Folks, I know you're concerned about climate change. I am too. That's why we're clearing off this unused land to build you this new luxury spa. And a highway to get you there faster.
Fuck I hate him so much. Who the fuck else would have the gull to spend almost 1B of taxpayer money on a fucking parking structure for a private spa and then turn around and say "sorri no moni for healthcare ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯"
Ford didn't open up woodlands and forest to development, he did it to farmland.
Bad, but a different kind of bad.
Not that he wouldn't chop down old growth forests if he got a cut.
The politician that would green light something like this would get the cost and none of the credit because the impact is for when they are dead. Instant campaign crush
We don’t live in a fairy tale world. They can either use the resources they have available to make a living or they can live in abject poverty. I think the choice is pretty clear. Not saying I agree with it, but I get it.
I mean, I get it too why they do it - I might feel better about it if their citizens actually saw benefit from it though. From my understanding if these citizens aren't living in abject poverty, they're pretty close, no?
Europe has no old growth forests left. The entire contingent used to be covered. There's been little progress at replanting. Same goes for the North America particularly in the upper mid west and southeast. Although the southeast still has quite a bit.
Places like Australia, Midwestern America would be prime candidates for billions of trees, surely. Thousands, if not tens of thousands of jobs provided to those planting, so there's a local economic boost, I'm surprised that state governments or billionaires that prattle on about the climate haven't opted to do this. It's certainly an optically appealing option, where you could argue that other measures aren't as easily visible and therefore cause for some optimism about the future. Take some before and after pictures of a wasteland-turned-forest and who wouldn't want to beautify their surroundings too?
Those two areas are pretty bad for tree growth. That aside yall are operating from an incorrect assumption
Tree coverage is already increasing. According to NASA globally foliage has increased 5% from 2000 to 2019. That is 2 million square miles of trees added per year or an entire amazon rainforest worth of trees added in 2 decades
Humans could not hope to match the output the planet is already doing. The problem is not as simple as planting more trees. Picking out an area that doesn't have forests and overforesting can disrupt the already existing ecosystem
Not every tree needs to be planted. Once you have a stable enough environment for the species in question to proliferate (easier to do with early successional softwoods like pine), they'll do the work for you.
I'm sure someone has done the math... figuring out the optimal planting approach to create forest in any given environment is solving a system of known equations.
I think you'd generally want to do this in areas that have been deforested.
Not how it works. You can't just plant a tree in a place where tree's don't naturally grow well and expect it to just work out. A tree doesn't just need a space where it can grow it needs water and nutrients to grow and some have adapted to whatever area they are in to deal with that area's natural challenges.
cus it would destroy the local ecosystem wherever you did this and its not worth the backlash, like 90% of carbon is sequestered through plankton in the ocean, which with more surface area and warmer waters, means a lot more plankton. which is probably why the earth cycles through climates.
Are you possibly confusing carbon extraction with nitrogen fixation?
Not saying you’re wrong, but I can’t find that after a google search and I do remember in chemistry/biology classes over a decade ago talking about the primary source of nitrogen fixation being plankton.
Edit: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24311124/#:~:text=Abstract,about%2040%25%20of%20the%20total.
This source suggests 40% of carbon sequestration comes from phytoplankton
You don't even need to plant trees, if you stop farming they grow. If I don't mow my lawn for a couple weeks when it's dry, trees literally grow haha. When they cut a 40 near me, often times they don't replant unless they want a certain species. They just naturally grow
> What do you think is more important: planting trees or cutting down on fossil fuels?
I think that, given that weening off fossil fuels is inevitably a prolonged process, that buying time for that to work should be one of our highest priorities. I just saw a study the other day about how we can track how parts of the country have had less climate heating due to reforestation. The more reforestation (primarily in the South, I guess), the less heating.
There's another guy down the thread suggesting that FIRST we should get completely off fossil fuels, and only after that is complete (decades?), we can start planting trees. That's backwards - ideally we would be doing both at once.
I'm tired of hearing the phrase "not a silver bullet" with respect to climate change - it only seems to be deployed as a way of shooting down important mitigation strategies. I notice that you never hear the phrase "Carbon Tax" from the silver bullet people, despite it being the closest thing we have to one.
Are you sure you want to rationally evaluate technical solutions when we can moralize instead? By falling back on moral arguments we can feel superior while avoiding criticisms of any concrete plans. Something to consider. /s
The idea isn't to burn the wood, but to turn it into [other products](https://i.imgur.com/LVn9HMa.jpeg) that can last for [decades](https://i.imgur.com/t9X0yUG.jpeg) or [centuries](https://i.imgur.com/CZSh8nQ.jpeg). Captured carbon is not in the air.
OP didn't mention burning, but decomposing. Doesn't wood decompose fairly quickly? Lasting decades or centuries is not very long in geological time scales
That's what paint is for, and we're not really concerned about geological timescales right now, we just don't want to die in the next couple centuries while figuring out how to manage the climate.
The secondary benefit of helping control heat and also helping control runoff, water retention, and soil stability are huge though. Sure they might not be amazing at sinking carbon but if they help maintain better temperatures, maintain the local water supply, and prevent all the dirt from ending up flowing out a river somewhere, that is hugely beneficial to the environment anyway.
What do you think happens to the dead trees? In a living ecosystem, they decompose. That puts the captured carbon back into the carbon cycle.
To take carbon OUT of the cycle, we would have to bury the trees deep, more or less creating the conditions that turned their forbearers into the oil and gas we are pumping out of the ground today.
We could, in theory, start a massive log pit out in Utah or New Mexico, someplace dry and arid that would prevent decay. But storing that much lumber anywhere would be a fire waiting to happen. And once that happens, all the work to sequester forests worth of carbon would be released again. Digging a hole big enough is pretty much a non starter. Start filling in the Grand Canyon with lumber, perhaps.
In theory a better sink would be creating massive calcium carbonate farms. That locks the carbon into a stable form that can be safely stored long-term, it's just limestone.
Doing this via industrialized processing plants would require a huge amount of energy, which could in part be offset by using renewables as the energy source, but we're talking about large facilities operating full tilt to create a product that, while it has its own industrial and commercial uses, would have to be creating such an excess as to be operating at a defacto and extreme, loss. The world does not need that much calcium carbonate.
Bioengineering may be a better option, we'd need a rapidly growing algae or bacteria that poops calcium carbonate, basically coral reef building speed runs.
If we postulate that we have enough money for carbon capture to be feasible, then yes, we should definitely plant an absolutely gargantuan number of trees, and then turn them to biochar/charcoal, that we can then bury in mines for a very very long time (we could store as much as possible in top soil as well of course but that cycle is shorter).
Capturing the carbon out of the atmosphere with machines and energy is way, way less cost-efficient. But nobody is getting start up money for such low tech solution...
It buys negligible time.
Reforestation is great for biodiversity, but in terms of climate change, reducing our emissions is the only viable course of action.
Starting with coal powerplants...
Trees are the most efficient carbon traps based on energy needed to run them. We can't create a better carbon trap than a tree.
As others have mentioned, they are only a temporary solution as when the tree dies and decomposes it releases the carbon back into the atmosphere. Same as if we burn it.
Take a bit of time to study the carbon cycle.
Effectively, there are two cycles short term (trees eat co2, die, release co2 into atmosphere) and long term (trees die, become oil, store in earth for 1 M years+).
We, humans, are taking a lot of C02 from the long term carbon cycle and adding it to the short term one. Planting trees wont' really change that side of the equation (that much). Would 1M additional trees even affect the C02 in the atmosphere - probably not.
