De-forestation - shouldn't it effect pollution?

[Tassadar]

I dont know where this urban legend came from ? I look carefully into civilopedia and there is no relation between de-forestation and global warming.

World pollution is cause by the sum of all cities pollution+nuclear strike+ nuclear meltdown. ref: civilopedia.

Thus if you built hospital without mass transit and you lets population increase without control you will get 1 polution skull per citizen over size 12. A.i. increase their city over 20 without mass transit ( more than 8 pollution skull), here come global warming, plant forest as you wish you wont change anything at all. Raze a.i. city is the solution.

 

[Jimcat]

Vegetation doesn't have much of an effect on pollution/global warming in Civ3, but I have noticed that forests and jungles act as a "buffer" against global warming. If GW kills your forest, you can re-plant it. Unfortunately once you lose a jungle, it's gone forever, but the resulting square will be Grassland which is at least useful. If you clear every tree you can reach (as the AI is wont to do) then you're set up to lose a lot of useful land when global warming sets in.

I tend to play the game as a "Gaian" as much as possible. I'll almost never chop down forests within my border, and I build cities on the edge of jungles and crank up their culture, to keep as much jungle as possible within my "protected" borders. Of course, I have yet to go as far as Tassadar with his "live green or die" foreign policy!

 

[The Templar]

Trees are primarily made out of carbon and water. Where does this carbon come from? CO2 in the atmosphere.

There are two gasses that pose the biggest global warming problems: methane and CO2. Methane, being light (CH3 has a far smaller atomic weight than CO2) quickly disperses out of the atmosphere. CO2 sticks around a long while. Forests can be used as carbon sinks to take CO2 out of the atmosphere and store it in trees.

Being a rabid environmentalist myself (I do NOT own a car, and given the power, I would ban them tomorrow), I do not think carbon sink forests are a reasonable alternative to stopping coal use. All I said is that the amount of forest and jungle on the planet should affect the rate of global warming in Civ3. And it should since planting forests where possible (obviously not in the desert - you cant grow trees in sand with no water) will remove CO2 from the air. It should not affect the occurance of pollution (which I take to represent both particulate matter discharged by use of fossil fuels, as well as toxic nuclear and chemical waste like dioxins) which is best effected reduction in fossil fuel use as by mass transit (especially where busses are not involved).

I am disturbed by the lack of penalty in Civ3 for deforestation. Clear all of the rainforests from the planet? NO problem! Replaced all forests with mines? No problem! No erosion, no mercury poisoned lakes, no dioxin in the fish in Civ3!

 

[Lt. 'Killer' M.]

The Templar: well said, sadly, the effects of tree growth as CO2 sinks are minuscle. I know, we do that stuff here where I work, and our models show that plating some trees in temperate zones doesn't even catch up 30% of the negative effect from cutting down tropical rain forest. We would have to cover all of northern America, Europe and Asia in Forests to see a difference, and then, after 200 years (a tree life), the effect would stop.

Good idea on banning cars, a bit harsh maybe, but 15$ per liter (60/Gallon) of gas would help nicely

 

[Jimcat]

All we have to do is keep the population down. Fewer people, less demand for resources, less need for polluting industry.

If we limit the world population to 100 million, everyone could have an SUV and it wouldn't be a problem.

 

[Lt. 'Killer' M.]

Originally posted by Jimcat
All we have to do is keep the population down. Fewer people, less demand for resources, less need for polluting industry.

If we limit the world population to 100 million, everyone could have an SUV and it wouldn't be a problem.

Right, but how are we going to do that???????

I secretly place some (very cynical) hope in AIDS..... As I said, very cynical.....

 

[Jimcat]

Nanotechnology should do the trick. Give it a few decades to a century, then launch a cloud of micro-robots that eradicate human ova. A virus could do the same thing (see Kurt Vonnegut's Galapagos) , but I prefer nanomachines because they can be programmed to ignore the select few.