Also – growth is good and Carbon based energy does not have to be the driver in the future. Think Water, wind, solar and Nuclear. Its hard to fly a plane on renewable energy so in the short term (my lifetime) carbon based fuels will not go away and probably not decline by more than a percentage point – so get busy and develop alternatives!

So if I understand it correctly it really is a question of prospective sustainability. If we grow wood to burn, cut it down, burn it and replant the land it is carbon neutral. If we deforest Brazil and by definition do not replant we have lost the prospective carbon absorption.

In your considered opinion then how can we reach carbon neutrality when it is the human condition to grow and consume. Won’t we have to have a fundamental paradigm shift in how we, as a civilization, view growth. We have always considered growth to be “good”. But from a carbon footprint standpoint it is not.

One last question, is the environment capable or reabsorbing carbon other than thru photosynthesis?

So, why is deforestation such a big source of GHG’s?

Your intuition is correct. From a GHG perspective, trees and plants store and release carbon, nothing more. The trick is in how the trees are grown in the first place. Deforestation refers specifically to an unsustainable practice of felling trees and either using or burning them. The land is then often left barren, or turned into human settlement. Since the trees don’t grow back, there is a net release of carbon into the atmosphere.

Well didn’t those trees suck in the CO2 to begin with?

Yes, they did, but on a much different timescale and scope. The earth has spent millions of years storing carbon in the form of vast, dense forests that humans are able to cut down within a few hundred years. The only reason the US can claim carbon neutrality with wood biomass is that wood production within the US is relatively sustainable (This isn’t because we’re progressive, we deforested our country centuries ago), and we rarely import wood just to burn it.

Another way to look at it is to compare it to oil reserves. Oil reserves are the product of millions of years of organic decay and compression, and hence a large carbon sink, like a forest. Burning that oil releases all of those millions of years of carbon sinking effort.

The problem with coal gasification is that at the end of the process, you release just as much CO2 as you would burning the coal. The fact of the matter is that CO2 is the lowest energy state of carbon, so any sort of fossil fuel combustion will eventually lead to a CO2 stream.

That being said, gasification effectively lowers all other emissions associated with power generation (SOx, NOx, particulates), and provides the most economically feasible method for CO2 capture. We still, however, need to figure out what to do with all that darn CO2.

-josh

However, carbon emissions are not the only environmental impact of coal energy. What about mountain top removal, groundwater contamination, mercury emissions, and fly ash disposal?

As far as coal use in the US, we have so much that is not in our best interest from a security or economic standpoint to turn away from it.

Good ranting JKace!