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I believe you can safely assume "it is not enough". We are recirculating literally millions of years worth of trees into the air. No amount of living carbon wil
by Misdicorl 5y ago
I believe you can safely assume "it is not enough". We are recirculating literally millions of years worth of trees into the air. No amount of living carbon will be able to offset it, even if the entire earth were covered in trees (citation needed).
- datadata 5y agoCitations seem to indicate this is actually enough! This surprised me also: https://www.fs.usda.gov/ccrc/topics/global-carbon https://www.fs.usda.gov/ccrc/topics/global-carbon. Indicates 400GT are in from forests, vs 800GT in the atmosphere. Some various sources seem to indicate that around 50% of forests have been destroyed by humans already (by area, not necessarily by carbon?). So if we could instantly recover all forests, and nothing else changed, that alone would reduce the atmosphere CO2 to preindustrial levels (it has almost doubled). I think the misleading part about "millions of years worth of trees" is that a very small percentage of tree biomass probably becomes useful fossil fuel, and the majority is recycled many times.
- Misdicorl 5y agoWow, that really is surprising to me. This is the best non-personal news I've heard in probably a decade, so thanks for sharing!