Next time, could you get a video from someone who's actually seen a tree? That video was just awful. It's only redeeming feature was that it was short. Here's

Next time, could you get a video from someone who's actually seen a tree? That video was just awful. It's only redeeming feature was that it was short. Here's what he got wrong: 1. The mass of CO2 in the atmosphere is about 3E+12 tonnes (not tons). Around a third of that is additional from humans, so around 1E+12 (cf trillionthton.org - they were a bit optimistic). That's pretty close to what he had, only out by a factor of 2, but purely by chance (there's a fair bit of that). 2. He rounded down the population, so the figure of 130 tonnes per person is again, pretty close. 3. The 0.33 tonnes per year from just breathing is beyond stupid. Unless you're drinking gasoline and eating coal, then all the CO2 you breathe out came from the atmosphere in the first place. It came from growing plants. This is just lazy and ignorant. It's not like he even uses this figure anyway. 4. Typical per-capita CO2 is not "10-ish tonnes per year" for a developed country. That's the high end. The UK is hardly a shining beacon of green policy, and even it is at 6.5 tonnes per year. What's more, we're trying to improve on that. 5 tonnes per year is closer to what the average person can easily manage without sacrificing anything. 5. Not all CO2 emissions stay in the atmosphere. A large part are absorbed by the oceans (hence ocean acidification). He should know this. 6. Great, now we've got the bizarre rectangular tree. Was the volume of a cylinder too much work to look up? Anyway, it's actually oddly difficult to get the total mass of a tree (not that he tried), because lumber yards tend to only care about the trunk. I found a site that gave a complete measurement of an oak, including canopy and roots. It came out to around 20 tons, around 10 tons dry biomass, giving around 5 tonnes carbon. 7. Carbon. Not CO2. Multiply by 44/12 to get the CO2 required. That's 18 tonnes CO2 per tree. Let's drop that down to 10 and say we have small trees. 8. Wait, what? He didn't even use the volume. He just guessed 1 tonne C02 per tree! 9. When trees die, they leave a gap in the forest and new trees grow. How else would forests last for thousands of years? Once you've planted the trees they will replace themselves. What's more, the wood could be used for building or furniture which means it will retain the CO2 even longer. What's even more, giving ourselves a hundred years or so breathing space while we reduce and reverse emmissions is absolutely worth it. Huh, I didn't mean to type so much but there was so much wrong with that video that I just kept going.