Category: Global Warming

Innovative Farmers Can Adapt to Scarcer Water

(p. D4) The Colorado River, Arizona’s largest water source, is so low that last month, for the first time in history, the federal government proposed cutting water allotments to three states that rely on the river, including Arizona. Climate change is parching soil and depleting aquifers already taxed by corporate agriculture. Large swaths of Arizona farmland are devoted to water-hungry crops like lettuce and hay, grown to feed livestock as far away as Saudi Arabia.

. . .

Drawing on lessons she learned at the Urban Farm, a Phoenix-based business that teaches home gardeners how to grow food in a dry climate, Ms. Norton turned her backyard “from bare-bones, dead-ground scratch” into a lush mix of garden and orchard. She’d be open to raising chickens as well, if not for the presence of predators like coyotes, roadrunners and rattlesnakes.

What appears wild is the result of careful planning. A mulberry tree provides shade for the dragon fruit growing around its trunk. The drip tape that waters apricot, plum and apple trees also irrigates Mexican primrose flowers and sweet potato vines below.

“These grapes are strategically placed to keep the afternoon sun off these young trees,” Ms. Norton said. “I take the leaves and give them to a lady four doors down. She uses them to make dolmas.”

Ms. Norton is an ardent member of the Phoenix area’s sprawling gardening community. She is now general manager of the Urban Farm, and owns a seed business with its founder, Greg Peterson.

. . .

A primary goal of gardeners like Ms. Norton is to naturally rejuvenate soil degraded by synthetic fertilizers and neglect. Zach Brooks started the Arizona Worm Farm to help.

Nearly halfway into a 10-year plan to establish a fully sustainable, off-the-grid farm, Mr. Brooks sees his project as proof of how quickly damaged land can be restored using natural methods. It includes gardens and a food forest, a dense collection of plants that support one another, comprising mostly fruits and vegetables. Together, they provide produce for a small farm store and meals for his 20 employees.

. . .

As challenging as it is to farm and garden around Phoenix, Sterling Johnson said it’s (p. D5) even more so in Ajo, about 100 miles south, which is even hotter and dryer.

“If we can do it out here,” he said, “we think you can do it anywhere.”

For the full story, see:

Brett Anderson and Adam Riding. “Feeding a Region As Water Runs Out.” The New York Times (Wednesday, May 10, 2023): D4-D5.

(Note: ellipses, and bracketed date, added.)

(Note: the online version of the story has the date May 8, 2023, and has the title “In Parched Arizona, the Produce Gardens Bloom.”)

“By Far the Biggest Risk to Global Climate Comes From Volcanoes”

(p. C9) What’s the connection between sugar and Xi Jinping? Why does the political turbulence in today’s Middle East trace back to the Cretaceous period? How did the humble potato revolutionize the world? Why did the great Mayan cities of the ninth century run out of potable water? What does the contemporary West African practice of polygyny—one man, many wives—have to do with the trans-Atlantic slave trade?

Peter Frankopan raises these beguiling questions—and many others, bless him—in “The Earth Transformed,” a book that examines the entire sweep of the relationship between humans and nature.

. . .

Whereas Mr. Frankopan never disguises the fact that he is on the greenish side of the climate-change conversation, he steers clear of enviro-preaching and finger-wagging.  . . .  In words that will startle many of us, he says that “by far the biggest risk to global climate comes from volcanoes.” He contrasts the “considerable thought and attention” that have gone into planning for a warming world with the almost complete absence of planning or funding on the likely implications of major volcanic eruptions. Estimates put the chances of a mega-eruption—one that could cost “hundreds of millions of lives”—at one in six before the year 2100.

. . .

The history of the Earth is a history of large-scale transformations that have wreaked havoc in some cases and blessed us with benign climatic eras in others (such as the Roman Warm Period from 300 B.C. to A.D. 500). The most famous instance of the former was the asteroid strike in the Yucatán Peninsula 66 million years ago in which our beloved dinosaurs were wiped out. The rise of humankind, Mr. Frankopan writes, was the result of an “extraordinary series of flukes, coincidences, long shots and serendipities” that made the planet hospitable to our existence. It was “geological chance” that gave the Middle East its oil reserves, the result of warming in Cretaceous times.

. . .

