Do all of West Virginia’s trees take in enough carbon dioxide to make the state carbon neutral?
Well, that’s the line that coal industry has been pushing, and that some lawmakers are apparently buying. But whatever math they’ve got to back this up is pretty fuzzy, according to independent scientists I asked to check into the issue for Coal Tattoo. In fact, the industry is off by about a factor of 15 … read on and I’ll explain how that is.
Frankly, I had hoped this issue would go away. A friend among the statehouse press corps pointed it out to me during last year’s session, after at least one lawmaker spouted off about West Virginia’s ample forest cover making the state “carbon neutral.”
I didn’t believe this could be true, and wanted to check it out. So, I contacted the Union of Concerned Scientists, a respected group of experts in a variety of fields.
And I pointed them to this speech by my buddy Bill Raney, president of the West Virginia Coal Association, where Raney explained:
Although we make 99% of our electricity with coal
And our carbon footprint is pretty big
We absorb more carbon than we emit
Because of our maturing Appalachian hardwood forests
We’re the 3rd most forested state in the nation
So we have a natural advantage
We need to make sure the world understands
We can burn coal – without net emissions of carbon
A couple of scientists at UCS took some time to study the matter, and got back to me. But as I said, I hoped the issue would go away and never blogged about it. But then, a friend of mine pointed out this article from the Beckley Register-Herald, which reports that:
Sen. Richard Browning, D-Wyoming, agreed, noting West Virginia has a carbon neutral footprint due to the number of trees in the state.
So, I said to myself, “Self, let’s go ahead and debunk this and then move on” … so here goes:
Aaron Huertas, a press spokesman for the UCS, summarized his group’s analysis this way:
UCS estimates that West Virginia’s forests absorb less than 6 million metric tonnes of CO2 annually. Meanwhile, West Virginia itself burns enough coal to produce just under 91 million metric tonnes of emissions each year. So the industry estimate seems to be off by a factor of 15. Additionally, if you count emissions from coal produced in West Virginia, the state is responsible for 280 million metric tonnes of emissions.
How did they come up with this conclusion?
First, the forest numbers, put together by Doug Boucher, head of the UCS Tropical Forests and Climate Initiative, and Patricia Elias, who formerly worked for the U.S. Forest Service:
The Forest Service’s Inventory and Analysis for West Virginia estimates that in 2006 (the latest year data is available), West Virginia’s forests experienced 203,078,000 cubic feet of net growth. (That includes total growth minus trees dying and decaying minus trees harvested). At about 32.5 pounds per cubic foot (See Forest Service Wood Handbook, Chapter 3), that translates to 2,993,775 metric tonnes of growth each year. Half a tree’s mass is carbon, so that means tree growth in West Virginia sequesters 5,493,579 metric tonnes of CO2 each year.
Now, the West Virginia carbon dioxide emissions from coal, calculated by Barbara Freese, clean energy and climate policy advocate at UCS (and author of Coal: A Human History):
According to the Energy Information Administration, West Virginia emitted about 91 million metric tonnes annually from its own use of coal in 2005 in electricity and other sectors. The nation as a whole emitted 2,156 million metric tonnes from coal use in 2005. West Virginia produces about 13 percent of the coal mines in the United States, so we can roughly attribute 280 million metric tonnes worth of emissions to West Virginia coal. The latter number overlooks imported coal, but it is in the ballpark.
(West Virginia’s own CO2 emissions from coal use are available here. In the left column is a category called state carbon dioxide emissions and a link labeled “by fuel.” That links to an Excel spreadsheet entitled Table 1, 2005 State Emissions by Fuel, showing 90.8 million metric tonnes for W.Va. for coal. At the bottom of that same table is the number for 2005 national emissions from coal: 2,155.8 million metric tonnes.
(West Virginia’s share of U.S. coal production is calculated from this table. It shows W.Va. coal production at about 13 percent of the U.S. total whether you use 2007 or 2006 figures).
Subscribe to the Coal Tattoo
[...] Blogs @ The Charleston Gazette – » Coal and climate change: The industry’s fuzzy math blogs.wvgazette.com – view page – cached Do all of West Virginia’s trees take in enough carbon dioxide to make the state carbon neutral? [...]
It seems the debate on man made climate change is in two camps, main bodies of scientists such as the IPCC and the fossil fuel companies who employ a minority of scientists to spread misinformation. I am not a scientist but after having heard both sides of the argument I decided to side with the IPCC. For me it was a simple choice, do I believe science which seeks truth or big business who’s agenda is short term profit! This debate is far too important to be taken over by profit motivated agenda, we need to listen to the scientists. Stephan Hawking, perhaps the most celebrated scientist today said: “Waiting until the ill-effects of global warming become obvious will be too late; action must be taken now. The warming process could run out of control, as “positive feedbacks” in the Earth’s natural systems magnify it. That could lead to the planet becoming uninhabitable – turning it into a hot dead one like Venus, which has long been known to have suffered the ultimate greenhouse effect”.
Is Bill Raney attempting poetry there?
I watched a show last night on the History channel. It showed over 400 fossils of whales that have been found. They are located in the Sahara Desert. They dated them to be 35 million years old.
