Information Support
to the YouTube Videos!
Main Theme
Forests play a significant role in Earth’s carbon cycle. Most of life consists of carbon-based molecules. Understanding the role of trees and forests contributes to a better understanding of climate change. Moving carbon among the pools of the carbon cycle has little long-term atmospheric impact. Adding fossil carbon, however, is the main cause of climate change.
Major Points
Schools could become more carbon-friendly (cliimate-friendly) by switching their boilers to wood chip systems, rather than replacing them with conventional fossil fuel systems. Several schools have done just this, even a few that are on the natural gas grid. For more information about modern wood-based heating and cooling, visit the Michigan Wood Energy website.
Wood does, indeed, emit more carbon per unit weight than coal, fuel oil, and natural gas. However, remember that the carbon in wood is already part of the carbon cycle and recently acquired its carbon from the atmosphere. Fossil carbon, on the other hand, is NOT part of the carbon cycle and subsequently contributes to climage change. As long as forests remain forests, we could burn wood for thousands of years and not affect the atmosphere.
"Renewable energy" discussions generally focus on technologies such as wind turbines and solar panels. These technologies produce primarily electricity. While important, we should remember that the use of electricity is only about a third of our total energy consumption. The two consumption sectors are transportation and heating/cooling. In the Lake States, heating/cooling is about 40 percent of total energy budget. This is where wood-based technologies can be easily deployed, as the systems are comparatively inexpensive and readily available. Smaller buildings, such as houses and small businesses, could used advanced pellet appliances (not wood stoves!) that work similarly to those appliances that burn either natural gas, propane, or fuel oil. Larger buildings, and groups of buildings, can benefit from the low operating costs of heat supplied by a wood chip system.
BeLeaf It or Not! Video ProductionThe purpose for these videos is to INTRODUCE a few concepts for each episode topic. They are meant to be light-hearted and entertaining. Yet, the intention is to have both feet on solid science ground (biological, economic, social, et al.). We acknowledge that many of the topics are introduced or reinforced in school curricula at the fourth through seventh grades. So, these students, and their teachers, are the primary target audience. All of these topics can be more fully explored within the classroom setting or, in some case, be explored IN THE WOODS! With this in mind, these support pages are embedded into the Michigan Forests Forever website, which already houses a wide range of information about Michigan forests, designed for use by teachers. This entire project cost about $100,000. No small amount, of course. The primary authors were Bill Cook, Georgia Peterson, and James Ford. Additionally, most of the episode scripts were either drafted and/or reviewed by cooperating foresters, biologists, teachers, and other experts. If you're curious about who helped produced these videos, visit the "credits" page. |