Re: Tree planting 'has mind-blowing potential' - sorry, not really. Archived Message
Posted by John Monro on August 2, 2019, 10:00 am, in reply to "Re: Tree planting 'has mind-blowing potential' to tackle climate crisis: Guardian"
Of course, forest planting is a form of carbon storage, but there's a lot of detailed problems here. For instance, plantation forestry probably is nowhere near as an effective sequestrator of carbon as permanent forest, but I can guarantee that much forest will be planation forest, I can also guarantee massive fraud in carbon market and offsets. It's happened in New Zealand already. I would advise anyone seriously interested in this matter to read this entry on Real Climate (the best site for those interested in climate change with at least some rudimentary scientific education and understanding) http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2019/07/can-planting-trees-save-our-climate/ Rather more sobering and realistic analysis as compared with the news in the MSM. This is what they say To be able to largely compensate for the consequences of more than two centuries of industrial development with such a simple and hardly controversial measure – that sounds like a dream! And it was immediately welcomed by those who still dream of climate mitigation that doesn’t hurt anyone. Unfortunately, it’s also too good to be true. Just read the article, not too difficult to understand. Basically the claims about the effectiveness of forest planting are seriously overstated, and some very simple environmental science has been ignored. Of course, we can plant trees, nothing wrong with this, but we just have to grasp the nettle of reducing carbon pollution, nothing, nothing else will be effective in any serious way. There's no logical or economic dichotomy here - we have to do both.
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