Healthy forests are enormously important for carbon capture
By Lethbridge Herald on September 8, 2023.
Editor:
Prime Minister Trudeau visited the North West Territories last weekend to show sympathy and promise help. Then he commented on the wildfires. He reportedly said a comment, meant to be funny, but it almost made me cry. “We will make people clean the leaves out of their eavestroughs.” The sorrow is from his position that wildfires are relatively unimportant and/or unmanageable.
As to what’s funny, a home that has leafy eavestroughs is relatively safe. Leaves come from hardwood trees and they are fire resistant. If they were full of needles from evergreens, they are like gasoline, fuel for a fire.
As to importance, Dr. Werner Kurz, a climatologist wrote “forest fires like the ones in 2017, 2021 and this year release carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases such as methane into the atmosphere.”
The initial, albeit unofficial estimate is that the direct emissions in 2017 were about 150 tons of carbon dioxide.
This is two to three times the emissions from fossil fuel burning from all other sectors.”
Yes, two or three times the emissions from all cars and trucks and trains; from all furnaces, air conditioners in homes, hospitals, business, industry and farms.
Doubtless, wildfire emissions must be included in our search for zero-point emissions and an emissions capture equation. A healthy forest is our biggest friend when it comes to carbon capture.
Even if we all drove e-cars, had solar-panel roofs and received all our electricity from windmills, it would be less effective than a healthy forest.
If there ever was a reason for a pause before proceeding as we are, it is to consider managing forest fires that have been managing us.
What’s really annoyed Dr. Kurz is the federal department of forests and Trudeau has taken the position there is nothing we can do. And as they have joined European climatologists who have declared that forest fires are an almost insignificant problem to reach zero-point.
Yes, it’s true, there are not many hectares hit by forest fire, few carbon emissions and firefighters and citizens are safe. So, we are misled by our government. There will be more well paid, life-long jobs in forestry if we follow German and Swiss models than if we do what is now proposed. We have a lot of catching up to do. Our forests are a mess. The forest is full of unusable roads, huge lakes and rivers but their waters are not available. Will it be more or less expensive than the way we are going? We will certainly be better stewards of our land. It’s time for a pause.
Phil Jorgensen
Lethbridge
15-14
Gee Phil I guess that would explain why people have no problem starting campfires with leaves or why people used to burn their leaf piles when raking them up in the fall? Fire resistant , not the ones I’ve burnt.
The true conservatives in my world aren’t fans of Trudeau either but we know better than to support another Reformer in Pierre Poilievre who has already proven that this only solution to any problem is to blame it on someone else and in true reform party form is promising to destroy jobs, not create them like conservatives have done over the years. Now his pal Danielle Smith is doing just that in Alberta with her destructive of green energy. Where does she think we are going to find the electricity to run our vehicles when that’s all we can buy? Maybe she prefers to see farmers using horse and buggy.
no room for forests when the economy is god, and the economy demands more consumers, consumption, and self interest to serve that god.
Surely, biff, the sooner Trudeau gets rid of our forests, the sooner he can get on with destroying something else.
What we really need is a Small Modular Reactor and freedom!
maybe one on every truck, motor boat and off road machine. few seem to care, but our economic approach is sicko, and not even a perfectly clean and sustainable source of energy will save the life forms on this planet from our wants driven self indulgence.