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Every time an article on this topic comes up, I read the same responses in the comments, here or on Reddit. Yes, it's cheaper not to emit than it is to reclaim

Every time an article on this topic comes up, I read the same responses in the comments, here or on Reddit. Yes, it's cheaper not to emit than it is to reclaim, but how does this comment contribute to the solution? Even if everybody stopped emitting CO2 today, we still need to remove many Gigatons of CO2 from the atmosphere to save the planet. Planting trees is cheap and is PART of the solution. Similarly, every time an article about direct air capture (DAC) comes up, somebody complains that we should be planting trees instead. This is ALSO a very unhelpful comment, because in truth we need to be doing both DAC and planting trees. Even if we reforested all the depleted forests of the world, there would still be gigatons of CO2 to remove. The answer to every proposed solution to climate change is not whether "this or that", it is "this AND that". We need to be doing everything: reforest, DAC, wind, solar, nuclear, synthetic meats, etc. The whole kit.

baxtr 8y ago
Anyone heard about the sargassum catastrophe in the Caribbean? [1] While I think it is terrible it might be an additional great sink for CO2. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_XD92EgWzZg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_XD92EgWzZg
ip26 8y ago
Not to mention each solution has other benefits. Expanding swampland is a carbon sink and helps absorb storms & floodwaters. DAC is a carbon sink and paves the way to ultrapure synthetic designer fuel. Wind & solar save emissions, and improve air quality near human habitation. On and on. As far as I see it, they are all virtuous technologies, and their relationship with carbon is just one more reason.
b_tterc_p 8y ago
Is this true? This is something I question a lot. Intuition tells me that the greenhouse effect of CO2 and other gasses determines derivative of climate change, but its often presented like it sets the absolute average temperature. That is, if we stopped producing CO2 completely back to pre-industrial levels (somehow), would we expect the globe to get warmer? Or are both statements true because excess CO2 naturally leaves the atmosphere into space + gets absorbed into the ocean?
- AnthonyMouse 8y ago
  Part of the problem with climate change is that some of the effects are self-sustaining. For example, snow and ice reflect light back into space. If the temperature increases then more of the ice melts, so more light is absorbed by the earth which raises the temperature. Then even if you get rid of the carbon, the temperature stays higher because the ice is gone and is no longer reflecting light back into space. And the ice is from the last ice age, it doesn't just refreeze on its own -- especially now that the temperature is higher. Meanwhile with higher temperatures there are more areas of drought, which means less vegetation grows there, which means those areas can absorb less carbon. And that too is sticky. If the temperature stays higher then there continue to be droughts and less vegetation. What this means is that we need to stop emitting carbon ASAP, and then on top of that ultimately do something to reverse the effects and actively work to get the temperature back down to where it was, because it may not be able to fix itself. We think of the Earth as a self-regulating system, but that isn't because it's stable, it's because it's adaptive. Earth's temperatures have been higher than this and still sustained life, but none of that life was humans, and the previous changes were accompanied by mass extinctions.
  - chupasaurus 8y ago
    > Then even if you get rid of the carbon, the temperature stays higher because the ice is gone and is no longer reflecting light back into space. And the ice is from the last ice age, it doesn't just refreeze on its own -- especially now that the temperature is higher. Check the historical data on CO₂ levels from antarctic ice. It correlates perfectly with the ice ages (we had samples of ~400K years covering 3 previous), and guess what, we are now on the brink of a next one.
    - AnthonyMouse 8y ago
      Were on the brink of a next one, on the geological timescale. Before we started burning all this carbon and went hard the other way.
ph0rque 8y ago
Actually, it's possible to remove all the extra CO2 just by planting trees (not to detract from all the other things we should be doing). Furthermore, it's affordable: $15/average US resident/year. I wrote a blog post about it recently: https://automicrofarm.com/blog/2019/03/solving-climate-change-with-trees.html https://automicrofarm.com/blog/2019/03/solving-climate-chang...
- _rpd 8y ago
  > Actually, it's possible to remove all the extra CO2 just by planting trees The linked, peer-reviewed paper in Nature says otherwise. Perhaps you could review it and point out their mistake?
  - ph0rque 8y ago
    Here's a paper saying there is room for 1.2 trillion more trees to be planted: https://eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2019-02/ez-pcc021119.php https://eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2019-02/ez-pcc021119.php Perhaps you could track down the discrepancy in the statements?
- xyzzyz 8y ago
  So, to offset his carbon emissions, American must plant 150 trees a year, ensure that they grow for at least 10 years, and then ensure that the CO2 captured by them doesn’t get rereleased. This means that we need space for at least 3 trillion trees, which is three times the space available, based on the figure in your link. Ensuring that the CO2 doesn’t get rereleased means that all that lumber needs to be buried or sunk, since this is way more lumber than the humanity actually uses productively. Additionally, this would mean doing heavy industrial management of all this immense forest area to cut and bury all these hundreds of billions of trees a year. This would require digging huge pits, transporting lots of heavy material to them, at extra emissions. And that’s for American emission only, which are only a fraction of global emissions. And of course we ignore the question why would you want to bury all this wood while keeping digging out all the fossils, when you could be using the same wood to generate energy instead. So no, while this might work to pacify the conscience of an individual, it makes absolutely no sense to do it at scale.

