5 ms·

Global forest restoration is the most effective carbon capture opportunity

50 points by elsewhen 6y ago

avmich 6y ago
It sort of doesn't prove forests are the best solution. Yes, they are natural and have a bunch of obvious advantages, but it's still not clear if they are best we can employ for the efforts - after all, plants weren't optimized for clearing after human blunders. So while we enthusiastically support growing trees... let's keep looking for better solutions.
- rantwasp 6y ago
  this must be some sort of joke. trees were not optimized for clearing human blunders? trees and vegetation have been capturing carbon and providing a critical service for most ecosystems on earth since... forever (well not forever but for a damn long period of time). to believe that we can come up with something better is a short time span is naive at best. even if we do nothing, i believe that mother nature will adapt to the mess we have created and in the grand scheme of things we are just a blip.
  - avmich 6y ago
    > to believe that we can come up with something better is a short time span is naive at best. Humans have substantial differences from the rest of the nature. Recent example with COVID-19 vaccine, developed within months, shows speed of progress which focused approach can reach. Forests are pretty good, and better than many naive options; just not guaranteed to be best available, if humanity would try harder to solve this crisis.
    - nix23 6y ago
      That's an COVID-19 example is incorrect: It's a NON-Problem earth-wise, and a pretty simple thing anyway. Humans never made a real great thing...well one exception...change the climate with burning lots of dead dinosaurs, the next one would be stop and maybe reverse that, and maybe in the future revive mars with terraforming. Trees and Bushes and grass do not just consume CO2 but also moisturize the air, prevent the ground to dry out, prevent erosion of the soil, give mushrooms insects bacteria a place to life and so on, the CO2 thing is just a really small part in a functional system called nature. We will not be able probably for the next 500 years, to fully understand and create a harmonic system, let alone find better solutions as the living earth already did. >>Humans have substantial differences from the rest of the nature That assumption is substantial incorrect. We are a normal part of nature not more not less, we cant survive at least ATM without a functional system.
      - avmich 6y ago
        Example with COVID was to illustrate how fast humans can develop a change, compared to nature which for evolution of something practically from scratch takes longer. Another example is Apollo project, where mammals successfully traveled to Moon and back, something which nature isn't known to be capable of without humans.
        nix23 6y ago
        Your immune system is always faster than any vaccine development, it's not perfect but so are vaccines. Well Nature made life from nothing...beat that Apollo btw we achieved nothing compared to Nature with Apollo, it's just a dump rocket hopping to the nearest rock..and as you say'd it's one of humankind greatest achievement..bigger is probably just the invention of the wheel, on the other hand Scarabaeus sacer does that too.
        rantwasp 6y ago
        hah. this must be some sort of joke. even to covid your immune system develops a response that is effective in most cases. from scratch. without seeing the virus before. that is bloody impressive. i’m not trying to diminish the vaccine or anything that humans have achieved. it’s that we’re really really small and insignificant when it comes to the universe in general and earth in particular.
  - wahern 6y ago
    Old growth forests aren't carbon sinks, modulo some slight metabolic shifts as CO2 increases. Forests tend to reach equilibrium between carbon consumption (e.g. autotrophic photosynthesis) and carbon emissions (e.g. fire, erosion of organic material into marine ecosystems, and heterotrophic activity such as grazing and decomposition).[1] Forests are currently a carbon sink primarily because of centuries of harvesting, and because of increases in atmospheric CO2 improving autotrophic efficiency. As they grow back and grow faster they're absorbing more carbon than they release, but this is temporary. Eventually there won't be more space to grow, and metabolic efficiencies will diminish and possibly even flip--e.g. higher temperatures can increase decomposition rates. Reforestation can't fix the problem, only buy us a little time. But don't take my word for it: > Although land practices have the potential to offset a small but significant portion of anthropogenic emissions, they should ultimately be seen (with the exception of geological sequestration through BECCS) as a short-term stopgap measure. Source: The Terrestrial Carbon Sink, Annu. Rev. Environ. Resour. 2018. 43:219–43, https://harvardforest1.fas.harvard.edu/sites/harvardforest.fas.harvard.edu/files/publications/pdfs/Keenan_AnnRevEnv_2018.pdf https://harvardforest1.fas.harvard.edu/sites/harvardforest.f... That said, preventing further deforestation is a no-brainer. The annual net carbon flux of a forest is nothing compared to the carbon stored in the tree stands and the soil, much of which is quickly released when the land is cleared. [1] Heterotrophs are far more efficient today than they were hundreds of millions of years ago.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
  - OrbitRock 6y ago
    > to believe that we can come up with something better in a short time span is naive at best We do already have carbon capture systems that are more effective per unit area than plants at capturing carbon. I say this as someone biased in the opposite direction, forest ecology is my career!
- progfix 6y ago
  Yeah, let's do nothing and wait for something better (sarcasm). I wonder what education or lack of someone must have to think that re-forestation is not the right thing to do right now. Planting trees is not rocket science and could for example be done with planes (like China does). Even when forests aren't enough to reverse climate change we can use wood instead of concrete as our building materials or use wood to make bio-fuel or bio gas all of which will reduce our CO2 footprint.
vr46 6y ago
Most effective is debatable. Land is always going to be in demand, whereas inshore and offshore seaweed farming offers similar if not better all-around opportunities, alongside the possibility of long-term storage.
- nix23 6y ago
  True, but don't forget that reforestation also prevents from erosion and can stop desert grow, moisturize the air which brings water to places where lakes or oceans are too far away, forest even protect clean and feed rivers.
fumblebee 6y ago
The word "most" migrates the focus of discussion away from the clear fact that reforestation is vital tool in our arsenal to capture carbon, to a fruitless argument over whether it's actually the "most effective". Tackling man-made climate change requires many solutions working in tandem, forest restoration is just one of them.

