Posted by Bob Janova at 9:04am Mar 18 '10The 4 tons will include all the carbon that's been sequestered before you burn it down. However, this is one reason why large scale fires are bad!
It isn't as dramatic on a long time scale as you would imagine, though, because the carbon 'released' was in the atmosphere-bioshpere system already, and will be taken back in when the forest regrows. This process has been going on throughout history, and isn't really an 'emission' in that sense. Forest fires are part of the natural equilibrium and don't really 'emit' atmospheric carbon any more than, say, bio-ethanol does. [Note: I know that [i]producing[/i] biofuels uses a lot of fossil energy, let's not get sidetracked into that here!]
So to forestall the inevitable discussion about climate change, it's taking fossil carbon and releasing it into the ocean-atmosphere-biosphere that we need to worry about, not exchange between those areas, although the boreal forest regrows sufficiently slowly that major net burning there could add extra pain in the next 200 years or so.
That said the numbers don't really make much sense, in the long term (by definition pretty much) the amount sequestered in an acre and the amount released when it burns have to be the same.
It isn't as dramatic on a long time scale as you would imagine, though, because the carbon 'released' was in the atmosphere-bioshpere system already, and will be taken back in when the forest regrows. This process has been going on throughout history, and isn't really an 'emission' in that sense. Forest fires are part of the natural equilibrium and don't really 'emit' atmospheric carbon any more than, say, bio-ethanol does. [Note: I know that [i]producing[/i] biofuels uses a lot of fossil energy, let's not get sidetracked into that here!]
So to forestall the inevitable discussion about climate change, it's taking fossil carbon and releasing it into the ocean-atmosphere-biosphere that we need to worry about, not exchange between those areas, although the boreal forest regrows sufficiently slowly that major net burning there could add extra pain in the next 200 years or so.
That said the numbers don't really make much sense, in the long term (by definition pretty much) the amount sequestered in an acre and the amount released when it burns have to be the same.
added on 9:04am Mar 18 '10:
Oops, wrong sort of tags there in the middle ... switching from 4K to other forums gets confusing!
I'm not sure you can add those two things - Bob Janova