361–370 of 469 posts
Why cant we just plant more trees? Or let the trees we have grow bigger, to soak up all that extra carbon?
I mean, in Canada when they raze a patch of forest they already immediately replant it.
The areas that aren't forested are so because they're being used for agriculture.
There's a few "plant trees" or "terraform the sahara" comments in here. For some context, if we planted trees wherever we could around the world we can only undo a decades worth of emissions[0]. Not only that but it would still take a century for the trees to reach maturity. Our use of technology threw nature out of balance and we need to use technology to get the balance back again. [0] https://science.sciencemag.or…
Do trees actually help? AFAIK once a forest reaches equilibrium it puts out as much CO2 as it takes in through various decomposition processes.
Forests need to be managed to optimize for sequestration; log the right parts at the right time, replant. Also need to invest more in controlling forest fires (hell, use the military if that's the only way to get the budget).
At the other end we need to reduce burning wood for fuel through other renewables and put more lumber into building.
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Trees are valuable too. The problem is we don't understand and/or appreciate that value. For instance, trees essentially power the entire terrestrial water cycle. Without trees all the water rains out within a few hundred km of the coast. Trees (far moreso than simple evaporation) are responsible for pushing that water back into the air-stream. Isotopic analysis confirms that 80% of the rainfall on land is caused by…
>> Anyone still think it's a good idea to utilize all that "valuable real estate" being "taken up" by trees? As long as plantation owners and/or illegal loggers do, then all your argumentation is moot.
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I actually think all people in the developed world - rich people of course most of all, but “commoners” too - do need to learn to be content with a lot less. Before the industrial era, the average person in England owned 36 objects. And that’s counting like 1) table 2) bowl 3) cup 4) knife. The way people in America and Europe have been taught to live in the last century - even the lower-middle and working class, let…
> Before the industrial era, the average person in England owned 36 objects. Life at the advent of the industrial revolution sucked. The Victorian age was also one of high inequality. I'm not sure what that's supposed to inspire. > inherently unsustainable What part? You're not addressing that. I did, however: increase in population increases demand for things. Environmental destruction is scaling with population, no…
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There's no reason not to plant trees in addition to everything else we'll need to do to fix this problem. The advantage of planting trees is that we know it works, it's cheap, and we can do it right now. So some people should be doing that, and others should be doing R&D on other means of carbon removal. No need to pit one against the other.
>There's no reason not to plant trees in addition to everything else we'll need to do to fix this problem. Yes, there is. Trees take a up valuable real estate. As long as people can do something even remotely profitable with land they own, this can not work.
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Wait a minute. Are you saying that the animals in the Amazonian rain forest produce more CO2 than the plants within it consume? Do you have any data that shows this?
This is cited in the documentary "One Strange Rock". That is the only data I have. I am trusting that the documentary is accurate, I have not fact checked the documentary. EDIT: You might find this PBS article interesting as well, https://www.pbs.org/newshour/science/no-the-amazon-fires-won... "Forest plants produce lots of oxygen, and forest microbes consume a lot of oxygen. As a result, net production of oxygen by…
Photosynthesis: 6CO2 + 6H2O → C6H12O6 + 6O2
You can see here that there's glucose (a carbohydrate) being produced in addition to oxygen.
There's a few "plant trees" or "terraform the sahara" comments in here. For some context, if we planted trees wherever we could around the world we can only undo a decades worth of emissions[0]. Not only that but it would still take a century for the trees to reach maturity. Our use of technology threw nature out of balance and we need to use technology to get the balance back again. [0] https://science.sciencemag.or…
It does seem unlikely that we'd be able to control temperatures without resorting to sulfur dioxide. It'll probably start a war, but once natural resources start getting scarce I fully expect the affected nation to deploy SO2.
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It's true that there are "other cooling dynamics". But most of those don't involve trees. And "reducing certain industrial practices" has nothing to do with trees. So I don't really understand your point. It's correct that we shouldn't be too reductionist, but even if we avoid reductionism it's still correct to say that plants and trees won't do the job, and is not "missing the entire point of regenerative methods".
Trees actually can provide tremendous cooling dynamics, beyond CO2 absorption. They provide shade at ground level. If every house in the US were surrounded by trees instead of useless lawns, energy use for both heating and cooling would be lower, so you’d get emissions reductions AND carbon absorption.
Tree effectively swampcoolers.
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Beyond carbon capture, trees cool an area, which is good in its own right.
Yes, everyone here seems to think CO2 is the most important thing to reduce, but we're not suffering from CO2 (2*C never hurt anybody), we're suffering from increased weather volatility as the homeostatic influence of the biosphere has been destroyed, slash and burned for cow pasture, drained for corn and soy farms, overfished and trawled until nothing is left. But since CO2 is easier to measure than biomass and ecos…
[1]https://www.oecd.org/env/cc/Outlook%20to%202050_Climate%20Ch... [2]https://www.acer-acre.ca/resources/climate-change-in-context... [3]https://www.businessinsider.com/carbon-dioxide-indoors-could...
Most types of carbon capture technology [1] being touted are credit cards for climate change: You burn enough fuel to generate 4MJ worth of heat... Your internal combustion engine generates 1MJ worth of mechanical effort from this... You use this to propel a 2 ton vehicle... Carrying 1 person... To take part in the rat race or indulge in some consumerism. [2] The carbon dioxide sits in the atmosphere for 50 years whe…