Climate Wire reports (registration required) a new study by Oregon State University researchers that suggests that Pacific Northwest forests if carefully managed could store 46% more carbon than they now do. Growing more plants – and improving breeds to grow faster and live longer – is as integral to solving the carbon problem as curtailing emissions. Here for those new to this topic is Freeman Dyson’s classic statement of the problem in the New York Review of Books:
About 8 percent of the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is absorbed by vegetation and returned to the atmosphere every year. This means that the average lifetime of a molecule of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, before it is captured by vegetation and afterward released, is about twelve years. This fact, that the exchange of carbon between atmosphere and vegetation is rapid, is of fundamental importance to the long-range future of global warming….
If we can control what the plants do with the carbon, the fate of the carbon in the atmosphere is in our hands. That is what Nordhaus meant when he mentioned “genetically engineered carbon-eating trees” as a low-cost backstop to global warming. The science and technology of genetic engineering are not yet ripe for large-scale use. We do not understand the language of the genome well enough to read and write it fluently. But the science is advancing rapidly, and the technology of reading and writing genomes is advancing even more rapidly. I consider it likely that we shall have “genetically engineered carbon-eating trees” within twenty years, and almost certainly within fifty years.
Carbon-eating trees could convert most of the carbon that they absorb from the atmosphere into some chemically stable form and bury it underground. Or they could convert the carbon into liquid fuels and other useful chemicals. Biotechnology is enormously powerful, capable of burying or transforming any molecule of carbon dioxide that comes into its grasp. Keeling’s wiggles prove that a big fraction of the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere comes within the grasp of biotechnology every decade. If one quarter of the world’s forests were replanted with carbon-eating varieties of the same species, the forests would be preserved as ecological resources and as habitats for wildlife, and the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere would be reduced by half in about fifty years.
The policy implications? Forestry management has to be thought of as part of our carbon management policy. Federal scientific dollars should be allocated to biological research of the kind Dyson describes. And let’s hope that President Obama does not allow next Arbor Day to proceed without a well-publicized presidential tree-planting.
6 responses so far
1 sinz54 // Jul 7, 2009 at 8:44 pm
The problem is, we won’t have even the first genetically engineered carbon-eating tree for years to come. And we won’t have them planted in the tens of millions for many years after that.
A more immediate solution is to impose an outright ban on any further tropical deforestation. Right now, the trend with trees is in the wrong direction: Tropical rain forests, a major sink of carbon, are being burned off by developing countries as they industrialize. We’ll have to find them ways to modernize without destroying these forests.
2 barker13 // Jul 7, 2009 at 9:49 pm
“…impose an outright ban on any further tropical deforestation.”
“Impose…???”
You mean… America declares itself “The Law” and we back up our claim with military force?
Oooh… Kaaaay…
BILL
3 dacookson // Jul 8, 2009 at 4:36 am
I say no to genetically modified anything. The choice we have here is between being more efficient and unleashing an experimental technology into our ecosystem without knowing the long term consequences. There are so many things you can do before you have to resort to that kind of thing.
I don’t understand this kind of conservative ideology that doesn’t have a problem legislating against people but can’t bear it against business. If you can ban drugs because they’re bad for people’s health, then tightening regulation because carbon emissions are bad for the planet really shouldn’t be too much of a conceptual leap. If I have to forgo the pleasure of spending an evening laughing at a lava lamp then Shell can do without a few percent of its massive profits.
4 SFTor1 // Jul 8, 2009 at 5:36 am
Carbon eating trees? Sure. I think the point is rather that we live in a carbon-eating biosphere.
By the way, to discuss global warming, wouldn’t it be nice to see some first? UAH tropospheric data show that we are right back where we started, pretty much. Upper ocean temperatures haven’t budged for five years.
Now even Mr. Glasser from GISS says the climate models have no predictive ability past even two weeks.
5 sinz54 // Jul 8, 2009 at 12:15 pm
dacookson sez: “I say no to genetically modified anything.”
In that case, you would be condemning me to death.
My chronic illness is life threatening. Currently it is being treated with brand-new drugs developed through genetic engineering. Without them, my life expectancy would be considerably shorter.
Please stop with the Luddism. Humans have been doing “genetically modified anything” ever since they domesticated the dog and maize.
Humans released dogs into the biosphere, and a whole series of domesticated plants for crops. Some of them are so delicately tailored that they cannot survive without humans doing the pollenization for them. Do you regret that?
6 dacookson // Jul 8, 2009 at 9:13 pm
Well sinz54 I’m sorry to hear about your health problems. I obviously can’t comment on your medication because it’s none of my business but I will clarify my position. My first remark wasn’t specific enough but I did go on to say that it was releasing GM products into the ecosystem that I’m against. If it’s in the laboratory or grown in secure greenhouses then I can support that for certain applications like medicine. If it’s about releasing this technology into the environment for higher yields and profits, to try and control the food supply, or to avoid regulating industry, then no way. Certainly not unless it’s ratified by every government in the world after decades of testing. We don’t know whether shortening the life-span of a fish to bring it to market quicker is going to disrupt the food cycle of other species, there’s no computer model that can tell us that. Once it’s out there, it’s out there, you can’t stop it. The dog metaphor isn’t a particularly strong one. We’re not talking about natural adaptations, albeit influenced by human selection, but specific artificially manipulated ones. You can surely see the difference between using the whole biological system of an organism to breed increases in weight or height for example and inserting genes from other species into the genome. We know some of the consequences of introducing species that have not naturally adapted to their environment, rabbits in Australia being the most well known.
I wonder actually how religious conservatives react to this debate, that’s not something I’m aware of actually. Do they find a way to support genetic engineering while still denying evolution?
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