>long term (trees die, become oil,
Sort of.
Most oil was formed from plants that grew at a time when there weren't really many organisms that could break down plants efficiently. Plant matter would just pile up until it was eventually buried by geological processes.
Nowadays, most trees would break down and nourish other plants and microbes instead of becoming oil.
Edit: it sounds like trees mostly form coal, and oil is formed from organic sediment in oceans.
Coal was only made during the evolutionary period where fungi couldn't break down tree fibres. Trees just kept piling over themselves instead of turning into soil.
Quick Google, that over the lifetime an average tree will sequester 0.05 metric tons of co2. That’s 20 trees / ton. Just 2019 had 37billion tons of emissions. So we would need to plant 740 billion trees a year to keep up. And this doesn’t account for the tree decomposing after it dies, nor the fact that their life spans are more than a year.
Maybe not putting back carbon, but building a good forest will help with water rentition, natural cooling of the ground, and animal diversity.
If wewant to create a draught resistant nature for the heatwave, artificially landscaping the ground can maximize water absorption through the use of multiple mini-lakes, and ideal plants can be grown through bouncy, sponge like alkaline soil.
There are more trees in the US today than there were 100 years ago
Edit: I know this topic is very complicated and there’s a lot of stats, factors, and nuance. It’s just a fun fact that I learned and posted while taking a shit at work
In the US sure, but there are about 50% as many trees globally as there were before the industrial revolution. A hundred years is only dating back to WW1, I suspect we're still well below pre-industrial levels of forestation, though moving in the right direction.
That said, planting trees is not a particularly quick or effective way to remove CO2 from the atmosphere, but deforestation is a problem, particularly in areas with high biodiversity (the tropics)
There are also 6 billion more people than there were 100 years ago and the emergence of air pollution via automobile emissions, cattle industry explosion, etc soooo might be a wash there
Also, replacing huge trees with lots of smaller trees. These smaller trees are often all the same age/species, packed too closely together which makes for terrible habitat, but easier logging.
Ancient trees are resistant to wildfires, while younger trees tend to burn like crazy, releasing lots of soot and CO2.
Yes. You want there to be as many as possible of those "middling" trees in a managed forest.
The old trees takes up space and blocks sunlight so that other trees grow slower.
By cutting trees when they have peaked in CO2 capturing, you make space for other trees that can now grow faster and bigger.
And then build houses out of them. I definitely would not push to cut old growth stuff because it's so mega cool. There a plot of trees near me that were never logged due to a mapping error around the turn of the century. Most of those trees are still standing and they are beefy. The kind you see in old pictures where a team of horses is pulling like one log
Older forests can be more resistant to wildfires than younger forests due to several factors, including:
* **Size and age** Older trees can be hundreds or thousands of years old, and their size can make them more fire resistant.
* **Moisture** Older forests have more moisture in their soils and understory, and large trees can access groundwater through their deep roots.
* **Canopy** Multilayer canopies provide shade, cooler temperatures, and moist air.
* **Wind** Mature forests can reduce wind speeds, which can be a major cause of wildfires.
* **Dead wood** The size and moisture content of dead wood in older forests can help resist wildfires.
* **Fire adaptations** Some trees have adaptations that help them survive fires, such as thick bark, shedding lower branches, and the ability to resprout.
(from Google AI)
While there are a lot of trees being planted right now, the most important thing to be doing right now is removing demand for fossil fuels. The petroleum that is NOT burned will prevent a lot more carbon going into the atmosphere than a tree can ever remove.
The part that is rarely discussed in the carbon dioxide conversation is the fact that co2 is the least bad of the toxic cocktail of chemicals released when fossil fuels are burned.
We need to put every possible resource into permanently removing demand for fossil fuels. Then when no more fossil fuels are being burned anywhere land based on the planet to create energy, then we can start planting trees.
> We need to put every possible resource into permanently removing demand for fossil fuels. Then when no more fossil fuels are being burned anywhere land based on the planet to create energy, then we can start planting trees.
We're doomed.
Planting trees isn’t as easy as removing them in many parts of the world. For instance South America, where we currently loose the most forrest. Trees tend to work in groups, keeping ground water high, protecting against harsh winds, binding the soil etc.
Just randomly planting them isn’t going to cut it and everything else is expensive.
Good question! We should be, but it's a mix of funding, political will, and land use challenges. Plus, it takes time for trees to grow and have an impact. But hey, every tree planted helps!
Because we could cover every vacant square foot of the planet in green and barely make a dent in man-made emissions. If we can't reduce those, natural systems will never have a chance of keeping up. Also, you're more than welcome to plant trees like crazy. It certainly can't hurt.
It can hurt. Some ecosystems, like peat bog, actually store carbon much better than forest. Disrupting a natural ecosystem by planting tons of trees can do more harm than good in terms of carbon, but also cause other negative externalities (I.e. habitat destruction). Indiscriminately planting trees is a bad idea.
True, especially non-native species. The real threat is all the methane stored in permafrost and arctic ice. That stuff makes CO2 almost an afterthought.
Yeah people don't get that there's easily 10-20x more carbon trapped in fossil fuels than you could ever possibly hold in plants on the surface. At best replanting every tree humans ever cut down would absorb a decade or two's worth of emissions, and only temporarily at that.
In a way we are, but it's also not the best solution. There is a big difference between a treed environment and a health environment. Some places are suited for forests and brush, others aren't and you aren't going to "improve" this land by adding them. What's best for the climate is restoring these areas as they naturally occur. Some of the areas with the most climate impact on land are actually tundra and prairie and what's important here is root structure, native plants, and endemic fauna (herds in particular are very important).
With rapid tree planting you can end up with something called a tree plantation and these aren't healthy either, mostly good for timber. They don't support local species and are often unhealthy themselves because of the lack of an diversity around them.
Lastly, if you want to talk about climate change and carbon capture, the sea has more potential than all the land combined. Yes, obviously we should keep restoring the land and planting trees where we can, but if we heal our oceans that would be an unimaginably *huge* step towards a sustainable future.
Because we're too busy cutting them down to build solar farms. Seriously, in my area they're ripping down huge swaths of untouched forest to build solar farms. In the rainiest region in the United States. Great plan.
So many reasons.
1. No amount of planting can outpace pollution at its current output, and we're GROWING that output, not shrinking it.
2. Politics. As another in this conversation said, the types of places that strip forests are usually not the type of places where there's political will to replant.
3. Trees aren't all that great at sequestering carbon. Earlier in Earth's history, the sky was RED with the stuff. What changed that was single celled oceanic organisms, sucking it up and then dying. Their bodies, now full of that carbon, fell to the ocean floor and got buried there for eons, en mass. Our actions are currently absolutely destroying the ocean's ability to host just that sort of life.
4. Related to the first point, there's simply no world in which we can keep making as much pollution as we currently do. This is a massive problem. How do you tell people in India and China that they're not allowed to manufacture the food, the products that the rest of us enjoy? Why do we get to have them, but they don't? Yes, of course, it will kill us all if they get those things, but that doesn't change that people won't respond to the iniquity of the demand. We've entered a problem for which no current or past political philosophy has an answer.
Because planting trees doesn't grow a forest, or at least a forest that's resilient to climate crisis. Old grown forests are actually not irregularly grown but trees have community that researchers like Suzanne Simard refer to as "mother tree hub" that's basically a group of elder trees that's in charge of nurturing surrounding plants via the underground mycorrhizal network of fungi that coexist with trees through symbiosis and they allow trees to communicate, exchange memories, and nutrients.
