22 ms·

Greening of the Earth Mitigates Surface Warming (2020)

435 points by themantra514 5y ago

toto444 5y ago
I have this pet theory of mine that planting trees could also mitigate rising sea levels since trees contain water. Is that dumb ? I have no idea of the order of magnitude we are talking about so I might be entirely delusional.
- Cthulhu_ 5y ago
  It... kinda is? Trees can't contain that much water and can't compensate for the volume of water coming from glaciers and the like. That said, trees do help stabilize the soil, mitigating the loss of arable soil in case of heavy rains and flooding or things like landslides.
- occz 5y ago
  >have this pet theory of mine that planting trees could also mitigate rising sea levels since trees Contain water. Is that dumb ? Unfortunately, we would likely have to cover more land than there is on the entire surface of the earth to stave off even a meter of sea level rise. For reference, the sea to land-ratio on earth is around 70/30, and a tree of 15 meters at 60 cm diameter is approximately 5 cubic meters in volume, and a tree contains around 30-50% of its volume in water. The average forest density appears to be about 50-100k trees per square kilometer. We should still plant trees en masse, but as a solution to sea level rise it's probably not viable.
- cedilla 5y ago
  It's not dumb as long as you ask questions (and are interested in the answer). The global ice sheets currently melt at a rate of 1.4 trillion tons per year. Biomass of all living things is about 500 billion tons C. Let's pretend all of that is plant mass on land (most if it isn't), and let's just say there's 5 times as much water as carbon in plants (an overestimation at least for trees), and we arrive at only 2.5 trillion tons of water bound. So, if I my estimations aren't wildly off, increasing tree biomass even by a large factor won't help us significantly. Add to that that the rate of the ice melting is accelerating, and that the sea levels are also rising due to thermal expansion, and I don't think we can more or less discount the bound water in trees.
- regularfry 5y ago
  In terms of raw volume of water no, sibling comment has done the maths. But there is another interesting effect that's tangentially relevant. Forested areas act as rainwater sponges. When you get heavy rainfall, if you've got nothing but tarmac or even grass, all that water runs straight off and into the nearest river. Which then bursts its banks and floods everything nearby, making building on floodplains a bloody stupid idea. With forests, though, the depth of the roots means the water can sink more into the ground. It all still ends up in the river eventually, but over a much longer time period. Because the big pulse of water from the rainfall is attenuated, the river has more of a chance to drain away, so you get fewer, and less serious, floods. The net effect is that while we'll lose land to rising sea levels, in some areas there's the opportunity to reclaim land currently too marginal to occupy. Nowhere near the same land area, but it's a worthwhile effect to be aware of where it applies.
grouphugs 5y ago
we've really underestimated how difficult it is to get green back on the surface. using kenya as a case-study, we see that we fundamentally changed earth, the conditions under which forests grew are no longer present. kenya has had a lot of difficulty getting tree's from reforestation campaigns to survive. this issue shows up all over the world.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
nend 5y ago
I mean, I get that this needs to be studied in order to understand Earth's climate better, but I feel like the title would be more accurate and responsibly written if they said "partially mitigates".
- carom 5y ago
  Mitigate means to make less severe. It does not mean prevent.
  - wumpus 5y ago
    You might take a survey amongst your friends before claiming that the dictionary tells you all you need to know about the word "mitigate".
  - KarlKemp 5y ago
    I was going to comment that it has both means, i. e. partial as well as full mit.. aehm, let's say "reduction (in harmful effects of)". But the dictionary is somewhat disappointing in only mentioning the gradual/partial reduction in harms. Here are the examples: • make (something bad) less severe, serious, or painful: drainage schemes have helped to mitigate this problem. • lessen the gravity of (an offence or mistake): there had been a provocation that mitigated the offence to a degree. What's interesting is that both examples seem to use the term in a way that suggests that it does mean full-and-complete mitigation, otherwise the specifications "to a degree" and "have helped to" would not be needed.
    - dahfizz 5y ago
      I've never understood mitigate to mean a complete reduction of harm. In that case, you would use a word like "solved" or "fixed". "Mitigate" is used when the fixing is only partial. > What's interesting is that both examples seem to use the term in a way that suggests that it does mean full-and-complete mitigation I think that is for extra clarity. Both definitions say that mitigation is a partial effect "less severe" or "lessen the gravity of".
- 5y ago
lucidguppy 5y ago
77% of agricultural land is devoted to livestock. We could return a lot of that land to wilderness if we adopted a whole food plant based diet. https://www.onegreenplanet.org/news/chart-shows-worlds-land-used/ https://www.onegreenplanet.org/news/chart-shows-worlds-land-...
- blablabla123 5y ago
  "Chickens actually evolved as a jungle species" https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/tree-range-chickens-1.5989923 https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/tree-range-c... I think I once saw something similar about cattle but I cannot find any reference.
  - suyula 5y ago
    'Silvopasture' might be the term you want.
    - blablabla123 5y ago
      Yes exactly, thanks!
  - danans 5y ago
    > "Chickens actually evolved as a jungle species" Though that might be true, and despite it working for a small community - the scale of meat production required to satisfy the world's demands today can't be achieved through forest-raised chickens or cattle. The price of meat would have to skyrocket and/or the consumption of it would have to dramatically decrease. Both of those would be progress from a climate change and environmental perspective, but from the perspective of global meat consumer expectations, it would be a serious regression. Few people want to go back to pre-industrial diet (mostly grains, greens, and a very small amount of meat). That's why plant based meat substitutes are such a big deal - they might be one of the few ways we can thread this needle.
    - SyzygistSix 5y ago
1cvmask 5y ago
