Logging industry official: Harvesting trees

Answer choices

1. A

   Unclear Impact6% picked this

   Many old-growth forests are the home of thousands of animal species that would be endangered if the forests

   If we cut down the old growth trees and then it leads to thousands of animals being endangered, does that reduce CO2? Add CO2? We don't know what effect, if any, the disappearance of these animal species would have on CO2.

   6%
2. B

   Correct48% picked this

   Much of the organic matter from old-growth trees, unusable as lumber, is made into products

   Why this is right

   We cut down these old-growth trees, and much of their matter is made into products that decompose rapidly, so they're still emitting CO2 into the atmosphere. The whole idea of cutting them down was to prevent them from decomposing on the forest floor when they die. But this answer is saying they're going to end up decomposing either way, so we won't really be preventing CO2 emissions. Granted, we might argue that SOME of the old-growth tree can still be used as lumber and might not decompose, but we also have to balance that against the fact that if the trees were still alive in the ground, they would be removing CO2 the way all plants do through photosynthesis.

   Skill tested: Weaken · how this choice captures the argument's function is the move to repeat next time.

   48%
3. C

   Irrelevant Comparison23% picked this

   A young tree contains less than half the amount of carbon dioxide that is stored in an old

   We're not surprised to hear that young trees (which are much smaller) have a smaller tank of absorbed CO2. The benefit of young trees was not supposed to be that they currently have more CO2 stored in them, it's that they suck in CO2 from the atmosphere at a faster rate than old trees do.

   23%
4. D

   No Impact13% picked this

   Much of the carbon dioxide present in forests is eventually released when wood and other organic debris found

   This is a factor that is true whether or not we cut down the old-growth trees. It doesn't give us anyway to compare the world where we leave them to the world where we harvest them.

   13%
5. E

   No Impact10% picked this

   It can take many years for the trees of a newly planted forest to reach the size of those

   It doesn't matter that it takes a long time for young trees to grow to the size of old trees. The key point the author cared about is that while they're growing, young trees are sucking up more CO2 than old trees are, on a daily basis.

   10%