131–140 of 332 posts
You don't cure cancer taking painkillers. You should both go after the symptoms (if they are bad enough at least, that they are now) and the root cause, because if you don't solve the real disease the symptom mitigations will be shortlived, as the patient.
This makes me wonder - could trees be modified genetically to handle more CO2 in order to make this number lower? Could we, instead of trees, have huge walls made of plants that would consume our CO2?
I believe the Californian Redwoods are very good at this but one of their main disadvantages is they take forever to grow in their native climate. Ironically, they grow much faster on the other side of the world (New Zealand) due to its wetter climate but the wood is not as hard due to this so they aren't useful in construction. Basically the ultimate carbon sync and useless for humans.
My gut reaction to suggestions like this one is that it seems so hard to do stuff that is as geographically distributed as this. I mean, to plant a billion trees we need to find suitable locations that have an enormous area (twice the US per some comment here). The odds, I'm guessing, are that this will be spread among many/all the continents over multiple countries, involving so many local stakeholders and potential…
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Depending on the tree(s), it could be consuming CO2 24 hours a day, year round, solar is just part of the day and only reaches capacity for a brief moment. I don't know the numbers to show the difference. That is why I asked for some facts which the OP seems to know.
Trees don't really continuously "consume" CO2 in this manner. The only CO2 removed by a tree is the carbon that ends up permanently Incorporated in the wood itself. And if you burn that wood, it's all released back into the air. Even if it just dies and decays, some of it ends up being released.
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That's only 160 trees for every man, woman, and child on Earth... It doesn't seem like a particularly practical solution.
It seems incredibly practical to me. I've seen a quote for 40 dollars to plant a thousand trees. That's something like 50 billion to offset a decade of global warming? Doesn't sound so bad. Spread the cost out worldwide, 5 billion a year, split between a few big countries? http://forestandrange.org/southernpine/magement/planting/rea...
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nuclear power is significantly more (space-, energy-, ..) efficient and clean than solar farms https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelshellenberger/2018/05/23...
Except for those two huge externalities that are never priced in and always overlooked by people who say nuclear is 'clean': the waste that will remain toxic for a very long time, and the risk of accidents (slim, but the consequences are really, really, really bad).
As for risk of accidents - nuclear is responsible for less deaths per MWh produced than coal, including all the accidents (Chernobyl and Fukushima too).
Coal powerplants also put more radioactive elements in the air than nuclear powerplants (including all accidents). And it's not "risk" in coal powerplants, it's their normal operation as designed.
Nuclear powerplants is the easiest way to replace baseload, and by insisting on not using it we increase the amount of radioactive elements in air, the deaths, and the CO2 emissions (because you can't replace most baseload with solar/wind - so if not nuclear it's coal/gas).
Not to be too snarky, but my first reaction to the headline was, “ only 1.2 trillion? What are we waiting for!” More seriously, though: the article claims there’s “ample acreage” for such an endeavor but I didn’t see where exactly they’re referring to. Are we supposed to imagine these are sprinkled here and there around the earth, and that there’s plenty of space just waiting for a tree to be planted, or is this some…
The great plains have little vegetation on them, and take well to having trees planted on them. The trees in Kansas, for example, were planted by early settlers to break the wind, and have thrived. (The historical reason trees were absent from the great plains was periodic fire.)
There are also recent studies that highlight some of the potential environmental impacts of large-scale terrestrial carbon removal as a primary mechanism for reversing the effects of climate change. Optimizing for sequestration means converting the most productive agricultural land or using even more natural land, devastating either food production or natural ecosystems,[1] in addition to drawing heavily on water resources and fertilizers on a massive scale, risking other planetary boundaries.[2] The more realistic scenarios risk both, albeit to less catastrophic degrees, but do so by decreasing potential sequestration and limiting its effects on global temperatures. Put a bit glibly, it's jumping out of the frying pan into the fire.
That's not to say that it isn't part of the solution. It is, as the first paper explicitly states in its conclusion, and "can significantly contribute as a “supporting actor” of the mitigation protagonist, if it gets started and deployed immediately." But it won't be a primary mechanism, nor will it reach anywhere near 1.2 trillion trees. Even the more limited "pertinent options available now, which include reforestation of degraded land and the protection of degraded forests to allow them to recover naturally and increase their carbon storage" need to be priorities.
Other geoengineering proposals, such as possible solar radiation management techniques, might extend the period during which we can use tCDR and other carbon removal mechanisms to mitigate past emissions beyond just slowing the rate of temperature increase. But without drastic emissions reductions in the immediate future, all of those possible options become more difficult, with even more deleterious consequences. Not to mention more expensive.
In other words, there's no easy or even optimal answer. Assuming, of course, that 1.2 trillion trees can be considered "easy."
0. http://www.fao.org/fileadmin/templates/wsfs/docs/Issues_pape...
1. https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/a712/e761c2360f927cbff0ee54...
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Why not do something more useful and sequester the trees in buildings? Timber-framed houses for everyone!
I wonder if the eventual fate of most lumber is to be burned, on the scale of tens of decades (as buildings deteriorate, are remodeled and older bits thrown out). In which case you're just postponing the need to sequester anyway.
But! It's also important to consider what timber houses would replace - concrete. Concrete is not very climate friendly. Throwing that into the equation, I'd be surprised if wood construction wasn't better for the environment than what we're doing now.