50 points by elsewhen 6y ago

It sort of doesn't prove forests are the best solution. Yes, they are natural and have a bunch of obvious advantages, but it's still not clear if they are best we can employ for the efforts - after all, plants weren't optimized for clearing after human blunders. So while we enthusiastically support growing trees... let's keep looking for better solutions.

rantwasp 6y ago
this must be some sort of joke. trees were not optimized for clearing human blunders? trees and vegetation have been capturing carbon and providing a critical service for most ecosystems on earth since... forever (well not forever but for a damn long period of time). to believe that we can come up with something better is a short time span is naive at best. even if we do nothing, i believe that mother nature will adapt to the mess we have created and in the grand scheme of things we are just a blip.
- avmich 6y ago
  > to believe that we can come up with something better is a short time span is naive at best. Humans have substantial differences from the rest of the nature. Recent example with COVID-19 vaccine, developed within months, shows speed of progress which focused approach can reach. Forests are pretty good, and better than many naive options; just not guaranteed to be best available, if humanity would try harder to solve this crisis.
  - nix23 6y ago
    That's an COVID-19 example is incorrect: It's a NON-Problem earth-wise, and a pretty simple thing anyway. Humans never made a real great thing...well one exception...change the climate with burning lots of dead dinosaurs, the next one would be stop and maybe reverse that, and maybe in the future revive mars with terraforming. Trees and Bushes and grass do not just consume CO2 but also moisturize the air, prevent the ground to dry out, prevent erosion of the soil, give mushrooms insects bacteria a place to life and so on, the CO2 thing is just a really small part in a functional system called nature. We will not be able probably for the next 500 years, to fully understand and create a harmonic system, let alone find better solutions as the living earth already did. >>Humans have substantial differences from the rest of the nature That assumption is substantial incorrect. We are a normal part of nature not more not less, we cant survive at least ATM without a functional system.
    - avmich 6y ago
      Example with COVID was to illustrate how fast humans can develop a change, compared to nature which for evolution of something practically from scratch takes longer. Another example is Apollo project, where mammals successfully traveled to Moon and back, something which nature isn't known to be capable of without humans.
      - nix23 6y ago
        Your immune system is always faster than any vaccine development, it's not perfect but so are vaccines. Well Nature made life from nothing...beat that Apollo btw we achieved nothing compared to Nature with Apollo, it's just a dump rocket hopping to the nearest rock..and as you say'd it's one of humankind greatest achievement..bigger is probably just the invention of the wheel, on the other hand Scarabaeus sacer does that too.
      - rantwasp 6y ago
        hah. this must be some sort of joke. even to covid your immune system develops a response that is effective in most cases. from scratch. without seeing the virus before. that is bloody impressive. i’m not trying to diminish the vaccine or anything that humans have achieved. it’s that we’re really really small and insignificant when it comes to the universe in general and earth in particular.
- wahern 6y ago
  Old growth forests aren't carbon sinks, modulo some slight metabolic shifts as CO2 increases. Forests tend to reach equilibrium between carbon consumption (e.g. autotrophic photosynthesis) and carbon emissions (e.g. fire, erosion of organic material into marine ecosystems, and heterotrophic activity such as grazing and decomposition).[1] Forests are currently a carbon sink primarily because of centuries of harvesting, and because of increases in atmospheric CO2 improving autotrophic efficiency. As they grow back and grow faster they're absorbing more carbon than they release, but this is temporary. Eventually there won't be more space to grow, and metabolic efficiencies will diminish and possibly even flip--e.g. higher temperatures can increase decomposition rates. Reforestation can't fix the problem, only buy us a little time. But don't take my word for it: > Although land practices have the potential to offset a small but significant portion of anthropogenic emissions, they should ultimately be seen (with the exception of geological sequestration through BECCS) as a short-term stopgap measure. Source: The Terrestrial Carbon Sink, Annu. Rev. Environ. Resour. 2018. 43:219–43, https://harvardforest1.fas.harvard.edu/sites/harvardforest.fas.harvard.edu/files/publications/pdfs/Keenan_AnnRevEnv_2018.pdf https://harvardforest1.fas.harvard.edu/sites/harvardforest.f... That said, preventing further deforestation is a no-brainer. The annual net carbon flux of a forest is nothing compared to the carbon stored in the tree stands and the soil, much of which is quickly released when the land is cleared. [1] Heterotrophs are far more efficient today than they were hundreds of millions of years ago.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- OrbitRock 6y ago
  > to believe that we can come up with something better in a short time span is naive at best We do already have carbon capture systems that are more effective per unit area than plants at capturing carbon. I say this as someone biased in the opposite direction, forest ecology is my career!
progfix 6y ago
Yeah, let's do nothing and wait for something better (sarcasm). I wonder what education or lack of someone must have to think that re-forestation is not the right thing to do right now. Planting trees is not rocket science and could for example be done with planes (like China does). Even when forests aren't enough to reverse climate change we can use wood instead of concrete as our building materials or use wood to make bio-fuel or bio gas all of which will reduce our CO2 footprint.

vr46 6y ago

Most effective is debatable. Land is always going to be in demand, whereas inshore and offshore seaweed farming offers similar if not better all-around opportunities, alongside the possibility of long-term storage.

nix23 6y ago
True, but don't forget that reforestation also prevents from erosion and can stop desert grow, moisturize the air which brings water to places where lakes or oceans are too far away, forest even protect clean and feed rivers.

fumblebee 6y ago

The word "most" migrates the focus of discussion away from the clear fact that reforestation is vital tool in our arsenal to capture carbon, to a fruitless argument over whether it's actually the "most effective". Tackling man-made climate change requires many solutions working in tandem, forest restoration is just one of them.