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Reforestation is not a viable solution to climate change. This should be a wake up call to anyone who thinks planting trees will fix anything. As global tempera

Reforestation is not a viable solution to climate change. This should be a wake up call to anyone who thinks planting trees will fix anything. As global temperature rises, these kinds of wildfires will become more and more frequent and we are not equipped to stop them. At this point scientists aren't even sure if forests are a net carbon sink or source after accounting for increasing wildfires. At best, forests are not carbon sinks, they are carbon stores. The only way to turn them into sinks is to cut down fully grown trees and do something with them that will prevent the release of their carbon content back into the environment. If they burn or if they rot, they release all the carbon back into the environment. The scariest thing about climate change isn't the deniers, it's that most of the people who identify as activists, are active towards ineffective measures. If global climate policy doesn't involve a massive rollout of nuclear to power electrochemical sequestration alongside a steep carbon tax, we might as well just roll over now. An average of 5 billion people has spent an average of 100 years burning various fossil fuels to provide their energy which brought Co2 from ~300ppm to ~400ppm. There's no way to solve climate change without repaying that energy debt. https://en-roads.climateinteractive.org/scenario.html?v=2.7.6 https://en-roads.climateinteractive.org/scenario.html?v=2.7....

PakG1 7y ago
Trees are also oxygen producers. I'm curious how oxygen would be produced around the world if forests decline dramatically. I think we need to consider more than whether or not carbon gets stored.
- missosoup 7y ago
  We can trivially produce large quantities of oxygen and hydrogen via electrolysis of water. This is a physics experiment that primary schoolers can do and also the mechanism that submarines use to generate oxygen for the crew.
  - solarengineer 7y ago
    Trees provide much more than just oxygen: shade, forest cover for animals birds and insects, attract rainfall, hold the soil. (On a tangent now) It is also worthwhile noting that putting a monetary value to nature permits us to pollute, to buy permits to pollute, to shrug off cleanups citing such actions to be expensive. Many things can’t be valued by a human ascribed price alone.
h0l0cube 7y ago
> Reforestation is not a viable solution to climate change. It's a strange tangent to take here. The article makes no mention of reforestation. Just to give some background about the situation in Australia: many of the trees are not just fire tolerant, but their seeds are triggered to germinate when a fire passes through - they depend on fire. This means that 1000s of saplings will arise where there were once 100s of established trees. This increases the fire risk over the next 5 years, but it does capture back a lot of that carbon. A big problem is that much of the old growth forests, that have less tree density, and thick canopies that rob much of the sunlight to smaller plants, have been clear felled. In their place, is either regenerated forest, with a higher fuel content, or with paddocks, where grass fires can rip straight through. But still, large canopy fires can still affect these old growth forests. As with all bush fires, the only thing that can be done is to back burn to contain them, and to ensure that sections of forests are divided by fire breaks. I suppose, to reduce fire risk and potentially releasing all this carbon, we could just turn all the trees into furniture. But I love forests, so I hope deforestation never becomes a popular idea. So what are you suggesting Australia does here?
- missosoup 7y ago
  There's a number of really obvious things for Australia to do. Like not voting in a prime minister who literally brought a lump of coal into parliament and told everyone that it represents the future[1]. We're ideally located for renewable power, we have an abundance of uranium for nuclear. And yet we're one of the worst polluters per capita in the world. But my comment wasn't about Australia specifically. It was about the general notion which has spread, that planting a bunch of trees will make a meaningful dent on climate change. It won't. It takes 10 minutes and the back of one envelope to do the math to understand that it won't. If you do the math, you'll find that every person on earth must plant 20 trees each year to offset their average Co2 emissions for that year alone, nothing to speak of the 5b people * 100 years debt we must repay to wind back atmospheric Co2. And once fully grown those trees need to be cut down and buried deep underground to contain their carbon content from returning to the cycle. We must focus our effort towards effective solutions because focusing it on ineffective ones is worse than doing nothing. Afforestation is not an effective solution. I'm not against afforestation, but at this point we need to run the numbers to figure out whether it makes things better or worse given that rising temperatures mean an increasing number of wildfires that can't be stopped. Wildfires that dump 6 months of an entire nation's Co2 output into the air in the span of a few days. [1] https://www.theguardian.com/global/video/2017/feb/09/scott-morrison-brings-a-chunk-of-coal-into-parliament-video https://www.theguardian.com/global/video/2017/feb/09/scott-m...
taneq 7y ago
> most of the people who identify as activists, are active towards ineffective measures. It’s because they’re political activists rather than engineers. They’re fighting to progress their cause, not to solve a problem. I see my friends doing this all the time and it’s so frustrating.
- perfunctory 7y ago
  [deleted]
  - taneq 7y ago
    I'm solving my problems, quite effectively I might add.
bryanlarsen 7y ago
> it's that most of the people who identify as activists, are active towards ineffective measures. With wind power reaching 1 cent per kilowatt hour vs nuclear power plants that cost a lot more and take 20 years to build, they're possibly just being pragmatic. And the intermittent nature of most renewables isn't a show stopper. You combat it with four measures (in order of preference): mixed sources, interconnection, overbuilding and storage. And while that's more expensive than renewable by itself, it's still cheaper than nuclear. > Forests are not carbon sinks, they are carbon stores. Forests are very effective carbon sinks today. Only once you run out of land to plant new forests does it become a problem. At that time you can make new land by turning an older forest into biochar. The point is we should do what we can today. Certainly we should continue research into more effectively scalable sources of nuclear power and other forms of climate sequestration. But we need to implement today's solutions today.
Dumblydorr 7y ago
You make strong claims providing very little evidence. Edit your post with actual data please.
- missosoup 7y ago
  Tell me which parts you find doubtful and I'll provide sources. Or click the link in the original comment and dial up afforestation to the max and see the fuck-all difference it makes to the outcome. It's a pretty detailed model built by MIT if you're into appeals from authority.
mistrial9 7y ago
while searching for RESEARCH to rebut on this topic, I notice another item: The California Tree Mortality Data Collection Network > Over 147 million dead trees were detected in California by the U.S. Forest Service Aerial Detection Survey (USFS ADS) from 2010 to 2018 (USDA 2019). The massive tree mortality, mostly in the Sierra Nevada and evident in swaths of conifers with red needles, resulted from the 2012–2016 drought and subsequent explosions in native bark beetle populations. In other words, ecosystems worldwide (ex. California) are experiencing high mortality and dramatic loss of content compared to even recent history (your lifetime). Your misplaced ire and fiery blind call to action basically stinks. More science to support re-forestation on the way.
- missosoup 7y ago
  I'm confused. You dug up data that supports my point, but you think my point is... '''Misplaced ire''' ? You're literally quoting a source that says forests have become a carbon source due to climate change. What?
- dang 7y ago
  This crosses into personal attack and name calling. That's against the site guidelines. Would you mind reading and sticking to them when posting here? https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
truculent 7y ago
Yeah if only there were some way for trees to replicate and replace fallen, burned or rotting ones.
matthewdgreen 7y ago
Wouldn’t you want to roll out the most cost effective power sources to power sequestration, even if those sources were intermittent and required sequestration efforts (today only extant at tiny scale and thus amenable to engineering) to scale up and down with current power supply? Because nuclear power today is both expensive and requires many years to build out, while renewables cost a fraction of the price and can be built out in vast quantities very quickly.

