9 ms·

Many more trees could be planted without encroaching on crop land or urban areas

194 points by ciconia 7y ago

gshdg 7y ago
Where can one donate to an organization that plants trees?
- notatoad 7y ago
  this is one: https://edenprojects.org/ https://edenprojects.org/ If you know tentree shirts, that's who they donate to.
- Maximus9000 7y ago
  There are tree planting orgs like https://trees.org/ https://trees.org/ There are also very effective tree saving charities like "cool earth" https://www.givingwhatwecan.org/report/cool-earth/ https://www.givingwhatwecan.org/report/cool-earth/
  - krageon 7y ago
    https://trees.org https://trees.org was mentioned elsewhere as well, but when I tried to donate they really asked for a prohibitive amount of personal information. Then they had a "privacy policy" that I had to agree with, which was also chunky. I prefer donating to an organisation that recognises that there is no need for a huge amount of my personal data.
- Mad_Mac 7y ago
  There's also https://www.ecosia.org/ https://www.ecosia.org/ search that donates ad money generated from searches to tree planting projects. They also provide their monthly finances on their blog.
michaelaiello 7y ago
You can plant trees at $USD0.10 per tree at trees.org
- raphaelj 7y ago
  That's really interesting. According to this [1], a 10 years old `Calliandra calothyrsus` such as the ones they (trees.org) plant captures about 170 kg / 380 lbs of CO2. According to the World Bank [2], the average European citizen produces 6 tons of CO2 while the average American produces about 16 tons. That would mean that they can offset the yearly CO2 emissions of an European or American person by planting 35 ($3.5) or 95 ($9.5) trees, respectively. Quite impressive if true. -- [1] http://www.unm.edu/~jbrink/365/Documents/Calculating_tree_carbon.pdf http://www.unm.edu/~jbrink/365/Documents/Calculating_tree_ca... [2] https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/EN.ATM.CO2E.PC?locations=US-EU https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/EN.ATM.CO2E.PC?location...
  - solstice 7y ago
    That's true but only half the picture: every time one of these trees dies it is cut down it needs to be buried or otherwise prevented from releasing the CO2 back into the atmosphere. The tree you mentioned is described on Wikipedia as follows: "...This tree grows to about 6 m and has pinnate compound leaves and flowers with a boss of prominent reddish-purple stamens. It is not very drought-tolerant and the above-ground parts are short-lived but the roots regularly resprout..." So that's a significant amount of stuff to bury/dispose of. (The project at trees.org seems very interesting regardless, though.)
    - zdragnar 7y ago
      Trees don't completely return to atmospheric co2; leaf litter, fallen branches and trunks are an important part of lifecycles for many fungi, bacteria and insects. I goodly amount of said material becomes new topsoil, rather than simply being respirated back out into the air.
    - CalRobert 7y ago
      We could get back to timber-frame buildings I suppose. If nothing else, woodworking is great fun.
zamazingo 7y ago
That means a global / multinational movement against governments cutting trees (eg for lucrative construction deals) is needed.
- GrumpyNl 7y ago
  Buy a little property and plant some trees, doesnt have to be that expensive. Thats what i did.
- pjkundert 7y ago
  Massive reforestation would eventually reduce cost of wood construction, allowing harvesting and replanting to sequester even more carbon.
- lopmotr 7y ago
  Cutting for wood doesn't hurt since the carbon is still trapped in the wood. In fact it helps since they regrow new trees that sequester carbon faster in their early years than mature trees.
  - SketchySeaBeast 7y ago
    > since they regrow new trees that sequester carbon faster in their early years than mature trees Is that actually the case? Wouldn't a larger tree's volume mean it consumes a ton more Carbon than a smaller tree, even if the smaller tree is rapidly growing?
    - lopmotr 7y ago
      Turns out it's not so simple: Young trees sequester carbon faster: https://psmag.com/environment/young-trees-suck-up-more-carbon-than-old-ones https://psmag.com/environment/young-trees-suck-up-more-carbo... Old trees sequester carbon faster: https://theconversation.com/big-old-trees-grow-faster-making-them-vital-carbon-absorbers-22104 https://theconversation.com/big-old-trees-grow-faster-making... Though when you consider forestry has the goal of producing sequestered carbon (wood), you would think they'd find a fast way to do that. In my country, commercial forestry is done with non-native species that are planted by the forest owners and obviously must be replanted for them to keep operating. They harvest them after about 20 years of growth. I guess that's the age when further growth would be too slow to be economical.
hdivider 7y ago
Given the right approach, this is also probably the only way to tackle climate change that is self-sustaining. Because trees reproduce. And they constantly search for ways to adapt to their environment in order to survive and reproduce. Human technology can't do that yet.
- wrycoder 7y ago
  And hopefully not soon.
skosch 7y ago
