8 ms·

My understanding is that reforestation, while being wonderful and helpful, simply doesn’t address the scale of the problem. All forests today contain ~200 giga

My understanding is that reforestation, while being wonderful and helpful, simply doesn’t address the scale of the problem. All forests today contain ~200 gigatons of carbon. Humans release ~25 gigatons of carbon per year. So DOUBLING the size of forests on Earth would just absorb 8 years of greenhouse gas emissions. This made no intuitive sense to me until I began to think of the fossil fuels we’ve got underground as representing millions of years of forests “compressed” into oil / gas.

jackfoxy 6y ago
> Humans release ~25 gigatons of carbon per year ~30% of which is from ongoing deforestation, unless the quoted ~25 gigatons is from fossil fuels only?
- renewiltord 6y ago
  There are 200 gigatons of forest in the world. We net 8 gigatons each year. So in 25 years we will have no forest if all this is true. That conclusion is absurd.
  - eanzenberg 6y ago
    These models are about as good as the covid ones!
    - renewiltord 6y ago
      Yeah, just through sheer arithmetic not all the parent comments can be right.
- mrosett 6y ago
  My understanding is that we’ve been net reforesting worldwide for the last few decades.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
tunesmith 6y ago
There's this pattern of: - We should do "X" - But doing "X" won't solve "Y" - But "X" will help - But "X" won't solve - But "X" is necessary - But "X" isn't sufficient And I think the unstated conclusions are whether we should actually do "X" or not. I think the answer is usually Yes, we should do X (in this case, plant as many damn trees as we can), but I also think that's me arguing from an individual perspective and not a group psychology perspective. Like, when people argue "but focusing on trees could distract us from addressing the entire problem", I used to just be dismissive of that, but I'm starting to feel like those objections should be taken more seriously - particularly having gone through this COVID debate where people focused so much on "flattening the curve" - which was necessary, not sufficient - that too many people signed on to gradual reopening just as the (high-amplitude) curve started flattening. If we had socialized a different benchmark, maybe it would have been more effective in the long run. (But still, even if only in parentheses, plant trees.)
- quotemstr 6y ago
  This whole argument is a great example of why we use prices and markets to decide on resource allocation instead of some other system. It's easy for people to cherry-pick evidence that their pet solution is the most efficient and to browbeat others into accepting that pet solution for non-economic reasons. But when you have to attach a price to something, you have to essentially put up or shut up. Either your project is as efficient as you claim or you lose money. And if your project suffers from economies or dis-economies of scale? Prices can incorporate this information too. Prices keep us honest. That's why a cap-and-trade system is the best approach for limiting and reducing carbon in the atmosphere. Put a price on the externality and the market will find a way to drive it down as far as it'll go.
  - ikiris 6y ago
    Most often by avoiding paying for the externality.
- ghransa 6y ago
  It's a different lense we need, this would be the argument: we should do x,x if we do it won't have enough effects by itself, it's better than nothing to have that desired effect, it's a step in the right direction to achieve the desired results, what we need to have is other people to also have the desired effect to do the same thing independently. The question is what is the effect and how much of a piece of the whole would it mitigate. Can the people who do decide to make a change in that one goal can they compare notes to improve on that outcome. Tldr: do what you can based on where you are at your life and hope improves in the right direction, this applies to all things.
neutronman 6y ago
Bill Gates has reached the same conclusion. He’s funded carbon extraction tech that takes up a football field in size but does the job of millions of trees. https://prepforthat.com/bill-gates-funds-project-that-extracts-co2-from-atmosphere/ https://prepforthat.com/bill-gates-funds-project-that-extrac...
- godelski 6y ago
  The added benefit of these is that you can directly capture carbon at its source. This is good since we know that emissions aren't homogeneous dispersed.
dredmorbius 6y ago
You'll likely appreciate Jeffrey Dukes, "Burning Buried Sunshine", which quantifies fossil fuel synthesis and utilisation: https://dge.carnegiescience.edu/DGE/Dukes/Dukes_ClimChange1.pdf https://dge.carnegiescience.edu/DGE/Dukes/Dukes_ClimChange1.... (pdf)
bromuro 6y ago
There are for sure many other benefits of increasing the forested land, eg from protecting the soil to host a whole living ecosystem (from which humans can benefit from) Not only reforestation helps with cleaning the air, but it tries to rolls back a (irreparable) damage we made to the environment during the last centuries.
godelski 6y ago
That's pretty much the problem, but I should also add that this doesn't mean we shouldn't do reforestation. It just means there isn't a single solution to a complex global problem (honestly, is anyone surprised? Why the fuck are people suggesting single solution answers to complex nuanced problems?). We should be making larger forests, fill them with birds and animals (this is actually a difficult part if you look at huge man made forests like the one in China). But we should also use man made sequestration. We should also redevelop coral reefs around the world. Etc. A lot of people seem to be forgetting the heart of the problem. There is too much greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. It doesn't matter how we remove them, just that we do (assuming the removal process doesn't do more harm, of course). Doesn't matter if it is natural (i.e. forests & reefs) or artificial (CCS), it needs to be removed from the atmosphere (and ocean). There's no "one size fits all" solution.
almog 6y ago
I am not familiar with the numbers, but do they represent carbon trapped in the forest's plants or in the forest as a whole (that includes the soil as well). The latter has an accumulative nature in regard to the soil trapped carbon being a derivative. I guess what I'm trying to say is that calculating how much carbon a forest can store, should take the throughput into account, not just the current total capacity.
m463 6y ago
When I read The Rational Optimist by Matt Ridley, I found it really interesting to read the history of fossil fuels. Basically whale oil and trees were replaced by coal mining - which saved whales and trees! And if I recall the coal mining saved 5x the landmass area in trees cut down (not that that helped the british isles). And then oil saved lots of coal mine deaths and strip mining. We just gotta keep going forward. I think it's unfortunate that modern safe nuclear hasn't gotten a place. I like that solar is getting a chance at development (helped via greedy power companies.. PG&E@48c/kwh). and yes, plant trees.
loungeleezard 6y ago
Humans release closer to 35 metric gigatons of carbon per year. The increased thawing of the permafrost is releasing massive amounts of CO2, methane which is 80 times more impactful than CO2, and nitrous oxide which is 300 times more impactful than CO2. The oceans are warming and they are releasing increasing amounts of CO2. Humans haven't been able to even slow the growth of greenhouse gas emissions, and now with the melting glaciers, thawing permafrost and warming oceans, which are all locked into positive feedback loops, it won't be long until the earth it's self will sustain the global warming pattern with no help from humans. Between the oceans, the glaciers and the permafrost they sequester almost 2.5 times the CO2 that is currently in the atmosphere. All we need is a technology that will capture and sequester greenhouse gases on a global scale to the tune of about 60 gigatons per year, this way we'll capture all the human released greenhouse gases, plus the emissions from the melting glaciers, thawing permafrost and warming oceans, and capture enough more so that we can eventually reverse the atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations back to the early 1700's. Oh, one last thing we need to invent this technology in about the next 10 years.
simonebrunozzi 6y ago
You're missing an important detail: forests don't capture CO2 just once (in the form of organic matter, e.g. wood); they also capture it continuously... Slowly turning CO2 into coal/oil over millions of years, which is not included in the count for CO2 in forests. It's instead like a slow by-product of it; as if we had "fossil forests" underneath live ones, which several gigatons of additional sequestered carbon. Doubling the size of forests on Earth would provide benefits that go beyond the simple, one-time CO2 capture you refer to.

