6 ms·

That ought to do it. Seriously though, anyone care to do the math on the impact of 1bn trees wrt. CO2 absorption? Would be interesting to know how it compares

by runeks 9y ago

That ought to do it. Seriously though, anyone care to do the math on the impact of 1bn trees wrt. CO2 absorption? Would be interesting to know how it compares to how much we need to remove to get back to historical levels.

aidenn0 9y ago
The first estimate google found for carbon fixing is new growth fixes ~0.7 lbs/tree-year and old-growth is ~1.5lbs/tree-year[1]. So 0.7 billion pounds, or ~300k tonnes of C/year Global carbon emissions are around 10 billion tonnes annually so that's about .003% of annual emissions. 1: http://sustainability.tufts.edu/carbon-sequestration/ http://sustainability.tufts.edu/carbon-sequestration/ (note that the per-tree is CO2 weight, not C weight)
- sqeaky 9y ago
  So put another way if every country (~200) planted this many trees it would capture about half a percent of the carbon we release each year. That really puts into perspective how much carbon is trapped in fossil fuel reserves for me. Put another way a few companies can dig so much carbon out of the ground the that they could outdo 195 countries each planting a billion trees by 200 fold.
  - sliverstorm 9y ago
    Well, coal is in a very real sense concentrated trees, accumulated over massive timescales. So it isn't terribly strange that a handful of decade's worth of trees couldn't offset that.
    - sqeaky 9y ago
      You are totally correct, but it violates the intuition of many people.
- hinkley 9y ago
  But small trees tend to die, so a better measure is by area planted. Internet is telling me trees fix about 7.7g/m²/d of CO2 (not carbon) and Pakistan has planted about 350k hectares. So that's about 4.6 million tons of CO2 per year once established. Edit to add: There is some hope though, as there are some people trying to work out the carbon fixation in the soil, indirectly caused by the trees, which might boost the numbers for healthy forests substantially over tree farms.
  - aidenn0 9y ago
    4.6M tonnes is within the range of the old-growth/new-growth estimate on a per-tree basis (CO2 is ~3.7x the weight of carbon).
  - ihsw2 9y ago
    It should be noted that they plan to restore 150 million hectares by 2020 and 350 million hectares by 2030, which is 428x and 1000x respectively. Furthermore they have one of the highest survival rates of trees in the world, ranging from 70 to 90 per cent. Together, these two metrics are very encouraging.
    - igravious 9y ago
      Where did you get those numbers from please?
      - ihsw2 9y ago
        The article linked above.
    - aidenn0 9y ago
      350MM hectares is at the point where it really starts to make an impact compared with usage cuts. The US (though add in China and India if you count reductions in projected growth) is probably the only country that has a near-term chance of being able to unilaterally cut worldwide carbon output by 3%, but Pakistan seems to have the ability to increase carbon sequestering by 3% of current worldwide carbon output.
- Dolores12 9y ago
  While globally it is a drop in the ocean, locally the quality of air should improve.
  - microcolonel 9y ago
    I think the more significant impacts will be in the new wood resource, and in combating soil erosion (which, through dust, is a big air pollution problem all across that side of the continent). If they can scale up demand for lumber immensely, and staff good foresters, they can probably do a lot of good. A mature cut tree is a great way to store carbon "forever".
sliverstorm 9y ago
No idea of the species, but fullgrown they might be 10-50 tons. Maybe 20% of the tree is carbon by weight, so 2-10 tons per tree. So, maybe 2-10bn tons of carbon when they are grown? The good news is that's a lot. The bad news is the yearly carbon production of just the American car fleet is only an order of magnitude or two lower.
rsync 9y ago
"Seriously though, anyone care to do the math on the impact of 1bn trees wrt. CO2 absorption?" That should be a fairly simple calculation, as children to your post have shown ... More interesting (and difficult) is the carbon costs of actually planting the trees in the first place ... 40% of the trees were saplings[1] that were moved and planted with labor that was fed and moved, etc. I have no idea how those figures pencil out - if the best-case absorption is 1.5 lbs/tree per year, is it obvious that less than 100-150 lbs of carbon is spent in planting the tree ? [1] http://www.thehindu.com/news/international/billion-tree-tsunami-surges-across-northern-pakistan/article17473107.ece http://www.thehindu.com/news/international/billion-tree-tsun...

