While I hesitate to interject on this wondeful flame war (which I suggest might be either made slightly less vindictive or taken elsewhere, I believe alt.flame is the usual suggestion), I feel the need to call a point of order on one statement (this does not mean I have no opinion on the rest of it, but that I have not time to join the debate right now) On Mon, 5 May 1997, B. Diamond wrote: > Patrick Moore wrote: > > > You are certainly persistent. I would not rant about "mining the earth". > > There is enough iron in the earth's crust to last into the foreseeable > > future. The real problem is not the material, it is the energy > > required to make it. All those "non-wood" > > steel studs you have grown to love require > > much more energy to produce than wood and therefore result in increased CO2 > > emissions (climate change), or nuclear waste, or valleys flooded > > (biodiversity). I hope you enjoy feeling responsible for these > > environmentally destructive impacts of your work. > > > While the production of steel products may result in more CO2 > emmissions, it certainly would help the situation if we weren't cutting > down 600 year old forests and replacing them with 1/2" diameter > seedlings. How much CO2 do those seedlings scrub, patrick? I believe you will find that the fastest rates of CO2 sequestration are during the first twenty years of the plantation/ natural forest's growth. The trees are putting on the greatest increment in this period. Those half inch saplings may not look much, but they don't stay half an inch diameter for long do they...? Perhaps if you could both cool the debate down and concentrate on the whole time frame for forest growth, instead of immediate results our twentieth century society has come to expect, you would find more common ground and a more coherent way forwards. Regards Morwenna Spear afu030@bangor.ac.uk
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