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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...
  - titzer 5y ago
    Just a PSA, the term "carbon capture" people are throwing around now almost always means capturing CO2 at emission sources like fossil fuel-fired power plants. It generally does not mean capturing CO2 from the air at large. There really is no viable technology for that. Except trees.
- jjcon 5y ago
  > Moreover forests are carbon neutral - that's why it's called a carbon CYCLE As is the meat industry despite many citations of a retracted paper - the cows aren't emitting anything that wasn't already in the grass (at least not in the long term). Both however to act as temporary buffers/reservoirs and emitters that can affect things if they are kept around in perpetuity.
  - wumpus 5y ago
    > the cows aren't emitting anything that wasn't already in the grass This is not true; fertilizer and farm machinery to fertilize and harvest the corn that creates 1/2 the mass of feedlot meat burns a lot of oil. And almost all of American beef goes through feedlots.
    - jjcon 5y ago
      >burns a lot of oil Oil isn't emitted from cows
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
  - 8note 5y ago
    Does the time spent in the cow make up for the cow re-releasing the carbon as methane instead of carbon dioxide? The same carbon was in the air, but not necessarily causing the same greenhouse effect
    - jjcon 5y ago
      The methane is only temporary and still maintains equalibrium in the long term - the issue is when we extract/introduce entirely new greenhouse gases to the system (notably oil)
- bliteben 5y ago
  I have never understood this argument with respect to industrial forests. We move all this carbon into lumber, paper and other products, yet somehow it magically returns to the air. Even industrial forests sequester some carbon in the soil as it seems from my experiences that there is easily 10% of the tree mass that never gets harvested before wind damage or other reasons. A natural forest is constantly losing trees which turn into soil. Some forests have soil that you literally can sink feet into decomposing trees that you can't even see before falling into them. I might buy the argument that the termites etc recycle the fallen trees back into carbon, except for the fact, that it seems to accrete.
- pabs3 5y ago
  Sounds like the real solution is to stop extracting gas/oil/coal from the ground entirely and also plant new fast-growing carbon-rich trees, cut them down, convert them to inert carbon (timber? charcoal? oil?), store the result (underground? as furniture/housing? somewhere?) and repeat the cycle as many times as possible in as many places as possible.
Cthulhu_ 5y ago
It needs to be a multi pronged attack. One of my current pet peeves is that there's a ton of green energy projects - offshore wind farms, solar panels at home, etc - but at the same time, new massive datacenters are built left and right. So instead of converting to renewables, renewables are added on top of existing energy production, and we'll never be able to get rid of carbon emitting energy production. That is, we need to reduce energy consumption AND convert to renewable energy AND have more green everywhere AND a bunch of other things.
- cedilla 5y ago
  Data centres account for only a few percent of energy usage, and energy use in developed countries increases quite slowly. Since renewable energy is so much cheaper than energy generated by nuclear or fossil fuel plants it can easily outpace the increase in demand.

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...
- titzer 5y ago
  Just a PSA, the term "carbon capture" people are throwing around now almost always means capturing CO2 at emission sources like fossil fuel-fired power plants. It generally does not mean capturing CO2 from the air at large. There really is no viable technology for that. Except trees.
jjcon 5y ago
> Moreover forests are carbon neutral - that's why it's called a carbon CYCLE As is the meat industry despite many citations of a retracted paper - the cows aren't emitting anything that wasn't already in the grass (at least not in the long term). Both however to act as temporary buffers/reservoirs and emitters that can affect things if they are kept around in perpetuity.
- wumpus 5y ago
  > the cows aren't emitting anything that wasn't already in the grass This is not true; fertilizer and farm machinery to fertilize and harvest the corn that creates 1/2 the mass of feedlot meat burns a lot of oil. And almost all of American beef goes through feedlots.
  - jjcon 5y ago
    >burns a lot of oil Oil isn't emitted from cows
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
- 8note 5y ago
  Does the time spent in the cow make up for the cow re-releasing the carbon as methane instead of carbon dioxide? The same carbon was in the air, but not necessarily causing the same greenhouse effect
  - jjcon 5y ago
    The methane is only temporary and still maintains equalibrium in the long term - the issue is when we extract/introduce entirely new greenhouse gases to the system (notably oil)
bliteben 5y ago
I have never understood this argument with respect to industrial forests. We move all this carbon into lumber, paper and other products, yet somehow it magically returns to the air. Even industrial forests sequester some carbon in the soil as it seems from my experiences that there is easily 10% of the tree mass that never gets harvested before wind damage or other reasons. A natural forest is constantly losing trees which turn into soil. Some forests have soil that you literally can sink feet into decomposing trees that you can't even see before falling into them. I might buy the argument that the termites etc recycle the fallen trees back into carbon, except for the fact, that it seems to accrete.
pabs3 5y ago
Sounds like the real solution is to stop extracting gas/oil/coal from the ground entirely and also plant new fast-growing carbon-rich trees, cut them down, convert them to inert carbon (timber? charcoal? oil?), store the result (underground? as furniture/housing? somewhere?) and repeat the cycle as many times as possible in as many places as possible.

Cthulhu_ 5y ago

It needs to be a multi pronged attack. One of my current pet peeves is that there's a ton of green energy projects - offshore wind farms, solar panels at home, etc - but at the same time, new massive datacenters are built left and right. So instead of converting to renewables, renewables are added on top of existing energy production, and we'll never be able to get rid of carbon emitting energy production. That is, we need to reduce energy consumption AND convert to renewable energy AND have more green everywhere AND a bunch of other things.

cedilla 5y ago
Data centres account for only a few percent of energy usage, and energy use in developed countries increases quite slowly. Since renewable energy is so much cheaper than energy generated by nuclear or fossil fuel plants it can easily outpace the increase in demand.