3 ms·
Trees are a buffer, not a permanent sequester. Planting trees buys time, but it's not a gigaton scalable solution. Eventually those trees die and rot and rejo
by eutropia 6y ago
Trees are a buffer, not a permanent sequester. Planting trees buys time, but it's not a gigaton scalable solution.
Eventually those trees die and rot and rejoin the natural carbon cycle. That's what's so fucked up about the CO2 emissions problem: the carbon we've emitted to the atmosphere (and has been absorbed into the oceans) was previously locked out of the natural carbon cycle as coal, limestone, etc... But burning/creating concrete/ etc has put it back into the active loop.
Any solution has to take the carbon out of that loop permanently if we want to address the greenhouse gas problem, reduce the total amount of carbon in the cycle.
- kumarvvr 6y agoWe perhaps have a time frame if about 30 years to set right our excess carbon levels. Trees can be the perfect buffer foe our societys transition to a carbon neutral economy.
- adflux 6y agoYou are aware of the fact that trees spawn other trees right?
- __turbobrew__ 6y agoThink at a macro scale. There are 3 different states of carbon on earth: a solid/liquid from underground (oil, coal, bitumen, etc); in organic matter (trees, animals, plants, etc); and in the atmosphere (CO2, methane, and others). If we assume that the earth is a closed system and no carbon can leave or enter earth, it means that when carbon gets transformed from its coal/oil state it must either become organic matter or atmospheric gasses — the two other states of carbon. Conversely, to reduce the amount of atmospheric carbon we must either transform it to organic matter (trees, animals, etc.) or put it back into the ground. The issue with transforming atmospheric carbon to organic carbon is that we have already reached and passed the global maxima for organic matter during the prehistoric times before human deforestation. At best we could plow down all the cities and civilizations and plant forests in their place and we would reobtain the global maxima of organic carbon again. But even at this point of global maxima of organic matter, we would still have all the carbon which came from coal/oil present in the atmosphere. Finally there is the natural process of transforming organic carbon to ground carbon, but that takes millions of years — which is a few orders of magnitude too long for us to address the crisis. This is why artificially sequestering carbon back into to ground is a vital part of addressing climate change.
- bratcomplex 6y agoRight because we can’t introduce more floura within development. this isnt binary.
- bratcomplex 6y agoThe only reason I can think of why your getting down voted, is a reductionists viewpoint. Forests are really the simple solution. it’s a matter of time frames not net carbon in and out.
- Andys 6y agoWhat we need is forests, not just trees. They have a perpetual self-sustaining cycle of growing new trees and turning the old ones into soil and burying them under more soil.
- Andys 6y agoTo downvoters: where do you think all our soil came from? It is more than just crushed up rocks.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- bratcomplex 6y agoThis. it’s the difference between dirt and soil.