jackfoxy 6y ago

> Humans release ~25 gigatons of carbon per year ~30% of which is from ongoing deforestation, unless the quoted ~25 gigatons is from fossil fuels only?

renewiltord 6y ago
There are 200 gigatons of forest in the world. We net 8 gigatons each year. So in 25 years we will have no forest if all this is true. That conclusion is absurd.
- eanzenberg 6y ago
  These models are about as good as the covid ones!
  - renewiltord 6y ago
    Yeah, just through sheer arithmetic not all the parent comments can be right.
mrosett 6y ago
My understanding is that we’ve been net reforesting worldwide for the last few decades.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]

tunesmith 6y ago

There's this pattern of: - We should do "X" - But doing "X" won't solve "Y" - But "X" will help - But "X" won't solve - But "X" is necessary - But "X" isn't sufficient And I think the unstated conclusions are whether we should actually do "X" or not. I think the answer is usually Yes, we should do X (in this case, plant as many damn trees as we can), but I also think that's me arguing from an individual perspective and not a group psychology perspective. Like, when people argue "but focusing on trees could distract us from addressing the entire problem", I used to just be dismissive of that, but I'm starting to feel like those objections should be taken more seriously - particularly having gone through this COVID debate where people focused so much on "flattening the curve" - which was necessary, not sufficient - that too many people signed on to gradual reopening just as the (high-amplitude) curve started flattening. If we had socialized a different benchmark, maybe it would have been more effective in the long run. (But still, even if only in parentheses, plant trees.)

quotemstr 6y ago
This whole argument is a great example of why we use prices and markets to decide on resource allocation instead of some other system. It's easy for people to cherry-pick evidence that their pet solution is the most efficient and to browbeat others into accepting that pet solution for non-economic reasons. But when you have to attach a price to something, you have to essentially put up or shut up. Either your project is as efficient as you claim or you lose money. And if your project suffers from economies or dis-economies of scale? Prices can incorporate this information too. Prices keep us honest. That's why a cap-and-trade system is the best approach for limiting and reducing carbon in the atmosphere. Put a price on the externality and the market will find a way to drive it down as far as it'll go.
- ikiris 6y ago
  Most often by avoiding paying for the externality.
ghransa 6y ago
It's a different lense we need, this would be the argument: we should do x,x if we do it won't have enough effects by itself, it's better than nothing to have that desired effect, it's a step in the right direction to achieve the desired results, what we need to have is other people to also have the desired effect to do the same thing independently. The question is what is the effect and how much of a piece of the whole would it mitigate. Can the people who do decide to make a change in that one goal can they compare notes to improve on that outcome. Tldr: do what you can based on where you are at your life and hope improves in the right direction, this applies to all things.

