With the harvesting of wood expected to increase dramatically in coming decades, researchers are warning that policy officials have woefully underestimated logging’s carbon footprint....Between 2010 and 2050, global demand for wood is expected to surge 54%....During that time, greenhouse gas emissions from wood harvests would significantly increase, likely releasing 3.5 billion to 4.2 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide each year.
Estimates vary a bit, but here are the basic stats on greenhouse gas emissions:
The wood researchers are estimating an increase of 0.7 billion metric tons of CO2 out of a total of 50 billion that the world currently emits. That's barely more than 1%. It's trivial.
There are two, and only two, things we should be seriously concerned about if we want to rein in climate change:
- Fossil fuels
- Carbon capture
We need to focus on fossil fuels because that's the whole mozilla. We need to focus on carbon capture of some kind because we can't reach our climate goals merely by reducing emissions. Everyone agrees that we need a lower concentration of greenhouse gases than we have now.
But is there any harm in pointing out other contributors to climate change? Agriculture in general is certainly #2. The problem is that being peppered by constant news coverage of this kind is a dangerous distraction. People hardly need more excuses to focus on more congenial but basically ineffective solutions to climate change. As hard as it is, we need to be focused like a laser on fossil fuels as the only thing that truly matters.
It's either that or geoengineering. Those are our choices.
>It's either that or geoengineering. Those are our choices.
Or the more likely outcome: Things get worse and worse and the climate doomists continue to demand only their view of things. "No nukes! No geoengineering! Poor people must stay poor!"
https://www.mattball.org/2023/06/outsourced-cruelty-of-climate-fanatics.html
"and the climate doomists continue to demand only their view of things."
Which might be a problem if the "climate doomists" held that much sway over such things. But they don't.
The reason that nobody builds nuclear in the US is that the one company to have tried it of late, Southern Company/Georgia Power, has demonstrated pretty conclusively that new nukes are colossal money sinks. SoCo applied for permits to build Plant Vogtle units 3 and 4 (total 2.2 GW) in 2006, with the expectation they'd come online in 2016, at a pricetag of $14 billion. Even with ~$15 billion in loan guarantees from the Obama admin, the project has ballooned to a pricetag of $30 billion, bankrupted Westinghouse, nearly bankrupted Toshiba, and is coming online 7 years late. No utility looks at that kind of failure and says "Me next!"
If you want nuclear, you're going to have to subsidize the hell out of it (even more so than happened with Vogtle), as tracking solar+storage has a levelized cost of less than 60% of advanced nuclear costs, at least according to those wild-haired hippies at the federal Energy Information Agency. Maybe nuclear is the climate solution, but the fact that it is way more expensive than non-emitting alternatives is the bigger hurdle than the tiny minority of anti-nuke protesters waiving signs around.
A great illustration of why public utilities should not be privately owned.
It's the whole mozilla? Firefox? Good god, I'm using Firefox!
That's exactly right. Burning wood is just a distraction. Fossil fuels are the big deal, and we actually have the technology to reduce our use of them. It's time we moved to a post-fire society.
I was amused to see you refer to the "the whole mozilla". That started as "the whole megillah" which is the story of Purim as retold on that holiday. It's basically a pantomime with heroes on is supposed to cheer and villains one is supposed to heckle, and it goes on and on which is why it is one of the few Jewish holidays one is supposed to get drunk. It's fun to see the whole megillah turned into the whole mozilla which came by way of Japan and Godzilla, a compound of gorilla and the Japanese "god" meaning big or great.
My favorite is still "wallah" for "voila". That's French for behold, mispronounced in English and finally conflated with a Hindi personal suffix as in box-wallah or Shakespeare-wallah. Sometimes language takes words through the ringer, originally "wringer".
Like! Now I want a hamantasch!
I thought "Mozilla" was the graphic-interface web browser that succeeded Mosaic, a character cell browser. "Mozilla" was a concatenation of "Godzilla" and "Mosaic." It, in turn, was succeeded by Firefox.
Thanks for the discussion of "megillah." I had always assumed it was some Irish thing.
Thanks for the fun post. With apologies for nit-picking, your etymology of "Godzilla" may be wrong. I was told by a native speaker that the name is derived from the word for whale, kujira. The Japanese phonetic writing for Godzilla is equivalent to go-ji-ra. The "r" is rolled and sounds close to an English "l".
Ironically, the infamous Hun, Atilla used to have the emphasis on the first syllable, but due to the influence of our friend Godzilla, Atilla is nowadays more often pronounced with emphasis on the second syllable.
My wife guessed it is just spelling correction to the well-known browser. But I like the alternative etymology you cranked out.
After decades of research, it is clear that carbon capture will cost between 50% and 120% of the energy from burning the fossil fuels, and fossil fuel companies refuse to do it. We still don't know if carbon capture will scale up.
