Links tagged “deforestation”

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A quick examination of the map for nearly every major forest fire to make national headlines will reveal the deadly blazes either start or grow on federally mismanaged land. “I don’t think you can call it a coincidence,” said Jonathan Wood, the vice president of policy and law at the Property and Environment Research Center (PERC), adding that two-thirds of fires start on federal property. “If it were one, maybe it would be a coincidence, but when you’ve got a series, you’ve got a trend.” Wood told The Federalist the outbreak of current forest fires was entirely predictable, raising alarm in a report published in April that the U.S. Forest Service confronted a backlog of 63 million acres with a “high risk or very high risk of wildfire” and another 80 million acres in need of restoration.

CNN: In 2009, the European Union (EU) pledged to curb greenhouse gas emissions, urging its member states to shift from fossil fuels to renewables. In its Renewable Energy Directive (RED), the EU classified biomass as a renewable energy source — on par with wind and solar power. As a result, the directive prompted state governments to incentivize energy providers to burn biomass instead of coal — and drove up demand for wood. So much so that the American South emerged as Europe’s primary source of biomass imports. Earlier this year, the EU was celebrated in headlines across the world when renewable energy surpassed the use of fossil fuels on the continent for the first time in history. But scientists and experts say it’s too early to celebrate, arguing that relying on biomass for energy has a punishing impact not only on the environment, but also on marginalized communities — perpetuating decades of environmental racism in predominantly Black communities like Northampton County, where Macklin and his family have lived for generations.

To say cutting down trees and burning them for power is a renewable energy source feels counterintuitive and, in reality, it is. Burning wood is less efficient than burning coal and releases far more carbon into the atmosphere, according to almost 800 scientists who wrote a 2018 letter to the European parliament, pushing members to amend the current directive “to avoid expansive harm to the world’s forests and the acceleration of climate change.” President Joe Biden and other world leaders received a similar letter from hundreds of climate scientists earlier this year.

Claim: We know cow farts (and, more importantly, burps) contribute to global warming, but they’re not the only things expelling greenhouse gases into the air. Trees killed by rising sea levels are also emitting carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide, according to a recent study, and these “tree farts” could be an overlooked source of emissions that will only worsen as sea levels continue to rise and wipe out woodlands.

Britain said it planned to treble tree planting rates over the next three years to help reach its target of net zero carbon emissions by 2050, as part of efforts to fight climate change..."We will make sure that the right trees are planted in the right places and that more green jobs are created in the forestry sector," Eustice is due to say, according to a government statement published on Sunday.

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Flashback: Settled Science?! Trees both cause & solve ‘global warming’?! – GOP climate pandering seeks to plant billions of trees

Bloomberg Green: "Two-thirds of America's total energy footprint is devoted to transportation fuels produced from agricultural crops, primarily corn grown for ethanol. It requires more land than all other power sources combined but provides just 5% of the nation's energy...The most land-intensive plan eliminates all fossil fuels and nuclear plants." ... 

"Is there even enough open land to build 250 million acres of new wind farms? The short answer is yes, according to estimates from the U.S. Department of Agriculture." ... "If the U.S. wants a carbon-free economy by 2050 using the least amount of land, it will need to rely less on wind and solar and instead build hundreds of nuclear plants and natural gas plants outfitted with systems to capture carbon dioxide."

"By 2050, when Biden wants the entire economy to be carbon free, the U.S. will need up to four additional South Dakotas to develop enough clean power to run all the electric vehicles, factories and more." ... "No matter how you slice it, the U.S. will need to dedicate more land to producing power in an emissions-free future."

"To rewild our environment, we need to create the correct conditions. This can be done through actions like reintroducing species that have disappeared, allowing forests to regenerate and preventing the fragmentation of rivers."