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Stephen  Sheehy's avatar

I don't disagree with your basic point. But a problem that doesn't get discussed is what to do with the leftover branches, chips, sawdust, etc. that result from turning trees into lumber. I'm not sure it can just be left on the forest floor. And does the leftover stuff increase the fire risk?

Drax imports pellets from the Southeast US made from entire trees, not just the unusable parts. That's truly nuts, from a climate change perspective. But burning just the unusable wood is more complicated. What is the alternative fuel that would be burned to make the power? Is that alternative better or worse than using the wood?

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Douglas J's avatar

I took a bit of a look into some figures and data involved here.

Roger Pielke writes recently on his Substack that: "wildfire emissions have declined globally since 2003, based on data from the EU." This is good news.

Also, it's good to be careful about using scientists' remarks from journalism, rather than from scientific reports. For instance, I took a look at Steven Davis's (quoted above, from Cal-Irvine) and the other related reports, and they show this:

-Boreal emissions were .48 gtons of carbon in 2021.

-Flight emissions in 2019, before the pandemic, were 1.7 gtons, factoring in a low multiplier for extra climate forcing. If you factor in a larger multiplier, such as the UK uses, then it's double that amount.

This means that Davis was somewhat cherrypicking data for his quote that "boreal fires were double the carbon emissions from flying that year." If you take typical flight emissions for a typical year, then the boreal fires in 2021 were 28% of recent years' flight emissions average. Factoring in the UK's flight emissions climate multiplier (2x), those boreal-fire emissions were only 14% of flight emissions. Then there is the fact that forest fire smoke also has a cooling effect, and not including that in these claims is also a form of obfuscation or a mistake, it would seem.

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