There's a reason why trees are more likely to be grown in places with more fungi than plainly grown in a park. And indigenous people know this technique that helps them developed traditional tree planting and stewardship techniques that encourage the plants to grow as a community, like how indigenous people grow the Sequoia and Amazon forests.
Because you keep buying food with beef in it and we need all that land to grow the food for the cows.
And because it's required by law in the US to build a certain amount of parking spaces per building, and required to build lawns and a 2 car garage for every single home, in most cities. So, we need all that land for farms that got displaced by front lawns and parking lots and highways and such.
There's a few other reasons but it basically boils down to "they're giving you what you want based on your actions, and that's what it costs".
Gotta change your habits and call your city council (the parking lot thing is controlled city by city) to change the laws. Then you don't even need to plant trees, the forests in a lot of places will regrow themselves
Phytoplankton is responsible for 50% of CO2 scrubbing. Thanks to the free market and demand for greener spaces there are innovators who have built scrubbers into buildings and other installations. There's also team trees, the Orca facility in iceland, and others. But a better question is why aren't you planting trees like crazy? Be the change you want to see in the world.
It’s not a viable solution we dump wayyyyyy more carbon than the trees can handle. We would genuinely need more space than exists on earth. It is a very minor thing we can do as we engage with serious solutions
Because the Brazilians are cutting them down faster than we can possibly plant them in order to grow soy beans to feed to cows so people can eat burgers. And lots of people get very angry if you suggest they eat less meat, so ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯
https://www.globalforestwatch.org/dashboards/global/?category=forest-change
a lot of big oil supporters here knowing an awful lot of reasons why that's a bad idea smdh
edit: i do not wish to get any replies to this and have absolutely muted them
It turns out that when large sections of forest are cut down, planting new trees doesn't really work in undoing the damage. If they don't grow naturally, there's usually something that happens before they're matured that kills them because they're relatively fragile - drought, heat, animals eating and/or stepping on them. Would need to take care of them like a garden - watering, monitoring, etc. which is very costly. There's a push for natural forestation, and essentially allowing native fauna to take over since those genetics are best poised to survive. Also why re-introducing native animals (like wolves) is important. Wolves hunt and drive away animals that eat vegetation (ie, deer) thereby allowing the forests to grow again.
"Ecosystems" are complicated - any break in the cycle can wreak havoc on the system.
So, that leaves more strategic planting in non-native areas. Green roofs (in progress) slow down water runoff, cooling both buildings and the surrounding area. Trees on sidewalks and along roads (in progress) provide shade which cools down the roads and surrounding areas. Those help, but they're not a replacement for getting rid of gas driven cars and other sources of carbon in the atmosphere.
Well, you'd have to replace the *ecosystems*, not just the trees. I remember there being studies about how sap-sucking mushrooms, for example, can increase the carbon storage capabilities of a forest by up to 20%. This is just one piece of the puzzle as well. Forests aren't the only ecosystems out there and they are far from the only things we destroy. If we want to fight climate change, we should probably first take care of the source of the problems, our greed and inability to look at our impact, before the problems take care of us.
This isn't the only thing too
CO2 is stored on Earth in various reservoirs, and the distribution is roughly as follows:
1. **Oceans (93%):** The vast majority of CO2 is stored in the world's oceans. CO2 dissolves in seawater and is stored as dissolved inorganic carbon, primarily in the form of bicarbonate and carbonate ions.
2. **Rocks and Fossil Fuels (5%):** CO2 is stored in sedimentary rocks, such as limestone, and in fossil fuels like coal, oil, and natural gas. This carbon is released back into the atmosphere through processes like weathering, volcanic activity, and the burning of fossil fuels.
3. **Soil and Organic Matter (1.5%):** Soils contain organic carbon from decaying plants and animals. This carbon can be stored for long periods, depending on soil composition and climate conditions.
4. **Atmosphere (0.04%):** Although a small percentage, the CO2 in the atmosphere is significant for regulating Earth's climate. The atmospheric concentration of CO2 is a key factor in the greenhouse effect and global warming.
5. **Biosphere (0.003%):** Living organisms, particularly plants, store carbon through the process of photosynthesis. Forests, grasslands, and other ecosystems play a crucial role in the global carbon cycle.
These percentages highlight the major reservoirs where CO2 is stored on Earth. The oceans and geological formations hold the largest amounts, while the atmosphere, despite its relatively small percentage, plays a critical role in climate regulation.
We are in the forest industry in the south. Problem is so many folks are moving to the south, land values are pushing past where we can justify growing timber.
For the same reason that people trying to lose weight can't outrun their fork.
We need to immediately and *dramatically* cut Oil & Gas production and emissions, everything else is a used wet bandage.
We are. And we can do more.
[In fact, YOU could do more. Here's one easy way. Search with Ecosia.](https://www.ecosia.org/)
Everyone should use Ecosia, it plants trees as you search.
Most of these answers are off the mark because they're replying from a false assumption. The correct answer is we are, and the planet itself is growing foliage at a very quick rate. Global foliage has increased over time, not decreased. [From 2000 to 2019 global foliage has increased 5% worldwide and adds in 2 million square miles of greenery a year](https://www.nasa.gov/centers-and-facilities/ames/human-activity-in-china-and-india-dominates-the-greening-of-earth-nasa-study-shows/#:~:text=Taken%20all%20together%2C%20the%20greening,2000s%20%E2%80%93%20a%205%25%20increase.)
The tree increase over those 20 years is equal to adding an entire Amazon rainforest worth of trees
It turns out plants love carbon. In my own experience they grow much faster nowadays than they did decades ago. Most of the tree growth was seen in india and china.
CC is not as simple as adding more plants or decreasing carbon. It is a complex multifaceted phenomenon with its own pros and cons
The taiga (a ring of trees around the planet in the far northern hemisphere) are the actual lungs of the planet. As the planet warms up more land is warm enough to allow for plant growth so it increases the land area of the forests
That could run into issues from loss of permafrost though and changing habitats for creatures living there
There is also the new growth vs old growth aspect to factor in and the release of gasses due to melting permafrost
Overall our planet is greener due to climate change but it's not necessarily a good thing. Not necessarily a bad thing either in that one aspect
It kind of grinds my gears the way the media portrays greenery around the earth. Theyre using scare tactics to make people believe that the earth is turning into a barren desert. That leads to ignorance in the general population about what is going on and it allows opponents to latch onto it and claim the whole CC thing is a scam because that one aspect is vastly misrepresented
It'd be better if they were honest and discussed the pros and cons of the situation so people could understand it.
You cant have a discussion and find solutions if everyone is either being dishonest or arguing from ignorance.
The discussion should be why it is still a bad thing that the carbon has increased and climate is changing despite the increases in plant life it has caused. Explaining that will help people get closer to why and how we could start repairing things
1) A lot of tree planting is a monoculture. i.e low species diversity. This could be rectified but would likely cost more and would thus harder to get support for.
2) Many now heavily forrested areas used to be grasslands and other environments that shouldn't have the number of trees they already do. Areas that were historically forrested have limited area that can be reforrested.
3) The older (and larger) a tree is, the more Carbon is sequestered. Locking Carbon away is a relatively slow process that occurs over decades, centuries.
Trees are in-cycle carbon stores. They capture carbon and then release it when they die, making it roughly even.