There was a similar report two years ago from NASA that the world had gone greener over 20 years primarily due to India and China. But I couldn’t find the breakdown of it by country. https://www.nasa.gov/feature/ames/human-activity-in-china-and-india-dominates-the-greening-of-earth-nasa-study-shows https://www.nasa.gov/feature/ames/human-activity-in-china-an... https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/144540/china-and-india-lead-the-way-in-greening https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/144540/china-and-in...
- vixen99 5y ago
  No it isn't primarily due to India and China. The greening of the earth is a universal phenomenon caused by the global increase in carbon dioxide. Carbon for plant growth has to come from somewhere and in general there are very limited carbon sources within the soil. https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2016/carbon-dioxide-fertilization-greening-earth https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2016/carbon-dioxide-fer.... https://www.noaa.gov/news/study-global-plant-growth-surging-alongside-carbon-dioxide https://www.noaa.gov/news/study-global-plant-growth-surging-... https://www.nature.com/articles/nclimate3004 https://www.nature.com/articles/nclimate3004 The massive increase in agricultural productivity due to this greening has not been a widely advertised observation. NASA has pointed out the pros and cons of this (i.e., the greening).
  - CodeGlitch 5y ago
    I wonder if it also has to do with the massive decrease in the need for paper due to an increase in computers at the end of the 20th century. "The paperless office." Also other sources of fuel other than wood for burning.
    - Cthulhu_ 5y ago
      Nah I don't think so, because demand for paper has shifted to things like cardboard. And of course, global population has gone up by a lot. Wood hasn't been a popular choice for a long time, things like coal, peat, oil, petroleum and gas have been more prevalent for the hundreds of years before the current systems of gas or electric heating. Wood is more of a last resort, or something more idyllic.
andrewstuart 5y ago
This is not the answer the Australian government is looking for. The solution needed by politicians is highly technological, expensive, allows us to keep selling coal, and isn't understood by people so can be easily spun into ridiculous tales by politicians. "Just plant trees" would be ridiculously expensive and is totally impractical, the politicians would say.
- 14 5y ago
  Let’s plant trees and have everyone of them e be connected via Bluetooth sensor next to them in the soil providing real time twitter updates. Would that suffice for the Australian government? If not maybe we suggest 5g.
  - andrewstuart 5y ago
    Where is the part in your solution that captures the coal emissions?
    - pilsetnieks 5y ago
      That'd be the actual trees themselves.
- throwawaylinux 5y ago
  How does this comment relate to the article? What answer, and what was the question being asked? Australian government has tree planting programs as part of its climate policy, doesn't it?
  - keyle 5y ago
    To answer your first question, the relative timezone at which this article has been posted helps triggers the local anger regarding climate change and our politicians taking the piss of it for profit. To answer your second question, I doubt it, and if it does, it's probably an insignificant joke.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
- sieabahlpark 5y ago
  Get over yourself.
vmception 5y ago
Is that really what we need though, atmospheric temperature I thought was the main issue How long heat stays in one area I get that more plants = good, for other reasons but surface temperature wasnt something we have been aiming to optimize for?
- Cthulhu_ 5y ago
  It's one of the issues though. I think ground temperature is about human and animal comfort, desertification, viability of certain plants and crops, etc. Not unimportant, but as you imply, only part of the equation.
olivermarks 5y ago
https://www.nationalgeographic.org/activity/save-the-plankton-breathe-freely/ https://www.nationalgeographic.org/activity/save-the-plankto... 70% of the oxygen in the atmosphere is produced by marine plants, rainforests are responsible for roughly one-third (28%)
- dahfizz 5y ago
  How much of the Earth's surface area is ocean and rain forest?
  - olivermarks 5y ago
    The ocean is a huge body of saltwater that covers about 71 percent of Earth's surface. https://www.nationalgeographic.org/encyclopedia/ocean/ https://www.nationalgeographic.org/encyclopedia/ocean/ Rainforests cover 2 percent of the Earth's surface. https://quizlet.com/338369119/rainforest-quiz-flash-cards/ https://quizlet.com/338369119/rainforest-quiz-flash-cards/
- hn_throwaway_99 5y ago
  That seems like it has to be a gross misrepresentation, that only 2% of oxygen comes from other land plants. This link, https://www.factcheck.org/2019/09/amazon-doesnt-produce-20-of-earths-oxygen/ https://www.factcheck.org/2019/09/amazon-doesnt-produce-20-o... , seems like it has more reasonable numbers. First, it's a bit misleading to talk about what produces "oxygen in the atmosphere", because that oxygen was generated over many millions of years. Better to discuss what current percentage of photosynthesis occurs from which sources. The link I gave says a quarter to a third of photosynthesis on land comes from tropical forests, and land vs. marine photosynthesis is split about 50/50.
- bliteben 5y ago
  I live in the PNW and I recently read in this book https://www.amazon.com/Razor-Clams-Treasure-Pacific-Northwest/dp/0295741422/ https://www.amazon.com/Razor-Clams-Treasure-Pacific-Northwes... that the dominate Phytoplankton that makes up razor clams diet has changed to three different species over the course of the last 100 years. Really makes you think about how little we know, and how long the process of distilling research into actual facts or summaries of how things work takes.
breakyerself 5y ago
Planting Trees and shrubs is not a substitute for phasing out fossil fuel emissions in case you were confused by this and many other similar headlines.
- koheripbal 5y ago
  Moreover forests are carbon neutral - that's why it's called a carbon CYCLE. New trees only sequester within the new biomass. The real solution is not to emit CO2 from mined fossil fuels. I do wonder how much more lush land will become with higher CO2 levels.
  - EdwardDiego 5y ago
    What about carbon capture in the soil? Genuine question, I'm not at all familiar with the science.
    - wizzwizz4 5y ago
      Iirc, that's an old forest thing, and goes away pretty much as soon as the trees do.
    - colechristensen 5y ago
