Silhouette
Gold Member
- Jul 15, 2013
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No matter what side of the climate change debate you come down on, there is no disputing the atomosphere is filling up with more and more Co2 than before the industrial revolution and the population explosion that came from it.
The burning of fossil fuels is the burning of carbon. That is going into the atmosphere. It was previously locked up in the earth...kind of where you want carbon to be if you like stable temperatures or ones at least that are slightly predictable from year to year. Co2 creates a blanket that warms the earth.
Ice caps condition the weather in the earth's systems. They act as stablizers. If they retreat significantly, so does the predictability of the weather.
Most fossil fuels came from vegetation that rotted and got locked up in the earth from surficial geologic processes. Vegetation has a lot of carbon because plants and trees pull carbon from the air when they respirate and use it to build themselves up. Trees are the paramount example of this.
OK, my dream...
The deserts in the Middle East have a lot of energy. Fuel and solar. I wonder how cool it would be if one of the Arab countries started planting a crapload of cedar tree seedings or other arid loving tree species as an introductory, building the soil up to where a forest could eventually begin again. The ME has tons of sunshine. Why not install solar desalination plants to take ocean water to irrigate patchworks of land to sustain an introductory biome that tree seedlings could eventually be introduced into? Imagine the ME with tall cedars again? Would be something for sure.
If it took off and worked, small parts of the Sahara could begin to be reclaimed in a similar way. At the same time, people in every country could really go on a rampage planting tree seedlings and really get on reforesting the globe. In five to ten years you'd have a bunch of carbon munchers fixing carbon from the atmosphere back down on the surface in the form of locked carbon.
Well?
The burning of fossil fuels is the burning of carbon. That is going into the atmosphere. It was previously locked up in the earth...kind of where you want carbon to be if you like stable temperatures or ones at least that are slightly predictable from year to year. Co2 creates a blanket that warms the earth.
Ice caps condition the weather in the earth's systems. They act as stablizers. If they retreat significantly, so does the predictability of the weather.
Most fossil fuels came from vegetation that rotted and got locked up in the earth from surficial geologic processes. Vegetation has a lot of carbon because plants and trees pull carbon from the air when they respirate and use it to build themselves up. Trees are the paramount example of this.
OK, my dream...
The deserts in the Middle East have a lot of energy. Fuel and solar. I wonder how cool it would be if one of the Arab countries started planting a crapload of cedar tree seedings or other arid loving tree species as an introductory, building the soil up to where a forest could eventually begin again. The ME has tons of sunshine. Why not install solar desalination plants to take ocean water to irrigate patchworks of land to sustain an introductory biome that tree seedlings could eventually be introduced into? Imagine the ME with tall cedars again? Would be something for sure.
If it took off and worked, small parts of the Sahara could begin to be reclaimed in a similar way. At the same time, people in every country could really go on a rampage planting tree seedlings and really get on reforesting the globe. In five to ten years you'd have a bunch of carbon munchers fixing carbon from the atmosphere back down on the surface in the form of locked carbon.
Well?