Mr. Frankopan’s thesis is that civilizations thrive best when they are resilient to shocks. Yet “hyperfragility,” he believes, is the name of the game in the 21st century—whether in response to warming, a rudderless U.S., Mr. Xi and Taiwan, Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine, or a nuclear Saudi Arabia and Iran. The march of history has left such places as Uruk, Nineveh, Harappa, Angkor and Tikal in ruins, not because of climate change but because of a lack of resilience to shocks, made worse by obtuse planning and even worse decision-making. That’s the lesson Mr. Frankopan is trying to teach us.

For the full review, see:

Tunku Varadarajan. “Doom May Have to Be Delayed.” The Wall Street Journal (Saturday, April 22, 2023): C9.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version of the review has the date April 20, 2023, and has the title “‘The Earth Transformed’ Review: Doom May Be Delayed.”)

The book under review is:

Frankopan, Peter. The Earth Transformed: An Untold History. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2023.

Even Environmentalists Face Trade-Offs: Plans to Refill the Salton Sea May Hasten an Overdue Large Earthquake

(p. A1) It has been about three centuries since the last great earthquake on the southern San Andreas Fault, the most treacherous seismic hazard in California. For decades researchers have puzzled over why it has been so long. The average interval of large earthquakes along that portion of the fault has been 180 years over the past 1,000 years.

While seismologists agree that Southern California is due for the Big One, a group of researchers published a paper on Wednesday [June 7, 2023] in the journal Nature that offers a reason for the period of seismic silence along the southern San Andreas, the tension-wracked meeting point of the North American and Pacific tectonic plates.

. . .

Mr. Hill and his co-authors found that major earthquakes along the southern San Andreas fault tended to happen when a large body of water, Lake Cahuilla, was filling or was full with water from the Colorado River in what are now the Coachella and Imperial valleys.

The lake has drained over the last three centuries and all that remains is the vestigial Salton Sea.

. . .

The research published in Nature, which builds on a paper on which Dr. Philibosian was a writer in 2011, raises questions about plans to rehabilitate parts of the Salton Sea, . . . .  . . .  As the sea dries out, toxic dust is left behind and blown into the air, posing a hazard for nearby residents.

. . .

Impounding more water in the Salton Sea could tamp down the dust.Impounding more water in the Salton Sea could tamp down the dust.  . . .  But a major change in the water level could also trigger seismic activity, according to Dr. Philibosian.

For the full story, see:

Thomas Fuller. “Scientists Offer Reason for a Sleepy San Andreas Fault.” The New York Times, First Section (Sunday, June 11, 2023): A20.

(Note: ellipses, and bracketed date, added.)

(Note: the online version of the story has the date June 7, 2023, and has the title “The San Andreas Fault Is Sleepy Near Los Angeles. Researchers Have an Idea Why.”)

The Nature article published online on June 7 and mentioned above is:

Hill, Ryley G., Matthew Weingarten, Thomas K. Rockwell, and Yuri Fialko. “Major Southern San Andreas Earthquakes Modulated by Lake-Filling Events.” Nature (2023) DOI: 10.1038/s41586-023-06058-9.

Environmentalists Now Worry We Will Run Low on Squirrels

Really? Our dachshund, Walter Disney Diamond, would be happy to ship a few squirrels to whoever is worried. (His main activity is to dash outside to angrily defend our property rights in our fence against constantly interloping squirrels.)

(p. A19) Male Arctic ground squirrels go through puberty every year. As if that wasn’t hard enough, now the females have a problem, too.

According to a paper published on Thursday [May 25, 2023] in the journal Science, climate change appears to be making them emerge from hibernation earlier. That matters, because it could throw off the timing of the animals’ mating cycle.

. . .

Any decline in squirrel populations could disrupt the local food web. Almost all Arctic predators, from wolves to eagles, rely on them as a food source.

For the full story, see:

Mélissa Godin. “Squirrels Find Arctic Dating Scene a Bit Cold.” The New York Times (Saturday, May 26, 2023): A19.

(Note: ellipsis, and bracketed date, added.)

(Note: the online version of the story was updated May 25, 2023, and has the title “Just Between Us Squirrels, There Might Be Trouble in the Arctic Dating Scene.”)

Opponents of Geoengineering View Global Warming as Nature’s Just Punishment of Us for Our Indulging in Technology and Capitalism

(p. A13) Make no mistake—Mr. Myhrvold is concerned about climate change.  . . .

