This is America, man, there’s plenty of potential for private companies to make money. There’s no limit on how much money we can pay Halliburton to plant some trees.
Actually, come to think of it, it’s not the worst idea in the world to create some corporate welfare program centered around tree planting. Create a strong lobby for it, and all. Still probably ends up being cheaper than climate catastrophe, with the lovely fringe benefit of, you know, fewer poor people dying.
That sounds hopeful and good but trees have the advantages you’ve listed plus there’s no need to spend on technology development or wait for uncertain advances. They scale pretty well too.
Light penetration sucks so it becomes a surface area problem.
Just need some way to bury the trees long term if we want to permanently sequester the carbon back into the ground.
for the first 100 years of a tree’s life, it’s better to just let it grow for carbon sequestration. for most trees, it’s much longer.
There is a finite amount of carbon on earth. Storing it in trees is better than the atmosphere even though eventually they release the carbon they store.
(Not a scientist so just parroting what I have heard)
Omg. Trump was right for wanting Greenland. And look global warming is going to solve global warming by freeing up the minerals for electric cars. And our billionaire overlords are going to harvest those minerals for the good of society.
All ye of little faith.
And that is why nobody has primaried Feinstein
Yeah, that’s a problem but you have a similar issue with any other option afaik. Abandoned coal mines have been suggested as one likely spot to stick them. There’s a butt-load of old mines around. Maybe we can pay the Manchins to use their mines if need be.
Most of the tree planting is restoring forests, so while the trees are growing it’s just a lot of carbon coming out of the air. Over the generations of trees (many hundreds of years) the capture is more limited (soil does build up) as carbon is released during decay or fires. But there are lots of places that can be reforested.
I don’t think it’s very complicated at all.
removing them is fine (good even) as long as 1) you aren’t burning them and 2) you’re replanting
I believe the biggest deforestations are just burning trees down to make room to grow hamburgers. Very very lose-lose.
Someone almost certainly told him about this in a meeting, right before he started spouting off about buying Greenland. Just be glad Bush and Cheney weren’t in office, Greenland would have suddenly developed a stockpile of WMDs.
And of course there are other benefits. China is doing that huge reforestation project to combat air pollution which contributes (is responsible for) maybe 20% of all deaths. (sounds crazy, maybe Harvard is being a little hyperbolic, but this is a pretty big deal)
Hmmm, now I’m conflicted.
My plan has been to eat hamburgers into extinction to make room for trees.
Put the vats in the tree tops
in other decarbonization news, biden’s socialist agency approved something nuclear
Tree planting should play a role.
But.
You need a LOT of land. That land is currently being used somewhere. In the developing world that’s often where poor people live and grow crops.
Tree planting isnt permanent. Many tree planting schemes have a 25 year time frame to get a carbon credit. Then you can just chop it down. Better ones have a hundred years. But that just delays the problem.
Even if you intend to leave them there. Theres always a risk of fire, drought, etc.
Tree planting CAN be used to store carbon permanently combined with CCS. If you burn the wood for power. Then bury the CO2 from the exhaust, you are actually having negative ommision power. This will likely play a role to counteract the harder sectors to decarbonise.
So to reduce carbon. You need to plant lots of trees and grow them to full size.
This means that mass tree planting is an effective solution to capture carbon over a 25 to 50 year horizon, with an upper limit purely from land available. That upper limit is large but not sufficient.
Mass tree planting through to 2050 would absolutely help buy us a little more time (2 to 3 years I think) to address carbon emissions via mass ramp down of fossil fuel.
So like everything in this space, it’s an AND not an OR
