So in the UK they're cutting down forests to replace them with bogs because 'bogs store more carbon than forests.' Can anyone explain this in a little more detail? The video here seems ...vague, and the three sentences accompanying it don't help. Trees absoarb carbon and replace it with oxygen. Bogs store carbon and emit ...methane. Am I the only one that thinks the BBC is totally full of it here? I'm guessing the UK is just trying to pretend its not cutting these trees down for lumber profits and blowing the sawdust up ignorant environmentalist's bogholes. Or am I just behind the times and brown is the new green? Why cutting down trees can be good for the climate - BBC News
Wasn't England once a place where some wit noted "Judas couldn't have found a tree to hang himself from."? I'll go with "lumber profits" for $200 Alex!
It says it is the video--the trees fully release their carbon when they die. plants trapped in bogs do not fully decompose and release all their carbon. The bogs become a longer term carbon sink than trees. Even beyond this, there is a controversy generally about trees and rewilding schemes in the UK. Some feel that they are placing too much emphasis on 1) trees and 2) the wrong sorts of trees. Instead of trying to stand up balanced, diverse habitats, they are planting densely populated stands of conifers which are not that friendly to many wild animals but look good in the photos to promote they are "doing something".
The Brits seem confused about bogs. Power Struggle "On 24th September 2021 an article appeared in the Shetland Times, headlined “Research into peatland is costly”. The article was about research into the impact of peat bogs on climate change, with regard to their ability to store greenhouse gases or, in the case of eroded peat, to emit them. Experts from the James Hutton Institutei have brought specialist equipment to a site near Girlsta to monitor the volume of greenhouse gases emitted from the degraded peat said to be there. Funding for the project comes from the Scottish government’s peatland action programme, which is more than a little ironic, since it was the Scottish government that granted planning permission for the gigantic Viking Energy wind farm development that is busily carving up huge swathes of peat in the central part of Shetland Mainland. The plan, it seems, is to assess potential emissions reductions that might be achieved by restoring degraded peatland. I have a simpler idea – why not stop carving roads and quarries through peatlands and digging enormous holes in it and pouring vast quantities of concrete into it to serve as foundations for wind turbines that are almost as tall as the hills on which they stand? Just a thought. . . . "
Is a bog really a carbon sink though? A carbon sink reduces carbon in the atmosphere. Bogs just store it. Seems to me over a long enough timeline, ongoing photosynthesis replacing co2 with o2 would be preferable to co2 just being locked up.
If it stores it for any amount of time it is a sink. Trees will do it for maybe 100 years. Bogs will do it for 1,000 years (in theory). The logic is that the more carbon we can sink and for the longer we sink it, the more time we buy ourselves to move away from fossil fuels and the like. Now personally, I think chasing carbon is a fool's errand. We should focus more on conservation, real man made chemical pollution reduction and mitigation, forest management, flood mitigation, etc. In other words, I think we should be doing the practical common sense things instead of obsessing about a naturally occurring compound.
CHANGE: Supreme Court Agrees to Hear Case Challenging EPA Authority to Regulate Greenhouse Gases. EPA presumed too much?