He laments that policy makers largely scorn geoengineering—human interventions in the Earth’s natural systems to thwart or neutralize climate change.

. . .

Geoengineering is about “deliberately trying to reduce climate change.” Excess CO2 traps a little less than 1% of heat from the sun, “so if we could make the sun 1% dimmer, we could shut off climate change.” When Mount Pinatubo, a volcano in the Philippines, erupted in 1991, it lowered world-wide temperatures by 1 degree Celsius for about 18 months. Human-emitted particulate pollution has historically offset about 20% of human-emitted CO2. “Ironically,” he says, “the Clean Air Act made our air better but hurt climate change.”

The simplest solar-radiation management scheme, Mr. Myhrvold says, “is to emit particles in the stratosphere to mimic Mount Pinatubo. We invented a particularly elegant way to do this with balloons and a pipe to the sky.” By “we,” he means Intellectual Ventures, the company Mr. Myhrvold founded in 2000 after leaving Microsoft, where he spent 13 years and rose to the position of chief technology officer. Intellectual Ventures “creates, incubates and commercializes” new inventions.

“Marine cloud brightening” is another solar-related intervention. “The idea is to increase the number and size of low clouds that form over the oceans so that more incoming sunlight bounces back into space instead of heating the ocean.” Scientists have proposed a variety of ways to do this. One, which Mr. Myhrvold’s company has explored, is to outfit ships with equipment to spray seawater into the air as they traverse the ocean. “The salt particles can serve as nuclei for water vapor to condense into droplets, thus forming clouds.”

. . .

“Opponents worry that once you have geoengineering, people won’t make sacrifices to cut emissions. They want a sword of Damocles hanging over humanity as a means to force us to follow their ideology.”

Mr. Myhrvold uses an analogy he describes as “horrible in some ways.” When the AIDS epidemic hit, some people saw it as punishment from God. “Their attitude was, ‘This is what you get if you indulge in the practices we don’t approve of.’ ” In climate change, he says, this moralistic attitude takes the following form: “I don’t like aspects of our society, I don’t like technology, I don’t like capitalism, and this is nature’s retribution. And so we have to change the way we live.” Such beliefs “have become a very powerful disincentive, particularly for academic researchers.”

. . .

“You could imagine a world in which cardiology doesn’t exist because the medical profession said, ‘You fat bastards. You did it to yourselves. We’re not going to help you.’ ”

For the full interview, see:

Tunku Varadarajan, interview. “THE WEEKEND INTERVIEW; Emission Cuts Will Fail. What to Do Then?” The Wall Street Journal (Saturday, Feb. 18, 2023): A13.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version of the interview has the date February 17, 2023, and has the title “THE WEEKEND INTERVIEW; Emission Cuts Will Fail to Stop Climate Change. What to Do Then?”)

Nimbly Resilient African Coffee Farmers Switch to Coffee Bean that Withstands Global Warming

(p. A1) First the bad news. The two types of coffee that most of us drink — Arabica and robusta — are at grave risk in the era of climate change.

Now the good news. Farmers in one of Africa’s biggest coffee exporting countries are growing a whole other variety that better withstands the heat, drought and disease supersized by global warming.

. . .

Catherine Kiwuka, a coffee specialist at the National Agricultural Research Organization, called Liberica excelsa “a neglected coffee species.” She is part of an experiment to introduce it to the world.

. . .

(p, A6) In 2016, she invited Aaron Davis, a coffee scientist from the Royal Botanical Gardens in Kew, England, to Zirobwe. He was skeptical at first. He had tasted Liberica elsewhere and found it to be like “vegetable soup,” he said.

But then, the next day, he ground the beans from Zirobwe in his hotel room. Yes, a coffee researcher always packs a portable grinder when traveling.

“Actually, this is not bad,” he recalled thinking. It had potential.

. . .

Dr. Kiwuka and Dr. Davis teamed up. They would encourage farmers to improve the harvesting and drying of their Liberica crop. Instead of tossing them in with the robusta beans, they would sell the Libericas separately. If they met certain standards, they would get a higher price.

“In a warming world, and in an era beset with supply chain disruption, Liberica coffee could re-emerge as a major crop plant,” they wrote in Nature, the scientific journal, this past December.

