Tree Planting 'Has Mind-Blowing Potential' To Tackle Climate Crisis 424
Planting billions of trees across the world is by far the biggest and cheapest way to tackle the climate crisis, according to scientists, who have made the first calculation of how many more trees could be planted without encroaching on crop land or urban areas. From a report: As trees grow, they absorb and store the carbon dioxide emissions that are driving global heating. New research estimates that a worldwide planting programme could remove two-thirds of all the emissions that have been pumped into the atmosphere by human activities, a figure the scientists describe as "mind-blowing." The analysis found there are 1.7bn hectares of treeless land on which 1.2tn native tree saplings would naturally grow. That area is about 11% of all land and equivalent to the size of the US and China combined. Tropical areas could have 100% tree cover, while others would be more sparsely covered, meaning that on average about half the area would be under tree canopy. The scientists specifically excluded all fields used to grow crops and urban areas from their analysis. But they did include grazing land, on which the researchers say a few trees can also benefit sheep and cattle.
Not much good... (Score:5, Insightful)
If we can't stop cutting down the largest forest in the world first: the rainforest. We're losing that at ~100k acres a day.
Re:Not much good... (Score:5, Interesting)
If we can't stop cutting down the largest forest in the world first: the rainforest. We're losing that at ~100k acres a day.
Rainforests are shrinking, but temperate and subarctic forests are expanding.
Global tree cover has increased 7% since 1982 [independent.co.uk]
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Instead of stopping the development of poor countries, why not convert the midwest to forests. Noone actually needs the corn. Its exported or fed to pigs. As a plus we wont have to pay farming subsidies to grow useless corn anymore.
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Tell that to the farmers.
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The only BS number I've seen in this thread is where you claimed that Google told you there was only 75 million acres of rainforest left, because it seems obvious you read this:
Out of the 6 million square miles (15 million square kilometers) of tropical rainforest that once existed worldwide, only 2.4 million square miles (6 million square km) remain, and only 50 percent, or 75 million square acres (30 million hectares), of temperate rainforests still exists, according to The Nature ...Jul 28, 2018
Live Science 63196-rainforest-facts
Which shows you missed the key phrase of "temperate" and didn't realize you weren't even talking about that in reference to the Amazon. A tropical rainforest.
Re:Not much good... (Score:5, Informative)
100k acres per day? Google just told me there are 75 million acres of rainforest left so you're saying they'll all be gone in about 2.5 years? This is why no one takes the Left seriously.
What Google are you using? My Google (query: world rainforest coverage -- top two links) tells me there are 1.3 billion to 2.4 billion hectares of tropical forest (depending on the definition of forest). That is something like 4 billion acres, not 75 million. You should have realized immediately that 75 million acres (a bit over 100,000 square miles) is ridiculously low.
So 100k acres a day would be 40,000 days worth, or about 1% a year.
Yeah "the Left" has credibility problems (facepalm).
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No patents on tree planting (Score:2)
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so how are our corporate overlords going to cash in on this activity?
By selling seedlings and shovels.
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By selling sterile seedlings and shovels.
FTFY. There wouldn't be enough profit in it for Bayer-Monsanto if you could buy just one tree and it could create others.
Lots of details to investigate. (Score:5, Insightful)
11% of the worlds land is not a small thing. Is there that much land with sufficient water that is not already used for agriculture? They may have studied this in detail, but a lot of grazing land is pretty dry and trees won't grow quickly there.
Clearly it makes sense to first stop cutting down trees - but that is generally done to expand agricultural land in poor countries. Is there a viable solution that provides jobs and food for people in those countries?
Trees of course are only a medium term solution - over hundreds to thousands of years they die or burn down and release the carbon again. Needs to be investigated as part of a long term plan.
In some areas forests go through a regular, and not all that long term fire cycle, and a lot of the biomass gets returned to the atmosphere.
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a lot of grazing land is pretty dry and trees won't grow quickly there.
I grew up on a farm, so I can point out another flaw in this plan: Cows eat seedlings.
There's an easy way around that - charcoal (Score:2)
Lots of things eat seedlings, one of the approaches I saw was from an effort to increase the number of trees somewhere in Africa - they toss seed pods all over the place, wrapped up in charcoal balls. This keeps animals away from them in the early stages of growth and also acts as a booster fertilizer.
