Politicians Save

Politicians actually listened when experts told them to protect Canada's boreal forest, a potent weapon against global warming, and the plan for this vast green area could work on some of the world's other vital places, scientists told Reuters.

Bigger than the Amazon and better than almost anywhere else on the planet at keeping climate-warming carbon out of the atmosphere, the boreal forest stretches across 1.4 billion acres (566.6 million hectares) from Newfoundland to Alaska.

More importantly, the boreal is in good condition, and the scientists' plan aims to keep it that way.

"There's not a lot of these really big chunks of ecosystem left," said Stuart Pimm, a conservation biologist at Duke University, said in a joint interview on Tuesday with several environmental experts.
Read the full story here.

Related:
Beetles Killing Trees In Colorado, Reviving An Industry
Obama Wants To Stay The Course On Climate

Comments

[b2j2]

10:02 PM on 11/19/2008

The carbon is already sequestere­d in the forest. If CO2 increases, the forest will take in more, but much of the value of preserving the forest is in not releasing what is already there.

No mention of the Mojave in the article. How is the carbon "sunk" in a desert. (Some, yes, if plant life can be increased. That could be part of the siting analysis.)

Big wind turbines are hard to beat with small turbines, but individual solar should be competitiv­e if you have a suitable site. And conservati­on is usually the least expensive.

The biggest and far most efficient storage (pumped) for when the sun is not shining or the wind not blowing belongs to some combinatio­n of the state and Edison's successors at Big Creek in the Sierras (on the grid).

[wdw102]

03:13 PM on 11/20/2008

good for them......­......as i toss another log on the fire......­..

[OneVoiceInACrowd]

09:08 PM on 11/19/2008

I didn't know deserts were big carbon sinks. Please elaborate.

[sheila]

07:57 PM on 11/19/2008

excellent! now, who is going to stand up for the Mojave, which is another fantastic, largely intact ecosystem which has proven to be as effective a carbon sink as a temperate forest? it is under siege from Big Solar and Big Wind, who wish to kill a huge, functionin­g carbon sink and perfect ecosystem in order to make sure that none of us can get solar panels on our roofs and deprive them of their 21st Century Robber Baron status.

stand up for yourself and the planet! demand feed in tariffs, local point of use solutions (conservat­ion, storage and renewable generation­) and refuse to allow your open spaces to be killed just to re-entrenc­h Big Energy monopolies­!