Tropical rainforests have been a cause celebre among environmentalists and climate change activists for decades. But research released in advance of this week's climate conference in Cancun shows that hectare-for-hectare British Columbia's rainforests store twice as much carbon.
Tropical rainforests store an average of between 360 and 460 metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalents per acre, while temperate rainforests in the Pacific Northwest store as much as 800 metric tons per acre, according to a synthesis of research by 30 scientists.
"Rainforests in the Pacific Northwest and Alaska... store the equivalent of more than twice the world's [annual] carbon dioxide pollution released by the burning of fossil fuels," said Dominick A. DellaSala, an Oregon conservation biologist who compiled the research.
Temperate and boreal rainforests are found in only 10 regions of the world, and comprise less than 3 per cent of the earth's forest land. Europe's rainforests were destroyed or degraded centuries ago. More than a third of the remaining temperate rainforest is in the Pacific Northwest.
"Carbon is stored for centuries in massive tree trunks, dense foliage, and rich soils in these rainforests that help stabilize the global climate," DellaSala said. "When these rainforests are cut down, much of that carbon is released to the atmosphere where it contributes to global warming pollution."
DellaSala is president of the North America section of the Society for Conservation Biology and editor of "Temperate and Boreal Rainforests of the World: Ecology and Conservation" (Island Press, 2010).
Monte Paulsen reports on carbon shift for The Tyee.
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mopled
1 year ago
I'm delighted to find out how efficiently
our wonderful forests grow. Now that we know that atmospheric CO2 has absolutely no effect on climate, we can rejoice that CO2 still continues to climb even while the earth cools. See the graph at http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.com/
It will help the forests to maintain growth rates. We get 6% more biomass for every part per million increase and CO2 makes plants more resistant to drought.
During the 20-40 year cold spell we are now in, we need all the CO2 we can get to maintain growth levels of the warm period we just went through. In 2009, Astrophysicist Piers Corbyn complained "Official data shows the world passed its peak temperatures 10 years ago, but sadly the BBC and 'Global Warming apologists' are now attempting to cover up the facts"
http://climaterealists.com/index.php?id=3307
Just in case you thought all this carbon nonsense was accomplishing something:
Kyoto Protocol Scorecard
Global Cost: $868 Billion
Global Warming supposedly averted by 2050: 0.009°C
CO2 Emissions Reduction: 0.3%
Cost per 1°C of Global Warming supposedly averted by 2050: $96.4 Trillion
Number of Delegates in Cancun aware of these numbers: estimated to be 0
cboo44
1 year ago
Carbon
Let's not forget that all of these bozos flitting about the world to the huge "Climate Conferences" spew more damned carbon into the stratosphere (where it is NOT recoverable, by the way) than all the vehicles on the ground, combined.