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This is this sort of thing that matters. Sometimes what sounds like a good idea may have issues that aren't at all obvious to people who don't have detailed knowledge. sometimes the problems can be fixed but that might or might not make the whole idea impractical.
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11% of the worlds land is not a small thing. Is there that much land with sufficient water that is not already used for agriculture?
More and more as time goes by. Global warming is extending the growing season in northern latitudes. It happens that there is a lot tundra that will support such growth as it becomes warmer.
Trees of course are only a medium term solution - over hundreds to thousands of years they die or burn down and release the carbon again. Needs to be investigated as part of a long term plan.
Cut them down before they burn or fall and rot. Use the lumber for building stuff. Plant more trees.
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It is likely that forested land, under a shaded canopy, with organic soils that build up, will retain moisture better. Trees actually also store some water in their structure. In many areas trees can also capture moisture from the air through condensation and fog capture.
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I live in the desert (Las Vegas).
We were surprised at just how much difference lawn by the bedroom window made on the indoor temperature in that room.
Eventually much of my lawn will go, but not before establishing an alternate green band around the house . . .
Other recent studies have found things such as that additional trees in an area as small as a few blocks lowers temperature by a noticeable amount.
hawk
Bullshit Roundup (Score:5, Informative)
Trees of course are only a medium term solution - over hundreds to thousands of years they die or burn down and release the carbon again. Needs to be investigated as part of a long term plan.
No. Even when trees burn down, a portion of the tree is retained as biochar, some of it becomes ash and washes into the soil, and some of it (about 20%) is root mass which is also in the ground. It's tiresome to see people continually repeating the falsehood that the entire tree simply up and vanishes into the atmosphere when it burns.
Now, off to other points along the thread...
Hold on (Score:1)
by Ol Olsoc ( 1175323 ) (#58874972)
Unless they are going to eventually bury the trees in a deep mine and fill it with concrete, trees are carbon neutral. They sequester Carbon until they die, then release it back into the atmosphere as they rot.
They release a percentage of their carbon back as they rot, and a portion is retained in the soil. They also have lifespans measured in tens to hundreds of years.
Re:Not much good... by ShanghaiBill (#58875062)
Rainforests are shrinking, but temperate and subarctic forests are expanding.
Global tree cover has increased 7% since 1982
When we talk about floating sea ice, we care about the extent more than the mass, because the floating ice won't increase sea level much at all — but the change in albedo affects heating from insolation. But when we talk about trees specifically from the standpoint of carbon sequestration, we care about the mass more than the area, because large mature trees fix carbon more quickly than young ones. That's partly because trees only grow from a small layer under the bark called the cambium, and partly because the rate of growth is also limited by the rate of photosynthesis. The larger the diameter of the tree, the larger the cambium; the larger the tree, the more sunlight it can make use of, and the more photosynthesis.
We both need to plant fast-growing species, and also more importantly stop cutting large trees. Tree farming may be a sustainable and carbon-negative process where access is very convenient and the energy costs are low, and should probably continue to be a part of the overall solution, but it is imperative that we promote and protect large trees.
TL;DR (for the whole comment): Large trees really do sequester carbon.
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To me the best type of solution is one that is self-maintaining. For example if non CO2 generating energy technology is developed which is cheaper (including capital cost) than the economics "genie" will largely do this for you. No need for regulations or complex giant programs
We don't have that yet (though some things are promising), so in the medium term we need other solutions. Planting trees *might* be such a solution. I wouldn't want to rely on humans continuing to do it for hundreds of years thou
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Oh, I'm fully in agreement with you on the value of planting trees.
I'm just looking for clarity on the scope of the benefit.
Whatever you do, everyone existing today will be dead in those "hundreds to thousands" of years. Whoever is alive then will be dead in another hundreds to thousands of years.
People have a persistent tendency to imply in argument that people are immortal while simultaneously denying that they are. The set of humans that will benefit in the described timeframes, regardless of what we d
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It's not thorny at all.
The choices are two. Either we
- actually prioritize people's lives, recognize that western humanism is by far the best system for the individual, and work to aggressively replace governments who do not care for their populations, or
- we recognize that national self interest is primary, and stop worrying about people in other countries. If it's bad enough, they need to revolt and fix their own shit.
