An article here a couple of weeks ago claimed that sea weed is more effective than tree fighting carbon dioxide, and it seems cheaper to plant and manage... Shouldn't we focus on it instead of trees ?
There’s Plenty of Space for One Trillion More Trees
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Re: There’s Plenty of Space for One Trillion More Trees
#42An article here a couple of weeks ago claimed that sea weed is more effective than tree fighting carbon dioxide, and it seems cheaper to plant and manage... Shouldn't we focus on it instead of trees ?
I wonder which would be more effective at countering ocean acidification, since sea plants need the carbon dioxide in the water in order to create oxygen.
Re: There’s Plenty of Space for One Trillion More Trees
#43Interestingly, planting 1 trillion trees all at once would decrease the albedo of the earth ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albedo ), increasing warming in the short term. I wonder how long the trees would have to exist before the scrubbing effect on carbon dioxide would outweigh the albedo change?
The albedo shouldn't decrease with more trees. More trees, more clouds. And clouds are the reason why the earth has such a high albedo.
Re: There’s Plenty of Space for One Trillion More Trees
#44Earlier quoted context omitted.
Don't know why you couldn't replant trees then. There are many types trees that do well in saltier soil. For example, White Ash, Red Cedar, Black Walnut, Japanese Black Pine, Pin Oak and Red Oak. Doubt it'd take much to get something estabilshed, and it'd probably take over on it's own gradually.
Not sure that you'd want to plant a bunch of European trees to replace native Australian forests.
Why?
Re: There’s Plenty of Space for One Trillion More Trees
#45I am not an expert on this but I assume the total amount of carbon on the earth is essentially constant. I am guessing for the most part it exists on earth as (1) plants and other life forms (2) fossil fuels and (3) other non-living stored carbon, in things like plastics and lumber. In the air it is mainly carbon dioxide. The more we store on earth the less there will be in the air. Maybe we need a plant and trade sy…
Do not forget rocks!
Re: There’s Plenty of Space for One Trillion More Trees
#46So the count of how many trees there are now was off by an order of magnitude. And we are supposed to give credence to an estimate of how many there were 10,000 years ago? What makes you think that's any more accurate? This kind of sloppy science is ruining people's confidence in science. I know it's supposed to be an iterative process, always getting better, but there should be some self awareness built in that earl…
My (uninformed) guess is they could make estimates by comparing forrest land and tree density. The former isn't too hard to come up with.
Re: There’s Plenty of Space for One Trillion More Trees
#4710^12 trees for anyone wondering
Re: There’s Plenty of Space for One Trillion More Trees
#48If you planted a tree every second, it would take you 31 thousand ish years to plant them all. That said, if you had 100k people planting them itd take under a year. Can a machine plant 1 tree per second? Id be interested to learn that
We plant far more crops like corn every year with machinery. I'm not sure the humans are even necessary, trees are pretty good at planting themselves.
The biggest issue is outcompeting other smaller plants growing in the same place. It takes a long time for an area to naturally become a forest. I believe human intervention with weeding and watering can speed it up significantly. But that's a bigger investment than merely planting them.
Re: There’s Plenty of Space for One Trillion More Trees
#49Earlier quoted context omitted.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albedo#Terrestrial_albedo Albedo of a conifer forest is 0.08 to 0.15, albedo of new concrete is 0.55. The climate change effects of reforestation are addressed later on in the same article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albedo#Trees
Of Asphalt it's only 0.4 - 0.12 though (from your link)
0.04