Meanwhile in Germany they cut 200km² of old forrest to build wind farms, locals are angry.
Ministry of environment said:
“Wind energy makes a decisive contribution to the energy transition and to the preservation of nature. This is the only way to preserve forests and important ecosystems.” You cannot make this up.
Please read carefully if you already share a BILD article. While they claim, that the forest is 200km² big and that it will be completely cut down, there is no actual basis to that. The official documents for that wind park talk about cutting down 29Ha, which would be 0.29km². And not all of that is permanent, some is temporary for access and construction. The permanently cut down area would be about 13.1Ha. None of that is in the actual old growth of the forest. So we are talking about 0.15% or so of the whole area of the forest! You can find more info about this here: https://rp-kassel.hessen.de/sites/rp-kassel.hessen.de/files/...
Now, if you tell me that no tree should be cut down for wind energy, then may I point out that from 2018 to 2021 we lost about 250000Ha of forest to climate change and drought (https://www.scinexx.de/news/biowissen/karte-zeigt-waldverlus...). That is 10 times the size of the forest you were so concerned about. Some sources even talk about 500000Ha if you include 2021 (https://www.geo.de/natur/oekologie/alarmierend--5-prozent-de...). We do need to transition to be carbon neutral to have any chance of stopping that. Cutting down less than a percent of trees for energy production while we have already lost several times that to climate change is not great, but it is much better than continuing to burn fossil fuels to kill the rest of the forests as well. There are no viable alternatives to become carbon neutral in the time frame we have left to my knowledge, so I would agree with the quote.
So please don't ever, ever quote BILD for facts. They have an intentional agenda to mislead people and they either conveniently twist the truth or just make up stuff. Unless you are able to distinguish that, it is best to not read it at all.
So you agree that your initial statement about 200km² of forest being cut down is incorrect? Which is mostly what I took issue with. If we agree there now, I am happy.
However regarding the study you linked, while it does show a downward trend in burned area, I am not sure how that relates to our "debate"? It clearly shows that the reduction of burned area each year is down mostly because of humans burning down fewer wooded areas intentionally (3.3.1). Meanwhile the area burned down because of the effects of climate change is actually up (3.3.2). Which does match up with the studies I linked to. However, the study you linked actually only covers up to 2007, which is soon close to 20 years ago. Meanwhile what I linked to covers until 2021. There has been a significant increase in global temperatures in that time (~0.5°C, which considering the limit from Paris is 1.5°C), as such it is very likely the impact of global warming has increased for the time periods after the ones covered in the study. And your study also shows no significant decrease in burned area each year in Europe, so it doesn't really say much about Germany. It also only covers burning. Most of the recent area reduction actually hasn't necessarily been through burning. Plenty of trees died because of drought and then either not having the necessary water to grow or failing to defend against harmful insects and similar.
Climate change won't necessarily burn your house down or make you drown in rising sea levels. Most people will probably be impacted by food shortages, diseases spreading, wars and other factors. As such I am a bit confused about why you linked that study. It seems to focus on a rather narrow factor of forest reduction. But it doesn't cover much of the recent times with the highest temperature increases (https://www.climate.gov/news-features/understanding-climate/...), doesn't disagree with any of my statements and only says the amount of reduction reduced. It doesn't say that forests actually started to increase (because they didn't).
Considering how upset you seemed about humans cutting trees down, I just don't follow what you are trying to argue about anymore? Did you just want to point out, that from 1940 until 2007 the area lost each year to fire reduced by around 30%, so clearly climate change is not that big of a problem, even though the study says the impact of climate change is increasing and in Germany we lost about 5% of the total forested area in 4 years in a later period not covered by your study and burning isn't the only reason for losing forests? It probably would help me, if you tied your argument into the previous discussion. From my perspective it seems to mostly just agree with what I said, in which case I don't understand, why I would have to be more open to debate, since there doesn't seem to be anything to debate?
I probably must have misunderstood you somewhere, so please enlighten me, if that is the case. Apart from that, have a nice day and sorry that I seem to not understand what you are trying to tell me!
- There has been a significant increase in global temperatures in that time (~0.5°C, which considering the limit from Paris is 1.5°C).
Because human activity rise in urban areas, temperatures from rulal areas have not increased that much. Satellite and balloon measures proofs that. (1)
Also rising temperatures is not new phenomena. Greenland ice core project (2) showing that there was about 25 dramatic climate changes in history. Its called Dansgaard–Oeschger event. (3), (4) and shows that for example during Younger Dryas (5) there was dramatic temperature decline and increase in few decades.
Back to topic. Why Germany need so much renewable source of energy and having most expensive energy price in same time? Shouldn't they build more nuclear power plants instead of cutting trees for unreliable source of energy?
Ministry of environment said: “Wind energy makes a decisive contribution to the energy transition and to the preservation of nature. This is the only way to preserve forests and important ecosystems.” You cannot make this up.
https://www.bild.de/regional/frankfurt/politik-inland/kaum-n...