We just can't keep doing neither/both simultaneously, complaining that "things should
So we can or we can't? (Score:2)
Apparently as climate change gets worse, trees absorb less CO2 [popularmechanics.com]?
Then and now (Score:4, Insightful)
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Yes, but here's the problem:
In the developed world, many countries are already below the replacement rate.
It's the poor countries where humans breed like rabits, and you can't tell a person who already has nothing in life to also give up on the one thing that might make them have a life when they are old, because family structure support is a thing.
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The world fertility rate is already getting towards the steady state level of 2.2. The continued increase in population is mostly due to people living longer.
There are also economic problems that come with a falling population. If there is a fall it needs to be slow to avoid causing problems.
Which is all fine as long as we make the effort to become carbon neutral fairly quickly.
It's an option (Score:3)
It sounds a little too easy, but I do like that it's a suggestion that addresses the issue without utopian (dystopian?) visions of planet-wide de-industrialization and radical decrease in standard of living.
Might even create jobs for all the people who will supposedly be unemployed because of automation and artificial intelligence.
Well duh! (Score:3, Insightful)
70% of the planet has been deforested by us pesky humans in the past 400 years, much of it in the tropics so we can grow our bananas, avocados, soy beans, palm oil, and coffee plants-to name a few. Obviously replacing a rich diverse forest that contains hundreds or thousands of different plants with an agricultural mono culture will have a big impact at the regional level (flooding, landslides, erosion, loss of biodiversity) and global level (temperature moderation, rainfall, loss of biodiversity).
Up until the late 70s, coffee was grown in the shade of existing mature trees in order to retain some habitat for birds, insects, and other animals, but they stopped doing that and cut down the mature trees so they can use 100% of the land, at the expense of the wildlife, and an increased usage of fertilizer and water. We have to stop doing stuff like that just to squeeze out an extra 10% of revenue. So ya, planting trees and farming practices that include some old stock plants could/will make a big difference if incorporated on a large scale.
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BTW, I didn't know this until today, but the largest coffee producer is Brazil at 30% of the total. That's an enormous amount of rain-forest in one country that was clear-cut to produce just one product.
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An acre of maze is a lot less sequestered carbon than an acre of Douglas Fir.
Good article with some near misses (Score:5, Informative)
This article was on the brink of covering some really important topics that could simultaneously resolve our climate issues and reform our agricultural system to bring it into better harmony with the land and its natural cycles.
For example, it suggested that two or three trees in every cow pasture would help. Project Drawdown (https://www.drawdown.org) goes further, and describes silvopasture, mixing sparse forest with grazing animals, as an old practice ripe for revival that, for an estimated $41.59 billion USD net implementation cost worldwide, would yield $699.37 billion USD in savings. This is one of many approaches that make sense when one draws on ecosystems for inspiration for designing systems that can support human life, without wrecking the planet.
Drawdown's write-ups are significant because they represent a lot of research and solid estimates of what the costs and benefits are of many approaches that, in unison, could resolve the climate crisis.
Other significant write-ups:
https://www.drawdown.org/solut... [drawdown.org] (Basic forest-planting as most people think of it)
https://www.drawdown.org/solut... [drawdown.org] (Restoring tropical rainforests)
https://www.drawdown.org/solut... [drawdown.org] (Biochar, which if you research leads into a fascinating revival of the creation of carbonaceous soils which better retain water and nutrients, while sequestering CO2 more rapidly than forests and is immediately applicable to our grasslands and plains)
https://www.drawdown.org/solut... [drawdown.org] (Multistrata agroforestry...)
https://www.drawdown.org/solut... [drawdown.org] (Tree polyculture which conveys benefits for resilience, resistance to pests, soil health, and multiple yields from the same land)
Towards the end of that list you might notice a theme of pursuing polycultures in agriculture, which 20th century industrial agriculture eschewed for obvious reasons. Might we not revisit that? A combination of ancient polycultural techniques which allowed complementary plant species to maintain long-term yields and new levels of AI-guided farming may well finally unite our ancient and current knowledge and help solve this crisis.
not gonna happen (Score:5, Interesting)
However, I doubt anything serious will be done until it becomes a *real* and *immediate* problem that's undeniable to *most* of the planet. In the past, humanity was able to do things proactively, like agree to limit fluorocarbons to fix the hole we punched in our ozone layer. Unfortunately, forward-thinking and cooperation is mostly dead, at least for the time being. Humanity is currently engaged in a full-blown session of head-up-ass (on multiple issues, not just climate change) and the bar for action in this area is very, very high.
