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Forests make rain [0][1]. Forests store carbon. Forests protect biodiversity [2]. Forests can be used for food production [3]. Why are we not planting more for

by myshpa 4y ago

Forests make rain [0][1]. Forests store carbon. Forests protect biodiversity [2]. Forests can be used for food production [3]. Why are we not planting more forests? Amazon was planted by natives several thousand years ago. "Primitives" with hand tools, and we, with all the technology and fossil fuels, cannot/will not? Forget technology. Find place [4][5][6], plant seeds. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biotic_pump https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biotic_pump [1] https://www.calacademy.org/explore-science/rainforest-makes-rain https://www.calacademy.org/explore-science/rainforest-makes-... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropocene#Biodiversity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropocene#Biodiversity [3] https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/what-is-permaculture-food-forests https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/what-is-permaculture-f... [4] hhttps://ourworldindata.org/land-use-diets https://ourworldindata.org/land-use-diets [5] https://ourworldindata.org/land-use https://ourworldindata.org/land-use [6] https://climatehealers.org/the-science/animal-agriculture-position-paper/ https://climatehealers.org/the-science/animal-agriculture-po...

martythemaniak 4y ago
People are raising money to do that too: https://techcrunch.com/2021/06/08/terraformation-gets-30m-to-fight-climate-change-with-rapid-reforesting/ https://techcrunch.com/2021/06/08/terraformation-gets-30m-to... Replanting native forests in deforested environments also requires desalination.
- myshpa 4y ago
  > Replanting native forests in deforested environments also requires desalination. Probably not everywhere. If biotic pump theory is correct, you could (for example) reforest at the coast, with the forest there established then progress inland, without expensive desalination / water distribution technologies.
  - martythemaniak 4y ago
    You should read some of terraformation's blog posts, they're quite sensible and talk about why you need desalination. Tldr, while forests do create their own microclimate, maintaining moisture, etc you need desalination for the first decade or two while the forest boots up. Also, desalination is largely a function of energy, as solar falls in price, so does the cost of desalination. https://terraformation.com/blog/solar-powered-desalination-reverse-desertification https://terraformation.com/blog/solar-powered-desalination-r...
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
User23 4y ago
> Amazon was planted by natives several thousand years ago. Really? What was there when the natives first arrived? Is there somewhere I can read more about this stupendous continental scale triumph of pre-modern environmental engineering?
- ciconia 4y ago
  > Researchers have found that the fertile terra preta (black earth) is distributed over large areas in the Amazon forest. It is now widely accepted that these soils are a product of indigenous soil management. The development of this soil enabled agriculture and silviculture to be conducted in the previously hostile environment. Large portions of the Amazon rainforest are therefore probably the result of centuries of human management, rather than naturally occurring as has previously been supposed. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_South_America#Amazon https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_South_America#Ama...
  - Jensson 4y ago
    Still doesn't support the claim that they planted the Amazon forest, just that they lived there and altered it. The Amazon forest mostly doesn't have that soil. > Terra preta soils are found mainly in the Brazilian Amazon, where Sombroek et al.[21] estimate that they cover at least 0.1 to 0.3%, or 6,300 to 18,900 square kilometres (2,400 to 7,300 sq mi) of low forested Amazonia;[1] but others estimate this surface at 10.0% or more (twice the area of Great Britain).[ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terra_preta https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terra_preta
