Quote:
Originally Posted by GGG
Aren't trees Carbon neutral, they grow they absorb carbon, die, decompose and release the Carbon. So its only by increasing acerage of trees do you reduce carbon and it's a one time benefit and not a continuous benefit.
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More or less. Mature forests still absorb carbon as trees grow, but eventually they die and the carbon gets released. Or forest fires release a ton at once.
I don't know current numbers, but I know from the 90's to the mid '00s Canada's forests were estimated to be a slight carbon sink. Some years they'd act as a sink and absorb a net ~50-100 million tons and other years they'd release almost that much more then they absorbed. But on the balance they absorbed slightly more than they released, something like 40 million tons a year from 1990-2005. Pretty far off the 14 billion estimate above though.