A slight rise in temperature isn't real enough.
A slight increase in storm severity isn't enough.
The loss of one or two major breadbasket regions isn't enough. Food production will just shift around.
Anything that happens in a poor country isn't enough, including starvation. Poor people simply don't count enough to those with power and wealth.
Any effect that is limited to the coasts isn't enough. People will just move.
Any extinctions short of country-scale ecological collapse isn't enough. Most people don't care about plants and critters beyond eating them.
Anything that is limited to the arctic isn't enough. Nobody lives there.
Mass migrations from poor countries won't be enough. Rich countries will just put up barriers and allow populations to die.
Actually, humanity is starting to de-carbonize, but incrementally and not for ecological reasons. Renewables are slowly becoming more economically competitive than carbon-based energy. Will it happen before we change the planet in ways that impede our progress as a species? The jury is still out on that one.
As far as I can see, There are the only things that will force humanity to deal with the problem at a faster pace: One: environmental-related destruction that renders entire cities in the rich world uninhabitable. That level of economic damage won't be deniable. Two: loss of enough major food-producing regions to affect the dinner tables of people in the rich world. When steak becomes unavailable, it'll be serious.
Beyond that, it's business as usual. Let's hope that geo-engineering is a viable option, because I suspect that we're going to need it.
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>Humanity is currently engaged in a full-blown session of head-up-ass
Not on climate change. In the past 10 years, Western countries practically stopped increasing production of CO2. In the same period, India and China dramatically increased production of CO2.
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>First of all, no one needs steak
Yes, billions of people need and eat steak
> steak is terrible for you.
No, steak is good for you.
> cattle are a major contributor to greenhouse gases
Only 18%
>You need to make steak unavailable,
No we don't
> reduce the amount of cattle 90%
No, we won't
> and you'll feel better
No we won't
> because you'll actually be healthier and actually live longer.
We already are healthier and live longer. The diseases that are on the rise: cancer and Alzheimer are not the r
Find a way to make it profitable and.. (Score:2)
I'm serious. Find a way to make planting more and more trees more profitable than other things that destroy forests and people and businesses will fight each other for a chance to get in on it.
Here's an idea: make more 'durable' things out of wood. Not just houses and other buildings. Promote the use of wood as a construction material for any number of things, instead of plastics or metals. Yes, I'm advocating going backwards a bit technologically-speaking -- or am I? Wh
The Trees (Score:2)
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Would it make sense to have multiple trees and plants and rotate them into the office and outside daily/weekly?
benefits (Score:2)
Grazing isn't the only thing. Our farms are optimized for big machines. Medieval farm lands did have trees around and inside the fields. They provided shadow, kept the soil from eroding and gave workers a nice resting place during harvest.
Roads with trees get less hot, due to shadow. Cities with trees get less hot and have cleaner air.
You can't exaggerate the benefits of trees.
So yes, plant more trees. There's no reason not to.
win-win regardless (Score:5, Insightful)
It also has mind blowing potential (Score:2)
It also has mind blowing potential of draining the waterbed and causing insanely massive forest fires, like the ones you see every year in California.
Trees aren't the only solution. (Score:5, Insightful)
They're just one solution among a plethora.
[El Guapo] Do joo know what a plethora eez?
Okay, jokes aside.
Tree planting is the one that can be implemented immediately.
There are other forms of carbon capture out there as well.
What we do NOT need, is another 40 years of wrangling about picking "the best" way.
Implement (to greater or lesser extent), ALL of them. Or at least a mix of the most promising ones.
Doesn't seem mind blowing to me (Score:2)
Calculation (Score:2)
They should calculate a number of trees to be planted per country and allow countries to trade up/down based on a credit system.