PakG1 7y ago

Trees are also oxygen producers. I'm curious how oxygen would be produced around the world if forests decline dramatically. I think we need to consider more than whether or not carbon gets stored.

missosoup 7y ago
We can trivially produce large quantities of oxygen and hydrogen via electrolysis of water. This is a physics experiment that primary schoolers can do and also the mechanism that submarines use to generate oxygen for the crew.
- solarengineer 7y ago
  Trees provide much more than just oxygen: shade, forest cover for animals birds and insects, attract rainfall, hold the soil. (On a tangent now) It is also worthwhile noting that putting a monetary value to nature permits us to pollute, to buy permits to pollute, to shrug off cleanups citing such actions to be expensive. Many things can’t be valued by a human ascribed price alone.

h0l0cube 7y ago

> Reforestation is not a viable solution to climate change. It's a strange tangent to take here. The article makes no mention of reforestation. Just to give some background about the situation in Australia: many of the trees are not just fire tolerant, but their seeds are triggered to germinate when a fire passes through - they depend on fire. This means that 1000s of saplings will arise where there were once 100s of established trees. This increases the fire risk over the next 5 years, but it does capture back a lot of that carbon. A big problem is that much of the old growth forests, that have less tree density, and thick canopies that rob much of the sunlight to smaller plants, have been clear felled. In their place, is either regenerated forest, with a higher fuel content, or with paddocks, where grass fires can rip straight through. But still, large canopy fires can still affect these old growth forests. As with all bush fires, the only thing that can be done is to back burn to contain them, and to ensure that sections of forests are divided by fire breaks. I suppose, to reduce fire risk and potentially releasing all this carbon, we could just turn all the trees into furniture. But I love forests, so I hope deforestation never becomes a popular idea. So what are you suggesting Australia does here?