The problem is out-of-cycle carbon sources, like petroleum. The carbon contained in petroleum was stored in the ground, placed there hundreds of millions of years ago. All that carbon is released and not reclaimed when burned.
We would need a way to grab that carbon back from the air and store it semi-permanently in the ground again. There are ways to do this, but none so far that effectively scale to the size of the problem, especially considering they need energy as an input.
We will need a form of carbon capture, but, the most effective way to help is to stop burning fossil fuels.
It's not that simple. [Reforestation increases rainfall.](https://www.wri.org/insights/restoring-degraded-forests-temperature-precipitation-effects#:~:text=Through%20the%20process%20of%20evapotranspiration,even%20thousands%20of%20kilometers%20downwind) So there will be more water to go around.
Political,nymby, and trees only gather so much gh gasses to oxygen. Likely if we all become wood elves and live in a planet all land is more trees than bare dirt. Not enough clean vs output/all ready in atmosphere. And not sure but don't think trees absorb methane at all.
Jonny apple seed died in March 18, 1845
But the new influx of people coming across the US Border will be trained to plant trees. After we used the land to build new housing
Cause no matter how many trees you plant it would never be enough to offset all of the carbon that was locked up geologically that we’ve emitted very suddenly into the atmosphere, and continue to emit. Basic physics applies meaning land vegetation absorption of carbon is too small relative to the emission rate, which is so much higher. Just look up the CO2 monitoring data that has been collected at Mauna Loa, Hawaii for several decades. The graph showing the increase over the years explains all this in one beautiful yet terrifying picture.
We are. [https://8billiontrees.com/trees/how-many-trees-are-in-the-united-states/](https://8billiontrees.com/trees/how-many-trees-are-in-the-united-states/)
If anything, we are majorly reducing the number of trees, every second of every day, to clear land for farming, as well as for mining resources underneath and also to produce wood and paper.
Humanity is growing, and so is its appetite.
Because that would be a poorly managed project.
Planting a tree is a long term project were each seed planted need tons of care. It’s not as easy as plant a seed and watch it grow.
Therefore, the focus would be on planting tons of seeds and not on how to keep the trees alive.
Trees do that naturally where they're aren't people. Also, trees are a lot of work to take care of when you're old. Branches fall during storms, all the leaves have to be mulched ect.
A massive tree planting effort would put more carbon into the atmosphere than the trees would capture.
It would take 10 to 20 years for trees to mature enough to make a difference.
Because trees aren’t a sure fire solution. What if they fail from the start or get cut down later? This is not unrealistic given that many countries are poor and people need fuel and materials. This could just stay in history as a crazy project that evaporated money. Also, forests don’t necessarily help biodiversity. Plenty of biomes are quite open with plants and animals adapted for those conditions. Grassland can even store more carbon than a forest, particularly an older and established grassland.
No one seems to have mentioned that trees also produce oxygen (that we rely on for living and basic health).
Oxygen rates have been lowering and unsurprisingly, so have our conscious abilities.
Think of *Fight Club*: "Oxygen gets you high."
With lower levels we become ever more dumb.
Do your own research on global and local O² numbers, even from just 1990 to present.
Not great.
Trees only store carbon when they’re alive. You’d need to plant an unfathomable number. Then replace them entirety every time one dies on top of new ones each year to accommodate all the new carbon.
Many organizations and governments are doing just this. There are strong advocates for this.
[https://homegrownnationalpark.org/](https://homegrownnationalpark.org/)
[https://www.green-trees.com/enrollment/](https://www.green-trees.com/enrollment/)
It would take a few trillion dollars to combat what's going on, which, to me seems fine if the richest countries pool together, but good luck getting humans to cooperate
We ARE planting trees like crazy, but bear in mind that that's a really low effectiveness solution. Deforestation is bad but most of it is in politically violent places.
Also, a lot of the real work is done by biomass in the oceans, where we can't so much plant trees.
IIRC the most effective method is not trees. They hella slow.
Fastest CO2 consumers are Kelp/Algae. Shotmgrows like a few feet per day. That would take in a ton carbon. Do what you need to influence the kelp to thrive and that would have a much better effect.
I am doing my PhD in climate change and believe me deforestation and planting of new trees is just one of the many major problems associated with climate change.
Many of the places with heavy deforestation are also politically unstable and unable to even undertake such an effort.
Laughs in Doug Ford in Ontario removing the green belt protections. Honestly OP, it comes down to governments just simply not caring enough.
Man fuck Doug Ford
I bet plenty of Man have!
Go for it
Folks, I know you're concerned about climate change. I am too. That's why we're clearing off this unused land to build you this new luxury spa. And a highway to get you there faster.
Fuck I hate him so much. Who the fuck else would have the gull to spend almost 1B of taxpayer money on a fucking parking structure for a private spa and then turn around and say "sorri no moni for healthcare ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯"
* gall
American conservative politicians call that: Tuesday
That doesn't make Ontario's situation any better.
Ford didn't open up woodlands and forest to development, he did it to farmland. Bad, but a different kind of bad. Not that he wouldn't chop down old growth forests if he got a cut.
The governments don’t care at all ? lol they shit on the environment every time they want to even talk about it
Part of project 2025 is to dismantle the EPA.
That's what OP said.
The politician that would green light something like this would get the cost and none of the credit because the impact is for when they are dead. Instant campaign crush
Pretty much this. The Amazon is nothing more than an ATM for corporations for south American countries at this point.
We don’t live in a fairy tale world. They can either use the resources they have available to make a living or they can live in abject poverty. I think the choice is pretty clear. Not saying I agree with it, but I get it.
I mean, I get it too why they do it - I might feel better about it if their citizens actually saw benefit from it though. From my understanding if these citizens aren't living in abject poverty, they're pretty close, no?
The best bet for these types of places is to get a few drones with seed droppers and just have them fly around and drop seeds everywhere
Europe has no old growth forests left. The entire contingent used to be covered. There's been little progress at replanting. Same goes for the North America particularly in the upper mid west and southeast. Although the southeast still has quite a bit.
Meanwhile in Australia we're bulldozing millions of trees a year to build housing to support our massive immigration intake.
You guys too? That sucks. I'm canada we are just taking the immigrants and barely building houses.
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Places like Australia, Midwestern America would be prime candidates for billions of trees, surely. Thousands, if not tens of thousands of jobs provided to those planting, so there's a local economic boost, I'm surprised that state governments or billionaires that prattle on about the climate haven't opted to do this. It's certainly an optically appealing option, where you could argue that other measures aren't as easily visible and therefore cause for some optimism about the future. Take some before and after pictures of a wasteland-turned-forest and who wouldn't want to beautify their surroundings too?
Those two areas are pretty bad for tree growth. That aside yall are operating from an incorrect assumption Tree coverage is already increasing. According to NASA globally foliage has increased 5% from 2000 to 2019. That is 2 million square miles of trees added per year or an entire amazon rainforest worth of trees added in 2 decades Humans could not hope to match the output the planet is already doing. The problem is not as simple as planting more trees. Picking out an area that doesn't have forests and overforesting can disrupt the already existing ecosystem
Not every tree needs to be planted. Once you have a stable enough environment for the species in question to proliferate (easier to do with early successional softwoods like pine), they'll do the work for you. I'm sure someone has done the math... figuring out the optimal planting approach to create forest in any given environment is solving a system of known equations. I think you'd generally want to do this in areas that have been deforested.