baxtr 8y ago

Anyone heard about the sargassum catastrophe in the Caribbean? [1] While I think it is terrible it might be an additional great sink for CO2. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_XD92EgWzZg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_XD92EgWzZg

ip26 8y ago

Not to mention each solution has other benefits. Expanding swampland is a carbon sink and helps absorb storms & floodwaters. DAC is a carbon sink and paves the way to ultrapure synthetic designer fuel. Wind & solar save emissions, and improve air quality near human habitation. On and on. As far as I see it, they are all virtuous technologies, and their relationship with carbon is just one more reason.

b_tterc_p 8y ago

Is this true? This is something I question a lot. Intuition tells me that the greenhouse effect of CO2 and other gasses determines derivative of climate change, but its often presented like it sets the absolute average temperature. That is, if we stopped producing CO2 completely back to pre-industrial levels (somehow), would we expect the globe to get warmer? Or are both statements true because excess CO2 naturally leaves the atmosphere into space + gets absorbed into the ocean?

AnthonyMouse 8y ago
Part of the problem with climate change is that some of the effects are self-sustaining. For example, snow and ice reflect light back into space. If the temperature increases then more of the ice melts, so more light is absorbed by the earth which raises the temperature. Then even if you get rid of the carbon, the temperature stays higher because the ice is gone and is no longer reflecting light back into space. And the ice is from the last ice age, it doesn't just refreeze on its own -- especially now that the temperature is higher. Meanwhile with higher temperatures there are more areas of drought, which means less vegetation grows there, which means those areas can absorb less carbon. And that too is sticky. If the temperature stays higher then there continue to be droughts and less vegetation. What this means is that we need to stop emitting carbon ASAP, and then on top of that ultimately do something to reverse the effects and actively work to get the temperature back down to where it was, because it may not be able to fix itself. We think of the Earth as a self-regulating system, but that isn't because it's stable, it's because it's adaptive. Earth's temperatures have been higher than this and still sustained life, but none of that life was humans, and the previous changes were accompanied by mass extinctions.
- chupasaurus 8y ago
  > Then even if you get rid of the carbon, the temperature stays higher because the ice is gone and is no longer reflecting light back into space. And the ice is from the last ice age, it doesn't just refreeze on its own -- especially now that the temperature is higher. Check the historical data on CO₂ levels from antarctic ice. It correlates perfectly with the ice ages (we had samples of ~400K years covering 3 previous), and guess what, we are now on the brink of a next one.
  - AnthonyMouse 8y ago
    Were on the brink of a next one, on the geological timescale. Before we started burning all this carbon and went hard the other way.

ph0rque 8y ago

Actually, it's possible to remove all the extra CO2 just by planting trees (not to detract from all the other things we should be doing). Furthermore, it's affordable: $15/average US resident/year. I wrote a blog post about it recently: https://automicrofarm.com/blog/2019/03/solving-climate-change-with-trees.html https://automicrofarm.com/blog/2019/03/solving-climate-chang...

_rpd 8y ago
> Actually, it's possible to remove all the extra CO2 just by planting trees The linked, peer-reviewed paper in Nature says otherwise. Perhaps you could review it and point out their mistake?
- ph0rque 8y ago
  Here's a paper saying there is room for 1.2 trillion more trees to be planted: https://eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2019-02/ez-pcc021119.php https://eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2019-02/ez-pcc021119.php Perhaps you could track down the discrepancy in the statements?
xyzzyz 8y ago
So, to offset his carbon emissions, American must plant 150 trees a year, ensure that they grow for at least 10 years, and then ensure that the CO2 captured by them doesn’t get rereleased. This means that we need space for at least 3 trillion trees, which is three times the space available, based on the figure in your link. Ensuring that the CO2 doesn’t get rereleased means that all that lumber needs to be buried or sunk, since this is way more lumber than the humanity actually uses productively. Additionally, this would mean doing heavy industrial management of all this immense forest area to cut and bury all these hundreds of billions of trees a year. This would require digging huge pits, transporting lots of heavy material to them, at extra emissions. And that’s for American emission only, which are only a fraction of global emissions. And of course we ignore the question why would you want to bury all this wood while keeping digging out all the fossils, when you could be using the same wood to generate energy instead. So no, while this might work to pacify the conscience of an individual, it makes absolutely no sense to do it at scale.