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Reducing tropical deforestation by 50 per cent over the next century, would help prevent 500 billion tonnes of carbon from going into the atmosphere every year. Credit: AFP WASHINGTON: Tropical developing nations can help drastically cut greenhouse gas emissions by reducing their rate of deforestation, say climate scientists. Reducing tropical deforestation by 50 per cent over the next century, would help prevent 500 billion tonnes of carbon from going into the atmosphere every year, the researchers said in a policy article published in the U.S journal Science. Such a reduction in emissions would account for 12 per cent of the total reductions targeted by the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the researchers said. At its current rate, tropical deforestation releases annually 1.5 billion tonnes of carbon into the atmosphere that would otherwise be absorbed by trees, making it a major contributor to global warming, they said. Big reduction, low cost The policy article was aimed to give scientific and technological backing to a two-year initiative launched by the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, after a group of developing nations asked for a strategy to make forest preservation politically and economically attractive. The researchers said the Reducing Emissions from Deforestation (RED) initiative faces political challenges as many developing countries consider their tropical forests as a key economic resource. But low-cost measures could be taken to convince developing nations to reduce deforestation, including, for example, by helping them evaluate the use of forests to focus clearing only in areas with high agricultural value, they said. "It will require political will and sound economic strategy to make the RED initiative work," said Christopher Field, director of the Global Ecology Department at the Carnegie Institution in the Washington D.C., a non-profit, scientific research organization. "But the initiative provides a big reduction in emissions at low cost," he said. Readers' comments
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Do the numbers
According to IPCC numbers, developed countries would have to cut their greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions over 90% by 2050 to have a 50% chance of avoiding dangerous warming.
Nature absorbs about half of mankind's CO2 emissions, but that is expected to reduce 30% by 2030.
Nature partially takes CO2 out of the environment with plants that convert it into carbohydrates, and animals that convert it into tissue, bone, and shell. Both are examples of autotrophs, which produce their own organic compounds using CO2 from the air or water in which they live. To do this they require an external source of energy, and almost all autotrophs use solar radiation to provide this.
The GHG can reenter the atmosphere through decay or combustion.
The autotrophs that remove the most CO2 from the environment are trees on land, and phytoplankton in the ocean. Yet, neither removes the CO2 for long, before they die and it returns back into the air through decay. Besides, the expanding human population places land use for reforestation at a premium, while decaying phytoplankton depletes oxygen in the ocean, leading to dead zones and the production of hydrogen sulfide by bacteria.
Since mankind is unlikely to cut their GHG emission so fast and so severely that dangerous warming is avoided, the only other solution is to remove the CO2 from the air after it has been emitted. Since naturally evolved autotrophs (i.e. trees) do not remove the CO2 from the air fast enough, or keep it out of the air long enough, I suggest improving nature's ability with genetic engineering-perhaps seeding a GMO into the ocean.
Forests are being weakened by insects that have increased their range, lack of rainfall, heatwaves, and higher high temperatures caused by global warming, so deforestation due to forest fire is increasing. Frankly, I don't see a reversal of that trend. For example, the great pine forests of North America are being ruined by the Pine Beetle. Within the next few decades, they are going to be ripe for massive forest fires. Good luck curbing that massive deforestation in the making.
ecological energetics and C02 sequestration
Great argument. One point; autotrophs are living organisms which produce their own energy and only consume the products and energy of the photosynthetic process. Animals are ecological heterotrophs not autotrophs, whether at a primary or higher level of consumption.