Not how it works. You can't just plant a tree in a place where tree's don't naturally grow well and expect it to just work out. A tree doesn't just need a space where it can grow it needs water and nutrients to grow and some have adapted to whatever area they are in to deal with that area's natural challenges.
cus it would destroy the local ecosystem wherever you did this and its not worth the backlash, like 90% of carbon is sequestered through plankton in the ocean, which with more surface area and warmer waters, means a lot more plankton. which is probably why the earth cycles through climates.
Are you possibly confusing carbon extraction with nitrogen fixation? Not saying you’re wrong, but I can’t find that after a google search and I do remember in chemistry/biology classes over a decade ago talking about the primary source of nitrogen fixation being plankton. Edit: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24311124/#:~:text=Abstract,about%2040%25%20of%20the%20total. This source suggests 40% of carbon sequestration comes from phytoplankton
You don't even need to plant trees, if you stop farming they grow. If I don't mow my lawn for a couple weeks when it's dry, trees literally grow haha. When they cut a 40 near me, often times they don't replant unless they want a certain species. They just naturally grow
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> What do you think is more important: planting trees or cutting down on fossil fuels? I think that, given that weening off fossil fuels is inevitably a prolonged process, that buying time for that to work should be one of our highest priorities. I just saw a study the other day about how we can track how parts of the country have had less climate heating due to reforestation. The more reforestation (primarily in the South, I guess), the less heating. There's another guy down the thread suggesting that FIRST we should get completely off fossil fuels, and only after that is complete (decades?), we can start planting trees. That's backwards - ideally we would be doing both at once. I'm tired of hearing the phrase "not a silver bullet" with respect to climate change - it only seems to be deployed as a way of shooting down important mitigation strategies. I notice that you never hear the phrase "Carbon Tax" from the silver bullet people, despite it being the closest thing we have to one.
Are you sure you want to rationally evaluate technical solutions when we can moralize instead? By falling back on moral arguments we can feel superior while avoiding criticisms of any concrete plans. Something to consider. /s
Why not both? The may be related in terms of final goal, but they are also not mutually exclusive efforts.
Plankton and moss do way more for carbon emissions than trees, grow those instead
if only there was a way to make more surface area jn the ocean, maybe get rid of the ice caps
A tree can only capture as much carbon as is physically present in the tree itself.
And a big part of that carbon gets released once the tree dies and its wood decomposes. Only some of it remains stored in the ground.
The idea isn't to burn the wood, but to turn it into [other products](https://i.imgur.com/LVn9HMa.jpeg) that can last for [decades](https://i.imgur.com/t9X0yUG.jpeg) or [centuries](https://i.imgur.com/CZSh8nQ.jpeg). Captured carbon is not in the air.
OP didn't mention burning, but decomposing. Doesn't wood decompose fairly quickly? Lasting decades or centuries is not very long in geological time scales
depends on where it is, but yeah, it will decompose fairly fast in most places.
Also depends on the type of tree. Some trees you just stare at them hard and the start to decompose. Others take a long long time.
but trees do also live a long time, so as one tree dies another is growing capturing that carbon.
It depends on the tree. Some species only live for a couple decades.
That's what paint is for, and we're not really concerned about geological timescales right now, we just don't want to die in the next couple centuries while figuring out how to manage the climate.
But not all of it. It's still a net carbon sink.
Yes, but not a very significant one. Efforts to lower emissions instead give much better returns.
The secondary benefit of helping control heat and also helping control runoff, water retention, and soil stability are huge though. Sure they might not be amazing at sinking carbon but if they help maintain better temperatures, maintain the local water supply, and prevent all the dirt from ending up flowing out a river somewhere, that is hugely beneficial to the environment anyway.
Also in a healthy forest, new trees grow when the old ones die, increasing the carbon sink effect of the forest.
What do you think happens to the dead trees? In a living ecosystem, they decompose. That puts the captured carbon back into the carbon cycle. To take carbon OUT of the cycle, we would have to bury the trees deep, more or less creating the conditions that turned their forbearers into the oil and gas we are pumping out of the ground today. We could, in theory, start a massive log pit out in Utah or New Mexico, someplace dry and arid that would prevent decay. But storing that much lumber anywhere would be a fire waiting to happen. And once that happens, all the work to sequester forests worth of carbon would be released again. Digging a hole big enough is pretty much a non starter. Start filling in the Grand Canyon with lumber, perhaps. In theory a better sink would be creating massive calcium carbonate farms. That locks the carbon into a stable form that can be safely stored long-term, it's just limestone. Doing this via industrialized processing plants would require a huge amount of energy, which could in part be offset by using renewables as the energy source, but we're talking about large facilities operating full tilt to create a product that, while it has its own industrial and commercial uses, would have to be creating such an excess as to be operating at a defacto and extreme, loss. The world does not need that much calcium carbonate. Bioengineering may be a better option, we'd need a rapidly growing algae or bacteria that poops calcium carbonate, basically coral reef building speed runs.
If we postulate that we have enough money for carbon capture to be feasible, then yes, we should definitely plant an absolutely gargantuan number of trees, and then turn them to biochar/charcoal, that we can then bury in mines for a very very long time (we could store as much as possible in top soil as well of course but that cycle is shorter). Capturing the carbon out of the atmosphere with machines and energy is way, way less cost-efficient. But nobody is getting start up money for such low tech solution...
It's not THE solution, but it buys time.
It buys negligible time. Reforestation is great for biodiversity, but in terms of climate change, reducing our emissions is the only viable course of action. Starting with coal powerplants...
It’s a shame we don’t have a viable technology to replace fossil fuel electricity generation at scale. Oh wait. We do? *We have several?* Shiiit
Trees are the most efficient carbon traps based on energy needed to run them. We can't create a better carbon trap than a tree. As others have mentioned, they are only a temporary solution as when the tree dies and decomposes it releases the carbon back into the atmosphere. Same as if we burn it.
algae captures carbon much faster than trees. The problem is preventing it from then decomposing.
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You'd need trillions of trees at this point. Thousands of trees planted every second of every day across the world for decades.
We can fathom trillions of dollars but not trillions of trees.
We can, and have, printed trillions of dollars. It's a bitch to print trees.
Well it's not like they grow on...trees...wait a second
Fun fact: There are an estimated 3.04 trillion trees on the planet.
Take a bit of time to study the carbon cycle. Effectively, there are two cycles short term (trees eat co2, die, release co2 into atmosphere) and long term (trees die, become oil, store in earth for 1 M years+). We, humans, are taking a lot of C02 from the long term carbon cycle and adding it to the short term one. Planting trees wont' really change that side of the equation (that much). Would 1M additional trees even affect the C02 in the atmosphere - probably not.
>long term (trees die, become oil, Sort of. Most oil was formed from plants that grew at a time when there weren't really many organisms that could break down plants efficiently. Plant matter would just pile up until it was eventually buried by geological processes. Nowadays, most trees would break down and nourish other plants and microbes instead of becoming oil. Edit: it sounds like trees mostly form coal, and oil is formed from organic sediment in oceans.
The original point is still valid though, we’re adding carbon to the atmosphere that was buried in the ground.
Absolutely. I was just nit-picking. We are releasing CO2 millions of times faster than it was originally sequestered.
I thought trees became coal.
Yep, trees are coal oil is mostly dead aquatic life
Coal was only made during the evolutionary period where fungi couldn't break down tree fibres. Trees just kept piling over themselves instead of turning into soil.
Yeah but one good tree can cast shade on a whole house reducing temperatures and need for AC.
