Sinks a Lot?
A quick vacation to Washington's Olympic Peninsula reminded me of two things. First -- dang, those trees are huge!
And second -- dang, there's still a lot of clearcut coastal forestland that's still just basically sitting there: no trees, just scrub and piles of decaying stumps.
Which got me to thinking: how much CO2 could the clearcut land store if returned to its full rainforest glory? Enough to take a serious bite out of our climate-warming emissions?
Well, according to this study, a single acre of undisturbed, old-growth forest in coastal Washington stores more than 300 tons of carbon, counting soils, trees, foliage, and woody debris on the forest floor.
And according to this (pdf), carbon stores are reduced by more than half after a clearcut, both because of the loss of the trees themselves, but also because the oxidation of carbon-rich forest soils.
Some interesting stuff follows.
Special Series
The Year of Living Car-lessly Experiment
In a Series
15 More Minutes?
I recently got a call from a casting director at Fox TV’s reality show Trading Spouses. (It’s not as salacious as it sounds!) Fox saw us during our first 15 minutes of fame (actually, 2.5 minutes, on CNN) and wants us on their network, too. We’ve never seen this program before, but we’re told it involves two moms from wildly different families swapping places for a week, while America gawks at the resulting arguments and break-downs.
What’s your opinion? Should we let TV crews and a visiting (presumably auto-centered) mom into the Durning home? Should Amy endure a week in a family of--umm--maybe five Hummer drivers? Would it help promote the values we stand for by making them visible to the millions of people who watch reality TV? Or would Fox use selective editing to make us look ridiculous, harming the cause?
Once you’ve had your say, we’ll make a decision.
P.S. If we do accept the invitation, we’ll be sworn to secrecy until the show is aired. So I won’t be able to blog the experience until afterward. Sorry.
