4 ms·

I thought a recent study showed the most effective/cheap method of reducing CO2 was very simple: plant a lot of trees. Like, really.

by timmg 5y ago

hannob 5y ago
Yeah, except that study was so bad that the publication that published it later published four replies by other groups of scientists pointing out all the flaws of it: https://www.the-scientist.com/news-opinion/researchers-find-flaws-in-high-profile-study-on-trees-and-climate--66587 https://www.the-scientist.com/news-opinion/researchers-find-...
oblak 5y ago
Ah, but how would certain entities make tons of money with trees? They wouldn't. And that's why we've been hearing about this nonsense for well over a decade now. It's about making money while pretending they're doing something.
- phtrivier 5y ago
  As other commenters pointed out, the other trickiest problem (beyond feasibility and energy requirement) of CO2 removal is that it's not clear who would be paying for them, since you want to sequester the CO2 and not use it. So in the end, it will be either a voluntary deal, or paid by the taxpayers as part of the maintenance of the infrastructure that is earth. Do people make money out of road and bridge maintenance ? At some point, you might argue that planting trees can make you more money if something edible grows on them (or under them)
  - oblak 5y ago
    Trickiest problem? Not clear who's going to pay for all this? The people are going to pay for all of it and then some. That's the entire point of this operation. As for the second part of your post: are you playing devil's advocate here? Planting trees, sustainable agriculture - that's not great way to generate fantastic profit at everyone's expense. It's not going to happen any time soon. Sorry for being a nihilistic prick but surely you're not that naive. We need some kind of agrarian Elon Musk to shake things up while making profit.
    - phtrivier 5y ago
      Who is `The people` here ? The taxpayers ? That's entirely possible, and it would probably be the only scalable way to fund it (treat "the atmosphere" as an infrastructure that we have to maintain without directly benefiting from it.) What I mean in my second post is that a private investor can put money into a forest, plant the trees, and recoup some of the costs by sell the fruits. This is a silly image to tell that if you're a private investor (no insult here), and want to sequester CO2, you either "need to have CO2 sequestered as a byproduct of a project that makes money ; or need to have money generated as a byproduct of a project that sequesters CO2." If you're a public investor (aka "the handler of taxpayer's money"), or a charity (aka "the handler of rich people's spare money"), the deal is not the same.
ClumsyPilot 5y ago
Its impossible to olant enoughbtrees to offset our impact. Which ofcourse doesn't stio various governments from doing fuck all, when they have vacant land they could have reforested
dntrkv 5y ago
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/23/us/wildfires-carbon-offsets.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/23/us/wildfires-carbon-offse...

I thought a recent study showed the most effective/cheap method of reducing CO2 was very simple: plant a lot of trees. Like, really.

by timmg 5y ago

I thought a recent study showed the most effective/cheap method of reducing CO2 was very simple: plant a lot of trees. Like, really.

hannob 5y ago

Yeah, except that study was so bad that the publication that published it later published four replies by other groups of scientists pointing out all the flaws of it: https://www.the-scientist.com/news-opinion/researchers-find-flaws-in-high-profile-study-on-trees-and-climate--66587 https://www.the-scientist.com/news-opinion/researchers-find-...

oblak 5y ago

Ah, but how would certain entities make tons of money with trees? They wouldn't. And that's why we've been hearing about this nonsense for well over a decade now. It's about making money while pretending they're doing something.

phtrivier 5y ago
As other commenters pointed out, the other trickiest problem (beyond feasibility and energy requirement) of CO2 removal is that it's not clear who would be paying for them, since you want to sequester the CO2 and not use it. So in the end, it will be either a voluntary deal, or paid by the taxpayers as part of the maintenance of the infrastructure that is earth. Do people make money out of road and bridge maintenance ? At some point, you might argue that planting trees can make you more money if something edible grows on them (or under them)
- oblak 5y ago
  Trickiest problem? Not clear who's going to pay for all this? The people are going to pay for all of it and then some. That's the entire point of this operation. As for the second part of your post: are you playing devil's advocate here? Planting trees, sustainable agriculture - that's not great way to generate fantastic profit at everyone's expense. It's not going to happen any time soon. Sorry for being a nihilistic prick but surely you're not that naive. We need some kind of agrarian Elon Musk to shake things up while making profit.
  - phtrivier 5y ago
    Who is `The people` here ? The taxpayers ? That's entirely possible, and it would probably be the only scalable way to fund it (treat "the atmosphere" as an infrastructure that we have to maintain without directly benefiting from it.) What I mean in my second post is that a private investor can put money into a forest, plant the trees, and recoup some of the costs by sell the fruits. This is a silly image to tell that if you're a private investor (no insult here), and want to sequester CO2, you either "need to have CO2 sequestered as a byproduct of a project that makes money ; or need to have money generated as a byproduct of a project that sequesters CO2." If you're a public investor (aka "the handler of taxpayer's money"), or a charity (aka "the handler of rich people's spare money"), the deal is not the same.

ClumsyPilot 5y ago

Its impossible to olant enoughbtrees to offset our impact. Which ofcourse doesn't stio various governments from doing fuck all, when they have vacant land they could have reforested

dntrkv 5y ago

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/23/us/wildfires-carbon-offsets.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/23/us/wildfires-carbon-offse...