Stromlo burn a doozy

Skidbladnir said :

johnboy said :

or growing more trees there….
Grow trees, bury them, grow more trees.

Thats the terrestrial carbon cycle…
I thought we were trying to avoid that (hence the IN SPACE)?

We are not trying to avoid the carbon cycle, but rather having have it be (more or less) balanced.

At the moment more “carbon™” is being release into the atmosphere then is leaving the atmosphere. “Carbon Neutral™” is when the specific unit you are looking at is in balance. A forest which is burned then regrows to the same structure is going to be more or less “carbon neutral™” over that time frame. But a forest which is cut down, all the wood buried in the ground, then regrown to the same structure will be a “sink™” of carbon, thus reducing the amount of carbon in the atmosphere. If humans were to do this a lot, and it result in the global reduction of atmospheric carbon to below natural levels then I imagine that it would result in “climate change™” in the opposite direction to what we are experiencing now.

But we would have to bury then regrow A LOT of trees to cancel out all the coal fired power stations on the planet.

johnboy said :

or growing more trees there….
Grow trees, bury them, grow more trees.

Thats the terrestrial carbon cycle…
I thought we were trying to avoid that (hence the IN SPACE)?

georgesgenitals said :

I wonder if they make sure the burn is carbon neutral?

Trees are only carbon sinks while they’re growing, then they decompose back into the carbon ycle.
(Bushfires unleash massive amounts of Carbon as soot and CO2, but it has to come from somewhere…)

If you wanted to simply remove carbon from terrestrial cycle forever, you could just knock down entire forests and turn them into libraries (IN SPACE!) , while going back and salting the earth wherever the forest previously grew.

georgesgenitals said :

I wonder if they make sure the burn is carbon neutral?

Well, if the areas burned are to continue to be used for the same purpose then it will be carbon neutral. It only takes a couple of years at the most for the fine fuels that this type of burn it supposed to reduce to return to the pre burn level (and likewise the stored carbon the the pre burn levels).

Coming across Coppings Crossing Rd this morning I noticed that some of the pines in the burnt area had been scorched their entire height. Usually this isn’t the the aim of a HR burn. I am wondering if it is because they were self seeders after the last fire to go through there, and so no one cares if they get killed?

georgesgenitals said :

I wonder if they make sure the burn is carbon neutral?

I’ve always wondered about this.
Seeing burning wood just releases carbon dioxide that was in the atmosphere in the first place, sucked up by the trees and now just returning to where it was in the first place, wouldn’t that make burning all wood carbon neutral?

I wonder if they make sure the burn is carbon neutral?

Glad I raced at Stromlo yesterday when it was clear, not tonight in the ash.

westonresident said :

A Doozy alright!
Weston Creek and Woden are currently immersed in a stagnant smokey smog!! It started to linger just before lunch, it’s currently 11pm and we still can’t open any windows or doors, our clothes stink, our hair stinks… a flashback for some of us. Lets hope it doesn’t hang around for 3 weeks like it did back then! Extremely unpleasant and most annoying 🙂 Surely it could have been done more intelligently? Wait for a predicted breeze and don’t burn such a large amount of land in one go? However, I am no expert.

Quite a bit of planning goes into these hazard reduction burns. It would perhaps surprise you how intelligently they are done. They could of course do nothing and let the fuel load build to dangerous levels, now that would be extremely unpleasant and most annoying.

Let it burn. The windows of opportunity are small enough for the people who have to get this important job done. A little smoke for a couple of days is an insignificant price to pay considering the potential other consequences.

I was out for a drive in Tuggeranong at 7pm and was all clear, driving home at 11pm it was like driving in a winter fog