It is quite straight forward really. What I would be curious to see is the timeline under which it would make an impact. Is this something that takes 20 years once planted or takes a year? Does it result in a steady state system or is it a once off measure to capture the output?
It takes a long time for wood to rot. (Score:5, Insightful)
Unless they are going to eventually bury the trees in a deep mine and fill it with concrete, trees are carbon neutral. They sequester Carbon until they die, then release it back into the atmosphere as they rot.
<sigh> If you'd ever worked with trees, firewood, or even wood construction materials, you'd know that chunks of wood take a long time to rot. Some tree varieties, like redwood or cedar, naturally repel rotting and can last a VERY long time.
So yeah, plant more trees! Eat more apples, apricots, peaches, plums, etc and throw those seeds around outdoors!
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In my back yard, chunks of trees I've thrown back in the corner have rotted away in less than a dozen years. Including cedar.
Re:It takes a long time for wood to rot. (Score:5, Insightful)
A dozen years is still a long time. During that time period, I could have had another new tree growing in that same spot to completely replace the one you chopped down and rotted away.
In my back yard, I have shade trees that grow way too big for my comfort. Every fall, I chop them down to just over my head height-wise. I wood chip the small branches for ground mulch, while selling the bigger chunks for firewood. Firewood is net carbon neutral by itself, but when you consider it is replacing the use of fossil fuels that would have been employed to heat people's houses, it's actually much better than net neutral. Much of the firewood releases CO2 back into the atmosphere, but there is always some charcoal left behind when people no longer need heat. That charcoal will likely never rot away.
Every year, my shade trees grow back, just as big or bigger than the year before. The main trunks that don't get chopped down continue gaining girth and thus sequesters CO2. The unburned wood chips slowly compost and turn into rich black soil -- that's sequestered carbon there too.
I don't understand what is going through the minds of these naysayers... They yell and scream about global warming, yet always deny that solutions exist or try to downplay the effectiveness of good solutions. In a way, THEY are the bigger problem. They don't want to solve global warming, they want to keep the narrative alive so they can profit from it somehow!
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During that time period, I could have had another new tree growing in that same spot to completely replace the one you chopped down and rotted away.
For a net carbon balance of nothing, and a large increase in global warming potential, as some of the Carbon released from the rotting tree is released as Methane.
Firewood is net carbon neutral by itself, but when you consider it is replacing the use of fossil fuels that would have been employed to heat people's houses, it's actually much better than net neutral.
Lets call it a carbon neutral fuel ... so long as you use renewable energy to cut down the trees, and deliver them to the people's houses. There are non-carbon neutral ways to heat a house, but that doesn't make wood use remove CO2 from the atmosphere.
Much of the firewood releases CO2 back into the atmosphere, but there is always some charcoal left behind when people no longer need heat. That charcoal will likely never rot away
Yeah, burying charcoal or biochar probably sequesters carbon. It's got a lot of impacts on the ch
Some naysayer realize something (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Some naysayer realize something (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Some naysayer realize something (Score:4, Insightful)
The global population problem is already solved. Yes, population is still climbing, and will continue for 30 years or so, but this isn't because we're having more children. The number of children born every year has been stable for some time, and is beginning to decline. The reason population is increasing is because the number of children born every year was exploding until a few decades ago, resulting in a global population that is skewed young.
Basically, we've reached a point where each new generation is about two billion people. Human lifespan is such that there are basically five generations alive at any given time. This means that, barring a significant increase in lifespan, we should expect a steady-state population of roughly 10B, which as you pointed out, we expect to reach in about 30 years. But that's where it will stop... and then it will begin to decline.
The seeds of that decline are already visible in the declining global birthrates. Most of the developed world's birthrates have already fallen below the replacement rate. The developing world is still above replacement rate, but falling rapidly. If you wish to encourage the decline, support (a) the deployment of medical services that reduce infant and child mortality and (b) the education of women. These two factors have enormous impact on birthrate.
So, yes, even if trees are only a short-term solution (and only a partial solution at that), short-term solutions are good, because the long-term solution -- fewer people -- is already in the works.
Re:It takes a long time for wood to rot. (Score:5, Insightful)
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In my back yard, chunks of trees I've thrown back in the corner have rotted away in less than a dozen years. Including cedar.
