a thoughtful web.
Good ideas and conversation. No ads, no tracking.   Login or Take a Tour!
comment
kleinbl00  ·  1560 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Can we sequester all of our C02 with trees? [Update: No]

If you just demonstrated that liberal applications of mutherfucking Arbor Day will solve the Crisis Of Our Time I will be alternately annoyed and overjoyed. I'ma run the numbers real quick myself.

My google takes me to Quora which takes me to Trees For the Future which has no metrics to speak of but lots of Smiling People of Color. Digging down a little takes me to The Guardian which thinks we need a trillion trees, 1.2 in fact, which need to live on 1.7 billion "hectares", which is some unit used in places that hate freedom, but they say that's the size of the US and China combined, which is hella bigger than South Dakota, so I ask WolframAlpha how big South Dakota is and it gets all sciencey on me and says "1.997x10^7 hectares" at which point I wonder how you dropped not one decimal point but two.

So okay I ask google "how much of the world is forest" and it's all "four billion hectares yo" because apparently scientists ALL hate freedom and I go

"Okay so basically we need to increase the world's forests by fifty percent."

I mean, I'm down. Let's do this. But I'll point out that before you get too carried away your napkinsketch is "South Dakota" and my napkinsketch is "increase the world's forests by fifty percent in the face of global warming and rising sea levels" and I love trees? And I am ALL ABOUT this? But it's a big ask. And that's probably why outfits like this get all pigeon-chested about planting 40 thousand trees even though it's five decimal places from useful.