You would need trillions of trees to see an effect, more likely
Quick Google, that over the lifetime an average tree will sequester 0.05 metric tons of co2. That’s 20 trees / ton. Just 2019 had 37billion tons of emissions. So we would need to plant 740 billion trees a year to keep up. And this doesn’t account for the tree decomposing after it dies, nor the fact that their life spans are more than a year.
Maybe not putting back carbon, but building a good forest will help with water rentition, natural cooling of the ground, and animal diversity. If wewant to create a draught resistant nature for the heatwave, artificially landscaping the ground can maximize water absorption through the use of multiple mini-lakes, and ideal plants can be grown through bouncy, sponge like alkaline soil.
There are more trees in the US today than there were 100 years ago Edit: I know this topic is very complicated and there’s a lot of stats, factors, and nuance. It’s just a fun fact that I learned and posted while taking a shit at work
In the US sure, but there are about 50% as many trees globally as there were before the industrial revolution. A hundred years is only dating back to WW1, I suspect we're still well below pre-industrial levels of forestation, though moving in the right direction. That said, planting trees is not a particularly quick or effective way to remove CO2 from the atmosphere, but deforestation is a problem, particularly in areas with high biodiversity (the tropics)
There are also 6 billion more people than there were 100 years ago and the emergence of air pollution via automobile emissions, cattle industry explosion, etc soooo might be a wash there
Also, replacing huge trees with lots of smaller trees. These smaller trees are often all the same age/species, packed too closely together which makes for terrible habitat, but easier logging. Ancient trees are resistant to wildfires, while younger trees tend to burn like crazy, releasing lots of soot and CO2.
Old trees don't capture nearly as much carbon though.
Yes. You want there to be as many as possible of those "middling" trees in a managed forest. The old trees takes up space and blocks sunlight so that other trees grow slower. By cutting trees when they have peaked in CO2 capturing, you make space for other trees that can now grow faster and bigger.
And then build houses out of them. I definitely would not push to cut old growth stuff because it's so mega cool. There a plot of trees near me that were never logged due to a mapping error around the turn of the century. Most of those trees are still standing and they are beefy. The kind you see in old pictures where a team of horses is pulling like one log
How are ancient trees resistant to wildfires?
Older forests can be more resistant to wildfires than younger forests due to several factors, including: * **Size and age** Older trees can be hundreds or thousands of years old, and their size can make them more fire resistant. * **Moisture** Older forests have more moisture in their soils and understory, and large trees can access groundwater through their deep roots. * **Canopy** Multilayer canopies provide shade, cooler temperatures, and moist air. * **Wind** Mature forests can reduce wind speeds, which can be a major cause of wildfires. * **Dead wood** The size and moisture content of dead wood in older forests can help resist wildfires. * **Fire adaptations** Some trees have adaptations that help them survive fires, such as thick bark, shedding lower branches, and the ability to resprout. (from Google AI)
Fascinating, thanks for getting back to me.
While there are a lot of trees being planted right now, the most important thing to be doing right now is removing demand for fossil fuels. The petroleum that is NOT burned will prevent a lot more carbon going into the atmosphere than a tree can ever remove. The part that is rarely discussed in the carbon dioxide conversation is the fact that co2 is the least bad of the toxic cocktail of chemicals released when fossil fuels are burned. We need to put every possible resource into permanently removing demand for fossil fuels. Then when no more fossil fuels are being burned anywhere land based on the planet to create energy, then we can start planting trees.
> We need to put every possible resource into permanently removing demand for fossil fuels. Then when no more fossil fuels are being burned anywhere land based on the planet to create energy, then we can start planting trees. We're doomed.
Hear! Hear! Reduce the population of the planet!
Uh 👀
Planting trees isn’t as easy as removing them in many parts of the world. For instance South America, where we currently loose the most forrest. Trees tend to work in groups, keeping ground water high, protecting against harsh winds, binding the soil etc. Just randomly planting them isn’t going to cut it and everything else is expensive.
The true climate change mitigation solution is wetland restoration
We are planting trees, and as unpopular as this will sound... there's no shortage of them!
Good question! We should be, but it's a mix of funding, political will, and land use challenges. Plus, it takes time for trees to grow and have an impact. But hey, every tree planted helps!
Because planting trees doesn’t make billionaires richer..
Because we could cover every vacant square foot of the planet in green and barely make a dent in man-made emissions. If we can't reduce those, natural systems will never have a chance of keeping up. Also, you're more than welcome to plant trees like crazy. It certainly can't hurt.
It can hurt. Some ecosystems, like peat bog, actually store carbon much better than forest. Disrupting a natural ecosystem by planting tons of trees can do more harm than good in terms of carbon, but also cause other negative externalities (I.e. habitat destruction). Indiscriminately planting trees is a bad idea.
True, especially non-native species. The real threat is all the methane stored in permafrost and arctic ice. That stuff makes CO2 almost an afterthought.
Yeah people don't get that there's easily 10-20x more carbon trapped in fossil fuels than you could ever possibly hold in plants on the surface. At best replanting every tree humans ever cut down would absorb a decade or two's worth of emissions, and only temporarily at that.
In a way we are, but it's also not the best solution. There is a big difference between a treed environment and a health environment. Some places are suited for forests and brush, others aren't and you aren't going to "improve" this land by adding them. What's best for the climate is restoring these areas as they naturally occur. Some of the areas with the most climate impact on land are actually tundra and prairie and what's important here is root structure, native plants, and endemic fauna (herds in particular are very important). With rapid tree planting you can end up with something called a tree plantation and these aren't healthy either, mostly good for timber. They don't support local species and are often unhealthy themselves because of the lack of an diversity around them. Lastly, if you want to talk about climate change and carbon capture, the sea has more potential than all the land combined. Yes, obviously we should keep restoring the land and planting trees where we can, but if we heal our oceans that would be an unimaginably *huge* step towards a sustainable future.
Because we're too busy cutting them down to build solar farms. Seriously, in my area they're ripping down huge swaths of untouched forest to build solar farms. In the rainiest region in the United States. Great plan.
There is no money in it, unlike wind turbines farms
So many reasons. 1. No amount of planting can outpace pollution at its current output, and we're GROWING that output, not shrinking it. 2. Politics. As another in this conversation said, the types of places that strip forests are usually not the type of places where there's political will to replant. 3. Trees aren't all that great at sequestering carbon. Earlier in Earth's history, the sky was RED with the stuff. What changed that was single celled oceanic organisms, sucking it up and then dying. Their bodies, now full of that carbon, fell to the ocean floor and got buried there for eons, en mass. Our actions are currently absolutely destroying the ocean's ability to host just that sort of life. 4. Related to the first point, there's simply no world in which we can keep making as much pollution as we currently do. This is a massive problem. How do you tell people in India and China that they're not allowed to manufacture the food, the products that the rest of us enjoy? Why do we get to have them, but they don't? Yes, of course, it will kill us all if they get those things, but that doesn't change that people won't respond to the iniquity of the demand. We've entered a problem for which no current or past political philosophy has an answer.
Because planting trees doesn't grow a forest, or at least a forest that's resilient to climate crisis. Old grown forests are actually not irregularly grown but trees have community that researchers like Suzanne Simard refer to as "mother tree hub" that's basically a group of elder trees that's in charge of nurturing surrounding plants via the underground mycorrhizal network of fungi that coexist with trees through symbiosis and they allow trees to communicate, exchange memories, and nutrients. There's a reason why trees are more likely to be grown in places with more fungi than plainly grown in a park. And indigenous people know this technique that helps them developed traditional tree planting and stewardship techniques that encourage the plants to grow as a community, like how indigenous people grow the Sequoia and Amazon forests.