Interesting – we need more of such studies. Check out Drawdown [0] for other interventions with quantified costs/benefits. Economists widely agree that carbon pricing is the most effective way to fix climate change [1], and fee-and-dividend implementations are the most viable politically (there's a bill before Congress now [2]). [0] https://www.drawdown.org/ https://www.drawdown.org/ [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/08/business/economic-science-nobel-prize.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/08/business/economic-science... [2] https://citizensclimatelobby.org/energy-innovation-and-carbon-dividend-act/ https://citizensclimatelobby.org/energy-innovation-and-carbo...
- jwr 7y ago
  > Economists widely agree that carbon pricing is the most effective way to fix climate change That is true, and does not conflict with the findings of the article. I think the difference here is that we can start planting trees right now. Carbon taxation is something people still pretend doesn't have to be done. It's also worth noting, that given the accelerating pace of the climate crisis, the time to start planting those forests is NOW. Not in a year, not in two years, NOW.
  - skosch 7y ago
    Absolutely true. And tree planting appears (to me) to be an underappreciated philanthropic cause area. This study could help change that.
  - Retric 7y ago
    Most people are overestimating the value in planting trees. Trees readily plant themselves in areas they are well adapted to. Areas that don’t quickly turn into forests are generally poorly suited to growing trees. Further, not all trees are equivalent with marginal areas generally resulting in small and often very slowly growing trees.
    - skosch 7y ago
      > Trees readily plant themselves in areas they are well adapted to. I am very skeptical if that's true – see formerly forested areas like Iceland, Brazil, etc. It's not easy for a single sapling to grow into a tree, even if the conditions are right. That's why companies like Afforestt exist [0]. [0] http://www.afforestt.com/ http://www.afforestt.com/
tamaharbor 7y ago
Sounds like problem solved then.
CoolGuySteve 7y ago
I wonder if anyone is researching genetically modified trees that specialize in carbon sequestration. Sort of like Golden Rice but for climate change.
- HillaryBriss 7y ago
  I wonder that too. Also, how much concrete construction could be replaced with engineered wood construction so that less concrete was manufactured (thus reducing a primary source of CO2 output) and more CO2 could be sequestered in buildings? i.e. can we genetically engineer a tree that grows fast and is well suited for construction uses?
  - Tharkun 7y ago
    There may be no need to genetically engineer trees for construction at this point, at least not in north america. Some kind of beetle (or was it a fungus?) has killed off a mind boggling number of trees which can be used as engineered wood in construction. As CLT and maybe Brettstapel.
    - JudgeWapner 7y ago
      > Some kind of beetle (or was it a fungus?) has killed off a mind boggling number of trees which may be a side-effect of fighting forest fires and the campaign against logging. higher tree density == easier for fungus to spread. this is why I don't automatically believe anything from the "enlightened" progressive camp. back in the 80's, it was "Stop the Big Bad Loggers! Save the Forest!". Now, had they responsibly thinned the forest, used the timber for logging, that CO2 would be sequestered in homes and the fungus wouldn't have spread through the forest.
      - dylan604 7y ago
        I get the premise of thinning, but nature seemed to do just fine for quite some time before humans brought their theories on how to maintain forests. Man comes up with a theory on how to use the land, but then has to come up with new theories to undo the effect the preceding theory caused. Looking at how nature has coped with out humans in Chernobyl is a good example of nature not needing man's help.
acqq 7y ago
From the article: “Crowther emphasised that it remains vital to reverse the current trends of rising greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuel burning and forest destruction, and bring them down to zero. He said this is needed to stop the climate crisis becoming even worse and because the forest restoration envisaged would take 50-100 years to have its full effect of removing 200bn tonnes of carbon” 200bn tonnes? Apparently humanity releases at the moment almost 40bn CO2 tonnes per year (1). All that trees then replace only 5 years. 1) https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aaf303 https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aaf303 "CO2 emissions grew by 1.6% in 2017 to 36.2 Gt (billion tonnes), and are expected to grow a further 2.7% in 2018 (range: 1.8%–3.7%) to a record 37.1 ± 2 Gt CO2 (Le Quéré et al 2018b)."
- Flip-per 7y ago
  My interpretation: Only 42 % of the emitted CO2 stays in the atmosphere[1], the rest is soaked up by land and ocean. The article only relates to the CO2 in the atmosphere. [1] https://www.co2.earth/global-co2-emissions https://www.co2.earth/global-co2-emissions
  - acqq 7y ago
    That factor changes "5 years" to 12. Which is still less than that because our emissions still increase. I don't suggest that trees aren't important, just that they are definitely still just a tiny part against what we put in the atmosphere at the moment if we contiue to do so (and we do too little to change that).
