Biodee writes:

<<Both have palm oil plantations out the ying yang and they share a common border. However, Malaysia has a much better grip on sustainable forest practices than its rival, Indonesia.>>

Let us hope this is correct.

From the sound of the Malaysian minister, though, it seems the Malaysians are determined to make something out of this crop, no matter what.  No, Biodee, we do not all confuse Malaysians with Indonesians.  But the Malaysian minister seem to have too easily confused orangutans with European boycotters: they are both obstacles to his plan to increase Malaysia's wealth from the sale of Borneo palm oil.  Really, if there is a solid market for palm oil, given the minister's aggressive pro-business anti-environment attitude, what is going to stop him from encouraging that more forest land be converted into plantations?

<<Palm oil plantations are not carbon sinks. The carbon they sequester is put right back into the atmosphere as soon as the oil is burned.>>

As are is all the CO2 from the veggies you eat when you fart.

Some would call this CO2 cycle "renewable" as opposed to "fossil" although this concept continues to elude you.

Biodee, you continue to demonstrate your loose grasp on the subject at hand. I think you'll find, if you bother to look into palm harvest- that the oil producing nut is hardly the totality of the CO sink- palms are trees.

I'm sure the Polar Bears, and entire arctic ecosystem, will be disappointed to learn of your favoritism towards the orangutan. Global warming is real.

Advocating a "do nothing" stance seems oddly familiar... oh yes! Big Oil.

I don't believe you support Big Oil, the Bush Administration and Global Corporate Control as much you advocate for such on these posts. I truly believed you are simply misinformed.  Science and action can be your friend, Biodee. Paranoia is a tool of the oppressors- break free, Biodee! I know you can do it.

'Some would call this CO2 cycle "renewable"'

Then they would be wrong.  Fuel farming destroys the huge carbon sink that is soil.  Chemical agriculture strips the organic matter that stores the carbon from CO 2 removed from the atmosphere by photosynthesis.

Electric cars powereed by renewable energy, that is the way to eliminate CO 2 emmissions from transportation.

Plenty of wind and solar power are available to do that.  Wind power is down to 2 cents per kwh.  The equivalent of under 20 cents per gallon of biodiesel or fossil liquid fuel.

Can you make biodiesel from fuel farming for 20 cents per gallon?   2 dollars per gallon even?  I doubt it.  Fuel farmed prodicts will only be 10% of the fuel we use (there is not enough land to produce anymore than that) and rise in price right along with oil, so no signifigant environmental or economic benefit will ever be realized from them.

Except for huge subsidies for agribizz ripped off from future taxpayers.  Agribizz biofuel farming is not sustainable in any respect.  It adds to the huge national debt and can never do anything to stop these oil wars.

Plus it destroys the soil as the major carbon sink we have that can actually reverse global climate change.

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog

Biodiversivist writes seriously and earnestly on subjects that I know little about; therefore I am not in a position to criticize his posts one way or the other.  But there are many others in the Grist readership who are quite competent to judge the value of his posts, and in my experience they seem to have generally welcomed what he has to say.

Rob, I am glad that in a handful of threads you have been writing to challenge some of Biodiversivist's assertions.  That is well done, and interesting.  But I am not pleased by the style in which you are doing it.  You have sought to discredit him by mocking his motives, his intelligence, even his personal habits.  I think I speak for most Grist readers in telling you that we do not like that sort of thing.  So please stop.

Tropical soils are not carbon sinks! Stop alluding that they are, since it is only areas where there is a net accumulation of organic matter that are carbon sinks. There is no carbon accumulation in tropical soils. Period.

caniscandida,

I'm sorry if you don't like my approach. These are serious issues. As for biodiesel- Biodiversivist writes seriously and hastily on subjects that he knows little about. Despite multiple attempts to point him towards scientific data, he rants on. I've found Biodiversivists assertions based on his personal positions, and I responded in kind. Fair warning: I'll continue to challenge his baseless assertions ongoing.

That tropical forests hold carbon in wood and other plant matter instead.  The ecosystem immediately turns any soil nutrients into plant matter, which then stores the carbon.  Same difference.

Carbon is stored.  Locked up out of the atmosphere.  When that area is converted to sugar cane fields, the CO 2 collected is released in the case of fuel farming, back into the atmosphere.

In the tropical forest it is stored in things like high value wood, which is running short.  Because forests are being cleared, to grow fuel crops, like sugar cane and palm for palm oil biodiesel.  

Tropical wood, harvested carefully for high value added products like wood flooring that provide local jobs and store carbon for centuries versus sugar cane for fuel that is burned in gas guzzlers.  

Shade grown coffee that provides sustainable farming jobs or fuel farms that create slave labor jobs that benefit corporate bottom lines.

Why does the concept of natural carbon sinks make you so upset?  Is it because it completely destroys the fiction that fuel farming is a renewable energy source that helps stop global climate change?

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog

Wind installations can make all the electrical fuel we need, while tropical forests, prairies, organic farms, wetlands all store carbon right under the spinning machines.

You get both that way.  And then global climate change from CO 2 due to fossil fuel combustion can be reversed as carbon is stored out of the atmospgeric system, it's so simple.

It is hard to understand why these realities are so difficult to accept.  But accept them we will, or reap the Katrina style mega-whirlwinds.

Yoda speak, it's gotta be true!

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog

...is wrong. In the tropics, plants do store the majority of the carbon, while the soil does not. In boreal forests and wetlands, soil stores the majority of the carbon, while only a small amount is in the plants.

Mature tropical forests do not store any more carbon then they already have (there is a limit to how much they will store), while boreal peat soils and wetland soils can store it indefinitely if conditions that were experienced last century were persistent.

I am all for tropical forest coservation and sustainable use, but even if we restore all of them, it will only help us mitigate the effects and not reverse global climate change.

They should be restored for their own sake and sustainable uses should be developed so that the populations living in them have a means of income. The population size to be sustained by sustainable forestry and use is not something I am knowledgeable about, but is a major factor in this.