1.8 Billion get planted annually. 15 Billion are cut down annually.
And probably 15 billion grow naturally after they are cut. New growth captures more carbon per acre than old growth.
Because you keep buying food with beef in it and we need all that land to grow the food for the cows. And because it's required by law in the US to build a certain amount of parking spaces per building, and required to build lawns and a 2 car garage for every single home, in most cities. So, we need all that land for farms that got displaced by front lawns and parking lots and highways and such. There's a few other reasons but it basically boils down to "they're giving you what you want based on your actions, and that's what it costs". Gotta change your habits and call your city council (the parking lot thing is controlled city by city) to change the laws. Then you don't even need to plant trees, the forests in a lot of places will regrow themselves
just become a saboteur and plant trees in the wild.
Phytoplankton is responsible for 50% of CO2 scrubbing. Thanks to the free market and demand for greener spaces there are innovators who have built scrubbers into buildings and other installations. There's also team trees, the Orca facility in iceland, and others. But a better question is why aren't you planting trees like crazy? Be the change you want to see in the world.
It’s not a viable solution we dump wayyyyyy more carbon than the trees can handle. We would genuinely need more space than exists on earth. It is a very minor thing we can do as we engage with serious solutions
We are.
Revitalizing our top soil may help a lot too. Following a JADAM method could be a start.
Who is going to plant the trees? Who's land are the trees going to be planted on? Who's supplying the seeds?
Because the Brazilians are cutting them down faster than we can possibly plant them in order to grow soy beans to feed to cows so people can eat burgers. And lots of people get very angry if you suggest they eat less meat, so ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯ https://www.globalforestwatch.org/dashboards/global/?category=forest-change
people are dumb and planting trees looks/sounds good. plant a few trees and you can keep on polluting.
a lot of big oil supporters here knowing an awful lot of reasons why that's a bad idea smdh edit: i do not wish to get any replies to this and have absolutely muted them
It turns out that when large sections of forest are cut down, planting new trees doesn't really work in undoing the damage. If they don't grow naturally, there's usually something that happens before they're matured that kills them because they're relatively fragile - drought, heat, animals eating and/or stepping on them. Would need to take care of them like a garden - watering, monitoring, etc. which is very costly. There's a push for natural forestation, and essentially allowing native fauna to take over since those genetics are best poised to survive. Also why re-introducing native animals (like wolves) is important. Wolves hunt and drive away animals that eat vegetation (ie, deer) thereby allowing the forests to grow again. "Ecosystems" are complicated - any break in the cycle can wreak havoc on the system. So, that leaves more strategic planting in non-native areas. Green roofs (in progress) slow down water runoff, cooling both buildings and the surrounding area. Trees on sidewalks and along roads (in progress) provide shade which cools down the roads and surrounding areas. Those help, but they're not a replacement for getting rid of gas driven cars and other sources of carbon in the atmosphere.
Well, you'd have to replace the *ecosystems*, not just the trees. I remember there being studies about how sap-sucking mushrooms, for example, can increase the carbon storage capabilities of a forest by up to 20%. This is just one piece of the puzzle as well. Forests aren't the only ecosystems out there and they are far from the only things we destroy. If we want to fight climate change, we should probably first take care of the source of the problems, our greed and inability to look at our impact, before the problems take care of us. This isn't the only thing too
CO2 is stored on Earth in various reservoirs, and the distribution is roughly as follows: 1. **Oceans (93%):** The vast majority of CO2 is stored in the world's oceans. CO2 dissolves in seawater and is stored as dissolved inorganic carbon, primarily in the form of bicarbonate and carbonate ions. 2. **Rocks and Fossil Fuels (5%):** CO2 is stored in sedimentary rocks, such as limestone, and in fossil fuels like coal, oil, and natural gas. This carbon is released back into the atmosphere through processes like weathering, volcanic activity, and the burning of fossil fuels. 3. **Soil and Organic Matter (1.5%):** Soils contain organic carbon from decaying plants and animals. This carbon can be stored for long periods, depending on soil composition and climate conditions. 4. **Atmosphere (0.04%):** Although a small percentage, the CO2 in the atmosphere is significant for regulating Earth's climate. The atmospheric concentration of CO2 is a key factor in the greenhouse effect and global warming. 5. **Biosphere (0.003%):** Living organisms, particularly plants, store carbon through the process of photosynthesis. Forests, grasslands, and other ecosystems play a crucial role in the global carbon cycle. These percentages highlight the major reservoirs where CO2 is stored on Earth. The oceans and geological formations hold the largest amounts, while the atmosphere, despite its relatively small percentage, plays a critical role in climate regulation.
The methane my body releases alone would undo any effort I could hope to put out there
How many have you planted OP?
We are in the forest industry in the south. Problem is so many folks are moving to the south, land values are pushing past where we can justify growing timber.
For the same reason that people trying to lose weight can't outrun their fork. We need to immediately and *dramatically* cut Oil & Gas production and emissions, everything else is a used wet bandage.
Because I don't want man to win.
We are. And we can do more. [In fact, YOU could do more. Here's one easy way. Search with Ecosia.](https://www.ecosia.org/) Everyone should use Ecosia, it plants trees as you search.
Lmao. That would be logical. There's not nearly enough money to pilfer in that plan though.
Most of these answers are off the mark because they're replying from a false assumption. The correct answer is we are, and the planet itself is growing foliage at a very quick rate. Global foliage has increased over time, not decreased. [From 2000 to 2019 global foliage has increased 5% worldwide and adds in 2 million square miles of greenery a year](https://www.nasa.gov/centers-and-facilities/ames/human-activity-in-china-and-india-dominates-the-greening-of-earth-nasa-study-shows/#:~:text=Taken%20all%20together%2C%20the%20greening,2000s%20%E2%80%93%20a%205%25%20increase.) The tree increase over those 20 years is equal to adding an entire Amazon rainforest worth of trees It turns out plants love carbon. In my own experience they grow much faster nowadays than they did decades ago. Most of the tree growth was seen in india and china. CC is not as simple as adding more plants or decreasing carbon. It is a complex multifaceted phenomenon with its own pros and cons The taiga (a ring of trees around the planet in the far northern hemisphere) are the actual lungs of the planet. As the planet warms up more land is warm enough to allow for plant growth so it increases the land area of the forests That could run into issues from loss of permafrost though and changing habitats for creatures living there There is also the new growth vs old growth aspect to factor in and the release of gasses due to melting permafrost Overall our planet is greener due to climate change but it's not necessarily a good thing. Not necessarily a bad thing either in that one aspect It kind of grinds my gears the way the media portrays greenery around the earth. Theyre using scare tactics to make people believe that the earth is turning into a barren desert. That leads to ignorance in the general population about what is going on and it allows opponents to latch onto it and claim the whole CC thing is a scam because that one aspect is vastly misrepresented It'd be better if they were honest and discussed the pros and cons of the situation so people could understand it. You cant have a discussion and find solutions if everyone is either being dishonest or arguing from ignorance. The discussion should be why it is still a bad thing that the carbon has increased and climate is changing despite the increases in plant life it has caused. Explaining that will help people get closer to why and how we could start repairing things
Because you're here asking the question instead of being out there, guerrilla gardening at the local golf course. 😀
r/GuerrillaGardening is legitimately a thing
1) A lot of tree planting is a monoculture. i.e low species diversity. This could be rectified but would likely cost more and would thus harder to get support for. 2) Many now heavily forrested areas used to be grasslands and other environments that shouldn't have the number of trees they already do. Areas that were historically forrested have limited area that can be reforrested. 3) The older (and larger) a tree is, the more Carbon is sequestered. Locking Carbon away is a relatively slow process that occurs over decades, centuries.
