Shell internal document acknowledged a global temperature rise of 4C

[crazy canuck]

A classmate of mine from the Kennedy school went on to get a degree at UBC in forestry or environmentalism or something like that.  He told me that when he started talking about things such as Norgy mentioned people would say "oh, you're one of those pay to pollute guys."

I wonder when your friend went to UBC.  At the turn of the century using forests as a carbon sink in the northern hemisphere was a very popular idea.  Particularly here in Canada.  Canada's early carbon reduction goals were significantly boosted at the time by calculations regarding how much carbon our forests would store.  The claim was valid based on the science done in the last few decades of the last century; however, the claim did not factor in the impact that climate change was already having on our forests.

Two main factors had turned our forests from a net carbon sink to a net carbon emitter.  The first was the a pine beetle that had once been killed off in the cold winters of your northern areas (where we had extensive pine forests) was no surviving and multiplying.  Huge areas of our forests were killed off as a result.It was about a 15 year process to try to harvest as much of that deadwood and try to extract some value.  This die off, which continues today as the beetle expands its territory as temperatures continue to warm, has released a significant amount of carbon.  The second factor is that increased temperatures and lower snow accumulations has significantly increased the number and size of forest fires which is obviously causes another dump of carbon.

I agree with Warspite's comment.   Climate change is too serious of an issue to have this sort of shoddy reporting.

[derspiess]

We gotz lotsa trees down here.  Once you get out of downtown it's trees, trees, trees everywhere you look.  I cut some down in my front yard but I'll plant some more once I get the stumps taken care of.

[crazy canuck]

We gotz lotsa trees down here. 

Yes you do. The US has almost as much forest as Canada.

[Caliga]

Pretty much the entire state of West Virginia is one big forest aside from the tiny oases of Charleston, Morgantown, Huntington, and Wheeling.

[crazy canuck]

Pretty much the entire state of West Virginia is one big forest aside from the tiny oases of Charleston, Morgantown, Huntington, and Wheeling.

I wonder whether the US forests are still operating as a net sink or whether they too are a net emitter now.