That's quite a termite problem you have
Re:It takes a long time for wood to rot. (Score:4, Insightful)
That especially includes the tar sands around Fort McMurray - the dirtiest oil on the planet. Makes most coal look clean by comparison.
Re:It takes a long time for wood to rot. (Score:5, Insightful)
>_ Sure, but if we pretend a tree absorbs carbon over 100 years, then rots over another 100-years we're still back to where we are now. So unless we also massively cut our emissions the planet is still in trouble.
Not quite.
You owe me 10,000 dollars, due tonight -- or you owe me the same, payable in 10 years from now. Which do you prefer?
We lost precious time because some idio^W folks:
- would not believe there was a climate change;
- were in fear of having to pay for damages or
- wanted to troll about everything, including Earth destruction.
If we get the 200 hundred years slack you mention, we might find a better solution.
We could even not have the problem anymore because the world population might rise and then decline to more manageable levels... who knows?
Also, new energy sources might help us sidestep entirely the current crisis.
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Re:It takes a long time for wood to rot. (Score:5, Insightful)
Sorry but this is dumb. If more trees reduce the rate, they reduce the rate. Keeping up or full reversal don't have to be achieved to make the situation better than it is now.
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You cannot get trees planted in sufficient volume to even keep up with current increases in CO2 emissions, never mind reversing them.
I've already had a hamburger in my life; no point eating healthy now, I might as well eat hamburgers every single day, I've already consumed some saturated fats.
I've already aged 40 years, might as well not quit smoking because even though it prematurely ages me, I've already aged some.
The toilet stopped up and overflowed- might as well keep flushing, I've already spilled toilet water on the floor.
Just because some damage has been done, and you may or may not be able to fix it all, doesn't mean you should d
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There’s zero slack to be had. You cannot get trees planted in sufficient volume to even keep up with current increases in CO2 emissions, never mind reversing them.
Yes, this is the standard that we should use. It either solves everything or it's useless. There's clearly no middle ground where something may help but not be a complete solution.
Re:It takes a long time for wood to rot. (Score:5, Insightful)
Trees make more trees. You think the forests that we still have only existed because man planted saplings? I also don't think anyone ever said "plant some trees this year, then stop planting because the job is done!"
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Do you think forests exist behind a magical barrier that protects them?
The only way planting trees helps is if we're willing to shoot people that try to harm those trees.
NASA says trees work (Score:3)
Sure, but if we pretend a tree absorbs carbon over 100 years, then rots over another 100-years we're still back to where we are now.
No we are not because in the long term we will have greater electrification and greater renewable base power. Assuming we can figure out renewables and storage to 100% satisfy an increasing global demand for electricity is unrealistic in a 20 year time frame, but in a 100 year time frame much more realistic. So we would not be in the same place, we would be at a stable place not the still changing place we have today.
So unless we also massively cut our emissions the planet is still in trouble.
And over a century that will happen through normal economic processes. We are literally run
Re: Hold on (Score:5, Insightful)
Burning biomass and replanting to the same level is carbon neutral (in the long run). Planting new areas of forest (away from lakes) locks carbon into those trees and the soil beneath it. You're basically creating new carbon stores.
Re: Hold on (Score:4, Insightful)
It also helps if we stop clear-cutting forests as well to make room for farms.
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Until new saplings growing from seeds in the mulch around them around them start absorbing the CO2. With the number of seeds that trees drop, we may start running out of it! I, for one, welcome our new arboreal overlords.
Re:Hold on (Score:5, Insightful)
Someone always posts this and it is completely irrelevant, not to mention painfully stupid. For a few reasons:
1. One tree is carbon neutral during its life span, but a forest (which is self renewing) isn't because it doesn't have an end-of-life. Trees replace themselves and grow more trees, but the forest remains a constant practically forever on our time scale.
2. The life span of a tree is often measured in centuries. By the time a tree dies and decomposes it'll be so far in the future than we'll likely be facing entirely different challenges. So even if the trees were all sterile and didn't self-maintain their forests, this solution would still work for the short-to-medium term.
Planting large forests now will fix a lot of problems, not only now, but for hundreds, maybe thousands, of years.
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the forest remains a constant practically forever on our time scale.
