[betwixthewires]

IMO this is a terrible idea. Humans love to try to engineer things and wind up mucking things up sticking their fingers in it. Think of all the invasive deliberately introduced species worldwide. In some cases it worked out, but the results were not predictable, in most cases it caused unforseen problems usually as bad as or worse than the one people were trying to solve.

> Currently voluntary for foresters, transferring seedlings in anticipation of future climate conditions will soon become mandatory.

Think of this: those forests that are there, when the climate was different before there were probably different sorts of plants, no? I'm not talking millions of years ago, I'm talking ten thousand years ago, way too short of a timeframe for evolution. So how did those plants get there?

The answer is clear, either the trees that are there are more adaptable than we give them credit for, or the seeds were winding up there but didn't germinate until climate changed to the conditions they needed.

Either way no intervention is necessary.

So why don't we just let it happen naturally the way it always has? Why do some people think a solution to (pardon my French) putting your dick in the pudding is to put your dick in the pudding some more? Maybe quit digging the hole and leave shit alone?

[hinkley]

Another aspect of getting in front of it is that forests make their own weather. An ecosystem has a microclimate, and when you remove it the microclimate shifts much faster than the climate does. The empty field they are eyeballing for a forest is going to be a much harder prospect for the native trees than an intact forest will be.

This is especially true of temperate forests, and temperate forests are, according to current understanding, the ones that sequester by far the most carbon. It’s partly to do with the soil being fungally dominant. Fungal soils also create their own weather, but they can’t do so if it gets too hot and dry or too tropical. The longer we wait to do something the less land there is to start a temperate forest.

[sp332]

I disagree. The climate has been warmer/drier/wetter/etc in the past, but the rate of change is really high right now. We need to work to get out in front of it. There's a risk that the engineered solution won't work well, but the alternative is a guarantee that habitats will be gone and biodiversity will take a huge hit, taking a really long time to recover.

[mkl]

> Think of this: those forests that are there, when the climate was different before there were probably different sorts of plants, no? I'm not talking millions of years ago, I'm talking ten thousand years ago, way too short of a timeframe for evolution. So how did those plants get there?

Forests migrate during slow natural climate change. The current climate change is much faster. If we wait and let it happen naturally, it will take a very long time, but we need to be soaking up carbon now, and it needs to be held by trees that will survive as long as possible in the currently-changing climate.

[sigg3]

I feel like this is an emergency brake type of deal. We need something fast.