akeck 7y ago
Related: A Toyota engineer grows forests: https://fellowsblog.ted.com/how-to-grow-a-forest-really-really-fast-d27df202ba09 https://fellowsblog.ted.com/how-to-grow-a-forest-really-real...
- jwr 7y ago
  The cool thing is that you can order your own dense, self-sustaining forest from https://www.afforestt.com https://www.afforestt.com — and it doesn't have to be big (100 square meters), and it doesn't take a hundred years, either.
  - toomuchtodo 7y ago
    Afforestt was started by the Toyota engineer in OPs citation.
  - thewhitetulip 7y ago
    But this is very costly.
  - krageon 7y ago
    100 square meters is very, very big unless you are almost unthinkably wealthy. Or at least it is in my neck of the woods.
    - jwr 7y ago
      10 meters by 10 meters is very, very big?
    - kwhitefoot 7y ago
      100 m2 is only a square about 33 feet on a side. Big if you live in a high rise in a city but you don't need to be unthinkably wealthy in any area that has woods. The plot of land that my house sits on is 800 m2 and I am most certainly not wealthy, let alone unthinkably so.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
WalterBright 7y ago
It's about time this was noticed. Consider that coal comes from dead trees - growing trees will be a big part of the solution.
- tortarga 7y ago
  Trees that had their leaves stripped by acid rain, flowed into stagnant seas and the nutrients caused ocean-wide algal blooms.
malloy 7y ago
totally agree!
rawland 7y ago
“We still have a net loss of about 10bn trees a year,” Crowther said. This is a horrible number... I wonder what the true loss is, without the component of planted trees?
- Flip-per 7y ago
  "The Planet Now Has More Trees Than It Did 35 Years Ago" (Nature publication): https://psmag.com/environment/the-planet-now-has-more-trees-than-it-did-35-years-ago https://psmag.com/environment/the-planet-now-has-more-trees-...
lrem 7y ago
The key phrase of the article: “Without freeing up the billions of hectares we use to produce meat and milk, this ambition is not realisable,” This is the polar opposite of what is happening at the moment. In particular: https://edition.cnn.com/2019/07/02/americas/amazon-brazil-bolsonaro-deforestation-scli-intl/index.html https://edition.cnn.com/2019/07/02/americas/amazon-brazil-bo...
- tobltobs 7y ago
  Why do you cut of the second part of this sentence? “Restoring trees at [low] density is not mutually exclusive with grazing. In fact many studies suggest sheep and cattle do better if there are a few trees in the field.”
  - lrem 7y ago
    Because it is not that relevant, for two reasons: 1. Most land used to produce meat and milk is actually not by grazing. 2. I was tunnel-visioned on the part I added. The article calls for reforesting 1.7G hectares, at average 50% density, for a total of 850M. Amazon is being deforested at about 500k-1M hectares per year[1] and the political climate suggests making it worse rather than better. According to a quick googling, over half of Amazons trees are over 300 years old and the deforestation is done with fire, effectively instantly undoing 300 years of sequestration. So, within 3-6 years of business as usual just the Amazon deforestation balances out a year of this theoretically possible global effort. Please prove me wrong, I don't want this to be true :( Edit: TFA calls for 1.7G (not T) hectares with 1.2T trees. [1]:https://news.mongabay.com/2019/05/new-report-examines-drivers-of-rising-amazon-deforestation-on-country-by-country-basis/ https://news.mongabay.com/2019/05/new-report-examines-driver...
    - cgh 7y ago
      >> Most land used to produce meat and milk is actually not by grazing. That's false. All cattle is grazed before spending the final few weeks of life in feedlots (unless it's grass-finished beef, in which case the feedlot is skipped). Anti-cattle people really need to visit a ranch sometime to see what actually happens there because I read a lot of misinformation on HN around this topic.
your-nanny 7y ago
I wonder about growing trees in regions losing permafrost from GW
- lopmotr 7y ago
  Perhaps there's a natural negative feedback where a higher CO2 concentration leads to more tree growth which reduces the CO2 concentration.
- aitchnyu 7y ago
  I wonder about creating a new homeland from reclaimed permafrost for climate refugees from all over the world. Maldives is already saving up for one since 2009 and looking at India, Sri Lanka and Australia.
- your-nanny 7y ago
  actually it may be the case that the soil is too poor, or the long winter nights and too short days is too inhibitive. I know that efforts to reforest Iceland have not been very successful. even if it worked, could be too slow
Flip-per 7y ago
> The analysis found there are 1.7bn hectares of treeless land on which 1.2tn native tree saplings would naturally grow. > Crowther’s team calculated that there are currently about 3tn trees in the world, which is about half the number that existed before I really hope this study is solid, but how can 1.2tn re-planted trees make up for a loss of 3tn logged ones? And moreover cover the CO2 of all that burned coal and oil?
- NeedMoreTea 7y ago