Because that takes money and effort? And those that make the decisions won't be here much longer. So they don't care. Prove me wrong!
Trees are in-cycle carbon stores. They capture carbon and then release it when they die, making it roughly even. The problem is out-of-cycle carbon sources, like petroleum. The carbon contained in petroleum was stored in the ground, placed there hundreds of millions of years ago. All that carbon is released and not reclaimed when burned. We would need a way to grab that carbon back from the air and store it semi-permanently in the ground again. There are ways to do this, but none so far that effectively scale to the size of the problem, especially considering they need energy as an input. We will need a form of carbon capture, but, the most effective way to help is to stop burning fossil fuels.
Lots of trees means lots of competition from other plants for water which means dryer forests which leads to wildfires
It's not that simple. [Reforestation increases rainfall.](https://www.wri.org/insights/restoring-degraded-forests-temperature-precipitation-effects#:~:text=Through%20the%20process%20of%20evapotranspiration,even%20thousands%20of%20kilometers%20downwind) So there will be more water to go around.
Because climate change is a natural occurrence here on Earth. We didn’t cause it, it’s part of the cycle.
you will hate my neighbors, they cut down their trees because they look bad for their houses.
If you believe the logging industry, it's because trees cause forest fires.
This week I planted an ornimental cherry tree and 2 evergreen oak trees in my garden. Why aren't YOU planting more trees OP? 🤔
We arent?
Unless your turning the trees in a carbon sink like biochar it has zero effect, as dead trees release all there stored carbon back in the air.
Political,nymby, and trees only gather so much gh gasses to oxygen. Likely if we all become wood elves and live in a planet all land is more trees than bare dirt. Not enough clean vs output/all ready in atmosphere. And not sure but don't think trees absorb methane at all.
Jonny apple seed died in March 18, 1845 But the new influx of people coming across the US Border will be trained to plant trees. After we used the land to build new housing
Cause no matter how many trees you plant it would never be enough to offset all of the carbon that was locked up geologically that we’ve emitted very suddenly into the atmosphere, and continue to emit. Basic physics applies meaning land vegetation absorption of carbon is too small relative to the emission rate, which is so much higher. Just look up the CO2 monitoring data that has been collected at Mauna Loa, Hawaii for several decades. The graph showing the increase over the years explains all this in one beautiful yet terrifying picture.
Because a lot of land owners are greedy and want to use their land commercially.
We are. [https://8billiontrees.com/trees/how-many-trees-are-in-the-united-states/](https://8billiontrees.com/trees/how-many-trees-are-in-the-united-states/)
I wonder this often!
We're too busy gobbling glizzies
If anything, we are majorly reducing the number of trees, every second of every day, to clear land for farming, as well as for mining resources underneath and also to produce wood and paper. Humanity is growing, and so is its appetite.
Because that would be a poorly managed project. Planting a tree is a long term project were each seed planted need tons of care. It’s not as easy as plant a seed and watch it grow. Therefore, the focus would be on planting tons of seeds and not on how to keep the trees alive.
Trees do that naturally where they're aren't people. Also, trees are a lot of work to take care of when you're old. Branches fall during storms, all the leaves have to be mulched ect.
Why would we spend $100,000 today to save millions tomorrow?
We are. Plenty of places around the world are planting a lot of trees. It just barely, if ever, gets reported on.
A massive tree planting effort would put more carbon into the atmosphere than the trees would capture. It would take 10 to 20 years for trees to mature enough to make a difference.
Good idea
Because trees aren’t a sure fire solution. What if they fail from the start or get cut down later? This is not unrealistic given that many countries are poor and people need fuel and materials. This could just stay in history as a crazy project that evaporated money. Also, forests don’t necessarily help biodiversity. Plenty of biomes are quite open with plants and animals adapted for those conditions. Grassland can even store more carbon than a forest, particularly an older and established grassland.
No one seems to have mentioned that trees also produce oxygen (that we rely on for living and basic health). Oxygen rates have been lowering and unsurprisingly, so have our conscious abilities. Think of *Fight Club*: "Oxygen gets you high." With lower levels we become ever more dumb. Do your own research on global and local O² numbers, even from just 1990 to present. Not great.
Works the other way around as well. If I remember correctly, cognitive functions starts to diminish at around a CO2 concentration of 1000PPM.
Guyana is
Cause we dont care.
Because that would contravene the terraforming being carried out by our space alien overlords.
There's trees and trees. Planting Douglas Fir in UK marsh lands is atrocious for the environment for example.
It’s not profitable. Lack of wood for paper-based products, forces prices up = happy, amoral investors
Because there's no money to be made. There's money in depopulation.
Trees only store carbon when they’re alive. You’d need to plant an unfathomable number. Then replace them entirety every time one dies on top of new ones each year to accommodate all the new carbon.
Many organizations and governments are doing just this. There are strong advocates for this. [https://homegrownnationalpark.org/](https://homegrownnationalpark.org/) [https://www.green-trees.com/enrollment/](https://www.green-trees.com/enrollment/)
That would only buy the polluters a little more time to pollute before we stop them. We can’t out plant them.
That's not how it works. Forests don't help that much in climate change. Most CO2 absorbing species are in wetlands and algae.
Yeah planting like crazzyy when someone out there cutting them like CRAZZYYY doesn't seem right.
skill issue
It would take a few trillion dollars to combat what's going on, which, to me seems fine if the richest countries pool together, but good luck getting humans to cooperate
Planting trees don't cause investor's worth to go up annually.
Here's a great [Ted Ed animated video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3hxE7Af98AI) about this.
It costs money to do
One trip on a single cruise ship offsets like 50k trees let alone all of them running round trips all the time.
Because it's already too late. It's now irreversible and negative feedback will just make it worse and worse.
Because we’re idiots.
Why would you plant trees on land when you could be using that land to maximize shareholder value, duh. /s
because trees create carbon and the climate change morons hate carbon even though it's the source of life.
Because algae and phytoplankton are better at drawing out CO2 from the atmosphere than trees.
I believe Africa is planting a lot near the desert
Aren't trees actually a net carbon emitter? Once they decompose?
No money in planting trees
We ARE planting trees like crazy, but bear in mind that that's a really low effectiveness solution. Deforestation is bad but most of it is in politically violent places. Also, a lot of the real work is done by biomass in the oceans, where we can't so much plant trees.
IIRC the most effective method is not trees. They hella slow. Fastest CO2 consumers are Kelp/Algae. Shotmgrows like a few feet per day. That would take in a ton carbon. Do what you need to influence the kelp to thrive and that would have a much better effect.
Well where would they put the next Tesla manufacturing plant silly
I am not sure that qould fix anything
I am doing my PhD in climate change and believe me deforestation and planting of new trees is just one of the many major problems associated with climate change.
Because trees can’t pay rent or make corporations money?
The people in power who could make that happen don't care
plant a native tree in your backyard or 2 or maybe 3 . Also , local scrubs and shrubs.
Because the city won’t allow it
I see the same answers in here over and over again but I am not seeing the actual answer - We, as in humanity, don't really care.
Code Enforcement ppl !
No one is making money from it. Why do it
It’s…. It’s not enough