95% of the forests that covered the US a few hundred years ago are gone. If they reappeared, they would simply accelerate global warming. We have probably already passed several points of no return like this.

In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Poison Darts--Protecting the biodiversity of our world

Hmmm. On NPR/National Geographic's "climate connection" series they recently had a nice piece about experiments by Harvard researchers on an old New England forest that told a different story.

"When scientists started monitoring the breathing of this stand of hemlock trees, they suspected any carbon dioxide captured by new growth would be canceled out by carbon dioxide released from decaying old trees. This is one of the oldest parts of Harvard Forest. Unlike other sections, it was never cleared for agriculture but was used instead as a woodlot. Some of the trees are 300 years old.

But the measurements delivered a surprise. The hemlocks capture a lot more carbon from the air than they give up: about a ton more, per acre, per year.

Equally surprising is the carbon's destination: "Only about half of the carbon that gets pulled out of the atmosphere is going into wood," says Hadley. "The rest must be going into the soil."

Other places in this forest, where the trees are younger, have been capturing even more carbon. And Steven Wofsy, the scientist at Harvard who pioneered the monitoring techniques used here, says at the site that he's watched the longest (17 years), the forest has been soaking up carbon faster and faster.

"That is a real mystery," he says. "We know where it's going, but we don't know why. We're trying to unravel that. It's one of the big questions in climate science.""

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1733 ...

Suspect this may be one of those science stories that resists easy conclusions.

also suggests that forests can be pretty durable. Power generation stations don't last forever either. My guess is that one study found a local effect, the other is predicting an overall effect. Both may be right, both may be wrong.

In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Poison Darts--Protecting the biodiversity of our world

But then there's the story on NPR the other day from the nation's longest studied forest, the Harvard Forest here in Mass: here's a clip:

"When scientists started monitoring the breathing of this stand of hemlock trees, they suspected any carbon dioxide captured by new growth would be canceled out by carbon dioxide released from decaying old trees.

But the measurements delivered a surprise. The hemlocks capture a lot more carbon from the air than they give up: about a ton more, per acre, per year.

Equally surprising is the carbon's destination: "Only about half of the carbon that gets pulled out of the atmosphere is going into wood," says Hadley. "The rest must be going into the soil."

Other places in this forest, where the trees are younger, have been capturing even more carbon. And Steven Wofsy, the scientist at Harvard who pioneered the monitoring techniques used here, says at the site that he's watched the longest (17 years), the forest has been soaking up carbon faster and faster."

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1733 ...

Not saying there's no merit to the study that's the subject of this post, but that this question is an awful lot bigger than just one piece of research.

Erik

The Orion Grassroots Network: 1,100+ grassroots groups working for conservation & more

Sorry for the duplication of comments: we must've been typing our responses out at the same moment, Kit.

The Orion Grassroots Network: 1,100+ grassroots groups working for conservation & more

Anthropogenic Global Warming is sounding more and more to me like those 19th century "aethers" that physicists used to talk about.   Whenever you read some Royal Academy scientist going on about a discovery, they always throw in something about the cause being an "ineluctable aether".

So too global warming.

Here's a very simple story.   Trees are absorbing less CO2 because of warming.

Now, an ordinary person would say "oh, well that's why the CO2 keeps rising...because whatever is causing the warming is affecting the trees and the result is more CO2".

But no.  Not the Grist Ecologists.   They have to throw in the AGW aether and invent a roundabout reason to blame Man for the whole thing and somehow make it a feedback loop without ever proving causality.

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