4 ms·

You are aware of the fact that trees spawn other trees right?

• __turbobrew__ 6y ago
  Think 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 ago
    Right because we can’t introduce more floura within development. this isnt binary.
• bratcomplex 6y ago
  The 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.