Carbon storage of 85% of CO2 emissions of cars & trucks - plant trees along inter-state highways

[JohnWxy]

We cannot forget that Gobal Warming is a critical issue that we must face. What do you think of a relatively cheap low tech method of carbon storage that would absorb 85% of the CO2 emissions of our transportation sector? Does that sound interesting?

check it out:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=115x215110#215718

[Sinistrous]

1. The diesel exhaust from the big rigs would kill them.

I see it for miles along the interstates.

[JohnWxy]

3. And you know this is because of the trucks and not some other cause?

I too have driven on interstates and I notice that the amount of space in which the exhaust would be diffused is considerable. I have not seen any trees that look worse for the wear being situated next to inter-states.

Inside cities where there is a lot of traffic is one situation where you would need to use a tree (or shrub) highly resistant to pollution ( http://www.barcham.co.uk/taxonomy/term/109). There are probably areas that are not good to plant much of anything in older highways or where there are very close situations where there really isn't the room. A different tree would be more appropriate away from dense traffic areas. (On the other hand, I've lived in cities and seen lots of trees in industrial areas where there was loads of air pollution. Didn't seem to bother them a whole lot.)

There are probably some areas that are not good to plant much of anything (older highways or where there are very close situations where there really isn't the room). However, I would say probably over 90% of the miles of inter-states would not require a tree especially suited to high exhaust conditions. So if you would like factor the number down by some percentage, okay. You are still probably going to be in a position to absorb over 75% of the carbon dioxide emissions of the transportation sector.

This makes the "high traffic areas will kill the trees" theory, hardly a persuasive argument against the whole idea.

[Sinistrous]

11. Of course,

green things just love the acid that forms when the sulfer in diesel exhaust mixes with water.

Check the sides of the upgrades on the PA Turnpike, where the engines of thew semis are lugging trying to power the trucks up those hills.

Yes, it is the exhaust.

[JohnWxy]

18. I have driven a number of miles on interstates around the U.S.

and seen trees that were not dead. The question would be are all the interstate highways unsuitable for tree plantings?

My guess is that not ALL the miles of interstate highway are not suitable. So the question is would 10% be unsuitable? (of course as I said before some trees, like the ones I have seen in industrial areas of cities do not seem to be much bothered by pollution (here is the link I provided which is a list of trees that seem to have grown well in New York city: http://www.oasisnyc.net/resources/street_trees/data/downloads/322trees.xls) but let's put that matter aside for now. ).

Maybe 10% of the interstate highway miles are unsuitable. That would leave 90% that are suitable. So 90% of 85% of the transportation emissions would give you a roughly 77% capture of transportation emissions.

I'll take capture of 77% of the emissions of the transportation sector. In fact, I would take 50% capture.

And this could be done as quickly as the trees could be planted and start growing. The only thing limiting how fast they could be planted would be the supply of seedlings.

This is the quickest and the cheapest way I can think of to achieve that much reduction in GHGs.

[existentialist]

14. Planting trees is generally good, but

I don't know about the particularly efficacy of planting them along the roads--not that is bad, it may be good for other reasons as well--but I do know that carbon dioxide molecules, and all gas molecules in the atmosphere are highly mobile. I can't see why planting trees miles from any road doesn't do as mush good as far as carbon capture as planting them right beside the road.

I am highly skeptical of there being a significant difference as far as carbon capture.

[JohnWxy]

17. I'm for planting trees anywhere! Everywhere! I just note that there is a helluva lot of area

around those interstates. 65,000 miles of interstates:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=115x215110#215718



65,000 iles of interstae highways

With a grass width of 52 feet, and 5,280 feet to the mile, we find that we have about 6.35 acres of tillable land for each mile of interstate.

65,000 miles times 6.35 acres gives you 4.1 million acres. At the second link (above) they talk about planting swichgrass for making ethanol (not yet commercially feasible) but you could plant a fast growing variety of tree there and harvest it (and replant of course) and they could be used in ethanol production or other industrial applications which are starting to use bio-mass as a fuel source.

An acre of Tulip trees (Liriodendron tulipifera) planted in New York, stores about 12,826 lbs (or 5,830 kiloGrams) of CO2 per yr so the 4.1 million acres would store 567 Billion lbs of CO2 per year (or 283 million tons).

According to the Environmental Defense Fund transortation emissions of CO2 comes to 302 million metric tons of CO2 per year, which I believe translates into 332 million English/American (2,000) tons.

