Thoughts on climate change and energy

Professor emeritus Johan Gullichsen presents his thoughts on climate change and on the opportunities available to alleviate its impacts (article on pages 22-25). He criticizes the observation and measurement methods used by the IPCC in its reports and the statistical processing of the data involved. Energy generation based on renewable fuels is currently a hot topic. How long would the world's forest resources last if used for the production of bioenergy? "Most likely far into the future, if not for ever, if only effective management of forest resources could be secured at global political level", professor Gullichsen muses. For example, according to his calculations, the raw material needs of the global forest industry today could be supplied from a forest area of about 50 million hectares, if it were situated in a subtropical region, such as Africa or South America. The remaining forest area could be used for the production of biofuels and to restore biodiversity! To cover the current annual use of fossil energy, a total of about 13 billion cubic metres of wood would be needed, and this could be supplied from an area equalling about 6.5% of the world's forest area. "On the basis of this thinking, which is entirely my own, I have come to the conclusion that climate change induced by mankind is unlikely to bring about the end of the world, and that we have excellent opportunities for replacing the world's dwindling fossil fuel resources with forest-based bioenergy", Johan Gullichsen concludes.