How much land to replace fossil fuels with biofuels? 6

[Tomfh]

Supposing we replaced the bulk of fossil fuel use with biofuels (wood, ethanol, etc). Roughly how much additional farm land would it take to replace current fossil fuel consumption?

 

[enginesrus]

Cleaning debris from the forest floor is not the same as a clear cut. All the forests should be park like anyway. Almost no chance of wild fires with the correct forest management, and way better than "Purposely" torching the forest trees with a "prescribed" burn, which is a huge waste of energy potential, as well as a potential threat to people, like we saw just recently. Such a huge failure of human intellect.

 

[SwinnyGG]

Scraping the forest floor clean and leaving the trees does basically the same amount of damage to the ecosystem as just cutting down all the trees does. There's a reason it isn't done.

Almost no chance of wild fires with the correct forest management,

This statement is hilarious. Forest fires are a natural process which took place before humans ever walked a step on the earth, and will continue in perpetuity long after we're gone.

Colorado, where I live, has roughly 25 million acres of forested land (depending on exactly which source you ask); a huge percentage of that area is extremely remote and difficult to access via any vehicle that isn't a helicopter. Areas in other states and countries are even more expansive and more remote.

The total forested area of the US is roughly 800 million acres, much of which is very difficult to access unless on foot or by helicopter. The US Forest Service has an annual budget of around $5 billion. If you can find a way to effectively manage 800 million acres of forested land which will completely prevent all fires at a cost of $6 or so an acre, you're a new class of genius.

 

[btrueblood]

"way better than "Purposely" torching the forest trees with a "prescribed" burn, which is a huge waste of energy potential, as well as a potential threat to people, like we saw just recently. Such a huge failure of human intellect."

That's not what a prescribed burn does (torching trees). Properly done, it only burns the detritus on the ground; nobody prescribes a forest fire, those happen when conditions get away from the forest managers (sudden high winds, etc.) More often, fires occur due to lightning strikes and idiots/campers/sportsmen lighting and forgetting to douse campfires. Potential threat to humans? You mean the idiots who lobby congress to allow leasing forest land to build their vacation homes, without any regard to making said homes fire resistant/fire safe? Who expect the forest service and others to drop everything and rescue them and their belongings from their remote estate 20 miles up a rough forest road when the eventual fires eventually draw near? Sorry, no sympathy here.

We have state managed forests here, and they have worked to try and find a way for understory/detritus management to be economically feasible. A contractor was allowed to use crews to remove fallen timber, and thinned trees, from a local managed forest near me. The contractor was paid a small fee for the "service" with the intent that the wood would be shipped to local mills that could burn the waste timber for power generation and to heat the lumber mill kilns. It didn't pay well enough, apparently, and the enterprise folded without clearing more than a few acres. The shipping costs weren't the major issue, it is the manpower required to clamber through a lowland thicket of half-grown fir and hemlock, to set the yarder cables to drag out trees. Then clamber back in when the tree/cable gets hung up, repeat ad infinitum.