      Depends on the forest and specific local ecology. Planting forests definitely is a carbon sink, but the carbon goes into the living biomass. Whether or not you get long term buildup of soil carbon just depends. In other words there’s a sizable one time bonus to planting forests and a conditional long term continuous sink. People tend to simplify one way or the other.
      - EdwardDiego 5y ago
        I was thinking about peat soils - as we know, they're great at preserving organic matter thanks to high acidity, to the extent that they're dug for fuel. A lot of peats in my country have been drained (and the drainage requires continual maintenance) for pasture, but well, it's rather hard to farm without harming the environment.[1] But I'm assuming that healthy peat bogs are fixing carbon/ritual sacrifices in a net-negative manner until someone digs it up and burns it. I just wonder if allowing peatlands to revert for carbon credits would offset the loss of the pasture. [1]:https://www.ruralnewsgroup.co.nz/dairy-news/dairy-management/peat-soils-need-extra-attention https://www.ruralnewsgroup.co.nz/dairy-news/dairy-management...
footlose_3815 5y ago
Nov 23, 2020
- good8675309 5y ago
  Ah yes, National Eat a Cranberry Day. My favorite holiday. Thanks for contributing to the conversation.
tootahe45 5y ago
You have been banned from r/science.
gmuslera 5y ago
Mitigation as in hitting a wall at 180 mph instead of 200? Or hitting the wall in 32 years instead of 30? Everything helps, but in the end the solution to the problem is elsewhere. Not tackling the problem and only going to partial mitigations is almost as bad as doing nothing, because it is just a delay to avoid solving the problem until is too late or doesn't matter anymore for you in particular.
- wizzwizz4 5y ago
  This is the logic that led to people recommending against masks: wearing masks would give people a false sense of security, and they'd start touching each others' eyeballs. Turns out, that's not how human psychology works. If people are doing something, then other people feel like they can, too; if everybody's waiting for the big solution that will actually be worth doing (but won't ever happen, for political reasons)?
  - playpause 5y ago
    “Turns out, that's not how human psychology works.” - source?
    - wizzwizz4 5y ago
      Source: the great experiment that we all did. People who wore masks over the past couple of years were generally more cautious if anything, not less.
      - playpause 5y ago
        What makes you think the causation is that way round?
        krageon 5y ago
        What makes you think that it is not?
DoreenMichele 5y ago
Before life got in the way, I wanted a Bachelor of Science in Environmental Resource Management as a foundation for a Master's in Urban Planning. I currently run r/UrbanForestry for the same reason: I don't think it makes sense to see human settlements as separate from nature. I think of nature as the fabric within which such configurations occur. It isn't inevitable that human development must be a concrete jungle. You can include plants, permeable surfaces, etc in your plans so people can live more lightly and less intrusively on the land. I also think America has a lot of room for adding back walkable mixed-use neighborhoods where at least some people can live, work and shop in the same neighborhood. Or at least live and shop if they are retirees, teens, or similar groups who aren't seeking a job or who already work at home or from home in some capacity. Studies suggest this leads to greater wealth in such neighborhoods (such as more sales) and we know vehicle traffic is a significant burden wrt human-caused climate change. Making it possible to skip the long commute makes for a better quality of life and less pollution adding to this issue. We currently frame this issue as a painful choice between short-term gratification and current high quality of life with a long-term cost of global disaster versus short-term sacrifice for slim hope of assuaging our guilt with no guarantee of real improvement in the future. I don't think that's necessary. I've lived without a car in the US for more than a decade. I think you can live that way and live well. I think we can design and build a world that provides a high quality of life for people and doesn't destroy the environment in the process.
- signal11 5y ago
  > I've lived without a car in the US for more than a decade. Is there a post/blog/thread/AMA about this? This sounds super interesting in itself!
  - Gustomaximus 5y ago
    I think this would be very much based on where you live. I went 10+ years without a car while I was living in cities and it only made life simpler. I now live on a farm and life would be near impossible without a vehicle unless I went Armish style with horse and cart and buggy. If this person lived NY vs back country Montana it would be 2 very different stores.
marsdepinski 5y ago
Duh.
ecommerceguy 5y ago
Wasn't Trump derided for wanting to plant a billion trees or something (I'm going by memory)? edit https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/trump-touts-tree-planting-but-ignores-climate-in-state-of-the-union-speech/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/trump-touts-tree-...
- alliao 5y ago
  you got new zealand mixed up with trump https://www.mpi.govt.nz/forestry/funding-tree-planting-research/one-billion-trees-programme/about-the-one-billion-trees-programme/#about-the-1billion https://www.mpi.govt.nz/forestry/funding-tree-planting-resea...
- good8675309 5y ago
  Seems like it was a good idea but we couldn't afford to give a fascist a win. For the sake of democracy or something.
  - KennyBlanken 5y ago
    It was the political equivalent of switching over to LED light bulbs to justify continuing to drive a 10mpg SUV an hour a day commuting to work. It was literally greenwashing his work to undo decades of environmental protection regulations and laws, while also forking over tons of public land to oil/gas/coal companies.
    - ecommerceguy 5y ago
      Once again a sky is falling comment that is pure lie. Do you people really believe this shit?
- 8note 5y ago
  I think that was mr beast with TeamTrees. I don't remember the derision though
  - Cthulhu_ 5y ago
joshuanapoli 5y ago
Tree cover also decreases albedo, which increases the total solar energy absorbed. [0] I wonder if tree cover decreases local surface temperature (as described in this article) while actually increasing global warming because less light is reflected back to space. [0] https://www.climate-policy-watcher.org/vegetation/deforestation-and-the-little-ice-age.html https://www.climate-policy-watcher.org/vegetation/deforestat...
- CodeGlitch 5y ago
  But wouldn't the plants and trees convert the sun's energy through photosynthesis into chemical energy? That energy conversion removes the heat.