by runeks 9y ago

aidenn0 9y ago

The first estimate google found for carbon fixing is new growth fixes ~0.7 lbs/tree-year and old-growth is ~1.5lbs/tree-year[1]. So 0.7 billion pounds, or ~300k tonnes of C/year Global carbon emissions are around 10 billion tonnes annually so that's about .003% of annual emissions. 1: http://sustainability.tufts.edu/carbon-sequestration/ http://sustainability.tufts.edu/carbon-sequestration/ (note that the per-tree is CO2 weight, not C weight)

sqeaky 9y ago
So put another way if every country (~200) planted this many trees it would capture about half a percent of the carbon we release each year. That really puts into perspective how much carbon is trapped in fossil fuel reserves for me. Put another way a few companies can dig so much carbon out of the ground the that they could outdo 195 countries each planting a billion trees by 200 fold.
- sliverstorm 9y ago
  Well, coal is in a very real sense concentrated trees, accumulated over massive timescales. So it isn't terribly strange that a handful of decade's worth of trees couldn't offset that.
  - sqeaky 9y ago
    You are totally correct, but it violates the intuition of many people.
hinkley 9y ago
But small trees tend to die, so a better measure is by area planted. Internet is telling me trees fix about 7.7g/m²/d of CO2 (not carbon) and Pakistan has planted about 350k hectares. So that's about 4.6 million tons of CO2 per year once established. Edit to add: There is some hope though, as there are some people trying to work out the carbon fixation in the soil, indirectly caused by the trees, which might boost the numbers for healthy forests substantially over tree farms.
- aidenn0 9y ago
  4.6M tonnes is within the range of the old-growth/new-growth estimate on a per-tree basis (CO2 is ~3.7x the weight of carbon).
- ihsw2 9y ago
  It should be noted that they plan to restore 150 million hectares by 2020 and 350 million hectares by 2030, which is 428x and 1000x respectively. Furthermore they have one of the highest survival rates of trees in the world, ranging from 70 to 90 per cent. Together, these two metrics are very encouraging.
  - igravious 9y ago
    Where did you get those numbers from please?
    - ihsw2 9y ago
      The article linked above.
  - aidenn0 9y ago
    350MM hectares is at the point where it really starts to make an impact compared with usage cuts. The US (though add in China and India if you count reductions in projected growth) is probably the only country that has a near-term chance of being able to unilaterally cut worldwide carbon output by 3%, but Pakistan seems to have the ability to increase carbon sequestering by 3% of current worldwide carbon output.
Dolores12 9y ago
While globally it is a drop in the ocean, locally the quality of air should improve.
- microcolonel 9y ago
  I think the more significant impacts will be in the new wood resource, and in combating soil erosion (which, through dust, is a big air pollution problem all across that side of the continent). If they can scale up demand for lumber immensely, and staff good foresters, they can probably do a lot of good. A mature cut tree is a great way to store carbon "forever".

sliverstorm 9y ago

No idea of the species, but fullgrown they might be 10-50 tons. Maybe 20% of the tree is carbon by weight, so 2-10 tons per tree. So, maybe 2-10bn tons of carbon when they are grown? The good news is that's a lot. The bad news is the yearly carbon production of just the American car fleet is only an order of magnitude or two lower.

rsync 9y ago

"Seriously though, anyone care to do the math on the impact of 1bn trees wrt. CO2 absorption?" That should be a fairly simple calculation, as children to your post have shown ... More interesting (and difficult) is the carbon costs of actually planting the trees in the first place ... 40% of the trees were saplings[1] that were moved and planted with labor that was fed and moved, etc. I have no idea how those figures pencil out - if the best-case absorption is 1.5 lbs/tree per year, is it obvious that less than 100-150 lbs of carbon is spent in planting the tree ? [1] http://www.thehindu.com/news/international/billion-tree-tsunami-surges-across-northern-pakistan/article17473107.ece http://www.thehindu.com/news/international/billion-tree-tsun...