Tree Euthanasia? Climate Alarmists Now Warn That Our Forests Will Worsen Global Warming
Back in the 1970s, when trees became almost a protected class, we heard that we had to ditch paper supermarket bags (and move to plastic) because we were decimating too many forests. Now, 50 years later, with more tree cover in the U.S. than a century ago, the greentopians have another complaint:
American forests will become CO2 emitters by 2070, they aver, joining 10 protected forests worldwide that already are net spewers of the gas.
Reflecting the complaints many misanthropic leftists have about people, the issue is that as trees age they become takers: Their growth slows and they use less CO2. In fact, the amount metabolized is lower than that produced by wildfires and dead-tree decomposition.
True to form, some scientists have suggested as a “remedy” what is already applied to people: euthanasia — with the arboreal version involving destroying senior-citizen trees and replacing them with young whippersnapper ones. Whether such a great replacement would involve foreign-tree imports was not revealed.
(Thankfully, U.S. Department of Agriculture experts dismiss this idea as being based on poor science.)
As for the tree-villain story, ScienceAlert informs:
An alarming report from the US Department of Agriculture predicts that by 2070, the nation’s forests will release substantially more carbon than they store.
Forests in the US – bar those in Alaska – will no longer absorb 150 million metric tons of carbon a year within five decades, experts say.
That carbon is equivalent to the emissions of roughly 40 coal power plants.
To understand how a carbon sink can become a carbon tap, we have to consider the lifecycle of a healthy forest, where new growth matures into old growth and old growth dies and makes room for new growth.
But today, in North America, not enough young trees are being planted and allowed to grow up.
This means that mature forests are outpacing young forests, which are also more likely to be harvested or killed due to climate effects like wildfires, drought, or storms.
The overall shift to an older age cohort of trees means that in the future, forests in the US could be dying more than they are growing.
Practically, this turns forests from carbon absorbers to carbon emitters.
Old growth trees hold the most carbon in total, but after reaching a certain size, their growth seems to slow. Young trees, on the other hand, rapidly take up carbon for growth.
My, not since Babes in Toyland have big old trees seemed so frightful. What’s really supposed to terrify us, though, is the big bad gaseous “threat” CO2. Yet this fear is as irrational as worrying about walking, talking trees.
The first suspicious thing about the climate-alarmist appeal is the terminology: Calling CO2 “carbon” is like calling H2O “hydrogen.” “Man, am I thirsty. I gotta get me a big glass of hydrogen.”
Then there’s, “The lawn’s lookin’ a bit brown. Tell Timmy to get the hose and hydrogen the grass.”
Yeah, it’s that ridiculous.