  - Cthulhu_ 5y ago
    Some, but 'removes the heat' is overly simplistic. They're not 100% efficient.
- marcus_holmes 5y ago
  Plant cover also increases evaporation (because the water get trapped by the plants on the surface), which increases warming (because water vapour is a very powerful greenhouse gas), but also reduces local temperatures (evaporation removes heat), and increases cloud cover (which reduces warming by increasing albedo). It's a very complex system, and working out the net effect is very difficult (as the paper says).
foxhop 5y ago
If you are into this sort of thing, I have a youtube channel where I grow food on 1/3 acre. I've a 6 year old food forest, my first year flock of 6 leghorn chickens, and very close access to a lot of water. Connecticut Zone 6b. Links in profile.
hasmanean 5y ago
The surface area of a lawn is several times that of a concrete surface. Walking into a forest, I notice the air is several degrees cooler than outside. Even a house made of clay will be a few degrees cooler in certain weather than one made of concrete due to the increased surface area and evaporation causing cooling. It isn’t rocket science. Greenery makes the earth a much better place.
- Cthulhu_ 5y ago
  Same with trees, that block a lot of sunlight from hitting the surface and instead keep it up there, where the wind can come in and take it away (and cool it through evaporation).
CallMeJim 5y ago
> NASA satellites have been observing increased green cover on land, which is thought to be due to intensive agriculture to feed growing populations and ambitious tree-planting programs – for example, the so-called “Green Great Wall” in China. > The cooling effect from greening is less significant in tropical forests with high leaf areas. Does this mean that cutting down the Amazon rainforest to use the land for farming is net-beneficial for slowing down climate change?
- lovemenot 5y ago
  >> Does this mean that cutting down the Amazon rainforest to use the land for farming is net-beneficial for slowing down climate change? Even if it does, the effect would be temporary. Such land can rarely be farmed sustainably. In the medium termt becomes scrub and barely contributes to cooling And anyway, the question is largely moot. Resisting climate change is only one of many important services rendered by these forests.
- goodluckchuck 5y ago
  Perhaps I’m dumb, but it sounds like they’re saying that it’s good when China does it but bad when anyone else does.
betwixthewires 5y ago
Well yeah. The best carbon capture technology we have is planting trees. Thankfully it happens all by itself.
- _ph_ 5y ago
  Not quite and even if, on a too slow scale. While trees try hard to spread, to survive they need minimum environmental conditions and e.g. protection from plant eaters while they are small. Take the extension of the Sahara to the south in the 70ies. There were droughts, trees being cut and new trees being eaten by goats. Once the soil had become unprotected, the desert would extend. Fortunately, there are now efforts to create the "great green wall" where new trees are planted and protected until they are strong enough to stand for themselves. This seems to be quite successful.
peter_retief 5y ago
If you establish a few trees and vegetation in an area it creates an oasis that is cooler than the surroundings as well as retaining water. This is definitely the way to cool the earth as well as absorb CO2
irthomasthomas 5y ago
If you search youtube for "desertification" you will find many videos on the horrors of this problem being shared by school teachers as if it where a fact. E.g. "Desertification is a fancy word for land that is turning to desert," begins Allan Savory in this quietly powerful talk. And terrifyingly, it's happening to about two-thirds of the world's grasslands, accelerating climate change and causing traditional grazing societies to descend into social chaos." https://youtube.com/watch?v=vpTHi7O66pI https://youtube.com/watch?v=vpTHi7O66pI Back on planet Earth, a review of the current scientific literature firmly disproves this thesis. Nasa satellite images clearly show the deserts are retreating, and on average there is a strong trend to global greening... Greening of the globe and its drivers - Nature 2016 https://www.nature.com/articles/nclimate3004 https://www.nature.com/articles/nclimate3004 "Satellite records from 1982–2009 show a persistent and widespread increase of leaf area (greening) over 25% to 50% of the global vegetated area, whereas less than 4% of the globe shows decreasing leaf area (browning). Ecosystem models suggest that CO2 fertilisation effects explain 70% of the observed greening trend, followed by nitrogen deposition (9%), climate change (8%) and land cover change (4%)." Elevated CO2 as a driver of global dryland greening - Nature 2016 https://www.nature.com/articles/srep20716 https://www.nature.com/articles/srep20716 "Recent regional scale analyses using satellite based vegetation indices such as the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI), have found extensive areas of “greening” in dryland areas of the Mediterranean, the Sahel, the Middle East and Northern China, as well as greening trends in Mongolia and South America. More recently, a global synthesis from 1982-2007 showed an overall “greening-up” trend over the Sahel belt, Mediterranean basin, China-Mongolia region and the drylands of South America." Global Greening Is Firm, Drivers Are Mixed - Harvard 2014 http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2015AGUFM.B31A0515K http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2015AGUFM.B31A0515K "Evidence for global greening is converging, asserting an increase in CO2 uptake and biomass of the terrestrial biosphere. Global greening refers to global net increases in the area of green canopy, stocks of carbon, and the duration of the growing season. The growing seasons in general have prolonged while the stock of biomass carbon has increased and the rate of deforestation has decelerated. Evidence for these trends comes from firm empirical data obtained through atmospheric CO2 observations, remote sensing, forest inventories and land use statistics." Rise in CO2 has 'greened Planet Earth' http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-36130346 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-36130346 Prof Judith Curry, the former chair of Earth and atmospheric sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology, added: "It is inappropriate to dismiss the arguments of the so-called contrarians, since their disagreement with the consensus reflects conflicts of values and a preference for the empirical (i.e. what has been observed) versus the hypothetical (i.e. what is projected from climate models).

