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Post by David B. Benson on Jul 5, 2019 15:45:36 GMT 9.5
Best way to fight climate change? Plant a trillion trees Seth Borenstein 2019 Jul 04 Phys.org
From the Swiss Institute of Technology in Zurich. At least a trillion is recommended.
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Post by David B. Benson on Jul 5, 2019 18:52:58 GMT 9.5
Irrigated Afforestation of the Sahara and Australian outback to end global warming Leonard Orstein et al. 2009 Aug 19 Climatic Change 97:409
The full paper pdf is freely available via the abstract. At this time there have been 3.8k downloads.
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Post by engineerpoet on Jul 5, 2019 22:08:00 GMT 9.5
Irrigated afforestation? In deserts? Who are they kidding?
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Post by David B. Benson on Jul 6, 2019 9:48:44 GMT 9.5
Columbia Basin Project here in Eastern Washington; Imperial Valley in California; Israel and Egypt.
Len Ornstein's goal is to sequester carbon, not make money. Actually read the full paper plus learn some desert sylviculture before critizing.
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Post by David B. Benson on Jul 6, 2019 9:49:00 GMT 9.5
*duplicate*
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Post by engineerpoet on Jul 6, 2019 12:49:34 GMT 9.5
Columbia Basin Project here in Eastern Washington; Imperial Valley in California; Israel and Egypt. Labels without explanation or even context.If you are trying to sequester carbon, the effort/energy/labor required is VERY relevant.What I see is the insistence on creating forests out of sterile sand, by desalinating seawater (which requires on-going effort) to pull out carbon that requires said desalination effort to continue even as the carbon store ceases to rise and reaches a peak.
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Post by David B. Benson on Jul 6, 2019 13:05:41 GMT 9.5
Obviously, those are places with irrigated agriculture, including trees.
Little of the Sahara is just sand; that trees will grow is illustrated by the Siwa oasis, with palm trees farther than the eye can see. Knowing some of the prehistory of the Sahara helps; several thousand years ago there were mangrove swamps with even infant whales.
Even without irrigation the Negev desert of Israel sports acacias, the nitrogen fixers of the arid lands.
As for the costs, read the paper before claiming impossibility.
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Post by David B. Benson on Jul 6, 2019 13:11:03 GMT 9.5
The carbon store only reaches a peak when desired. In the nonce cut down overly mature trees and perform pyrolysis. Crush the solid residue and bury deeply as artificial anthracite seams.
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Post by David B. Benson on Jul 6, 2019 19:54:49 GMT 9.5
Applying the concept of "energy returned on investment" to desert greening of the Sahara/Sahel using a global climate model S. P. K. Bowring et al. Earth Sys. Dynam. 5, 43--53, 2014
Even for the entire Sahara plus Sahel the EROEI exceeds 1, so by this measure feasible. Some regions of this vast expanse are preferable to others.
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Post by huon on Jul 8, 2019 15:12:02 GMT 9.5
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Post by David B. Benson on Jul 8, 2019 19:27:02 GMT 9.5
Climate Emergency: Reforestation is no Substitute for Leaving Fossil Fuels in the Ground Mark Maslin 2019 Jul 07 The Conversation
Well, nobody stated that it was. This opinion from a University College London don has more sensible commentary about "trillions of trees" than the headline suggests. Others have made similar comments.
My reaction is "plant even more trees, use the Sahara and Australian outback."
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Post by huon on Jul 9, 2019 14:36:08 GMT 9.5
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Post by David B. Benson on Jul 14, 2019 12:03:29 GMT 9.5
Putting pigs in the shade: the radical farming system banking on trees John Vidal 2019 Jul 13 The Guardian
So plant even more trees, multiple stories of trees, shrubs and vines.
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Post by engineerpoet on Jul 14, 2019 23:39:55 GMT 9.5
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Post by huon on Jul 16, 2019 14:25:24 GMT 9.5
"Putting pigs in the shade"--how can one not love an article like this? Thanks, DBB and EP for giving us a passport to this edenic place.
