Save a tree this x-mas

In away this week, so I'll leave you with some holiday ideas from the inbox:

The site worldchristmastree.com, launched a week ago by two activists from Riga, Latvia is dedicated to save at least a portion of what is lost in this NOT VERY GREEN festivity.

During THIS WEEK most of us will cut or buy a tree just for purpose of strong traditions. We donate money to the World Land Trust to save 1 sq. foot of rainforest in exchange for ones decorated tree photo. So simple!

Comments

[odograph]

Broken link. (World Christmas Tree)

(While buying a foot of rainforest is very good, it's amusing to note that Christmas trees in landfills do at least provide carbon incarceration. Or you could go the trendier terra preta.)

[Dano]

Speaking of afforestation and sequestration, an interesting follow-up paper at AGU regarding anthropogenic influences on climate from ~Medieval times here.

New World Post-pandemic Reforestation Helped Start Little Ice Age, Say Scientists

ScienceDaily (Dec. 19, 2008) — The power of viruses is well documented in human history. Swarms of little viral Davids have repeatedly laid low the great Goliaths of human civilization, most famously in the devastating pandemics that swept the New World during European conquest and settlement.

[...]

Stanford University researchers have conducted a comprehensive analysis of data detailing the amount of charcoal contained in soils and lake sediments at the sites of both pre-Columbian population centers in the Americas and in sparsely populated surrounding regions. They concluded that reforestation of agricultural lands—abandoned as the population collapsed—pulled so much carbon out of the atmosphere that it helped trigger a period of global cooling, at its most intense from approximately 1500 to 1750, known as the Little Ice Age.

"We estimate that the amount of carbon sequestered in the growing forests was about 10 to 50 percent of the total carbon that would have needed to come out of the atmosphere and oceans at that time to account for the observed changes in carbon dioxide concentrations," said Richard Nevle, visiting scholar in the Department of Geological and Environmental Sciences at Stanford. Nevle and Dennis Bird, professor in geological and environmental sciences, presented their study at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union on Dec. 17, 2008.

[...]

Best,

D