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Originally Posted by Leeman4Gilmour
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This has already been debunked. I wish people would stop bringing it up because it is one of the dumbest ideas ever thrust upon the debate. This was a model by MIT that projected how many trees would have to be planted to act as a carbon sink to absorb the carbon we have been injecting into the atmosphere. Even the author has said it is all for not if we don't also cut emissions.
Crowther's projections were we would need to plant 1.4 trillion trees, which about 1/3 of the trees already in existence. This is virtually impossible and could have dire effects on biomes and their sustainability and possibly make the situation of warming worse.
https://www.llnl.gov/news/models-sho...global-warming
https://www.sciencefocus.com/planet-...limate-change/
You can't just arbitrarily plant trees and think they will not have negative ramifications. There are only so many nutrients and only so much water in the watershed. When you increase the number of plants it taxes the soil and creates an unhealthy environment for plant survival. By packing in more trees you create competition and the strongest plants will survive. Others will die off and create the blanket of debris that creates the conditions for uncontrollable wild fires. Sustainability of the plants is the most important thing, and the concept suggested does not take that into consideration.
https://skepticalscience.com/co2-plant-food.htm
What people don't understand is that the environment can only handle so many plants and trees in an area. Then there is the conditions in which the plants are going to grow. We are thinking in present terms, not future terms. What does the future condition look like and will plants be able to grow in those conditions, or will they require more nutrients and water to do so. Studies show that future conditions - increased temperatures - will make it more difficult for plants to survive and competition for resources will be even greater.
https://www.pnas.org/content/pnas/ea...34113.full.pdf
The same problems affect food crops that we rely upon.
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/...1111/gcb.12069
While we may think that planting trees is a great idea it is going to do more harm to the fragile ecosystems we rely upon to survive. Couple that with the fact that it takes a tree over a decade to mature to the point where it starts acting as a carbon sink and you have even greater challenges. Environmental conditions continue to degrade as temperatures rise, making it more difficult for plants to survive. Without proper management of the plants and increases in the resources needed to sustain them, we are actually doing greater damage than good.
http://le.uwpress.org/content/78/4/559.full.pdf
https://www.greenbiz.com/article/cou...climate-change
"Other scientists question not only the practicality of the study's claims, but also the study's very methodology. "Many of the allegedly available restoration areas are clearly unsuitable for more trees than they currently support. If you look closely at the map, a large proportion of these areas are in regions where soils are permanently frozen," says Eike Luedeling, a climate change researcher and professor of horticultural sciences at the University of Bonn.
"The methodology implicitly (probably not on purpose) implies that carbon stock is proportional to canopy cover, i.e. ecosystems without trees contain no carbon. This is clearly false and strongly inflates the global estimate [of restoration]."
Jan Börner, Luedeling's colleague and a professor for economics of sustainable land use at the University of Bonn, is similarly skeptical. Börner says that some areas being proposed for restoration under the current study are already in use for other purposes. Börner considers the study to be an "interesting academic exercise ... but as a [climate change] mitigation strategy proposal (and it is being advertised as such), it sends a misleading signal to the international climate policy debate."
It is not a practical solution.
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It's more than just kicking a can down the road and is not copping out. Sure, "larger, more comprehensive plans" would be great. But, why not start with a simple chapter 1 of said plan.
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Because its an idea a kindergarten kid would propose. On surface, yeah, it kind of makes some sense. But when you actually start looking into the idea and what the ramifications are, its an incredibly short sighted and not well thought out plan. These are complex problems that require complex solutions, and pinning the hopes of the planet on an idea a four year old would suggest is flat out scary.
Wonderful. They planted all of those trees. Now, how many of those trees will survive and mature to the point of making a difference? The biome they were planted in is grassland. How many resources will they eat up that will cause damage to the biome? Will they be sustainable? It's one thing to put a plant in the ground, its another bringing it to maturity. This will be a great exercise to observe. I hope the media circles back in one year, three years, and five years to see how well this new "forest" is doing and if it survives. Considering the conditions that Ethiopia finds itself, I'm skeptical.