  Because it's not suggesting to return to pre-human numbers, but to plant without encroaching on current agricultural and urban land.
WalterBright 7y ago
Finding ways to get trees to grow in inhospitable areas, like the tundra, deserts, and at high altitude, can also help.
- Panino 7y ago
  As far as deserts go, here is Geoff Lawton using permaculture to grow fruit and other trees in Wadi Rum, Jordan, a desert that gets just 17mm of rain per year (less than an inch). They use only permaculture and greywater to achieve this feat. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ycLbO02lb7w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ycLbO02lb7w If fruit can be grown there, it can be grown almost anywhere on Earth.
jillesvangurp 7y ago
It can actually be better than this still. Cattle can be part of a solution to helping restore arid land where the soil has been destroyed by intensive farming and erosion. Healthy soil stores enormous amounts of biomass (aka carbon). Intensive farming has destroyed enormous amounts of land world-wide and turned it into desert, releasing lots of CO2 into the atmosphere. This is a reversible process and catlle is part of the solution: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2011/jul/22/cows-climate-change https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2011/jul/22/cows-cli... So, using large herds of cattle to refertilize bits of land that are currently not usable for agriculture would capture enormous amounts of carbon in the soil, restore the water retention capability of arid land, put a stop to large scale erosion of remaining soil, and restore it to productive land that may be used for growing food. Alternatively, once restored, you can sit back and watch the land reforest itself or use planned grazing to keep it as grassland. There's no actual need to manually plant trees; though it does probably speed up the process. Finally, using cattle to fix land produces lots of nice organic/free range meat in a sustainable way as a side effects. And yes, cow farts have a green house effect but it is offset by the captured CO2 in the restored soil. Healthy soil has lots of biomass.
- cgh 7y ago
  You are correct. Here's another link in support of what I think is highly counter-intuitive to people here: http://www.dasnr.okstate.edu/Members/donald-stotts-40okstate.edu/carbon-sequestration-a-positive-aspect-of-beef-cattle-grazing-grasslands http://www.dasnr.okstate.edu/Members/donald-stotts-40okstate...
- senorjazz 7y ago
  Is this actually validated? Living in an area heavily deforested for cattle grazing, the cattle grazed land does not look like a healthy land. The cattle keep all plant life cut right back. Hot sun can easily access the soil drying it out, then when heavy rains come, the top soil all runs off the land. Land that is left without cattle fares better, land that is actively reforested and trees helped to get established looks infinitely more healthy.
  - 7y ago
nielsbot 7y ago
A glimmer of hope? Waiting for the other shoe to drop in terms of "it will cost too much", "politically it's not possible", or some such...
- kibwen 7y ago
  I think part of the appeal of this plan, aside from its theorized effectiveness, is that it doesn't require any political buy-in. People can plant trees all on their own. That said, a trillion is a quantity larger than any human has the ability to intuitively grasp. It really depends if by "planting trees" they mean "scattering seeds by aircraft" or if they mean "hand-planting saplings".
  - 8bitsrule 7y ago
    Maybe this helps: if most Americans plant 3 trees, that's about a billion trees. When I was young and part of a crew, each us planted -several hundred- trees over 3 eight-hour days. So at least a thousand per person in 10 days. A nation-wide volunteer org -with access to enough seedlings- ... that's the tricky part ... could quickly multiply that to 300 per American - 10% of that trillion.
  - seltzered_ 7y ago
    "scattering seeds by aircraft" FWIW, There are startups doing this idea like BioCarbon Engineering https://www.biocarbonengineering.com/services https://www.biocarbonengineering.com/services (found via video by one of it's investors Tom Chi https://vimeo.com/294975140 https://vimeo.com/294975140 (at 11 minute mark) ) The concept of seed drops / seedballs seemingly goes back to the 'zero budget farming' ideas of Masanobu Fukuoka (an older video that goes into seedball making - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A4-bwW8PWI0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A4-bwW8PWI0 )
- empath75 7y ago
  It won’t matter if we keep pumping carbon dioxide into the air, once the forests are grown, unless we bury them all deep underground and grow them again. It’s a one time thing.
dr_dshiv 7y ago
What, is it the 1980s again? Save the Rainforest and Plant a Tree? Why did that plank of the environmental movement get dropped? Did it? In any case, it is back just in time for the latest season of Stranger Things. Ooh!
sunstone 7y ago
So would deciduous trees better than evergreens for this given that they shed tons of leaves every year?
aitchnyu 7y ago
What do scientists say about alleged negatives about planting trees, like reduced reflectivity and slower disperal of fumes in cities? Do any of them still stand?