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Post by David B. Benson on Jul 17, 2019 17:32:39 GMT 9.5
Can planting trees save our climate? stefan 2019 Jul 19 Real Climate www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2019/07/can-planting-trees-save-our-climate/The climatologist Stefan Rahmstorf wades in to provide some perspective, but, I fear, insufficient comprehension of sylviculture. Still, the comments are also of interest. Edited to add: The main point seems to be that the net sequestration of carbon is overestimated by a fact of 2 as ocean degassing is not considered.
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Post by David B. Benson on Jul 17, 2019 20:27:19 GMT 9.5
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Post by David B. Benson on Jul 18, 2019 14:28:35 GMT 9.5
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Post by David B. Benson on Jul 18, 2019 14:49:43 GMT 9.5
Restoring Forests Could Help Put a Break on Global Warming, Study Finds Somini Sengupta 2019 Jul 05 The New York Times
A different selection of experts offer one-paragraph opinions on the scheme.
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Post by David B. Benson on Jul 18, 2019 19:27:42 GMT 9.5
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Post by David B. Benson on Jul 19, 2019 21:52:50 GMT 9.5
Using the figures from the James Conca article, 122,483 Nuscale modules plus RO units appear to suffice to provide the desalinated irrigation water for a trillion trees in the Sahara or, I presume, the Australian outback, assuming but 10 gallons per tree per day. More is required to provide the electricity for pumping. I assume water vapor in pipes for the pumping. I don't know how to estimate the cost of piping and other infrastructure.
Still, so many Nuscale modules might be installed for but $150m each; that's $20 trillion to desalinate. Assuming total capital costs are 2 times that, I find $40 per tree; plus of course ongoing expenses. Affordable, the EROEI paper referenced above claims.
Edited to correct the decimal points, as noticed by Huon in the subsequent post
Edited to add that the trees would actually receive about 20 gallons per day once the induced rains set in. The density is 1000+ trees/ha, mostly filling the Sahara. The annual costs are $2trn so after 80 years,the lifetime of the equipment, each tree has cost an estimated $200.
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Post by huon on Jul 20, 2019 8:55:41 GMT 9.5
Hi, DBB-- Conca quotes the price of a NuScale plant as $1,800 million or $150m per module (see table). And Ornstein in this Guardian article gives the price for the afforestation plan as $1.7 trillion a year $1.9 trillion a year. (DBB, yes, my turn to correct a silly error: the $200 billion discrepancy you slyly note in the next comment.)
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Post by David B. Benson on Jul 20, 2019 10:34:15 GMT 9.5
Huon, The Guardian made a decimal point error. I suppose the ongoing expenses that I see might add to $200 billion by paying more people than strictly necessary. But even if somehow The Guardian is right that is still on the scale of the US DoD.
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Post by David B. Benson on Jul 20, 2019 18:24:20 GMT 9.5
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Post by David B. Benson on Jul 20, 2019 19:39:47 GMT 9.5
Planting trees could buy more time to fight climate change than thought Susan Milius 2019 Jul 17 Science News www.sciencenews.org/article/planting-trees-could-buy-more-time-fight-climate-change-thoughtA take on the non-irrigated article. However, the headline is wrong. It is still necessary to stop using fossil fuels as rapidly as possible. Tree planting is a clean up operation to remove the excess carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, restoring something like the Holocene climate.
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Post by David B. Benson on Jul 21, 2019 14:23:59 GMT 9.5
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Post by David B. Benson on Jul 22, 2019 9:20:51 GMT 9.5
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Post by David B. Benson on Jul 24, 2019 16:04:21 GMT 9.5
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Post by David B. Benson on Jul 27, 2019 14:53:04 GMT 9.5
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Post by David B. Benson on Jul 27, 2019 18:52:30 GMT 9.5
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