- myshpa 4y ago
  Sure, some links to get you started: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/pristine-untouched-amazonian-rainforest-was-actually-shaped-humans-180962378/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/pristine-untou... https://www.jstor.org/stable/1311432 https://www.jstor.org/stable/1311432 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terra_preta https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terra_preta https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Os-ujelkgw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Os-ujelkgw
- 4y ago
kragen 4y ago
forests "make" rain out of rain that already fell on them or nearby, or fog that settled there they don't transmute nitrogen and silicon into hydrogen
- pvaldes 4y ago
  Not. Water is a chemical byproduct of the Photosynthesis. Each time a plant cell uses the sun is making 3 molecules of water by cycle. Is a well known fact that forests build rivers Even better, they turn CO2 into water. Many of our problems would be solved having much more plants and algae around, but strictly protecting more lands as forests is the simple solution that nobody wants to try (and making the laws much harder against arsonists that are releasing CO2 in massive amounts just for fun and profit would be a big step in the right direction).
  - kragen 4y ago
    you say > Not. Water is a chemical byproduct of the Photosynthesis. Each time a plant cell uses the sun is making 3 molecules of water by cycle. ... > Even better, they turn CO2 into water. this is backwards photosynthesis destroys a molecule of water per ch₂o unit produced, as well as a molecule of co₂ it doesn't create water, from co₂ or from anything else this should be obvious because there is no 'h' in 'co₂' but there is in, for example, glucose, c₆h₁₆o₆ you can't produce hydrogen from carbon and oxygen without nuclear reactions, which are not involved in photosynthesis plants don't have significant sources of hydrogen for photosynthesis other than water of course it's circular; when the carbohydrates are metabolized, the water is produced again, so it's not as if the water is destroyed permanently, but it's not created either this is why there are no rain forests in the middle of the sahara, because plants depend on rainfall for their water (or occasionally fog) indeed, in semiarid deserts one of the biggest drains on subterranean aquifers is often trees such as salt cedars, because like most plants, they lose much more water through transpiration than they consume in photosynthesis people like you that want to 'make laws much harder' while getting the basic causality backwards scare me you are calling for violent enforcement of your ignorant errors, the kind of institutionalized violence that produced the greatest atrocities of the 20th century, such as the four pests campaign in the great leap forward i hope you are trolling
lm28469 4y ago
> Why are we not planting more forests? Amazon was planted by natives several thousand years ago. Apparently it's more cost effective to destroy everything to plant palm for oil to manufacture our unhealthy processed "food"
xphos 4y ago
I mean this isn't an either/or we live in a world where we can do both, we just need the will as a population to actually invest in our environment the same way we are willing to invest in stocks. I think the hardest part of environmentalism is showing investors you can make a quick buck off it. If you showed wall street environmentalism = a 8% growth investment they'd buy 5 world GDPs in the investment. But jokes aside the reason I think you'd be more likely to see desalination than forest planting is because you can meter the water line, just planting trees while potentially being the more efficient and logical decision lacks accountability. It makes it impossible to pass costs around to the people actually using all of the resources and causes trouble politically, which is the largest problem when it comes to solve real world problems