435 points by themantra514 5y ago

I have this pet theory of mine that planting trees could also mitigate rising sea levels since trees contain water. Is that dumb ? I have no idea of the order of magnitude we are talking about so I might be entirely delusional.

Cthulhu_ 5y ago
It... kinda is? Trees can't contain that much water and can't compensate for the volume of water coming from glaciers and the like. That said, trees do help stabilize the soil, mitigating the loss of arable soil in case of heavy rains and flooding or things like landslides.
occz 5y ago
>have this pet theory of mine that planting trees could also mitigate rising sea levels since trees Contain water. Is that dumb ? Unfortunately, we would likely have to cover more land than there is on the entire surface of the earth to stave off even a meter of sea level rise. For reference, the sea to land-ratio on earth is around 70/30, and a tree of 15 meters at 60 cm diameter is approximately 5 cubic meters in volume, and a tree contains around 30-50% of its volume in water. The average forest density appears to be about 50-100k trees per square kilometer. We should still plant trees en masse, but as a solution to sea level rise it's probably not viable.
cedilla 5y ago
It's not dumb as long as you ask questions (and are interested in the answer). The global ice sheets currently melt at a rate of 1.4 trillion tons per year. Biomass of all living things is about 500 billion tons C. Let's pretend all of that is plant mass on land (most if it isn't), and let's just say there's 5 times as much water as carbon in plants (an overestimation at least for trees), and we arrive at only 2.5 trillion tons of water bound. So, if I my estimations aren't wildly off, increasing tree biomass even by a large factor won't help us significantly. Add to that that the rate of the ice melting is accelerating, and that the sea levels are also rising due to thermal expansion, and I don't think we can more or less discount the bound water in trees.
regularfry 5y ago
In terms of raw volume of water no, sibling comment has done the maths. But there is another interesting effect that's tangentially relevant. Forested areas act as rainwater sponges. When you get heavy rainfall, if you've got nothing but tarmac or even grass, all that water runs straight off and into the nearest river. Which then bursts its banks and floods everything nearby, making building on floodplains a bloody stupid idea. With forests, though, the depth of the roots means the water can sink more into the ground. It all still ends up in the river eventually, but over a much longer time period. Because the big pulse of water from the rainfall is attenuated, the river has more of a chance to drain away, so you get fewer, and less serious, floods. The net effect is that while we'll lose land to rising sea levels, in some areas there's the opportunity to reclaim land currently too marginal to occupy. Nowhere near the same land area, but it's a worthwhile effect to be aware of where it applies.

grouphugs 5y ago

we've really underestimated how difficult it is to get green back on the surface. using kenya as a case-study, we see that we fundamentally changed earth, the conditions under which forests grew are no longer present. kenya has had a lot of difficulty getting tree's from reforestation campaigns to survive. this issue shows up all over the world.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

nend 5y ago

I mean, I get that this needs to be studied in order to understand Earth's climate better, but I feel like the title would be more accurate and responsibly written if they said "partially mitigates".

carom 5y ago
Mitigate means to make less severe. It does not mean prevent.
- wumpus 5y ago
  You might take a survey amongst your friends before claiming that the dictionary tells you all you need to know about the word "mitigate".
- KarlKemp 5y ago
  I was going to comment that it has both means, i. e. partial as well as full mit.. aehm, let's say "reduction (in harmful effects of)". But the dictionary is somewhat disappointing in only mentioning the gradual/partial reduction in harms. Here are the examples: • make (something bad) less severe, serious, or painful: drainage schemes have helped to mitigate this problem. • lessen the gravity of (an offence or mistake): there had been a provocation that mitigated the offence to a degree. What's interesting is that both examples seem to use the term in a way that suggests that it does mean full-and-complete mitigation, otherwise the specifications "to a degree" and "have helped to" would not be needed.
  - dahfizz 5y ago
    I've never understood mitigate to mean a complete reduction of harm. In that case, you would use a word like "solved" or "fixed". "Mitigate" is used when the fixing is only partial. > What's interesting is that both examples seem to use the term in a way that suggests that it does mean full-and-complete mitigation I think that is for extra clarity. Both definitions say that mitigation is a partial effect "less severe" or "lessen the gravity of".
5y ago

lucidguppy 5y ago

77% of agricultural land is devoted to livestock. We could return a lot of that land to wilderness if we adopted a whole food plant based diet. https://www.onegreenplanet.org/news/chart-shows-worlds-land-used/ https://www.onegreenplanet.org/news/chart-shows-worlds-land-...

blablabla123 5y ago
"Chickens actually evolved as a jungle species" https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/tree-range-chickens-1.5989923 https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/tree-range-c... I think I once saw something similar about cattle but I cannot find any reference.
- suyula 5y ago
  'Silvopasture' might be the term you want.
  - blablabla123 5y ago
    Yes exactly, thanks!
- danans 5y ago
  > "Chickens actually evolved as a jungle species" Though that might be true, and despite it working for a small community - the scale of meat production required to satisfy the world's demands today can't be achieved through forest-raised chickens or cattle. The price of meat would have to skyrocket and/or the consumption of it would have to dramatically decrease. Both of those would be progress from a climate change and environmental perspective, but from the perspective of global meat consumer expectations, it would be a serious regression. Few people want to go back to pre-industrial diet (mostly grains, greens, and a very small amount of meat). That's why plant based meat substitutes are such a big deal - they might be one of the few ways we can thread this needle.
  - SyzygistSix 5y ago