NOte 283 million tons of CO2 stored each year by the tree plantings along inter-states as caculated above comes to about 85% of the total transportation emissions per year. And that works out to about 4% of the World's total carbon emissions.

Hm-m-m-m-m. IF my calculations are right this sounds promising.
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Plant them anywhere else you want but just plant them.

at any rate planting along interstates will get you about 4.1 million acres. that's a lot of fucking trees. :)

[dwilso40641]

8. I-5 in Seattle

is lined with trees of many variates. They don't seem to mind the exhaust and there is a lot of it. Maybe the rain keeps them clean. Don't see to many hit by cars either.

[Sinistrous]

12. Damn few hills in Seattle. Check the mountains.

[Demeter]

2. And have all those incompetent drivers crash into them?

not to mention those intent on suicide. There's a reason why there are no trees.

[JohnWxy]

4. better to clean out the gene pool. I didn't say plant trees right up to the shoulder. You can

leave some room.

I remember reading about in one area they planted some sortof pine tree. They found that the trees would slow down a car that sped into the median and bring it to stop, not abruptly, over a relatively short distance, keeping the driver from possibly going across into oncoming traffic but not bringing him to a quick and perhaps deadly stop. They still soak up CO2.

Actually most bad drivers hit other cars before they have a chance to go off the road.

Hey, in those areas where the highway is above the surrounding service roads maybe having trees there would break the errant drivers fall and save there life!!!!

"Shucks, if it wasn't for those damn tulip trees I guess I'd be dead now. Shit, I never thought I'd say I owe my life to a tree! Shur pruned those suckers though!"

[Demeter]

5. Kudzu?

If we tried to clean out the gene pool, they would rightly call it eugenics.

What we need is real health care, real job creation, and a government that cares more about people than multinational corporations. This would do so much for people's mental and economic states, that they could cope with things beyond just trying to stay alive and reasonably functional.

I'm in Michigan. We've been in Depression, not recession, since 9/11/2001. That's nine years of unrelieved stress that increases daily. I do not exaggerate. People are borderline insane here, and I mean the liberals with jobs and money. The right wing has always been insane here, even in good times. But in these times of stress, they think they have the upper hand, that liberalism has failed. Liberalism never got off the ground here, and our governor has worked herself to the bone trying to keep the ship of state afloat, but the right sits there being obstructive.

If Granholm hadn't been born in Canada, she'd be MY choice for President. The woman cares, she works and she tries everything.

[JohnWxy]

6. did you mean to land on this thread? Jennifer Granholm is smart .. and she is FINE!

[JohnWxy]

10. Granholm has been in an impossible situation. And it's the much the same one Obama is in.

The Corporate media is echoing the message of the GOP that Obama should be able to fix the economic disaster the GOP handed him in one year. This is of course idiocy. None of the economists interviewed on tv have said that. They all know it takes quite a while to fix up the enormous damge done to the economy by the Deregulation disaster. Maybe that's why you don't see economists being interviewed on tv so much lately. It's been taking everything Obama and the Democrats could do (dragging the Corporate Lobbyist Party every step of the way) just to keep this Republican Dystopia from becoming the Great Depression II.

The M$M talking heads also don't ask the Republicans if they think it was a great idea to reduce the size of the stimulus package by demanding some of it be in the form of tax cuts. Everybody knows tax cuts in a recession (or depression) will be used by people, worried about losing jobs and houses, to save for trouble or pay down their debt load. A good thing for personal finances but NOT stimulating to the economy. Thank the GOP for reducing the size of the stimulus. If the Democrats had had there way the stimulus would have been bigger.

The Republicans used to criticize the stimulus for landing too much in 2010. Now, when the media is saying we need a second stimulus, maybe that 2010 timing will meet that need. I think the stimulus should have been bigger. So did many other Democrats in Washington. But they couldn't get the Republicans to sign up for it. The Republicans are doing everything they can to see that Obama fails to fix the disaster the Republicans created for him. So the people will get frustrated and vote for Republicans AGAIN!

[Mopar151]

7. The trick is keeping the trees small!

Christmas trees, Cedar fencepost stock, ash for tool handles, willow or fast-growing pine for chips/biomass....
Basically, my hillclimb buddies and I have conducted extensive testing on tree impacts. 3" dia. or smaller is best - seems to be at least as good as tire walls or foam blocks. Trouble is, the strength goes up at the square of the diameter - 8" or bigger in any strong wood (i.e. fir, spruce, hardwoods), more than 40 mph - take the plates off, it's done! (totaled) Even a rugged race car (i.e. Nascar, Rally) will require new frame section(s).

