excerpt:
WASHINGTON - In one week, Southern California's wildfires spewed the same amount of carbon dioxide — the primary global warming gas — as the state's power plants and vehicles did, scientists figure [shudder--that means if wildfires of that scale burned for one year, then California's annual emissions would double. We'd also all be dead].
A new study by two Colorado researchers shows that U.S. wildfires pump a significant amount of the greenhouse gas into the air each year, more than the state of Pennsylvania does. It raises questions about how useful it is to plant trees to offset rising carbon dioxide emissions and soothe environmental consciences.
Because the California wildfires occurred just as the study was about to be published, the researchers calculated how much carbon dioxide was likely to come from the devastating blazes Oct. 19-26. It's a lot: 8.7 million tons.
That's more than the state of Vermont produces in a year. And it's also more than the 6 million tons estimated by California's air control agency, which used a different calculation method.
On average, wildfires in the United States each year pump 322 million tons of carbon dioxide. That's about 5 percent of what the country emits by burning fossil fuels, such as gasoline and coal, according to the new research published online Thursday in the peer-reviewed journal Carbon Balance and Management.
5%?!? NIGHTMARE!!!
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