You assume people can resist the urge to cut down the forest for fire wood, or to plant food crops.
Re: Hold on (Score:2)
The thing is we aren't planting forests. (Score:2, Insightful)
It may LOOK like a forest. But what's being planted is, essentially, a tree farm.
One that needs to be maintained to prevent fires, which immediately release all that carbon back, plus shitloads of particulate pollution.
As such, a planted area can't simply be allowed to "grow wild" with new trees equaling or outstripping old growth death.
Re:Hold on (Score:4, Informative)
No need to bury the trees.
Trees drop leaves (containing carbon) every year. Building deeper and deeper carbon rich soil. Even when the trees die, much of the carbon remains in the soil.
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Re:Hold on (Score:5, Interesting)
That argument only works when people talk about growing carbon capturing annual crops. Forested areas hold a lot of carbon permanently in their structure. Sure trees dies and rot, but in forests new trees grow to take their place so the amount of carbon locked up remains constant.
Not quite constant though - forest soils also hold more carbon, so as the soil builds up (from decay) more carbon will be accumulate.
We had a dramatic demonstration of this by the way in the 16th Century. Between 1550 and 1610 the carbon content of Earth's atmosphere dropped sharply, not fully recovering until the Industrial Revolution. This caused sharp cooling and contributed greatly to the Little Ice Age (which is a term used for a complex cooling period in the middle part of the last millenium, not due to one single cause). The apparent reason for this CO2 drop is the regrowth of forests in North America after Hernando de Soto's expedition across the southern part of that continent introduced a number of pandemic diseases and wiped out the cultures that practiced burning land-clearing (for pasture and hunting), and large scale agriculture.
Re:Hold on (Score:4, Insightful)
Trees make seeds, seeds make more trees. It's self sustaining, unless the trees are cut down and not replanted. For instance one of the biggest causes of an increase in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is the cutting down of trees to make new farmland.
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Re:Hold on (Score:5, Insightful)
Thats really the key to it all. Plant shitloads of trees, do something about deforestation (Im looking at you Brazil and Australia) and we stand a decent chance of delaying the worst of it in time to build technological solutions (Nuclear reactors) or at least transition out of the carbon fuel game.
But we shouldn't just take that to mean we can go on building new coal fired stations. We shouldn't fight to a standoff, we actually need to roll back emissions.
The trees buy time and put bandages over the wounds. Using that time to expand carbon would be suicidal
Re: Hold on (Score:2)
Trees are not a permanent solution, but they may help us buy time
So let's say we plant all the trees over the next ten years, the trees live their expected life and by-and-large all die during a similar 10 year period. That will buy us an amount of time roughly equal to average life of those trees - great! Except, unless we seriously curtail CO2 production within that time frame we will find CO2 being released into the atmosphere at an increasing rate as the trees die and release their trapped CO2...
Personally, my 9th grade Earth Sciences understanding of the process tha
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all die during a similar 10 year period.
Trees live much longer than 10 years.
the trees die and release their trapped CO2
The trees eventually die, but the forest doesn't. Old trees are replaced by new trees.
The dead trees take a lot time to rot. A dead redwood can take over a thousand years to decay.
Re: Hold on (Score:4, Insightful)
You plant a load of trees. They suck x tonnes of CO2 out of the atmosphere. When they die, they release x tonnes (actually x - a bit because some carbon is sequestered in the ground, but let's stick with x to keep it simple) back into the atmosphere. So what have you gained? Well, for a few years the trees sequestered x tonnes of CO2. If you make sure you plant more trees to replace the ones that died, you can keep those x tonnes sequestered more or less permanently.
In addition, you don't have to just let the dead trees rot, you can use them for fuel, replacing some of the fossil fuels we are digging out of the ground. Plus, there are more trees in the World. That seems like a win-win situation.
Forest fires are carbon neutral (Score:3)
Every forest eventually burns, releasing CO2 that you want sequestered. How are you going to stop lightning strikes ?
Every forest that burns is immediately replaced by a new forest. Wild fires / Forest fires are carbon neutral. You know all those thousand and thousand of years before man made climate change, where things were at a lower "stable" CO2 level. Those many millennia had forest fires.