So carbon capture will only happen if the government funds it separately.
Also, the incentives in carbon capture are all in the direction of making it less effective--it will be hard to directly measure how much CO2 is captured, how much leaks out, the 'cheat' percentage, and the companies running the process profit more the less they do for the carbon capture payment.
So I don’t have to become a vegetarian? Because some are suggesting we have to give up meat.
https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/23778399/media-ignores-climate-change-beef-meat-dairy
No, but it would be good to cut down meat consumption. IF the whole world went on the "American" diet--that would be unsustainable. It's not just the direct emissions from raising cows--the large amount of deforestation to create new pastures is bad--see Brazil and the Amazon.
Americans are such absolutists. Everything is either black or whte. All or nothing. As gloack indicates, cutting back can do a lot of good without making people feel deprived. One can also save on the grocery bill that way! (Permiting the purchase of more beer, a renewable resource.)
I like beer! (Feel free to nominate me to the judiciary.)
Imagine how many restaurants would go out of business.
So, Kevin, how does ignoring the burning of wood advance carbon capture? Is the burning of the Amazon by extension a don’t care? And while I’m in for a penny of snark and vitriol, regarding fossil fuels, is your car at least a hybrid yet? Your kitchen electric? Your furnace a heat pump?
I believe the point is that biofuels can not save us. Burning more "wood" in place of fossil fuels is not going to help solve the global warming problem.
I'm all for all of the above approach. And people do need to get the most fuel efficient item they can when major things need to be replaced. Alas, we're not at the point yet where everyone can do that quickly.
Kevin was doing a kitchen remodel not quite four years ago: https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2019/09/the-great-kitchen-remodel-begins-today/ Did the kitchen go electric?
He bought a new car between two and three years ago: https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2021/01/raw-data-vehicle-sales-in-2020/ Was it at least a hybrid?
When it comes to climate change, Kevin seems big on calling for silver bullets, and singularly unwilling to bite the bullet himself.
I'd hope that only cars with avg. MPG of 50 or higher would be on the market, not fleet average but 50mpg would be the minimum--but that's not the case. At least the Forrester at 29mpg (average) bested the national average for new vehicles, 25.4 mpg.
Most car companies had a hybrid car by 2019--even earlier. But not all models are available as hybrid or all electric. And even if they make them, there can be a long back order. The switch over from plan internal combustion is finally happening now. IC cars will mostly be off the streets in 20 years--better late than never.
Here's the thing, making big heavy batteries takes a lot of carbon. And if the electricity is made by burning coal, then you save a lot less C than you'd hoped. Overall, EV's are generally better and can be much better, but it's complicated, see:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1364032122000867
Doing the kitchen over would be great time to go electric--so might as well upgrade electrical service as needed too. You'll probably a new circuit when switching from natural gas. Induction cook tops were very expensive a few years ago, but prices have dropped recently:
https://www.consumerreports.org/appliances/ranges/pros-and-cons-of-induction-cooktops-and-ranges-a5854942923/
Of course, if you then need a complete set of new pots and pans, that would cut into your carbon savings.
Meh. I was at 30 MPG with an ‘02 Passat.
A further beef I have with Kevin’s choice of automobile is that he’s all “support (US) labor/unions” and then bought a foreign-made vehicle.
Fine. And how much coal is burned for electricity in California? For that matter, what is the trend for the US as a whole?
As for the electrical service upgrade, I’m intimately familiar with that. I’m anxiously awaiting the inspection to allow the new conductors to be pulled. When all said and done that bit might come in at less than a year from initial engagement with the utility to finish.
Subaru has a plant in Terre Haute, IN, I drove past it once on the way to Chicago to visit my brother. Don't know if Kevin's car was assembled there. My car a Mazda was made in Japan but I only buy cars when my old one falls apart so I held onto my last car for 19 years, this one is 13 years old. I'm waiting to go car shopping as I WFH at the moment and I'm waiting for the car market to get more sane.
My first car was a Dodge Shadow--yes, a "K" car--which then became a Mercedes--as in Mercedes bought Chrysler.
American car, good mileage, and just enough power to do what I needed it to do.
When I went to replace it, couldn't find an American car with comparable MPG (at least not one made in America). The big three has basically abandoned the small car market at the time, so went with Honda.
I would say all extractive, unrenewable resources should be nationalized, as they are in many other countries.
This is the simplest and easiest way of managing them, and, by a mile, provides the best benefit to society.
The antagonism to doing such a thing seems trivial compared to the cost of not doing it, the death of everyone and everything.
To be clear, no other approach will have the vaguest chance of success, not carbon tax, carbon capture, or anything else.
Anything that preserves the power of the petroleum industry to obfuscate or evade it will fail, fail completely and probably quickly.
