Russia ratifies Kyoto Protocol

[lightblue]

The easiest way off hurting the economies of countries that don't start cutting emissions back is to slap really fat tariffs on everything produced in those countries. The revenues can then be used to develop more environmentally friendly energy sources.

[DinoDoc]

I doubt the WTO would go for that.

[lightblue]

TBH stuff the WTO. Free trade on an unlevel playing field is overrated.

[Dinner]

Originally posted by lightblue
The easiest way off hurting the economies of countries that don't start cutting emissions back is to slap really fat tariffs on everything produced in those countries. The revenues can then be used to develop more environmentally friendly energy sources.

Except the EU, Canada, and Japan are basically the only countries which would have to lower emmissions under Kyoto. Every other signatory would get a free pass to pollute to their hearts' content. I seriously doubt you could try to tarrif 3/4 of the world without suffering even worse under their counter tarrif.

[DinoDoc]

Says the group of people who brought a case against us for protecting dolphins.

[Dinner]

Originally posted by lightblue
TBH stuff the WTO. Free trade on an unlevel playing field is overrated.

Other then Farm goods what is so unlevel?

[Chemical Ollie]

Originally posted by Ned
Oerdin, If I understand it correctly, doing things to expand forests or control forest or grass fires gets no credit in Kyoto because they are not counted in the first place. Brazil would be the world's largest polluter if forest fires counted.

Burning wood does not give a permanent CO2 increase as long as you let the forest or other crops grow back.

[The Mad Monk]

I'm not overly concerned about CO2 -- it all goes into the carbonate sink eventually.

[Ned]

The US is not a net emitter. A report, the FAN report, developed under the Clinton admin, apparently determined that the US and Canada were both net carbon sinks.

http://www.heartland.org/Article.cfm?artId=13379

As to Brazil, I don't buy the notion that constantly burning forests on the scale that occurs in Brazil does not add tremedous amounts of CO2. But, if you are willing to balance this with Brazil's forests and other vegetation that act as a sink, you should be willing to do the same with the US's forests and vegetation which makes the US a net sink.

[Dauphin]

From Ned's link:

Air in the Northern Hemisphere is rich in nitrogen (a plant food), thanks to the area’s industry and agriculture.

Who'd a thunk the atmosphere has a lot of nitrogen.

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

Originally posted by Chemical Ollie


Burning wood does not give a permanent CO2 increase as long as you let the forest or other crops grow back.

That would be problematic then for Brazil and other rain forest deforestation players as the clear cutting is not allowing for re-establishment of rainforest areas. More likely is pasture land.

[Chemical Ollie]

Originally posted by Ogie Oglethorpe


That would be problematic then for Brazil and other rain forest deforestation players as the clear cutting is not allowing for re-establishment of rainforest areas. More likely is pasture land.

Yes you are right, if the land turns into desert or wasteland. But my company owns large forest plantations in Brazil, on land that was clear-cut by other companies and used for beef production some decades ago. Now there are eucalyptus plantations on the flat hill tops and re-grown rain forest in the valleys.

I don't buy the argument "cutting trees or burning wood is bad". Wood is a crop just like any other and it's a part of the natural carbon cycle. It's like saying "Let's not eat so much bread, we need to preserve those straws".

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

Good show on the Eucalytptus. Perhaps the most favored long fiber wood used in papermaking today with incredible growth/yield. I agree rotating crops is good environmental sttewardship and one of the main reasons why I think paper companies get a bad rap as they have by and large embraced the concept of renewable resource and replenishment thereof.

[Ned]

I don't get it, so make it real slow. If you never burn the trees, they are a carbon sink (growing leaves and the like) until they die and are replaced by younger trees. If you burn a tree, it contributes a great amount of CO2 and it takes a generation for a new tree to replace the burnt one. For all this time, the CO2 sink is not as great as the amout of CO2 released in the burn.

Now on a larger scale, if you burnt the entire Amazon rainforest this year, you would release, let us say, the equivalent of all the man made CO2 that could be produced in the next 50 years. But, you tell us, that is no problem, for over the next 50 years the forest will regrow and take that same CO2 back out of the atmosphere.

But, during the interim, there will be a global temperature rise attributable to the burning followed by global cooling as the CO2 levels fell.



If the process is continuously repeated. It seems to me that the

[Dauphin]

Originally posted by Ned
Now on a larger scale, if you burnt the entire Amazon rainforest this year, you would release, let us say, the equivalent of all the man made CO2 that could be produced in the next 50 years.

What are you pulling those numbers out of?