Re: Hold on (Score:5, Insightful)
The underlying assumption is that all the currently treeless regions are in fact capable of supporting trees. There might very well be a reason these regions are currently treeless.
There is. We keep cutting them down faster than they can grow back. That's why we need to be more aggressive about re-planting.
Forestry management is an established branch of academic study and environmental practice. Many countries do it well already. But the effort needs to be more global.
More trees is a good thing, don't get me wrong, but just assuming we can carpet the planet with trees Willy-nilly Seems quite childish.
Of course we can't. Nobody said otherwise. For one thing, certain kinds of trees can grow only in certain areas. But we should plant them where we can. As many as we can.
Re: Hold on (Score:4, Informative)
Maybe actually read the study [sciencemag.org], or at least the abstract, before long-jumping to gold in the Assumption Olympics:
We mapped the global potential tree coverage to show that 4.4 billion hectares of canopy cover could exist under the current climate. Excluding existing trees and agricultural and urban areas, we found that there is room for an extra 0.9 billion hectares of canopy cover, which could store 205 gigatonnes of carbon in areas that would naturally support woodlands and forests.
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The underlying assumption is that all the currently treeless regions are in fact capable of supporting trees. There might very well be a reason these regions are currently treeless.
More trees is a good thing, don't get me wrong, but just assuming we can carpet the planet with trees Willy-nilly Seems quite childish.
In some cases you need trees in an area before you can make more trees in the area. Sometimes they need the shade produced by other trees. Sometimes, like in swamps they need fallen trees to help them take root themselves by growing in their decomposing ancestor. Sometimes the air is too dry and the trees need more humidity, or rain.
You clearcut an entire area and new trees can't grow there again, not enough rain or humidity. Plant enough trees again and it encourages rain and traps moisture in the air
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The messenger is irrelevant partisan shithead.
I can't stand Trump, but a good ideas a good idea, if he started a mass tree planting program I'd be behind him 100%.
Re:11% of all land, sure. Start now right? (Score:5, Informative)
Start now, yes.
The best time to plant a tree?
10 years ago.
The second best?
Today.
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ALL excess carbon gets eaten up by plankton, which falls into the deep ocean where it will stay for millions of years.
Planting trees is a good thing for many other reasons, but for "climate change" it is just jacking off.
Don't you mean lumber jacking off?
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Uh. No. Actually there were experiments on this about a decade back.
Did the plankton absorb lots of carbon?
Sure!
And when they died, did they sink into the deep ocean?
Sure!
Know what happened next?
CO2 plumes as the plankton broke down.
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Interesting thought (Score:2)
Wouldn't uncut grass also absorb more CO2 growing? At the end of the season it could be cut once and disposed of in some carbon neutral way.
Re: Planting hemp (Score:2)
WTF, are we running out of ropes and scratchy clothing?
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you do realize when you smoke it you release the carbon back into the atmosphere.
Re:Tree Planting (Score:4, Interesting)
Abbott's Direct Action Plan was a con job designed to give money to polluters whilst doing nothing to combat climate change. Paying corporations to be decent does not work. Look at Australia's emissions when they had a carbon price compared to what happened immediately after it was repealed.
Freeman Dyson 1976 (Score:3)
Dyson did some investigations in climate change early on (and kept track of it later) and wrote an article about how much effort was needed http://redd-monitor.org/wp-con... [redd-monitor.org]
The carbon intake/output of trees varies a lot depending on climate and lifecycle and actual implementation is not easy. Equatorial forests trap far more carbon than Canadian forests do. Dyson focused on getting the carbon into the top soil which is where it is retained best. There are a lot of ways the carbon avoids getting trapped into
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Instead of planting trees, just get rid of 90% of the population. Problem solved.
After you sir.
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They included all grazing lands and deserts in the land where trees need to be planted, that land generally does not support the kind of trees they are thinking of. They can do it but it will require lots of irrigation, until sufficient growth, alters localised climates.
In the mean time, the stupidest will breed the most, the problems increased by those least able to treat the problem.
Now the expect the most problematic areas to be alleviated by ignorant people moving from those areas to less problematic ar
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One thing it will do:
* Provide an inarguable, complete solution to spam.
I think we need a new checklist for climate change solutions.