What caused the sea that was there to change into a desert? How can we all be so certain that Global Warming is real when the climate changes so dramatically even before man walk the planet?
Do you also believe Al’s hockey stick chart?
Randy, it’s good you are asking tough questions. Now, are you ready for some answers? If so, go to the blog climate progress and see why the next set of bones sticking up out of a desertmay be your grandchildrens’! (Yes, I’m exaggerating, but the future is grim unless we stop emitting CO2). Seriously, there are answers to your questions, if you want them.
35 million years is alot longer than 100 years. Previous climate changes occurred on the scale of thousands to millions of years. A change from a sea to a desert over 35 million years is understandable given the dynamic nature of the earth’s climate. The loss of glaciers over the span of decades is not.
Raney also likens WV as the “nations boilerroom” I used to work in boilerrooms aboard ship and I didn’t particularly like it then but at least I was getting paid well, is WV coal assoc. gonna pay me to be a resident of WV? I don’t think so.
Thanks, Ken, for the debunking. I had not heard the “we got trees” line before.
Have you got anything to report on the EPA regulation of greenhouse gases — possible scenarios and timetables?
Stop and think. It took millions of years, tens of millions of years, for natute to sequester that carbon in the ground as coal. We are releasing the same carbon back into the atmosphere in a little over 100 years.
If what the coal folks are saying was true, we would never have to worry about running out of fossil fuels, because nature would be recycling the carbon back into the ground as fast as we’re using it up.
Git a grip on reality.
Anyone who has the ability to think rationally, can figure out that the coal companies are lieing to protect their profit. Unfortunately, it seems that our governor, Joe Manchin, is void of rational thinking because he believes everything the coal companys’ says to him and he cannot see the devistation to the land, water, air, and health the coal companys create. It is pathetic when our government values a dollar over a human life and our childrens’ health.
Once a coalman always a coalman, Joe knows the color of money which is the only green initiative he has ever liked.
I’m a former math teacher. The numbers that Ken has tracked down tell a story that can’t be denied. After all, science is a matter of hard data, not what you do or don’t “believe in.” Note that the UCS goes beyond the surface of the issue – it’s not only the coal burned here in West Virginia that matters (although that is obviously a huge problem), but the coal we send to be burned in coal-fired power plants all over the country.
I understand and am among those who feel that state policy (and national and global policy) is moving too slowly to address climate change, BUT I don’t think it’s fair to characterize the Governor’s position as in line with the coal industry’s stance.
Twice I’ve been present at industry dominated forums where Manchin has made strong statements supporting the premise of human induced climate change to an audience not at all sympathetic to what he said.
The first time was at the public release of the Imagine West Virginia report on the future of coal in Charleston a couple of years ago. The Governor opened the event with an address that included him turning to Chris Hamilton and other coal leaders and telling them quite directly that the science was clear that global warming is happening and that human activity plays a significant role in that warming. He advised them that they needed to accept this as an important component in future coal strategy.
More recently I attended the Governor’s energy summit at Stonewall Jackson a month ago where he echoed the same position while citing last year’s energy bill as an example of the state responding to climate science.
We can debate the merits of that bill, and there’s a case to be made that we could and should be moving more aggressively to address climate change in this state, but I did note that when one speaker at the summit asked for a show of hands of those who believe humans play a significant role in a warming planet only a smattering of hands went up in a room full of fossil fuel advocates. Governor Manchin’s hand and mine were among the few to be raised.
I don’t see how there could be a net growth in forests with the deforestation by all the strip mining going on in WV. If a study was done today it would have to show a decline in our forests.
Randy,
The reason there are whale fossils in the Sahara desert is because 35 million years ago the Sahara Desert was not where it is now, both horizontally and vertically. Better said, place on the planet that is now the Sahara Desert was once an ocean, and this was due to very, very long geological processes like continental drift.
Have you been to the Grand Canyon? If so, then the 5,000 vertical feet you see below you are layers of limestone and sandstone that were formed at the bottom of a large ocean. They now sit 2000 to 7000 ABOVE sea level. No, the oceans didn’t recede, the land uplifted.
Randy, I understand your question and realize why you may draw your conclusion, or try and use it to doubt man-made global warming. However, if you study geology you will begin to understand the dinamic nature of our earth’s geological processes.
Also, the earth’s climate has never changed as quickly as it is changing now. Sure, climate change always happened, but not as fast, not nearly even.
Glacier National Park had 143 glaciers in 1800, and had about the same in 1900. Now it has around 50.
You must understand the TIME scale here.
With respect,
Jim
Regardless of the cause the one point that most people miss when talking about climate is that we have to be prepared for change. It is pure human fantasy to assume that the Earth today is some sort of steady state system that is supposed to remain exactly as it is. Ocean levels will change and coastlines along with it. Rain belts will shift (North Africa used to be the bread basket of the Roman Empire before the Sahara ate it) and glaciers will flow and retreat. Nearly all the ideas in the climate debate are built on the false supposition that the climate that supports the current geopolitical state is the norm. Let’s quit trying to find someone to blame and figure out how to deal with change that will come regardless of whose fault it is.