I ask because I never see this mentioned anywhere, it's always about cars and coal and even cows, which seems silly to me. So, my question is about trees, if Global Warming is caused by CO2 isn't this directly related to the fact that we as people have spent the vast majority of the last 100 years chopping down every single tree in our path, every subdivision I see built today there are no trees, every week a new shopping center goes up where a wooded lot used to sit even though there are half a dozen empty ones around town. Without those trees the CO2 levels rise and in turn we get the symptoms of Global Warming. So in theory could we not slow down this phenomenon by keeping large swaths of land covered in trees, slowing down deforestation and working on ways to get and grow trees in urban settings? Or am I way off base and talking out of my backside with my limited high school knowledge? Of course I'm not so deluded as to believe we have enough land to plant enough trees.
It's getting a bit late, I can reply tomorrow in greater detail if you want, unless someone else comes up with a detailed answer before that. But the the general gist is that the carbon cycle of plants is.. well.. a cycle. Most of the CO2 that is removed from the atmosphere by photosynthesis of plants is eventually returned to the atmosphere. As plants die the organic matter they produced will decompose - aerobic decomposing/digestion produces CO2 and anaerobic produces mainly methane. And methane eventually reacts with oxygen to form CO2 and water.
Some amount of carbon gets deposited in the soil permanently (eventually forming things like coal and oil), but that's a relatively minor part of the carbon cycle on land.
However by increasing the total amount of living plant biomass you do decrease the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere. Then all we gotta do is take all those plants and shove them deep underground so that the carbon is removed from the active cycle.. reverse mining, heh.