194 points by ciconia 7y ago

gshdg 7y ago

Where can one donate to an organization that plants trees?

notatoad 7y ago
this is one: https://edenprojects.org/ https://edenprojects.org/ If you know tentree shirts, that's who they donate to.
Maximus9000 7y ago
There are tree planting orgs like https://trees.org/ https://trees.org/ There are also very effective tree saving charities like "cool earth" https://www.givingwhatwecan.org/report/cool-earth/ https://www.givingwhatwecan.org/report/cool-earth/
- krageon 7y ago
  https://trees.org https://trees.org was mentioned elsewhere as well, but when I tried to donate they really asked for a prohibitive amount of personal information. Then they had a "privacy policy" that I had to agree with, which was also chunky. I prefer donating to an organisation that recognises that there is no need for a huge amount of my personal data.
Mad_Mac 7y ago
There's also https://www.ecosia.org/ https://www.ecosia.org/ search that donates ad money generated from searches to tree planting projects. They also provide their monthly finances on their blog.

michaelaiello 7y ago

You can plant trees at $USD0.10 per tree at trees.org

raphaelj 7y ago
That's really interesting. According to this [1], a 10 years old `Calliandra calothyrsus` such as the ones they (trees.org) plant captures about 170 kg / 380 lbs of CO2. According to the World Bank [2], the average European citizen produces 6 tons of CO2 while the average American produces about 16 tons. That would mean that they can offset the yearly CO2 emissions of an European or American person by planting 35 ($3.5) or 95 ($9.5) trees, respectively. Quite impressive if true. -- [1] http://www.unm.edu/~jbrink/365/Documents/Calculating_tree_carbon.pdf http://www.unm.edu/~jbrink/365/Documents/Calculating_tree_ca... [2] https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/EN.ATM.CO2E.PC?locations=US-EU https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/EN.ATM.CO2E.PC?location...
- solstice 7y ago
  That's true but only half the picture: every time one of these trees dies it is cut down it needs to be buried or otherwise prevented from releasing the CO2 back into the atmosphere. The tree you mentioned is described on Wikipedia as follows: "...This tree grows to about 6 m and has pinnate compound leaves and flowers with a boss of prominent reddish-purple stamens. It is not very drought-tolerant and the above-ground parts are short-lived but the roots regularly resprout..." So that's a significant amount of stuff to bury/dispose of. (The project at trees.org seems very interesting regardless, though.)
  - zdragnar 7y ago
    Trees don't completely return to atmospheric co2; leaf litter, fallen branches and trunks are an important part of lifecycles for many fungi, bacteria and insects. I goodly amount of said material becomes new topsoil, rather than simply being respirated back out into the air.
  - CalRobert 7y ago
    We could get back to timber-frame buildings I suppose. If nothing else, woodworking is great fun.

zamazingo 7y ago

That means a global / multinational movement against governments cutting trees (eg for lucrative construction deals) is needed.

GrumpyNl 7y ago
Buy a little property and plant some trees, doesnt have to be that expensive. Thats what i did.
pjkundert 7y ago
Massive reforestation would eventually reduce cost of wood construction, allowing harvesting and replanting to sequester even more carbon.
lopmotr 7y ago
Cutting for wood doesn't hurt since the carbon is still trapped in the wood. In fact it helps since they regrow new trees that sequester carbon faster in their early years than mature trees.
- SketchySeaBeast 7y ago
  > since they regrow new trees that sequester carbon faster in their early years than mature trees Is that actually the case? Wouldn't a larger tree's volume mean it consumes a ton more Carbon than a smaller tree, even if the smaller tree is rapidly growing?
  - lopmotr 7y ago
    Turns out it's not so simple: Young trees sequester carbon faster: https://psmag.com/environment/young-trees-suck-up-more-carbon-than-old-ones https://psmag.com/environment/young-trees-suck-up-more-carbo... Old trees sequester carbon faster: https://theconversation.com/big-old-trees-grow-faster-making-them-vital-carbon-absorbers-22104 https://theconversation.com/big-old-trees-grow-faster-making... Though when you consider forestry has the goal of producing sequestered carbon (wood), you would think they'd find a fast way to do that. In my country, commercial forestry is done with non-native species that are planted by the forest owners and obviously must be replanted for them to keep operating. They harvest them after about 20 years of growth. I guess that's the age when further growth would be too slow to be economical.

hdivider 7y ago

Given the right approach, this is also probably the only way to tackle climate change that is self-sustaining. Because trees reproduce. And they constantly search for ways to adapt to their environment in order to survive and reproduce. Human technology can't do that yet.

