Reddit's Former CEO Is Now In the Forest-Planting Business (fastcompany.com) 33
Terraformation, a startup led by Yishan Wong, former CEO of Reddit, is demonstrating an approach to reforest the planet quickly enough to fight climate change. Fast Company reports: Trees can play a key role in capturing carbon at scale -- by one estimate, nearly a trillion hectares of land could feasibly be reforested, and those trees could potentially store more than 200 gigatons of carbon. But efforts at reforestation are moving too slowly. "Essentially, we need to scale the solution in about 10 years, so that there is time for the forest to mature and become a carbon sink of reasonable size to meet various nations' commitments to be net zero around 2040 or 2050," says Yishan Wong, CEO of the Hawaii-based startup, called Terraformation.
One of the challenges the company identified was the lack of land: Some land that was originally forested is now covered by cities or used for farming. Other areas might not be available for sale. But there's a large amount of desertified land that is available. The United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification reports that around 4.7 billion acres on the planet -- about twice the size of China -- have been affected by drought or desertification, but could potentially be restored. Finding enough water to grow trees there is a challenge. But the folks at Terraformation believe that if desalinated water is used to irrigate seedlings, a restored forest will eventually be able to sustain itself.
In Hawaii, the startup built the world's largest fully off-grid, solar-powered desalination system. With a half-acre of solar panels, there's enough power to desalinate around 34,000 gallons of water per day, taken from a well on the site. A drip irrigation system sends the water to the roughly 1,900 native trees and shrubs that have been planted in the area so far. As the forest grows, proving that the system works, the company is working to replicate the same idea around the world. It's creating seed banks that fit inside shipping containers and can store the millions of native seeds that are necessary for large planting projects. It's also building open-source software that groups can use to collect data and track progress after trees are planted.
One of the challenges the company identified was the lack of land: Some land that was originally forested is now covered by cities or used for farming. Other areas might not be available for sale. But there's a large amount of desertified land that is available. The United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification reports that around 4.7 billion acres on the planet -- about twice the size of China -- have been affected by drought or desertification, but could potentially be restored. Finding enough water to grow trees there is a challenge. But the folks at Terraformation believe that if desalinated water is used to irrigate seedlings, a restored forest will eventually be able to sustain itself.
In Hawaii, the startup built the world's largest fully off-grid, solar-powered desalination system. With a half-acre of solar panels, there's enough power to desalinate around 34,000 gallons of water per day, taken from a well on the site. A drip irrigation system sends the water to the roughly 1,900 native trees and shrubs that have been planted in the area so far. As the forest grows, proving that the system works, the company is working to replicate the same idea around the world. It's creating seed banks that fit inside shipping containers and can store the millions of native seeds that are necessary for large planting projects. It's also building open-source software that groups can use to collect data and track progress after trees are planted.
Re: (Score:2)
Did you really just misspell one of the most common and easiest words in the English language... Do you even American?
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
FREEDUMB!!!
Seems to be the case. I have wondered why so many people want to live in the US, but that explains it nicely.
Re: (Score:2)
People want to live their own way, no matter how stupid it is. Most people are poor at taking criticism. They learn to accept it in work but try telling people how they should do it in bed, or how they should organize their house. Freedom is primarily an excuse for ignorance which often leads to us being dumb. It's a vicious cycle. That doesn't mean freedoms aren't good. You have people like Musk who come, utilize the true value of freedom, and ultimately become very successful in our system. These people a
Re: Donald Trump (Score:2)
That's like saying yours is the first car to never collide with another car... because it crashed and burned right into a car compactor at the first chance it got.
Re:Donald Trump (Score:4)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
He's the first president in my life that never embroiled the US in a foreign war.
Not for lack of trying, though, especially right here at the end.
The best you can say for him is that he's been ineffectual at trying to get us into a war.
While that's a positive thing for us, it's not a positive attribute for him.
If only forests had had us, all those years ago... (Score:1, Troll)
All those millions of years ... before us, where they were totally helpless and couldn't spread saplings by themselves . . .
Oh the treemanity!
But at least somebody can compensate his bad feelings for not actually stopping the cutting down of ancient rain forest, and feel virtuous for replacing it with a otherwise dead monoculture that will be just as natural in, what, 800 years...
Re: (Score:2)
Millions of years. Conventional wisdom says we do not have thousands to wait before climate change starves us out.
Re: If only forests had had us, all those years ag (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Yes, this is dumb. But doing nothing is even dumber.
Re: (Score:2)
I'll never understand why people care so much about what other people do. The guy likes planting trees? Good for him being happy in what he's doing. Does it somehow detract from my life? No.
Replace coal first (Score:2)
Instead of using solar panels to desalinate water and grow trees, use those solar panels for replacing current coal fired plants.
Trees are inefficient (around 3%) at converting solar energy even without the extra effort of desalinating water.
Re: (Score:1)
Forest fires (Score:1)
The problem with forests in a warming climate they tend to burn quickly.
Better to replace deserts with grassland, traps more CO2/m^2.
Re:Forest fires (Score:5, Informative)
The problem with forests in a warming climate they tend to burn quickly.
Better to replace deserts with grassland,
Grassland burns even more quickly [nasa.gov].
traps more CO2/m^2.
It also releases more CO2 when it inevitably burns, faster than trees. (Literally! Grass fires are some of the fastest-advancing fires.) Grasses don't have the root systems of trees, so they don't have the soil carbon sequestration of trees.
Why not do it directly? (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Speed. We are now over the critical point. Dragging world climate back into the safe area will be a massive effort and has to be done pretty fast.
Re: Why not do it directly? (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
Agricultural use (Score:2)
Now if only those intensive agricultural practices did not denude the subsoil of it valuable microbial life through tilling, synthetic fertilizers, Roundup, etc. then maybe we'd also have some more carbon sequestration in agricultural lands. (And healthier more productive plants too, since the soil bacteria, fungi etc. are quite important for plants' nutrient uptake.)
How much? That is a good question that I'm unable to answer, and would probably depend a lot on specific circumstances. But the Wikipedia ar
Let's see it work somewhere other than Hawaii (Score:1)
Terra preta (Score:2)
Please enter the biochar industry instead. Its actually a product you can sell and is proper sequestration. Trees only need carbon for their growing periods, die eventually or burn down in fires.
Because idiots never learn from others (Score:2)
In the Scottish moorlands, plots planted with trees stored less carbon than untouched lands: Study
In the Scottish moorlands, experimental areas planted with native trees actually stored less carbon after several decades than untouched plots covered in heather.
These results are of direct relevance to current policies that promote tree planting under the logic that trees remove carbon from the atmosphere and lock it in their biomass as they grow. This is true, but disregards the role of soil.
Globally, more carbon is stored in soil than in all the Earth’s plants and the atmosphere combined.
Planting trees in areas that have never been forested, a practice known as afforestation, can release these carbon stores, resulting in a net loss of carbon from the ecosystem.
So, assuming that planting trees is better than the desert is just that, an assumption. It needs testing before you end up making things worse.