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Another VERY important couple of questions to ask and understand when looking at the 800,000 years of atmospheric CO2 concentration data we have is: Q1- What c
by robomartin 7y ago
Another VERY important couple of questions to ask and understand when looking at the 800,000 years of atmospheric CO2 concentration data we have is:
Q1- What caused atmospheric CO2 concentrations to reliably increase by about 100 ppm in roughly 25,000 years for each (roughly) 100,000 year cycle?
Q2- What made CO2 concentration decrease over 50K to 75K years?
The answers to these questions are simple:
A1: Fires. Massive continent-scale fires...burning forests.
A2: Massive natural reforestation and weather. Yup. Hurricanes, cyclones, rain, etc.
While the idea of planting trillions of trees is excellent, we also have to understand an important point. The more trees we have the greater the probability of going backwards by decades when --not if-- a large fire rips through millions of them. We can't fight fires at those scales. And, if we could, you'd have to calculate the energy and CO2 we would produce in doing so (planes, trucks, equipment, etc.).
Climate change isn't an easy problem, not even close. I don't know if I want to laugh or cry when I hear politicians pushing some of the truly brain-dead stuff they get behind.
- jmiskovic 7y agoWe can handle fires if we plant those forests. We could engineer the buffers to stop the spreading, and develop infrastructure for early detection and extinguishing. Not saying it's easy, but can be done if everything depends on it.
- robomartin 7y agoYou are probably right. Having seen gigantic fires in CA I think it is important to take fire mitigation very seriously. One good forest fire can erase years of progress. To put things into context and quantify...we know wild fires have produced, on average, 8 billion tons of CO2 per year for the past 20 years. That is fully 25% of total annual CO2 emission, which sits somewhere around 32 billion tons per year. That’s a very serious contribution that makes some of the things politicians focus on absolutely laughable. If we plant trillions of trees and, at some time in the future, experience a massive forest fire we could easily move backwards several decades. What I am saying is that fire mitigation has to be a first class concern when we speak of reforestation.
- robomartin 7y agoHere’s another interesting take on the subject... https://youtu.be/pBbvehbomrY https://youtu.be/pBbvehbomrY