neutronman 6y ago

Bill Gates has reached the same conclusion. He’s funded carbon extraction tech that takes up a football field in size but does the job of millions of trees. https://prepforthat.com/bill-gates-funds-project-that-extracts-co2-from-atmosphere/ https://prepforthat.com/bill-gates-funds-project-that-extrac...

godelski 6y ago
The added benefit of these is that you can directly capture carbon at its source. This is good since we know that emissions aren't homogeneous dispersed.

dredmorbius 6y ago

You'll likely appreciate Jeffrey Dukes, "Burning Buried Sunshine", which quantifies fossil fuel synthesis and utilisation: https://dge.carnegiescience.edu/DGE/Dukes/Dukes_ClimChange1.pdf https://dge.carnegiescience.edu/DGE/Dukes/Dukes_ClimChange1.... (pdf)

bromuro 6y ago

There are for sure many other benefits of increasing the forested land, eg from protecting the soil to host a whole living ecosystem (from which humans can benefit from) Not only reforestation helps with cleaning the air, but it tries to rolls back a (irreparable) damage we made to the environment during the last centuries.

godelski 6y ago

That's pretty much the problem, but I should also add that this doesn't mean we shouldn't do reforestation. It just means there isn't a single solution to a complex global problem (honestly, is anyone surprised? Why the fuck are people suggesting single solution answers to complex nuanced problems?). We should be making larger forests, fill them with birds and animals (this is actually a difficult part if you look at huge man made forests like the one in China). But we should also use man made sequestration. We should also redevelop coral reefs around the world. Etc. A lot of people seem to be forgetting the heart of the problem. There is too much greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. It doesn't matter how we remove them, just that we do (assuming the removal process doesn't do more harm, of course). Doesn't matter if it is natural (i.e. forests & reefs) or artificial (CCS), it needs to be removed from the atmosphere (and ocean). There's no "one size fits all" solution.

almog 6y ago

I am not familiar with the numbers, but do they represent carbon trapped in the forest's plants or in the forest as a whole (that includes the soil as well). The latter has an accumulative nature in regard to the soil trapped carbon being a derivative. I guess what I'm trying to say is that calculating how much carbon a forest can store, should take the throughput into account, not just the current total capacity.

m463 6y ago

When I read The Rational Optimist by Matt Ridley, I found it really interesting to read the history of fossil fuels. Basically whale oil and trees were replaced by coal mining - which saved whales and trees! And if I recall the coal mining saved 5x the landmass area in trees cut down (not that that helped the british isles). And then oil saved lots of coal mine deaths and strip mining. We just gotta keep going forward. I think it's unfortunate that modern safe nuclear hasn't gotten a place. I like that solar is getting a chance at development (helped via greedy power companies.. PG&E@48c/kwh). and yes, plant trees.

loungeleezard 6y ago

Humans release closer to 35 metric gigatons of carbon per year. The increased thawing of the permafrost is releasing massive amounts of CO2, methane which is 80 times more impactful than CO2, and nitrous oxide which is 300 times more impactful than CO2. The oceans are warming and they are releasing increasing amounts of CO2. Humans haven't been able to even slow the growth of greenhouse gas emissions, and now with the melting glaciers, thawing permafrost and warming oceans, which are all locked into positive feedback loops, it won't be long until the earth it's self will sustain the global warming pattern with no help from humans. Between the oceans, the glaciers and the permafrost they sequester almost 2.5 times the CO2 that is currently in the atmosphere. All we need is a technology that will capture and sequester greenhouse gases on a global scale to the tune of about 60 gigatons per year, this way we'll capture all the human released greenhouse gases, plus the emissions from the melting glaciers, thawing permafrost and warming oceans, and capture enough more so that we can eventually reverse the atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations back to the early 1700's. Oh, one last thing we need to invent this technology in about the next 10 years.

simonebrunozzi 6y ago

You're missing an important detail: forests don't capture CO2 just once (in the form of organic matter, e.g. wood); they also capture it continuously... Slowly turning CO2 into coal/oil over millions of years, which is not included in the count for CO2 in forests. It's instead like a slow by-product of it; as if we had "fossil forests" underneath live ones, which several gigatons of additional sequestered carbon. Doubling the size of forests on Earth would provide benefits that go beyond the simple, one-time CO2 capture you refer to.