missosoup 7y ago
There's a number of really obvious things for Australia to do. Like not voting in a prime minister who literally brought a lump of coal into parliament and told everyone that it represents the future[1]. We're ideally located for renewable power, we have an abundance of uranium for nuclear. And yet we're one of the worst polluters per capita in the world. But my comment wasn't about Australia specifically. It was about the general notion which has spread, that planting a bunch of trees will make a meaningful dent on climate change. It won't. It takes 10 minutes and the back of one envelope to do the math to understand that it won't. If you do the math, you'll find that every person on earth must plant 20 trees each year to offset their average Co2 emissions for that year alone, nothing to speak of the 5b people * 100 years debt we must repay to wind back atmospheric Co2. And once fully grown those trees need to be cut down and buried deep underground to contain their carbon content from returning to the cycle. We must focus our effort towards effective solutions because focusing it on ineffective ones is worse than doing nothing. Afforestation is not an effective solution. I'm not against afforestation, but at this point we need to run the numbers to figure out whether it makes things better or worse given that rising temperatures mean an increasing number of wildfires that can't be stopped. Wildfires that dump 6 months of an entire nation's Co2 output into the air in the span of a few days. [1] https://www.theguardian.com/global/video/2017/feb/09/scott-morrison-brings-a-chunk-of-coal-into-parliament-video https://www.theguardian.com/global/video/2017/feb/09/scott-m...

taneq 7y ago

> most of the people who identify as activists, are active towards ineffective measures. It’s because they’re political activists rather than engineers. They’re fighting to progress their cause, not to solve a problem. I see my friends doing this all the time and it’s so frustrating.

perfunctory 7y ago
[deleted]
- taneq 7y ago
  I'm solving my problems, quite effectively I might add.

bryanlarsen 7y ago

> it's that most of the people who identify as activists, are active towards ineffective measures. With wind power reaching 1 cent per kilowatt hour vs nuclear power plants that cost a lot more and take 20 years to build, they're possibly just being pragmatic. And the intermittent nature of most renewables isn't a show stopper. You combat it with four measures (in order of preference): mixed sources, interconnection, overbuilding and storage. And while that's more expensive than renewable by itself, it's still cheaper than nuclear. > Forests are not carbon sinks, they are carbon stores. Forests are very effective carbon sinks today. Only once you run out of land to plant new forests does it become a problem. At that time you can make new land by turning an older forest into biochar. The point is we should do what we can today. Certainly we should continue research into more effectively scalable sources of nuclear power and other forms of climate sequestration. But we need to implement today's solutions today.

Dumblydorr 7y ago

You make strong claims providing very little evidence. Edit your post with actual data please.

missosoup 7y ago
Tell me which parts you find doubtful and I'll provide sources. Or click the link in the original comment and dial up afforestation to the max and see the fuck-all difference it makes to the outcome. It's a pretty detailed model built by MIT if you're into appeals from authority.

mistrial9 7y ago

while searching for RESEARCH to rebut on this topic, I notice another item: The California Tree Mortality Data Collection Network > Over 147 million dead trees were detected in California by the U.S. Forest Service Aerial Detection Survey (USFS ADS) from 2010 to 2018 (USDA 2019). The massive tree mortality, mostly in the Sierra Nevada and evident in swaths of conifers with red needles, resulted from the 2012–2016 drought and subsequent explosions in native bark beetle populations. In other words, ecosystems worldwide (ex. California) are experiencing high mortality and dramatic loss of content compared to even recent history (your lifetime). Your misplaced ire and fiery blind call to action basically stinks. More science to support re-forestation on the way.

missosoup 7y ago
I'm confused. You dug up data that supports my point, but you think my point is... '''Misplaced ire''' ? You're literally quoting a source that says forests have become a carbon source due to climate change. What?
dang 7y ago
This crosses into personal attack and name calling. That's against the site guidelines. Would you mind reading and sticking to them when posting here? https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

truculent 7y ago

Yeah if only there were some way for trees to replicate and replace fallen, burned or rotting ones.

matthewdgreen 7y ago

Wouldn’t you want to roll out the most cost effective power sources to power sequestration, even if those sources were intermittent and required sequestration efforts (today only extant at tiny scale and thus amenable to engineering) to scale up and down with current power supply? Because nuclear power today is both expensive and requires many years to build out, while renewables cost a fraction of the price and can be built out in vast quantities very quickly.