"cannabis hemp 'key' to climate change": Canna Zine
http://cannazine.co.uk: Perhaps its time the largest producers of CO2 were instructed to grow larger crops of hemp, in a bid to off-set national CO2 emissions?
The poor old and much maligned industrial hemp plant continues to get a bad press. Even though the UK has recently started to produce hemp fibre's via an initiative by Essex based Hemcore Ltd, over in North Dakota, the DEA is still "just saying no"!
But as the United States continues to rate as one of the worlds largest producers of the gases which are playing such a huge part in global warming, isn't it time the international community stepped in?
The evidence to do so, is compelling.
Global Warming There can be absolutely no doubt any more. Global warming is happening, and the ramifications are taking place before our very eye's.
Atmospheric CO2 levels are higher than they have ever been before, up from 300 PPM (parts per million), to 370 PPM, measured at the summit of Mauna Loa in Hawaii between 1958 and 2000.
Which is an insignificant set of numbers in the grand scheme of things, but what that means in real terms, is the CO2 gas which is causing literally kilometres of the polar ice caps to melt annually, has gone up by 15% in just a few years.
And as our addiction to fossil fuels grips us even tighter, there's no sign anywhere on the horizon, of the situation reversing.
So whats causing it?
Its all to do with the carbon cycle, which is a complicated and scientific way of explaining simple double entry book-keeping. Profit and loss.
Basically we create an amount of greenhouse gases every year, and we also consume an amount. The trick is, getting the balance right - the global carbon budget.
Alas we can't seem to get our heads around this bit and as a result, CO2 levels are going to continue rising unless something changes, and quickly.
So whats hemp got to do with this?
One of the most positive by-products of growing hemp, comes as a result of this carbon exchange.
Hemp uses absolutely tons of CO2 every year, which it uses for the process of photosynthesis. The hemp plant uses its leaves as big green solar panels, which converts the raw nutrients transported from the roots, into sugars and starch's, which the plant then uses to feed itself.
But the building blocks the plant uses to actually build itself, are taken into the plant by way of a carbon exchange as the plant quite literally sucks up CO2 out of the atmosphere, and uses the carbon element within CO2 as a construction material.
And in return for this carbon source, the plant releases pure oxygen into the atmosphere, just to say thanks.
After harvest comes the day of reckoning. This is where we can remove millions of tons of CO2 every single year, by growing a crop which every country on the planet has a use for, and depending on the use the hemp is put to, depends on how large the saving in CO2.
Clearly, running a large factory to process the hemp could be counter-productive, as the power, heat etc, which is used to process the hemp plants, returns a percentage of the CO2 back into the atmosphere. Remember that profit and loss I mentioned earlier?
But with careful management allied to modern technology, large-scale hemp growth could show a marked and dramatic drop in ambient CO2 levels in next to no time, and if it IS (as we already know) a viable alternative, I think we are duty bound as custodians of planet earth, to explore every avenue available.
And regardless of what US Drug Czar John Walters says.
http://cannazine.co.uk
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