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We’re staying at a condo right now here in the People’s Republic of the Berkshires. It occurs to me that the rich folks who built second homes here might be environmental Heros rather than demons, at least a little.

How?

These condos use a lot of lumber that was grown for the purpose of building homes. When those trees are growing, they take in a lot of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. And if they ended up as biofuel or paper or just died then they would release their carbon dioxide right back into the atmosphere.

However if the trees are harvested and turned into 2x4s, then much of that carbon remains sequestered for quite a long time. In other words, the rich dudes building vacation homes are reducing carbon emissions on net. How many green projects can boast such a thing?

2 Responses to “Sunday Morning Ponderance”

  1. Harry says:

    The balance of nature works in strange ways, WC.

    A question, WC: are you familiar with how atmospheric CO2 is measured by CO2 alarmists, or by disinterested scientists? Do they do it daily, on land or sea, in both hemispheres, in winter or summer? For example, would the reading in my soybean field in August on a sunny, calm day differ from a reading in the same field on a windy overcast Groundhog Day, winds blowing out of the north (from Rochester)? I would think these would be variables one would have to account for, not to mention how one’s instrumentation is calibrated, and whether the lab tech is inhaling or exhaling near the collection device. Is the margin of error plus or minus fifty parts per million, just for those readings, or are any of the data less precise? And what are the readings a mile away, or twelve thousand miles away, in, say Tibet, or the Falklands?

    I am not asking this question to be a smartass. You are much better read on these technicalities than I. I suspect that the climate has warmed a bit since Chester A. Arthur’s administration, so I am not a Denier, and should not therefore be singled out for scrutiny by the EPA. Then again, Chester A. Arthur (Alpha, Psi Upsilon) in his day probably did not know that CO2 was in his club soda.

    • Harry says:

      And even if we have adequate data today (doubtful) how precise is the data from twenty, fifty, a hundred, or four hundred years ago?

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