Categorie: forests

The CO2 Swamp

How to deal with CO2, causes quite a bit of confusion. (See also earlier [1]) No wonder, considering that focusing on an effect rather than a cause leads to such confusion, but more on that in a moment. I was once again triggered by the debate about Carbon Credits. For…

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There is no Space for Cork…

Cork. Lately I regularly come across publications and buildings with Cork. Ideal insulator, it seems, and weatherproof, And quite a decorative material, recently saw some nice applications in construction design. Well, that could be so, but is it a serious option? For that, we have to dive into some figures….

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Not De-Growth but Re-Growth !

Degrowth is currently a topic of significant interest, presenting the idea of “degrowing” as a necessity to address our problems. (this is based on a previous article on Linkedin). The implicit message is clear and seems to point in the right direction. However, it all depends on how we define…

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A EU Referendum: wine, or soybeans, or solar panels?

I’m sitting on a terrace on the borders of the Moselle, tasting some local wine. And looking out over the slopes along the Mosel, I come to a rather confrontational observation: we have deforested an enormous area, in order to be able to grow our wine… All the southern slopes…

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Trees versus humans

Once upon a time, we crawled out of the sea. Crawled around on land for a while, but there was nothing to do there, so we migrated back to the sea. Millions of years later we went back to look on land, and lo and behold, there seemed to be…

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Carbon storage: the land-time relation 2/2

There are many ways you can start “accounting” for CO2 (as comments on the previous article also showed), but at the end of the day what matters are absolute CO2 emissions, from whatever activity. And cutting down a tree and using it as a column (or a table, or a…

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Carbon storage in wood-timber 1/2

Storage (binding) of CO2 in wood/timber is a hot issue at the moment*. But how should that be calculated really? Before I go into more detail, a few preliminary remarks: (the part on ‘calculating’ has been later added, and ‘CO2’ has been adapted) Building in wood is always a good…

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Land, between heaven and earth

It is intriguing how the world fundamentally works, with its cycles, driven mainly by solar energy. Which can be traced back mainly to the yields of land, as I found out earlier. [1,2] (Land that has virtually disappeared from economic theory as a production factor). But yields from land is…

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Climate neutral Rugby…

There is a lot of discussion, how to ‘fight’ climateheating. Especially now, with massive investments in the economy. But what is clear, is that every sector has to make its contribution, to become carbon emissions free. Every sector? Yes. We were sitting together with some old rugby friends recently: So…

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Biomass (-growth) is our reference : Back to the forests

By now its obvious: the way we are currently dealing with climate, environment, raw materials, food, biodiversity, will not help us prevent disasters. But what then? The struggle and discussion on solutions is in full swing currently. Just look at the energy transition. We do not want fossil fuels anymore:…

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