wrycoder 7y ago
And hopefully not soon.

skosch 7y ago

Interesting – we need more of such studies. Check out Drawdown [0] for other interventions with quantified costs/benefits. Economists widely agree that carbon pricing is the most effective way to fix climate change [1], and fee-and-dividend implementations are the most viable politically (there's a bill before Congress now [2]). [0] https://www.drawdown.org/ https://www.drawdown.org/ [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/08/business/economic-science-nobel-prize.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/08/business/economic-science... [2] https://citizensclimatelobby.org/energy-innovation-and-carbon-dividend-act/ https://citizensclimatelobby.org/energy-innovation-and-carbo...

jwr 7y ago
> Economists widely agree that carbon pricing is the most effective way to fix climate change That is true, and does not conflict with the findings of the article. I think the difference here is that we can start planting trees right now. Carbon taxation is something people still pretend doesn't have to be done. It's also worth noting, that given the accelerating pace of the climate crisis, the time to start planting those forests is NOW. Not in a year, not in two years, NOW.
- skosch 7y ago
  Absolutely true. And tree planting appears (to me) to be an underappreciated philanthropic cause area. This study could help change that.
- Retric 7y ago
  Most people are overestimating the value in planting trees. Trees readily plant themselves in areas they are well adapted to. Areas that don’t quickly turn into forests are generally poorly suited to growing trees. Further, not all trees are equivalent with marginal areas generally resulting in small and often very slowly growing trees.
  - skosch 7y ago
    > Trees readily plant themselves in areas they are well adapted to. I am very skeptical if that's true – see formerly forested areas like Iceland, Brazil, etc. It's not easy for a single sapling to grow into a tree, even if the conditions are right. That's why companies like Afforestt exist [0]. [0] http://www.afforestt.com/ http://www.afforestt.com/

tamaharbor 7y ago

Sounds like problem solved then.

CoolGuySteve 7y ago

I wonder if anyone is researching genetically modified trees that specialize in carbon sequestration. Sort of like Golden Rice but for climate change.

HillaryBriss 7y ago
I wonder that too. Also, how much concrete construction could be replaced with engineered wood construction so that less concrete was manufactured (thus reducing a primary source of CO2 output) and more CO2 could be sequestered in buildings? i.e. can we genetically engineer a tree that grows fast and is well suited for construction uses?
- Tharkun 7y ago
  There may be no need to genetically engineer trees for construction at this point, at least not in north america. Some kind of beetle (or was it a fungus?) has killed off a mind boggling number of trees which can be used as engineered wood in construction. As CLT and maybe Brettstapel.
  - JudgeWapner 7y ago
    > Some kind of beetle (or was it a fungus?) has killed off a mind boggling number of trees which may be a side-effect of fighting forest fires and the campaign against logging. higher tree density == easier for fungus to spread. this is why I don't automatically believe anything from the "enlightened" progressive camp. back in the 80's, it was "Stop the Big Bad Loggers! Save the Forest!". Now, had they responsibly thinned the forest, used the timber for logging, that CO2 would be sequestered in homes and the fungus wouldn't have spread through the forest.
    - dylan604 7y ago
      I get the premise of thinning, but nature seemed to do just fine for quite some time before humans brought their theories on how to maintain forests. Man comes up with a theory on how to use the land, but then has to come up with new theories to undo the effect the preceding theory caused. Looking at how nature has coped with out humans in Chernobyl is a good example of nature not needing man's help.

acqq 7y ago

From the article: “Crowther emphasised that it remains vital to reverse the current trends of rising greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuel burning and forest destruction, and bring them down to zero. He said this is needed to stop the climate crisis becoming even worse and because the forest restoration envisaged would take 50-100 years to have its full effect of removing 200bn tonnes of carbon” 200bn tonnes? Apparently humanity releases at the moment almost 40bn CO2 tonnes per year (1). All that trees then replace only 5 years. 1) https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aaf303 https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aaf303 "CO2 emissions grew by 1.6% in 2017 to 36.2 Gt (billion tonnes), and are expected to grow a further 2.7% in 2018 (range: 1.8%–3.7%) to a record 37.1 ± 2 Gt CO2 (Le Quéré et al 2018b)."

