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Except forest fires do not produce CO2. They release carbon that has been temporarily stored in trees and is part of the carbon cycle. On the other hand, by dr

Except forest fires do not produce CO2. They release carbon that has been temporarily stored in trees and is part of the carbon cycle. On the other hand, by driving a car, you are adding to the atmosphere carbon that has not been in the cycle. Btw, for the same reason, neither planting trees nor building cities out of wood will do anything. It is awfully hard to preserve wood forever in any large quantities that would make any difference.

User23 4y ago
> Except forest fires do not produce CO2. They release carbon that has been temporarily stored in trees and is part of the carbon cycle. By that reasoning burning coal doesn’t produce CO2 either. It’s just a matter of the size of the time constant. Coal burning is just a forest fire with greater hysteresis.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- robomartin 4y ago
  Exactly right. How many trees go into making one barrel of petroleum that we burn millions of years later?
- userbinator 4y ago
  Coal burning is just a forest fire with greater hysteresis. With the added benefit of providing useful power, unlike a forest fire.
- 1270018080 4y ago
  Yes. And there is quite a bit of difference between 50 years and 10 million.
  - twawaaay 4y ago
    Actually, it is more like 300 million. The coal formed because plants produced lignin but there was no organism that was able to break it up, until fungi evolved. Now it is pretty much impossible for new coal to form in significant amount (except maybe for peat bogs) because every tree that falls will rot.
- kube-system 4y ago
  Forest fires happen as a part of natural occurrences. Petroleum/coal is only burned due to human activities.
robomartin 4y ago
> Except forest fires do not produce CO2. They release carbon that has been temporarily stored in trees and is part of the carbon cycle. I hope you are kidding. The planet has had multiple cycles of atmospheric CO2 increases and decreases over millions of years. We have very accurate data to cover 800,000 years, where the range was between, roughly, 200 and 300 ppm. The question is: How did CO2 increase when humanity was pretty much insignificant and not burning fossil fuels? How did that happen? The answer is simple: Massive, continental scale forest fires. Without modern fire fighting and mitigation technologies these fires burned for very long periods of time and razed areas the size of entire modern cities. The average 100 ppm increase took about 100K years. Nothing other than fires could cause this change. Fires over a very long period of time. The other question is: How did atmospheric CO2 concentration decrease? After all, we were not around to "save the planet" with technology. Also simple: Rain, hurricanes, cyclones, weather and vegetation regrowth over 100K years. That's how long it took the natural planetary engine to react to a 100 ppm change in atmospheric CO2 and revert it. Next question: How did humans add another 100 ppm+ in such a short period of time? Because we burned more forests faster than nature could have ever done on its own. Except we did this by burning oil, petroleum. One way to look at petroleum is that it is a highly concentrated form of plant and other biomass materials turned into goo we can easily burn. And so, by burning it, we engaged in the equivalent of burning entire forests on a daily, monthly or annual basis for the last several hundred years. As population grew, the more we burned. And here we are. Forest fires absolutely produce CO2. That has been the cased for millions of years. If it makes your more comfortable to say they release CO2, so be it. That's fine. The net effect is the same: CO2 accumulates in the atmosphere and contributes to global warming. Same thing cars do. The greater point is a dark one, and one most people are not ready to accept: There isn't a thing we can do about it. It's a planetary-scale problem that will take in the order of tens of thousands of years to affect. We can't do it. EDIT: One more question we should ask: How many trees (or plants) went into creating one unit of petroleum? https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/654287 https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/654287 From the article: "Can you imagine loading 40 acres worth of wheat – stalks, roots and all – into the tank of your car or SUV every 20 miles?" asks ecologist Jeff Dukes, whose study will be published in the November issue of the Journal Climatic Change. Here's the full paper: https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/5212176.pdf https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/5212176.pdf

User23 4y ago

> Except forest fires do not produce CO2. They release carbon that has been temporarily stored in trees and is part of the carbon cycle. By that reasoning burning coal doesn’t produce CO2 either. It’s just a matter of the size of the time constant. Coal burning is just a forest fire with greater hysteresis.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
robomartin 4y ago
Exactly right. How many trees go into making one barrel of petroleum that we burn millions of years later?
userbinator 4y ago
Coal burning is just a forest fire with greater hysteresis. With the added benefit of providing useful power, unlike a forest fire.
1270018080 4y ago
Yes. And there is quite a bit of difference between 50 years and 10 million.
- twawaaay 4y ago
  Actually, it is more like 300 million. The coal formed because plants produced lignin but there was no organism that was able to break it up, until fungi evolved. Now it is pretty much impossible for new coal to form in significant amount (except maybe for peat bogs) because every tree that falls will rot.
kube-system 4y ago
Forest fires happen as a part of natural occurrences. Petroleum/coal is only burned due to human activities.

robomartin 4y ago

> Except forest fires do not produce CO2. They release carbon that has been temporarily stored in trees and is part of the carbon cycle. I hope you are kidding. The planet has had multiple cycles of atmospheric CO2 increases and decreases over millions of years. We have very accurate data to cover 800,000 years, where the range was between, roughly, 200 and 300 ppm. The question is: How did CO2 increase when humanity was pretty much insignificant and not burning fossil fuels? How did that happen? The answer is simple: Massive, continental scale forest fires. Without modern fire fighting and mitigation technologies these fires burned for very long periods of time and razed areas the size of entire modern cities. The average 100 ppm increase took about 100K years. Nothing other than fires could cause this change. Fires over a very long period of time. The other question is: How did atmospheric CO2 concentration decrease? After all, we were not around to "save the planet" with technology. Also simple: Rain, hurricanes, cyclones, weather and vegetation regrowth over 100K years. That's how long it took the natural planetary engine to react to a 100 ppm change in atmospheric CO2 and revert it. Next question: How did humans add another 100 ppm+ in such a short period of time? Because we burned more forests faster than nature could have ever done on its own. Except we did this by burning oil, petroleum. One way to look at petroleum is that it is a highly concentrated form of plant and other biomass materials turned into goo we can easily burn. And so, by burning it, we engaged in the equivalent of burning entire forests on a daily, monthly or annual basis for the last several hundred years. As population grew, the more we burned. And here we are. Forest fires absolutely produce CO2. That has been the cased for millions of years. If it makes your more comfortable to say they release CO2, so be it. That's fine. The net effect is the same: CO2 accumulates in the atmosphere and contributes to global warming. Same thing cars do. The greater point is a dark one, and one most people are not ready to accept: There isn't a thing we can do about it. It's a planetary-scale problem that will take in the order of tens of thousands of years to affect. We can't do it. EDIT: One more question we should ask: How many trees (or plants) went into creating one unit of petroleum? https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/654287 https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/654287 From the article: "Can you imagine loading 40 acres worth of wheat – stalks, roots and all – into the tank of your car or SUV every 20 miles?" asks ecologist Jeff Dukes, whose study will be published in the November issue of the Journal Climatic Change. Here's the full paper: https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/5212176.pdf https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/5212176.pdf