Quote:
Originally Posted by redpoint5
My quick search showed an average of 8B tons of CO2 emitted in forest fires each year vs 45B tons released by human activity.
What is the source that shows 15x all of earth's forests worth of CO2 is emitted by humans each year? That doesn't pass my sniff test.
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The source is 'Too Smart for Our Own Good,' by Craig Dilworth.Dilworth gives fossil-fuel consumption as a function of burning 'world forest equivalents' (wfe).It's based upon the average-mean carbon stored in a unit area of 100-year-old forest,at total global forest area.
The carbon dioxide,alone,from combusting coal,petroleum,and natural gas is equivalent to burning Earth's entire forest cover fifteen times,each year.
If viewed from space,the fire would cover more than the entire surface of Earth.A forest fire as large as all the land and all the water.
Anyone can go online and see images of Earth's atmosphere,resolved into a sphere,orbiting next to the planet.(also the all the water). When you realize how tiny the atmosphere is,when compared to Earth itself,it really drives home the amount of 'invisible' smoke we produce annually.
And this does not include anthropogenic water vapor,Methane,nitrous oxide,ozone,chloroflourocarbons,hydrochloroflouroc arbons, perchlorocarbons,sulfur hexaflouride,carbon monoxide,oxides of nitrogen,and non-methane volatile organic compounds.