO2 from the replaced bits back into the atmosphere.

Carbon sequestration by pumping it back into the ground at high pressure
is a really bad joke almost every way you look at it:

- maybe the CO2 from oil will fit back into the wells, but will it
stay there? How do we know that extracting the oil hasn't cracked the
impermeable dome that kept it there?

- Coal mines were never impermeable in the first place, so howinhell are
you going to fill them with high pressure CO2?

- What about all the coal from open cast mines?

IMO 'carbon sequestration' has all the credibility of Bliar's Iraqi
Weapons of Mass Destruction and, like them, is merely spin for ignorant
sheeple.


--
martin@ | Martin Gregorie
gregorie. | Essex, UK
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