For the full story, see:

Somini Sengupta. “Hardier Brew: African Farmers Bet on Climate-Resistant Coffee.” The New York Times (Saturday, April 29, 2023): A1 & A6.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version of the story has the date April 28, 2023, and has the title “What Climate Change Could Mean for the Coffee You Drink.”)

The article in Nature Plants mentioned above is:

Davis, Aaron P., Catherine Kiwuka, Aisyah Faruk, Mweru J. Walubiri, and James Kalema. “The Re-Emergence of Liberica Coffee as a Major Crop Plant.” Nature Plants 8, no. 12 (Dec. 2022): 1322-28.

Scarce Metals, Batteries, and Factories Needed for EVs Are Very Hard to Quickly Ramp-Up

(p. B1) The Biden administration’s plan to accelerate the adoption of electric vehicles — reaching a two-thirds share of new cars in less than a decade — pushes automakers further in a direction they have already been going. But meeting the new timetable will be a challenge.

. . .

But the industry and its customers have a long way to go. While sales of electric vehicles are (p. B3) rising, they accounted for only 5.8 percent of the 13.8 million new cars and trucks sold in the United States last year.

. . .

The owner of a 2018 Ford F-150 pickup truck, he often has to haul around a trailer full of equipment for his job, and he sometimes tows a camper for vacations — driving patterns that are not very suitable for E.V.s. It’s also not unusual for him to have to drive 300 miles on a work trip, and farther when he visits relatives in Michigan.

“I’m a person who likes to go and not have a lot of stops,” he said. “If I’m working, I can’t really wait an hour or more to recharge an E.V.”

On top of that, he lives in an apartment, so he would have no way to charge an E.V. at home.

Whether Americans are willing to accept changes to their work and lifestyle to drive electric vehicles is only one of several hurdles and uncertainties. The biggest is perhaps lithium. The soft, silver-white metal is the key element in E.V. batteries, and the world produces only a small fraction of the amount that will be needed for a majority of car buyers to go electric in the United States, Europe and China, markets where more than 50 million cars were sold last year.

“Can we really produce enough lithium for that?” asked Mike Ramsey, a Gartner analyst who follows the electric car business. “We’re not even at 10 percent now, and it’s difficult for companies to get the lithium they need.”

While mining companies are racing to expand lithium production, the pace at which they can is unclear. In North Carolina, for example, Albemarle is trying to reopen a pit mine along Interstate 85 near Kings Mountain, 32 miles west of Charlotte.

The mine was in operation from the 1940s to the 1980s, and to reopen it the company must work out plans for protecting surrounding groundwater, determining if the mine’s steep walls are suitable for new operations and dealing with any contaminants that may be found in the pit lake at the mine’s bottom.

Extracting lithium from the hard ore at the site involves a more difficult and costly process than other sources, and residents in the area have begun working to block the resumption of mining operations.

The supply and production of other metals — including nickel, rare-earth metals, manganese and cobalt — must also increase to support a tenfold rise in E.V. sales.

On another front, the plants and assembly lines needed to produce millions of E.V.s every year don’t exist yet. While G.M., Ford and other manufacturers have plants under construction, they will have to produce twice or three times as many battery plants to hit their sales targets and those the Biden administration is setting.

Building and ramping up dozens of new plants will take years, and that process can be fraught.

For the full story, see:

Neal E. Boudette. “A Test for Automakers: Meeting Biden’s Deadline.” The New York Times (Tuesday, April 11, 2023): B1 & B3.

(Note: ellipses added.]

(Note: the online version of the story has the same date as the print version, and has the title “Automakers Face Test in Reaching U.S. Target for Electric Vehicles.”)

/>

Fast Transition Away from Fossil Fuels Requires Fast and Huge Increase in Mining of Lithium, Cobalt, and Copper

(p. A17) The drive toward energy transition will increase demand for lithium, cobalt and other minerals many times over. An offshore wind project uses nine times the minerals of a natural-gas-fired power plant of the same generating capacity.

As countries roll out targets for “net zero” carbon emissions by 2050, it’s becoming clear how difficult it will be to source this huge increase in minerals. The U.S. and Japanese governments, the European Union and a host of multilateral organizations have issued alarming reports about the magnitude of the challenge. The International Monetary Fund warns that striving to achieve net zero by 2050 will “spur unprecedented demand for some of the most crucial metals,” leading to price spikes that “could derail or delay the energy transition itself.”