1cvmask 5y ago

There was a similar report two years ago from NASA that the world had gone greener over 20 years primarily due to India and China. But I couldn’t find the breakdown of it by country. https://www.nasa.gov/feature/ames/human-activity-in-china-and-india-dominates-the-greening-of-earth-nasa-study-shows https://www.nasa.gov/feature/ames/human-activity-in-china-an... https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/144540/china-and-india-lead-the-way-in-greening https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/144540/china-and-in...

vixen99 5y ago
No it isn't primarily due to India and China. The greening of the earth is a universal phenomenon caused by the global increase in carbon dioxide. Carbon for plant growth has to come from somewhere and in general there are very limited carbon sources within the soil. https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2016/carbon-dioxide-fertilization-greening-earth https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2016/carbon-dioxide-fer.... https://www.noaa.gov/news/study-global-plant-growth-surging-alongside-carbon-dioxide https://www.noaa.gov/news/study-global-plant-growth-surging-... https://www.nature.com/articles/nclimate3004 https://www.nature.com/articles/nclimate3004 The massive increase in agricultural productivity due to this greening has not been a widely advertised observation. NASA has pointed out the pros and cons of this (i.e., the greening).
- CodeGlitch 5y ago
  I wonder if it also has to do with the massive decrease in the need for paper due to an increase in computers at the end of the 20th century. "The paperless office." Also other sources of fuel other than wood for burning.
  - Cthulhu_ 5y ago
    Nah I don't think so, because demand for paper has shifted to things like cardboard. And of course, global population has gone up by a lot. Wood hasn't been a popular choice for a long time, things like coal, peat, oil, petroleum and gas have been more prevalent for the hundreds of years before the current systems of gas or electric heating. Wood is more of a last resort, or something more idyllic.

andrewstuart 5y ago

This is not the answer the Australian government is looking for. The solution needed by politicians is highly technological, expensive, allows us to keep selling coal, and isn't understood by people so can be easily spun into ridiculous tales by politicians. "Just plant trees" would be ridiculously expensive and is totally impractical, the politicians would say.

14 5y ago
Let’s plant trees and have everyone of them e be connected via Bluetooth sensor next to them in the soil providing real time twitter updates. Would that suffice for the Australian government? If not maybe we suggest 5g.
- andrewstuart 5y ago
  Where is the part in your solution that captures the coal emissions?
  - pilsetnieks 5y ago
    That'd be the actual trees themselves.
throwawaylinux 5y ago
How does this comment relate to the article? What answer, and what was the question being asked? Australian government has tree planting programs as part of its climate policy, doesn't it?
- keyle 5y ago
  To answer your first question, the relative timezone at which this article has been posted helps triggers the local anger regarding climate change and our politicians taking the piss of it for profit. To answer your second question, I doubt it, and if it does, it's probably an insignificant joke.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

sieabahlpark 5y ago
Get over yourself.

vmception 5y ago

Is that really what we need though, atmospheric temperature I thought was the main issue How long heat stays in one area I get that more plants = good, for other reasons but surface temperature wasnt something we have been aiming to optimize for?

Cthulhu_ 5y ago
It's one of the issues though. I think ground temperature is about human and animal comfort, desertification, viability of certain plants and crops, etc. Not unimportant, but as you imply, only part of the equation.

olivermarks 5y ago

https://www.nationalgeographic.org/activity/save-the-plankton-breathe-freely/ https://www.nationalgeographic.org/activity/save-the-plankto... 70% of the oxygen in the atmosphere is produced by marine plants, rainforests are responsible for roughly one-third (28%)

dahfizz 5y ago
How much of the Earth's surface area is ocean and rain forest?
- olivermarks 5y ago
  The ocean is a huge body of saltwater that covers about 71 percent of Earth's surface. https://www.nationalgeographic.org/encyclopedia/ocean/ https://www.nationalgeographic.org/encyclopedia/ocean/ Rainforests cover 2 percent of the Earth's surface. https://quizlet.com/338369119/rainforest-quiz-flash-cards/ https://quizlet.com/338369119/rainforest-quiz-flash-cards/
hn_throwaway_99 5y ago
That seems like it has to be a gross misrepresentation, that only 2% of oxygen comes from other land plants. This link, https://www.factcheck.org/2019/09/amazon-doesnt-produce-20-of-earths-oxygen/ https://www.factcheck.org/2019/09/amazon-doesnt-produce-20-o... , seems like it has more reasonable numbers. First, it's a bit misleading to talk about what produces "oxygen in the atmosphere", because that oxygen was generated over many millions of years. Better to discuss what current percentage of photosynthesis occurs from which sources. The link I gave says a quarter to a third of photosynthesis on land comes from tropical forests, and land vs. marine photosynthesis is split about 50/50.
bliteben 5y ago
I live in the PNW and I recently read in this book https://www.amazon.com/Razor-Clams-Treasure-Pacific-Northwest/dp/0295741422/ https://www.amazon.com/Razor-Clams-Treasure-Pacific-Northwes... that the dominate Phytoplankton that makes up razor clams diet has changed to three different species over the course of the last 100 years. Really makes you think about how little we know, and how long the process of distilling research into actual facts or summaries of how things work takes.

breakyerself 5y ago

Planting Trees and shrubs is not a substitute for phasing out fossil fuel emissions in case you were confused by this and many other similar headlines.

