Climate Policy

[Jester]

Another area I haven't thought through yet. Perhaps the linear growth of CO2 correlates with global deforestation. From the first logs hewn for ships and castles to the present day how has land use affected the climate? Some scientists predict deforestation accounts for 25% of anthropogenic atmospheric CO2, but perhaps that is larger due to other processes such as erosion releasing carbon from the soil as well.

That shouldn't be tough to measure. Just install measurement devices in recently cut areas, and see what happens. But I suspect the lion's share of CO2 released is just through the obvious mechanism: trees that held carbon in wood are burned. Stopping deforestation would be an enormous and sensible step forward. It is also one of the reasons I'm highly skeptical of the "plant a trillion trees" solution. We can't even keep our existing forests up due to population pressures and economic motives. How, without changing those facts, are we going to dramatically increase global forests, or transform them with bioengineering?

Presumably, it would be true that deforestation is highly correlated with CO2 growth, for fairly obvious reasons. One is causal: forests held carbon in plants that is now in the atmosphere. Another is simply coincidence: we are more able to exploit forest resources because we have fuel-burning technology and a high population, both of which create emissions.

-Jester