Dec 11

Written by:
12/11/2008 9:41 PM 

No, not your car. Not you and your barbeque. I mean Vashon Island, you know, that pile of hardpan with trees on it? Each day the green stuff gobbles carbon dioxide and each day we burn some trees in our heaters. So what is the net score for atmospheric carbon , let's say, on December 25, 2008? Hmmm.

Tree: 800 lbs, a quarter of it carbon (no, I just guessed), 200 lbs

Number burned by 5OOO fires,  say 50 trees.

Carbon in fifty trees 200 bs X 50 = 10,000 lbs went to heaven

Photosynthetic sequestration in a typical Vashon tree per day is 1/400 of a pound.

(An acre of Douglas fir trees stores approximately 1.4 metric tons of carbon each year (14). That's 1/400 pound per tree per day given several baseless assumptions http://www.scientificblogging.com/science_mom/i_wanna_go_green_so_show_me_the_math)

Number of trees on Vashon is 30 exp 6 so that 80 thousand pounds of carbon is sequestered per day

Bottom line, 80 thousand pounds of carbon taken out, ten thousand sent back up on December 25.

This result is, I hope you appreciate, totally meaningless because nearly every step was an unscientific wild guess. The point is that it is not unreasonable to suppose that five people working for a week could come up with a  meaningful number. it might be interesting.

It makes me sad to ponder that such a marvelous creation has been treated so badly by the most intelligent of animals.