koheripbal 5y ago
Moreover forests are carbon neutral - that's why it's called a carbon CYCLE. New trees only sequester within the new biomass. The real solution is not to emit CO2 from mined fossil fuels. I do wonder how much more lush land will become with higher CO2 levels.
- EdwardDiego 5y ago
  What about carbon capture in the soil? Genuine question, I'm not at all familiar with the science.
  - wizzwizz4 5y ago
    Iirc, that's an old forest thing, and goes away pretty much as soon as the trees do.
  - colechristensen 5y ago
    Depends on the forest and specific local ecology. Planting forests definitely is a carbon sink, but the carbon goes into the living biomass. Whether or not you get long term buildup of soil carbon just depends. In other words there’s a sizable one time bonus to planting forests and a conditional long term continuous sink. People tend to simplify one way or the other.
    - EdwardDiego 5y ago
      I was thinking about peat soils - as we know, they're great at preserving organic matter thanks to high acidity, to the extent that they're dug for fuel. A lot of peats in my country have been drained (and the drainage requires continual maintenance) for pasture, but well, it's rather hard to farm without harming the environment.[1] But I'm assuming that healthy peat bogs are fixing carbon/ritual sacrifices in a net-negative manner until someone digs it up and burns it. I just wonder if allowing peatlands to revert for carbon credits would offset the loss of the pasture. [1]:https://www.ruralnewsgroup.co.nz/dairy-news/dairy-management/peat-soils-need-extra-attention https://www.ruralnewsgroup.co.nz/dairy-news/dairy-management...

footlose_3815 5y ago

Nov 23, 2020

good8675309 5y ago
Ah yes, National Eat a Cranberry Day. My favorite holiday. Thanks for contributing to the conversation.

tootahe45 5y ago

You have been banned from r/science.

gmuslera 5y ago

Mitigation as in hitting a wall at 180 mph instead of 200? Or hitting the wall in 32 years instead of 30? Everything helps, but in the end the solution to the problem is elsewhere. Not tackling the problem and only going to partial mitigations is almost as bad as doing nothing, because it is just a delay to avoid solving the problem until is too late or doesn't matter anymore for you in particular.

wizzwizz4 5y ago
This is the logic that led to people recommending against masks: wearing masks would give people a false sense of security, and they'd start touching each others' eyeballs. Turns out, that's not how human psychology works. If people are doing something, then other people feel like they can, too; if everybody's waiting for the big solution that will actually be worth doing (but won't ever happen, for political reasons)?
- playpause 5y ago
  “Turns out, that's not how human psychology works.” - source?
  - wizzwizz4 5y ago
    Source: the great experiment that we all did. People who wore masks over the past couple of years were generally more cautious if anything, not less.
    - playpause 5y ago
      What makes you think the causation is that way round?
      - krageon 5y ago
        What makes you think that it is not?

DoreenMichele 5y ago

Before life got in the way, I wanted a Bachelor of Science in Environmental Resource Management as a foundation for a Master's in Urban Planning. I currently run r/UrbanForestry for the same reason: I don't think it makes sense to see human settlements as separate from nature. I think of nature as the fabric within which such configurations occur. It isn't inevitable that human development must be a concrete jungle. You can include plants, permeable surfaces, etc in your plans so people can live more lightly and less intrusively on the land. I also think America has a lot of room for adding back walkable mixed-use neighborhoods where at least some people can live, work and shop in the same neighborhood. Or at least live and shop if they are retirees, teens, or similar groups who aren't seeking a job or who already work at home or from home in some capacity. Studies suggest this leads to greater wealth in such neighborhoods (such as more sales) and we know vehicle traffic is a significant burden wrt human-caused climate change. Making it possible to skip the long commute makes for a better quality of life and less pollution adding to this issue. We currently frame this issue as a painful choice between short-term gratification and current high quality of life with a long-term cost of global disaster versus short-term sacrifice for slim hope of assuaging our guilt with no guarantee of real improvement in the future. I don't think that's necessary. I've lived without a car in the US for more than a decade. I think you can live that way and live well. I think we can design and build a world that provides a high quality of life for people and doesn't destroy the environment in the process.

signal11 5y ago
> I've lived without a car in the US for more than a decade. Is there a post/blog/thread/AMA about this? This sounds super interesting in itself!
- Gustomaximus 5y ago
  I think this would be very much based on where you live. I went 10+ years without a car while I was living in cities and it only made life simpler. I now live on a farm and life would be near impossible without a vehicle unless I went Armish style with horse and cart and buggy. If this person lived NY vs back country Montana it would be 2 very different stores.

marsdepinski 5y ago

Duh.

ecommerceguy 5y ago

Wasn't Trump derided for wanting to plant a billion trees or something (I'm going by memory)? edit https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/trump-touts-tree-planting-but-ignores-climate-in-state-of-the-union-speech/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/trump-touts-tree-...

alliao 5y ago
you got new zealand mixed up with trump https://www.mpi.govt.nz/forestry/funding-tree-planting-research/one-billion-trees-programme/about-the-one-billion-trees-programme/#about-the-1billion https://www.mpi.govt.nz/forestry/funding-tree-planting-resea...
good8675309 5y ago
Seems like it was a good idea but we couldn't afford to give a fascist a win. For the sake of democracy or something.
- KennyBlanken 5y ago
  It was the political equivalent of switching over to LED light bulbs to justify continuing to drive a 10mpg SUV an hour a day commuting to work. It was literally greenwashing his work to undo decades of environmental protection regulations and laws, while also forking over tons of public land to oil/gas/coal companies.
  - ecommerceguy 5y ago
    Once again a sky is falling comment that is pure lie. Do you people really believe this shit?
8note 5y ago
I think that was mr beast with TeamTrees. I don't remember the derision though
- Cthulhu_ 5y ago

joshuanapoli 5y ago

Tree cover also decreases albedo, which increases the total solar energy absorbed. [0] I wonder if tree cover decreases local surface temperature (as described in this article) while actually increasing global warming because less light is reflected back to space. [0] https://www.climate-policy-watcher.org/vegetation/deforestation-and-the-little-ice-age.html https://www.climate-policy-watcher.org/vegetation/deforestat...

