North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

[Kevin Moore <aleguy33@yahoo.com>]

You are absolutely right. That carbon is now in the atmosphere. The oceans have largely stopped absorbing carbon because the coral is either dead or dying and can no longer turn atmospheric carbon into calcium carbonate or limestone. What is worse, all the carbon from the Arctic peat bogs is oxidizing and entering the atmosphere as well. This may in fact equal or exceed the carbon emissions from burning fossil fuels. This is not a "natural effect as many people would like to claim. It is the direct result of man-made global warming and is just one more example of how this thing is starting to snowball.

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From: Kieran &/or Donna <holycow@frontiernet.net>
To: North American Fruit Explorers <nafex@lists.ibiblio.org>
Sent: Saturday, March 28, 2009 5:06:47 PM
Subject: Re: [NAFEX] Weather (Off topic)

Well, I had some interesting thoughts the other day.  We had cut down a 50 year old pine and I was thinking about how they'd used these impossible-to-split virginia pines for making log cabins.  Next day I was walking in the neighboring field and thinking about how it was all once virgin timber and that all the wimpy woodlands surrounding it were huge old trees before the white man came.  Then I wondered, "Where are those trees now?"  All the timber that was cut down not just the first time, but all the times since, where did they go?  Where are the houses, the barns, the fences that were built with them?  Most have rotted away or burnt down, and they are now existing as CO2 and water and some minerals in the soil or most likely in the ocean.  What does THAT do to global temps?  I am only too aware of what it does when you chop down all the trees and have exposed soil or pavement or house roofs.  But the difference between the amount of carbon that was in trees, not to mention what was in the rich organic matter content of the soil... all that must be in the atmosphere now.  Donna