Consider a recent S&P Global study on copper. Much of the energy transition is predicated on electrifying as much as possible, as fast as possible. That will require a huge amount of copper, as it is the “metal of electrification.” The report concludes that translating the 2050 net zero goals into the equipment and technologies that will be needed—electric-vehicle batteries and charging stations, offshore wind, onshore wind, solar panels, battery storage, etc.—adds up to a doubling of the need for copper by the mid-2030s.

. . .

Two countries mine about 40% of world’s copper supplies—Peru, where the government is in disarray after the president was impeached and arrested, and Chile, whose government is struggling between its populist agenda and the need for economic growth.

. . .

The quest for net zero emissions will face similar challenges with other commodities, where the growth in demand will be much greater. Seventy percent of cobalt, critical for electric-vehicle batteries, comes from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where large mining operations coexist with small, hand-dug mines in which both adults and children work.

There’s a further complication—about 60% of the world’s lithium is processed in China, and 47% of copper is smelted there. By comparison, the U.S. processes 4% of world copper. Once the U.S. had more than a dozen copper smelters; now it has two.

For the full commentary, see:

Daniel Yergin. “‘Net Zero’ Will Mean a Mining Boom.” The Wall Street Journal (Thursday, April 13, 2023): A17.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date April 12, 2023, and has the same title as the print version.)

The S&P Global study mentioned above is:

Yergin, Daniel (Project Chairman). “The Future of Copper: Will the Looming Supply Gap Short-Circuit the Energy Transition?” S&P Global, July 2022.

Critique of Fed Claim That a Year of Above Average Temps Increases Odds of a Recession

(p. A17) . . . recently I published a critique of a study from the Federal Reserve Board claiming that a year of above-normal temperatures in countries around the world makes economic contraction more likely.

. . .

There are two main reasons why the Fed study appeared at first to show a statistically significant effect of temperatures on economic growth. First, each country in the sample had equal weight in the analysis. China had the same weight as St. Vincent though China’s population is 13,000 times as large. Equal weighting means that some small countries with unusual histories of economic growth greatly influenced the results.

The paper’s results disappeared when countries like Rwanda and Equatorial Guinea—which had economic catastrophes and bonanzas unrelated to climate change—were omitted. Omitting similar countries representing less than 1% of world gross domestic product was enough to eliminate the paper’s result. The complicated statistical techniques used in the Fed study magnified the influence of these unusual countries.

There’s a second reason why the Fed study appears to find that temperature affects growth: Many poor countries have warm climates. A warm climate doesn’t preclude economic growth, as is demonstrated by Florida, Arizona, Taiwan, Singapore and several Persian Gulf states. But the average poor country is warmer than the average rich country. Debate continues as to whether this correlation is random or causal, but the hypothesis of the Fed paper is that year-to-year increases in temperature reduce annual economic growth. The paper claims that its method controls for long-term differences in climate, but using simulated data I found that the Fed paper’s method can be fooled into finding an effect that doesn’t exist.

For the full commentary, see:

David Barker. “The Fed’s Climate Studies Are Full of Hot Air.” The Wall Street Journal (Monday, April 10, 2023): A17.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date April 9, 2023, and has the same title as the print version.)

Barker’s critique mentioned above is:

Barker, David. “Temperature and Economic Growth: Comment on Kiley.” Econ Journal Watch 20, no. 1 (March 2023): 69–84.

Occidental Building Costly Plant to Bury Carbon Dioxide, Hoping to Be the Last Firm Still Allowed to Produce Oil

The “oracle of Omaha,” Warren Buffett, has been investing in Occidental.

(p. A1) About fifty miles southwest of Midland, Texas, deep in the oil-saturated Permian Basin, more than 100 workers are busy laying out roads and water lines, preparing to build an elaborate complex of fans, each as large as a tennis court.

When they start running in 2024, the fans will suck massive amounts of carbon dioxide out of the air. The carbon will be funneled thousands of feet down deep wells into geological formations, where it should remain for centuries.

The company behind this environmental moonshot is Occidental Petroleum Corp., one of the country’s most successful oil-and-gas producers. It hopes the enterprise will give it license to keep operating as a driller decades into the future.