CodeGlitch 5y ago
But wouldn't the plants and trees convert the sun's energy through photosynthesis into chemical energy? That energy conversion removes the heat.
- Cthulhu_ 5y ago
  Some, but 'removes the heat' is overly simplistic. They're not 100% efficient.
marcus_holmes 5y ago
Plant cover also increases evaporation (because the water get trapped by the plants on the surface), which increases warming (because water vapour is a very powerful greenhouse gas), but also reduces local temperatures (evaporation removes heat), and increases cloud cover (which reduces warming by increasing albedo). It's a very complex system, and working out the net effect is very difficult (as the paper says).

foxhop 5y ago

If you are into this sort of thing, I have a youtube channel where I grow food on 1/3 acre. I've a 6 year old food forest, my first year flock of 6 leghorn chickens, and very close access to a lot of water. Connecticut Zone 6b. Links in profile.

hasmanean 5y ago

The surface area of a lawn is several times that of a concrete surface. Walking into a forest, I notice the air is several degrees cooler than outside. Even a house made of clay will be a few degrees cooler in certain weather than one made of concrete due to the increased surface area and evaporation causing cooling. It isn’t rocket science. Greenery makes the earth a much better place.

Cthulhu_ 5y ago
Same with trees, that block a lot of sunlight from hitting the surface and instead keep it up there, where the wind can come in and take it away (and cool it through evaporation).

CallMeJim 5y ago

> NASA satellites have been observing increased green cover on land, which is thought to be due to intensive agriculture to feed growing populations and ambitious tree-planting programs – for example, the so-called “Green Great Wall” in China. > The cooling effect from greening is less significant in tropical forests with high leaf areas. Does this mean that cutting down the Amazon rainforest to use the land for farming is net-beneficial for slowing down climate change?

lovemenot 5y ago
>> Does this mean that cutting down the Amazon rainforest to use the land for farming is net-beneficial for slowing down climate change? Even if it does, the effect would be temporary. Such land can rarely be farmed sustainably. In the medium termt becomes scrub and barely contributes to cooling And anyway, the question is largely moot. Resisting climate change is only one of many important services rendered by these forests.
goodluckchuck 5y ago
Perhaps I’m dumb, but it sounds like they’re saying that it’s good when China does it but bad when anyone else does.

betwixthewires 5y ago

Well yeah. The best carbon capture technology we have is planting trees. Thankfully it happens all by itself.

_ph_ 5y ago
Not quite and even if, on a too slow scale. While trees try hard to spread, to survive they need minimum environmental conditions and e.g. protection from plant eaters while they are small. Take the extension of the Sahara to the south in the 70ies. There were droughts, trees being cut and new trees being eaten by goats. Once the soil had become unprotected, the desert would extend. Fortunately, there are now efforts to create the "great green wall" where new trees are planted and protected until they are strong enough to stand for themselves. This seems to be quite successful.

peter_retief 5y ago

If you establish a few trees and vegetation in an area it creates an oasis that is cooler than the surroundings as well as retaining water. This is definitely the way to cool the earth as well as absorb CO2

irthomasthomas 5y ago

If you search youtube for "desertification" you will find many videos on the horrors of this problem being shared by school teachers as if it where a fact. E.g. "Desertification is a fancy word for land that is turning to desert," begins Allan Savory in this quietly powerful talk. And terrifyingly, it's happening to about two-thirds of the world's grasslands, accelerating climate change and causing traditional grazing societies to descend into social chaos." https://youtube.com/watch?v=vpTHi7O66pI https://youtube.com/watch?v=vpTHi7O66pI Back on planet Earth, a review of the current scientific literature firmly disproves this thesis. Nasa satellite images clearly show the deserts are retreating, and on average there is a strong trend to global greening... Greening of the globe and its drivers - Nature 2016 https://www.nature.com/articles/nclimate3004 https://www.nature.com/articles/nclimate3004 "Satellite records from 1982–2009 show a persistent and widespread increase of leaf area (greening) over 25% to 50% of the global vegetated area, whereas less than 4% of the globe shows decreasing leaf area (browning). Ecosystem models suggest that CO2 fertilisation effects explain 70% of the observed greening trend, followed by nitrogen deposition (9%), climate change (8%) and land cover change (4%)." Elevated CO2 as a driver of global dryland greening - Nature 2016 https://www.nature.com/articles/srep20716 https://www.nature.com/articles/srep20716 "Recent regional scale analyses using satellite based vegetation indices such as the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI), have found extensive areas of “greening” in dryland areas of the Mediterranean, the Sahel, the Middle East and Northern China, as well as greening trends in Mongolia and South America. More recently, a global synthesis from 1982-2007 showed an overall “greening-up” trend over the Sahel belt, Mediterranean basin, China-Mongolia region and the drylands of South America." Global Greening Is Firm, Drivers Are Mixed - Harvard 2014 http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2015AGUFM.B31A0515K http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2015AGUFM.B31A0515K "Evidence for global greening is converging, asserting an increase in CO2 uptake and biomass of the terrestrial biosphere. Global greening refers to global net increases in the area of green canopy, stocks of carbon, and the duration of the growing season. The growing seasons in general have prolonged while the stock of biomass carbon has increased and the rate of deforestation has decelerated. Evidence for these trends comes from firm empirical data obtained through atmospheric CO2 observations, remote sensing, forest inventories and land use statistics." Rise in CO2 has 'greened Planet Earth' http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-36130346 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-36130346 Prof Judith Curry, the former chair of Earth and atmospheric sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology, added: "It is inappropriate to dismiss the arguments of the so-called contrarians, since their disagreement with the consensus reflects conflicts of values and a preference for the empirical (i.e. what has been observed) versus the hypothetical (i.e. what is projected from climate models).