by myshpa 4y ago

martythemaniak 4y ago

People are raising money to do that too: https://techcrunch.com/2021/06/08/terraformation-gets-30m-to-fight-climate-change-with-rapid-reforesting/ https://techcrunch.com/2021/06/08/terraformation-gets-30m-to... Replanting native forests in deforested environments also requires desalination.

myshpa 4y ago
> Replanting native forests in deforested environments also requires desalination. Probably not everywhere. If biotic pump theory is correct, you could (for example) reforest at the coast, with the forest there established then progress inland, without expensive desalination / water distribution technologies.
- martythemaniak 4y ago
  You should read some of terraformation's blog posts, they're quite sensible and talk about why you need desalination. Tldr, while forests do create their own microclimate, maintaining moisture, etc you need desalination for the first decade or two while the forest boots up. Also, desalination is largely a function of energy, as solar falls in price, so does the cost of desalination. https://terraformation.com/blog/solar-powered-desalination-reverse-desertification https://terraformation.com/blog/solar-powered-desalination-r...

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

User23 4y ago

> Amazon was planted by natives several thousand years ago. Really? What was there when the natives first arrived? Is there somewhere I can read more about this stupendous continental scale triumph of pre-modern environmental engineering?

ciconia 4y ago
> Researchers have found that the fertile terra preta (black earth) is distributed over large areas in the Amazon forest. It is now widely accepted that these soils are a product of indigenous soil management. The development of this soil enabled agriculture and silviculture to be conducted in the previously hostile environment. Large portions of the Amazon rainforest are therefore probably the result of centuries of human management, rather than naturally occurring as has previously been supposed. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_South_America#Amazon https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_South_America#Ama...
- Jensson 4y ago
  Still doesn't support the claim that they planted the Amazon forest, just that they lived there and altered it. The Amazon forest mostly doesn't have that soil. > Terra preta soils are found mainly in the Brazilian Amazon, where Sombroek et al.[21] estimate that they cover at least 0.1 to 0.3%, or 6,300 to 18,900 square kilometres (2,400 to 7,300 sq mi) of low forested Amazonia;[1] but others estimate this surface at 10.0% or more (twice the area of Great Britain).[ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terra_preta https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terra_preta
myshpa 4y ago
Sure, some links to get you started: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/pristine-untouched-amazonian-rainforest-was-actually-shaped-humans-180962378/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/pristine-untou... https://www.jstor.org/stable/1311432 https://www.jstor.org/stable/1311432 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terra_preta https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terra_preta https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Os-ujelkgw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Os-ujelkgw
4y ago

kragen 4y ago

forests "make" rain out of rain that already fell on them or nearby, or fog that settled there they don't transmute nitrogen and silicon into hydrogen

pvaldes 4y ago
Not. Water is a chemical byproduct of the Photosynthesis. Each time a plant cell uses the sun is making 3 molecules of water by cycle. Is a well known fact that forests build rivers Even better, they turn CO2 into water. Many of our problems would be solved having much more plants and algae around, but strictly protecting more lands as forests is the simple solution that nobody wants to try (and making the laws much harder against arsonists that are releasing CO2 in massive amounts just for fun and profit would be a big step in the right direction).
- kragen 4y ago
  you say > Not. Water is a chemical byproduct of the Photosynthesis. Each time a plant cell uses the sun is making 3 molecules of water by cycle. ... > Even better, they turn CO2 into water. this is backwards photosynthesis destroys a molecule of water per ch₂o unit produced, as well as a molecule of co₂ it doesn't create water, from co₂ or from anything else this should be obvious because there is no 'h' in 'co₂' but there is in, for example, glucose, c₆h₁₆o₆ you can't produce hydrogen from carbon and oxygen without nuclear reactions, which are not involved in photosynthesis plants don't have significant sources of hydrogen for photosynthesis other than water of course it's circular; when the carbohydrates are metabolized, the water is produced again, so it's not as if the water is destroyed permanently, but it's not created either this is why there are no rain forests in the middle of the sahara, because plants depend on rainfall for their water (or occasionally fog) indeed, in semiarid deserts one of the biggest drains on subterranean aquifers is often trees such as salt cedars, because like most plants, they lose much more water through transpiration than they consume in photosynthesis people like you that want to 'make laws much harder' while getting the basic causality backwards scare me you are calling for violent enforcement of your ignorant errors, the kind of institutionalized violence that produced the greatest atrocities of the 20th century, such as the four pests campaign in the great leap forward i hope you are trolling

lm28469 4y ago

> Why are we not planting more forests? Amazon was planted by natives several thousand years ago. Apparently it's more cost effective to destroy everything to plant palm for oil to manufacture our unhealthy processed "food"

xphos 4y ago

I mean this isn't an either/or we live in a world where we can do both, we just need the will as a population to actually invest in our environment the same way we are willing to invest in stocks. I think the hardest part of environmentalism is showing investors you can make a quick buck off it. If you showed wall street environmentalism = a 8% growth investment they'd buy 5 world GDPs in the investment. But jokes aside the reason I think you'd be more likely to see desalination than forest planting is because you can meter the water line, just planting trees while potentially being the more efficient and logical decision lacks accountability. It makes it impossible to pass costs around to the people actually using all of the resources and causes trouble politically, which is the largest problem when it comes to solve real world problems