Planting 1.2T Trees Could Cancel Out a Decade of CO2 Emissions

Post by nojvek » Sun, Apr 28, 2019, 3:58 PM UTC

Latty wrote: post #276

ed_balls wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think planting trees is the biggest issue. Access to water is. More practical solution would be to fill some desert with sea water and grow plankton, kelp etc.

I recently saw a video about doing this - apparently the desert is actually a really bad option if we want to combat climate change - the core problem is that the desert currently reflects a lot of light from the sun. If we cover it with forest or whatever, then suddenly we adjust the albedo of the earth and absorb more heat, negating some of the impact. Combined with the energy need to pump (and desalinate for trees…

I assume trees are good at trapping the energy from sunlight + combining it with c02 and water to produce carbon, oxygen and more water.

So planting trees in deserts with somewhat decent access to underground water tables should help cool the planet and create a great renewable resource right?

Post by nojvek » Sun, Apr 28, 2019, 4:01 PM UTC

ALittleLight wrote: post #97

jandrese wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

That’s the price of the seeds though. The cost of finding the land, digging holes, planting seeds and watering them to sustainable growth would be much higher.

Honestly if HN knows any charities focused on tree planting, let me know. Happy to donate 1k-ish if it puts 10k trees to our family’s name.

Re: Planting 1.2T Trees Could Cancel Out a Decade of CO2 Emissions

Re: Planting 1.2T Trees Could Cancel Out a Decade of CO2 Emissions