Saturday, November 24, 2007

Trees felled by KATRINA weighed as factor in global warming.

I read this in the Times-Picayune today. A group of researchers, led by Tulane University biologist, has found that the monster storm may well have accelerated global warming. When Katrina roared through coastal forests, most of southeast Louisiana is swamp few trees, it destroyed thousands of trees. As trees decompose the carbon they release will be enough to offset a year's worth of new tree growth in other parts of the United States, said Jeffrey Chambers, an assistant professor of ecology and evolutionary biology. Forest are important adversaries of global warming unless trees are rotting in the forest. This is what I got out of the article. Let's see, trees are dying everyday in old forest and are causing globing warming so we should send in logging company's to remove them before they die. If thousands of rotting trees are effecting a year's worth of new tree growth I wonder what happened on May 18th 1980 when Mount St. Helens changed more than 200 square miles of rich forest into a gray lifeless landscape. This is a lot of rotting trees causing global warming. It also sent a massive ash cloud 80,000 feet in 15 minutes and reached the east coast in 3 days and circled the earth in 15 days and stayed in the atmosphere for many years. In fact there has been 7 eruptions in the past 200 years in that northeast area. Think of all the trees that will rot because of the California fires. Maybe man is not the major cause of global warming.

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