Flip-per 7y ago
My interpretation: Only 42 % of the emitted CO2 stays in the atmosphere[1], the rest is soaked up by land and ocean. The article only relates to the CO2 in the atmosphere. [1] https://www.co2.earth/global-co2-emissions https://www.co2.earth/global-co2-emissions
- acqq 7y ago
  That factor changes "5 years" to 12. Which is still less than that because our emissions still increase. I don't suggest that trees aren't important, just that they are definitely still just a tiny part against what we put in the atmosphere at the moment if we contiue to do so (and we do too little to change that).

akeck 7y ago

Related: A Toyota engineer grows forests: https://fellowsblog.ted.com/how-to-grow-a-forest-really-really-fast-d27df202ba09 https://fellowsblog.ted.com/how-to-grow-a-forest-really-real...

jwr 7y ago
The cool thing is that you can order your own dense, self-sustaining forest from https://www.afforestt.com https://www.afforestt.com — and it doesn't have to be big (100 square meters), and it doesn't take a hundred years, either.
- toomuchtodo 7y ago
  Afforestt was started by the Toyota engineer in OPs citation.
- thewhitetulip 7y ago
  But this is very costly.
- krageon 7y ago
  100 square meters is very, very big unless you are almost unthinkably wealthy. Or at least it is in my neck of the woods.
  - jwr 7y ago
    10 meters by 10 meters is very, very big?
  - kwhitefoot 7y ago
    100 m2 is only a square about 33 feet on a side. Big if you live in a high rise in a city but you don't need to be unthinkably wealthy in any area that has woods. The plot of land that my house sits on is 800 m2 and I am most certainly not wealthy, let alone unthinkably so.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

WalterBright 7y ago

It's about time this was noticed. Consider that coal comes from dead trees - growing trees will be a big part of the solution.

tortarga 7y ago
Trees that had their leaves stripped by acid rain, flowed into stagnant seas and the nutrients caused ocean-wide algal blooms.

malloy 7y ago

totally agree!

rawland 7y ago

“We still have a net loss of about 10bn trees a year,” Crowther said. This is a horrible number... I wonder what the true loss is, without the component of planted trees?

Flip-per 7y ago
"The Planet Now Has More Trees Than It Did 35 Years Ago" (Nature publication): https://psmag.com/environment/the-planet-now-has-more-trees-than-it-did-35-years-ago https://psmag.com/environment/the-planet-now-has-more-trees-...

lrem 7y ago

The key phrase of the article: “Without freeing up the billions of hectares we use to produce meat and milk, this ambition is not realisable,” This is the polar opposite of what is happening at the moment. In particular: https://edition.cnn.com/2019/07/02/americas/amazon-brazil-bolsonaro-deforestation-scli-intl/index.html https://edition.cnn.com/2019/07/02/americas/amazon-brazil-bo...

tobltobs 7y ago
Why do you cut of the second part of this sentence? “Restoring trees at [low] density is not mutually exclusive with grazing. In fact many studies suggest sheep and cattle do better if there are a few trees in the field.”
- lrem 7y ago
  Because it is not that relevant, for two reasons: 1. Most land used to produce meat and milk is actually not by grazing. 2. I was tunnel-visioned on the part I added. The article calls for reforesting 1.7G hectares, at average 50% density, for a total of 850M. Amazon is being deforested at about 500k-1M hectares per year[1] and the political climate suggests making it worse rather than better. According to a quick googling, over half of Amazons trees are over 300 years old and the deforestation is done with fire, effectively instantly undoing 300 years of sequestration. So, within 3-6 years of business as usual just the Amazon deforestation balances out a year of this theoretically possible global effort. Please prove me wrong, I don't want this to be true :( Edit: TFA calls for 1.7G (not T) hectares with 1.2T trees. [1]:https://news.mongabay.com/2019/05/new-report-examines-drivers-of-rising-amazon-deforestation-on-country-by-country-basis/ https://news.mongabay.com/2019/05/new-report-examines-driver...
  - cgh 7y ago
    >> Most land used to produce meat and milk is actually not by grazing. That's false. All cattle is grazed before spending the final few weeks of life in feedlots (unless it's grass-finished beef, in which case the feedlot is skipped). Anti-cattle people really need to visit a ranch sometime to see what actually happens there because I read a lot of misinformation on HN around this topic.

your-nanny 7y ago

I wonder about growing trees in regions losing permafrost from GW

lopmotr 7y ago
Perhaps there's a natural negative feedback where a higher CO2 concentration leads to more tree growth which reduces the CO2 concentration.
aitchnyu 7y ago
I wonder about creating a new homeland from reclaimed permafrost for climate refugees from all over the world. Maldives is already saving up for one since 2009 and looking at India, Sri Lanka and Australia.
your-nanny 7y ago
actually it may be the case that the soil is too poor, or the long winter nights and too short days is too inhibitive. I know that efforts to reforest Iceland have not been very successful. even if it worked, could be too slow

Flip-per 7y ago

> The analysis found there are 1.7bn hectares of treeless land on which 1.2tn native tree saplings would naturally grow. > Crowther’s team calculated that there are currently about 3tn trees in the world, which is about half the number that existed before I really hope this study is solid, but how can 1.2tn re-planted trees make up for a loss of 3tn logged ones? And moreover cover the CO2 of all that burned coal and oil?