The only thing that can work is the most draconian, direct attack upon the source of carbon.
There is no time for subtlety, as if no one would notice you were doing it, and which would fail in any event.
Any mention of "geoengineering" makes me REALLY nervous. Our understanding of the effects of suggested approaches -- spraying massive quantities of reflective particles into the upper atmosphere being the most popular -- has nowhere NEAR the precision necessary even to attempt it, much less to be confident that it wouldn't result in an even worse problem or an outright planetary catastrophe. And their (necessary) scale, the complexity of the interacting systems they would affect, and the time lag between actions and effects make it very difficult -- maybe even impossible -- to conduct experiments to refine our understanding. It's so bad that it's arguably irresponsible even to suggest that "geoengineering" is a plausible solution to global warming.
Of course, this won't stop ignorant boosters, cynical grifters, desperate politicians, et al. from hyping it, or an increasingly panicky general population from insisting "we've got to do SOMETHING!" I'd give it at least even money that we'll try some utterly irresponsible gamble at some point. But I'd still prefer we not do anything to get that train rolling quite yet.
Pumping tons of CO2 into the atmosphere by burning fossil fuels is geo-engineering.
Carbon capture can come under the rubric of geo-engineering, though it's much more efficient to not burn the fossil fuels to begin with. As for dumping sulfate into the stratosphere--that has me nervous too--but it is something the can be tested. Resonance times is a few years (I think). And we've seen what volcanoes can do, so we have some idea of what's going on. One of my major fears is that if it works, people might decide to keep burning fossil fuels longer.
"Pumping tons of CO2 into the atmosphere by burning fossil fuels is geo-engineering."
Exactly. And that CO2 will remain in the atmosphere for decades. Even if carbon burning ended tomorrow, we'd be in for increase global warming. Conservation won't matter. The only thing that matters now is mitigation, which is global carbon capture and/or geoengineering. Full stop.
Disappointing but expected to see Kevin Drum pimp carbon capture. Something that has been promised as a silver bullet for decades now, but is, like SMRs and cold fusion, a paper concept that has repeatedly failed in the real world.
This was looked at last year, and that study found that in looking 3 decades worth of carbon capture, utilization, & sequestration projects "most CCUS projects initiated in the past three decades have failed"
Which is as you'd expect. CCS is basically taking stable high-energy stores of carbon, running them downhill into low-energy CO2 to generate electricity, and then trying to push the CO2 back uphill to more-or-less where you started so that is again stable and not out in the atmosphere. It's thermodynamic nonsense.
CC will only make sense once there's surplus generating capacity. Until then, it's much more efficient to use the electricity directly.
Well, what is meant by "wood harvests" and "logging"? I had assumed that it referred to cutting down trees for their lumber and pulp, not combustion. Why in the world, in the 21st century, would burning wood in increasing amounts even be a thing?? On the other hand, there is a housing crisis and not just in the US. Wood forms much of the basis for buildings.
And if indeed, the trees are harvested for lumber and pulp, this is good! Because it takes their carbon out of circulation and makes it necessary to grow more trees, thus capturing even more carbon! Win Win!
Yes, I was thinking that one of the factors increasing demand for wood is the use of engineered wood products in construction, which sequesters the carbon for a fair period of time.
"And if indeed, the trees are harvested for lumber and pulp, this is good! Because it takes their carbon out of circulation "
it would be nice but unfortunately it doesn't work like that.
Wood (for instance a wooden house) decays and is eventually landfill. "decay" in wood releases its carbon. To the atmosphere it's basically slow-motion burning..
Well, sure, but my house is about 40 years old and there are many in town near 100 years old, and no danger of either rotting away or being torn down.
Assuming every house gets torn down, isn't it more often than not replaced with the same, or additional, housing? Which could still amount to a net negative in carbon emissions.
Yes, beware of distractions, fake and unproven solutions and straight propaganda. Let's keep the focus on reducing fossil fuel use as fast as possible. I would certainly call carbon capture and geoengineering completely unproven and they are actively being used to distract from the urgency of reducing fossil fuel use. Even the use of wind and solar power is not proven to help at the scale that is needed. Just note that after very substantial investments in and installation of wind and solar power the increase of the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere continues to accelerate and accelerate even faster than world population. The only proven and scalable carbon-neutral energy source is nuclear power. France could change to nuclear in about 20 years. Why can't the world?
The world can. But the point is, it's already too late. If all carbon burning ended tomorrow, the amount of CO2 already in the atmosphere will remain for decades and continue to drive global warming (and I'm not even including methane, both from anthropogenic sources and from melting clathrates).
The only way to prevent resource wars that will destroy civilization by 2050 is some combination of carbon capture and geoengineering.
