- Project Drawdown, a group that compares the merits of different emission-cutting techniques, currently places onshore wind power and improved recycling of fridges and air conditioners at the top of its list.
If rolled out on a realistic scale, each of these techniques would cut over 80 gigatons of emissions, while growing forests languishes in 15th place with a saving of just 18 gigatons.
New research undertaken by Dr Crowther has used the 1.2 billion figure to estimate the potential scale of carbon capture that could be achieved by planting trees, and reveal their true potential.
“There’s 400 gigatons now, in the 3 trillion trees, and if you were to scale that up by another trillion trees that’s in the order of hundreds of gigatons captured from the atmosphere – at least 10 years of anthropogenic emissions completely wiped out,” he said.
I saw an interesting video a while back about a hypothetical mega-project to turn Sahara into a forest. The conclusion in that particular video is that it would actually make global warming worse for two reasons. One is that forests reflect less light than desert, and second is the enormous amount of energy required in producing and distributing water in the enormous desert. But that doesn't necessarily mean that growing forests in more suitable places is a bad idea. Humans may not be very good at planting forests though. The "Green Great Wall" of China suffers from biodiversity problems, as do the forest planting projects of my native Norway. Land owners have for decades been encouraged to plant pine trees, because they have economic value. The problem with that is that pine forests suffer from very low biodiversity. Simultaneously forests are growing all over the country because of depopulation of rural areas (and, ironically, because global warming lets trees grow in areas that were previously too cold). I guess what I'm saying is that the whole issue is a bit more complex than The Independent explains it.
It's easy to imagine that our reforestation and forest management projects are going to get a lot more difficult in the near future due to climate change. What trees might have been able to thrive in a certain area may no longer be able to due to changing temperatures and seasonal trends, soil becoming too dry or too moist compared to the past, possible changes in the fungal and nutritional make up in the soil, the spread of destructive pests, on and on it could go. We might look back and realise trying to grow a forest to fight back a growing desert might be easy in comparison.
He's talking about a one time gain unless they cut down the trees and remove them from the carbon cycle every few decades and replant. Maybe we can bury them all in a nice bog so eventually the remnants of society can have an easy to find coal deposit to jumpstart their own industrial revolution. ---------- Wind power and efficient cooling with the right refrigerants have recurrent benefits