[JohnWxy]

9. "have conducted extensive testing on tree impacts" !! LOL. I'll keep what you said in mind!!

Here's another thought: don't go so fast!

[Mopar151]

13. But that's the fun part...... n/t

[Igel]

15. Bandaid.

The problem is that growing trees merely replaces carbon put into the atmosphere when the trees that were there were cut down. (At least some of that might have been sequestered as framing in houses.) You want trees to really sequester carbon from fossil fuels? Chop them down and store them where they won't rot.

Otherwise every ounce of carbon placed into the atmosphere from fossil fuels is carbon that cannot be made up, in the long run, by growing biomass. Even using biomass for fuels just banks that carbon in the atmosphere for withdrawal by plants to store radiant energy as carbohydrates.

It's the problem with the old '80s "the rainforest are the lungs of the planet." A stable rainforest has as much carbon-releasing decay as it has carbon-storing growth. Sure, X million tons are fixed in woody plants every year. But every year just about X million tons of woody plants die, and every year X million tons of woody plants rot.

You want carbon sequestered from the rainforest? My guitar is made from rosewood and ebony, my violin bow of pernambuco. Neither, if I have any say about it, is going to be releasing their carbon content into the air in the near future. My violin's sequestered its carbon for over two centuries now, my viola's carbon was removed from the ecosystem at large in the early '80s, my guitar's about 7 years ago--when their component parts had their mute life in the forest ended by a cruel axe, were carved, coated in partly cross-linked linseed oil, and strung up to sweetly (or not so sweetly) sing. (Duiffopruggar: Viva fui in Sylvis; sum dura occisa securi; Dum vixi, tacui, mortua dulce cano.)

[JohnWxy]

16. Ethanol from almost anything (e.g. wood chips )

Let me guess, you think electric cars will save us even though it will take 20 years before they are on the road in large enough numbers to make a significant impact and in the mean time you think we can get awaywith doing nothing.

Calling absorption of perhaps 75% of the emissions of the entire transportation fleet a band-aid, makes one wonder if you need a band-aid for your brain.

Keep in mind, this is annual storage which goes on as long as the trees are growing. The plantings could be accomplished in several years - limited only by the supply of seedlings. This is the fastest way I know of to get this large an impact on CO2. NOte, time is critical in this regard. We are just about out of time. We cannot wait 20 years to do something.

Climate scientists are saying we have only a few years to start getting more significant reductions of GHg emissions if we are to prevent catastrophic warming. James hjansen has said we MAY have four years to get started with more significant reductions of GHGs in order to prevent caatastrophic Global Warming. http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/jan/18/jim-hansen-obama



Ethanol from almost anything? Coskata opens Lighthouse cellulosic ethanol plant


Coskata's newly-opened semi-commercial flex ethanol facility in Madison, Pennsylvania is as small as it can possibly be. Co-located at a Westinghouse facility that also in some fashion uses nuclear energy, the Lighthouse project, as it's called, is running 24/7 to turn wood chips into ethanol. It's also intended to show off just how far Coskata has come since emerging from stealth mode almost two years ago. Oh, and the plant can also be scaled up to fit the needs of cellulosic ethanol producers from coast to coast.

The Lighthouse plant follows the Horizon integrated processing plant that started in 2008 in Warrenville, Illinois and precedes the Flagship plant that is due for 2012 at a location somewhere in the Southeast U.S. that will be announced later. The location for the Flagship plant has been selected, but Coskata will not specify where it will be until it can talk more specifically about the financing arrangements involved for the 55-million-gallon-per-year plant that will use forest residue and other woody biomass.
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There are other companies using biomass for heat and power right now, although this is still on a very small scale. But it is do-able - right now.

[muriel_volestrangler]

19. Correction: 0.2% of US vehicle CO2 emissions

See my calculation in reply #12 in that thread.

[JohnWxy]

20. Considering planting 2 trees per residence you get 12.5% of Transp emissions absorbed - assuming

it's correct to consider 1 kG of Carbon sequestered equal to 3.67 kGr of CO2 removed from atmosphere (based on molecular weights of Carbon 12, and CO2 44).

see my reply for my calculations and source of data at:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=115x215110#216286


and your points were well taken re my misinterpretation of data from excel spreadsheet on carbon sequestration by trees growing in NY as I so stated here: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=115x215110#216278