>From what I've read, it's actually too much undergrowth. Before we started fighting every fire, fires occurred natually and would burn off the undergrowth and keep it down. The fire didn't often get hot enough to ignite the larger trees, which is why you have old growth forests with trees several hundred years old. As we started to put out every little fire, the undergrowth flourished and built up. Now, you have a lot of kindling, which when ignited, burns hot enough and long enough to set fire to the larger trees. Once they catch, you have a major fire. And yes, major fires occurred in the past, but not as often as now.
I've also read that grasses are more efficient per acre at converting carbon dioxide into oxygen. However, grasses are also more affected by drought since they don't have the deep roots that trees do. Bottom line - we need both. Even so, as long as we keep dumping more CO2 into the air than nature can handle, we're just killing ourselves. One reason why I drive an EV. Dave >From: josh <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> >Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] >To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] >Subject: Re: OT(?) O2 (was EVLN(Jr tu sue CARB)) >Date: Fri, 16 Aug 2002 22:24:22 -0700 > >On Fri, 16 Aug 2002 16:23:22 -0700 (PDT), you wrote: > > >Agreed it is a "hard to say" kind of thing, but we do fight forest > >fires now. Perhaps the rate of tree destruction by fire has been > >lessened enough to make it true. > >Now that you mention it, I saw a show examing some of the present issues in >the >forest fire-fighting debate, and one of them pointed out that "too many" >trees >now exist, per unit area, in areas where fire has been prevented, and that >this >is not at all natural, that it effects which species flourish and so forth, >and >that it of course could lead to even worse fires if-when the area does >finally >succumb. The numbers were pretty big. You know, if you had x number of >trees >per acre 100 years ago, the number is some multiple of x now, in the show I >was >watching, in the forest the guy was in. I don't recall the multiple, but >it >could have been 2 or 3 x or more. > >jl _________________________________________________________________ Chat with friends online, try MSN Messenger: http://messenger.msn.com