NeedMoreTea 7y ago
Because it's not suggesting to return to pre-human numbers, but to plant without encroaching on current agricultural and urban land.

WalterBright 7y ago

Finding ways to get trees to grow in inhospitable areas, like the tundra, deserts, and at high altitude, can also help.

Panino 7y ago
As far as deserts go, here is Geoff Lawton using permaculture to grow fruit and other trees in Wadi Rum, Jordan, a desert that gets just 17mm of rain per year (less than an inch). They use only permaculture and greywater to achieve this feat. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ycLbO02lb7w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ycLbO02lb7w If fruit can be grown there, it can be grown almost anywhere on Earth.

jillesvangurp 7y ago

It can actually be better than this still. Cattle can be part of a solution to helping restore arid land where the soil has been destroyed by intensive farming and erosion. Healthy soil stores enormous amounts of biomass (aka carbon). Intensive farming has destroyed enormous amounts of land world-wide and turned it into desert, releasing lots of CO2 into the atmosphere. This is a reversible process and catlle is part of the solution: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2011/jul/22/cows-climate-change https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2011/jul/22/cows-cli... So, using large herds of cattle to refertilize bits of land that are currently not usable for agriculture would capture enormous amounts of carbon in the soil, restore the water retention capability of arid land, put a stop to large scale erosion of remaining soil, and restore it to productive land that may be used for growing food. Alternatively, once restored, you can sit back and watch the land reforest itself or use planned grazing to keep it as grassland. There's no actual need to manually plant trees; though it does probably speed up the process. Finally, using cattle to fix land produces lots of nice organic/free range meat in a sustainable way as a side effects. And yes, cow farts have a green house effect but it is offset by the captured CO2 in the restored soil. Healthy soil has lots of biomass.

cgh 7y ago
You are correct. Here's another link in support of what I think is highly counter-intuitive to people here: http://www.dasnr.okstate.edu/Members/donald-stotts-40okstate.edu/carbon-sequestration-a-positive-aspect-of-beef-cattle-grazing-grasslands http://www.dasnr.okstate.edu/Members/donald-stotts-40okstate...
senorjazz 7y ago
Is this actually validated? Living in an area heavily deforested for cattle grazing, the cattle grazed land does not look like a healthy land. The cattle keep all plant life cut right back. Hot sun can easily access the soil drying it out, then when heavy rains come, the top soil all runs off the land. Land that is left without cattle fares better, land that is actively reforested and trees helped to get established looks infinitely more healthy.
- 7y ago

nielsbot 7y ago

A glimmer of hope? Waiting for the other shoe to drop in terms of "it will cost too much", "politically it's not possible", or some such...

kibwen 7y ago
I think part of the appeal of this plan, aside from its theorized effectiveness, is that it doesn't require any political buy-in. People can plant trees all on their own. That said, a trillion is a quantity larger than any human has the ability to intuitively grasp. It really depends if by "planting trees" they mean "scattering seeds by aircraft" or if they mean "hand-planting saplings".
- 8bitsrule 7y ago
  Maybe this helps: if most Americans plant 3 trees, that's about a billion trees. When I was young and part of a crew, each us planted -several hundred- trees over 3 eight-hour days. So at least a thousand per person in 10 days. A nation-wide volunteer org -with access to enough seedlings- ... that's the tricky part ... could quickly multiply that to 300 per American - 10% of that trillion.
- seltzered_ 7y ago
  "scattering seeds by aircraft" FWIW, There are startups doing this idea like BioCarbon Engineering https://www.biocarbonengineering.com/services https://www.biocarbonengineering.com/services (found via video by one of it's investors Tom Chi https://vimeo.com/294975140 https://vimeo.com/294975140 (at 11 minute mark) ) The concept of seed drops / seedballs seemingly goes back to the 'zero budget farming' ideas of Masanobu Fukuoka (an older video that goes into seedball making - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A4-bwW8PWI0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A4-bwW8PWI0 )
empath75 7y ago
It won’t matter if we keep pumping carbon dioxide into the air, once the forests are grown, unless we bury them all deep underground and grow them again. It’s a one time thing.

dr_dshiv 7y ago

What, is it the 1980s again? Save the Rainforest and Plant a Tree? Why did that plank of the environmental movement get dropped? Did it? In any case, it is back just in time for the latest season of Stranger Things. Ooh!

sunstone 7y ago

So would deciduous trees better than evergreens for this given that they shed tons of leaves every year?

aitchnyu 7y ago

What do scientists say about alleged negatives about planting trees, like reduced reflectivity and slower disperal of fumes in cities? Do any of them still stand?