It is spending more than $1 billion to build the first in a planned fleet of plants using direct-air capture to pull the CO2 out of the air, a budding technology with fuzzy economics. Bolstering the move are generous tax incentives included in the climate package President Biden signed into law last year that cover up to 45% of Occidental’s expected initial costs per metric ton.

. . .

(p. 8) To be successful, Occidental will need to bring the cost of capture and containment down by hundreds of dollars per metric ton of CO2, according to energy executives and analysts.

Occidental estimated its initial cost to remove a metric ton of CO2 would be between $400 and $500. It said that as it manufactures more plants and efficiencies kick in, it will be able to roughly halve that to between $200 and $250 a ton by the end of the decade, according to the company. None of the figures include federal tax credits.

The Inflation Reduction Act, signed into law by President Biden last year, rewards companies that capture and store atmospheric CO2 with a $180 tax credit per metric ton contained permanently, up from $50. Credits for capturing atmospheric CO2 and using it in enhanced oil recovery rose to $130 a metric ton, up from $35. The bill also offers incentives to companies that capture CO2 at industrial plants and sequester it, which Occidental also plans to do.

. . .

Howard Herzog, a leading researcher on carbon capture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said he didn’t think bringing the cost of direct-air capture down to around $100 a metric ton was a realistic goal. Occidental is “probably more bullish on direct-air capture than I would be,” he said. But he added that how much buyers of carbon credits are willing to pay will also determine how profitable direct-air capture turns out to be.

Ms. Hollub told The Wall Street Journal in August that Occidental’s efforts on carbon capture and on becoming a net-zero emitter would allow it to keep up its investments in oil and gas. She warned that underinvestment in fossil fuels, which she says will be needed for years even amid the broader transition to clean energy, will lead to a scarcity of supplies. In contrast, she said, other oil majors such as BP PLC and Shell PLC have shrunk their oil segment and invested in renewables.

Oil companies will have to find ways to remove as much carbon dioxide as they emit “if they want to be the last producer standing in the world,” Ms. Hollub said.

For the full story, see:

Benoît Morenne. “Occidental’s Green Bet To Keep Pumping Oil.” The Wall Street Journal (Tuesday, April 11, 2023): A1 & A8.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version of the story has the date April 10, 2023, and has the title “Occidental Makes a Billion-Dollar Climate Moonshot—So It Can Keep Pumping Oil.”)

The Hybrid Trees Weyerhaeuser Plants, Absorb More Carbon Dioxide Than Did the Trees It Cuts Down

(p. A1) KIBBY TOWNSHIP, Maine—Weyerhaeuser Co. has cut down more trees than any other American company since its founder started logging before the Civil War. Environmentalists have long treated it as an enemy.

Now, the new math of carbon emissions is enabling the lumber producer to cast itself as something quite different: a force for environmental good.

Its 10.6 million acres of U.S. timberland act as a giant sponge for carbon dioxide, which Weyerhaeuser says more than compensates for the greenhouse gases it emits by felling trees, sawing them into lumber and distributing wood products.

Although Weyerhaeuser is cutting down as many trees as ever and plans to increase lumber production 5% in the next few years, it says its net carbon footprint is negative—so much so that it is offering carbon dioxide storage capacity to other companies. Weyerhaeuser expects a new unit dedicated to helping other firms offset their emissions to generate $100 million a year in profit by the end of 2025.

“I don’t think there are many companies in the world with a better environmental (p. A8) story than Weyerhaeuser,” said Devin Stockfish, chief executive officer of the Seattle-based company. “The moment is really ripe for us.”

. . .

Weyerhaeuser logs about 2% of its land each year and plants more than 130 million saplings a year to replace much of what it cuts. Company scientists have selectively bred trees over the decades to grow bigger, faster and better for lumber-making than the ones they replace. The company says those new breeds will sock away carbon dioxide faster than the ones cut down, allowing it to boost sequestration and wood production at the same time.

“There is a pretty significant difference in the genetics of the trees that we grow versus what would have grown naturally,” Mr. Stockfish said.

For the full story, see:

Ryan Dezember. “Logger Recasts Itself As Climate Friendly.” The Wall Street Journal (Tuesday, April 18, 2023): A1 & A8.

(Note: ellipsis added.)

(Note: the online version of the story has the date April 17, 2023, and has the title “America’s Most Prolific Logger Recasts Itself as Environmental Do-Gooder.”)