This is exactly the danger of advocating unproven solutions: it gives people permission to do nothing. Yes, the present levels of CO2 in the atmosphere are already warming the earth dangerously and it will get worse, but if we start right now with building nuclear power plants the way we built weapons for WWII we can avoid catastrophe for humanity. Our situation is like being at war: you use the tools you have, not the tools you wished you have.
I'm all for green energy (solar, wind, nuclear) as well as conservation. But it is *already* too late to avoid catastrophe by implementing those methods. If *all* carbon burning ended tomorrow, the amount of CO2 already in the atmosphere will remain for decades and continue to drive global warming (and I'm not even including methane, both from anthropogenic sources and from melting clathrates).
The *only* way to prevent resource wars that will destroy civilization by 2050 is some combination of carbon capture and geoengineering.
Speaking of which, pine beetles are part of a climate change feedback loop.
The worse the temperatures rise, the further north the pine beetles reach, the more trees die, diminishing carbon sinks, contributing to rising temperatures, etc.
There are two, and only two, things we should be seriously concerned about if we want to rein in climate change:
Fossil fuels
Carbon capture
AND UNTIL THE TRANSFORMATION TO 100% GREEN ENERGY:
Limit population *growth* (estimated to be 25% over the next 75 years)
"It's either that or geoengineering. Those are our choices."
Well, realistically, it is that *and* geoengineering. The only way we get the CO2 emissions under control is a combination of
1 -- nuclear power plants, hopefully with safer designs, wind and solar
2 -- better energy storage, possibly by converting green electrons into H2, possibly just way better batteries
3 -- some sort of carbon capture for things like agriculture, airplanes, and other things that you can't do with electricity
This will all take time -- so I suspect geoengineering will be required to minimize disastrous heat waves.
Correct
Although it is necessary to note that this must include the constant repetition that with the combination of RE (solar, wind), the implicit here is electricifiction of most transport and most industrial processes and this requires MASSIVE GRID REINFORCEMENT and build out. And this done right quick, not at the pace that is occuring in any industrial country right now (although USA is really staggeringly badly positioned right now with your bizarrely balkanised grid)
The Greeny Left engages in massive magical thinking on all fronts in this area.
Such coverage is frankly the general result of Journalists largely being science illiterates and beyond that generally innumerate, and Journo practice of relying on anectdote (aka interviews).
Hear, hear! Like +50. Americans need smarter news. Even NPR loudly dumbs inself down when it precedes anything even vaguely technical with a disclaimer on how nerdy and wonky it is, and probably none of the listeners would understand, anyway.
PBS, even in its most sciency programs, spews forth hours and hours of eye candy, with some banal, pointless philosophizing narrative, rather than actually explaining what the viewer is seeing on screen. Sure, some come away with feeling more informed ... but we all could be a lot MORE informed.
Kevin, you are basically right. But the missing puzzle piece is "how do we stop burning fossil fuels?" Just saying it doesn't make it happen. And nationalizing energy industries is a pipe dream.
The answer is actually butt-simple: tax carbon. Not after it's been burned, but before. Tax the coal, oil, and gas at the first point of sale, and raise the tax rate steadily every year.
And then, and this is key, redistribute all the tax revenue back to households, equally per capita. This is called "carbon fee and dividend."
Not only would it work, but it is the ONLY thing that will work.
But, Rick, you ask, "if it's so great, then why aren't we doing it?"
The answer is simple: BECAUSE IT WOULD WORK.
And actually, "we" are doing it, just not here. Canada and a few European countries are doing it, and it is working as intended.
There is absolutely no hope that CO2 emissions are even going to plateau in the next 20 years, nevermind be reduced from what they are now.
Carbon capture will save us right around the time cold fusion saves us.
Humanity is in full-on denial and that won't be changing anytime soon.
The silly little trick played with these accounting papers (the original Nature paper, not the LA times) is to change the time horizon. If you allow trees to regrow in your modeling, then the net effect of harvesting a replanted forest is zero just before the point of the next harvest. But if you shorten the timeframe of your accounting, then the net effect is a C loss (they model between 2010-2050). Or if you cut down an old growth forest, and plant soybeans, then the net loss is immediate and forever (or until humanity no longer exits). So they key is, and always is, do not cut old growth forests.
The paper is written by an environmental outfit. Look for their fundraising emails in your junk mail!
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Apocalyptic wingnuts fueled and supported by the petroleum industry,
https://twitter.com/jimstewartson/status/1677459495432368129
When we harvest wood, we use fossil fuels. We deplete natural carbon and cooling sinks that forests create. And we release the carbon previously captured in that woodland.
I live in Maine, on the edge of the great Northeastern Forest, that stretches from upstate NY through northern New England and into eastern Canada. It captures more carbon each day than the entire US eastern seaboard produces.
So I think your base graph misses a lot of nuance that matters a good deal.