[DrPhish]

Trees are pure carbon. I have heard a number of weak “yeah, but…” arguments that try to diminish the fact, but a central, common sense thesis remains.

If we are truly worried about climate change and are unable to curb our consumption, then we should plant as many trees as we can and aggressively shift as much of our long-lived infrastructure to using wood products as possible.

Grow it, use it, maintain it.

[Terr_]

There are good reasons to green-up our cities, but [edit: capturing] global CO2 levels isn't one of them.

Living things typically don't store carbon long-term, unless you take extra steps like burying them in bogs. Even if we were to collectively invest in sequestration, it'd be more effective with trees that are lower-maintenance, more densely/conveniently situated, and where residents don't complain that a tree needs to be kept-longer/removed-sooner. Perhaps we'd choose something else entirely like algae.

[__MatrixMan__]

Even if it's not typical, when circumstances are right they can store a lot of carbon in a hurry.

My garage is on the same level as my basement, so there's a 5' retaining wall on either side of it. Leaves blow around and get trapped in the corners. Once I didn't bother cleaning it up for several years and when I did I had to move several hundred pounds of new soil into my back yard because of how many leaves had decayed there. Small trees were growing in it.

Similar story with the drainage on the side of my house. Not long after I moved in a heavy rain filled my basement with water. I had to rent a machine to dig a trench on either side so that the back yard would stop becoming a pond when it rained. I'm sure this wasn't a problem in the 60's when it was built, but over time the decaying leaves from my neighbor's tree raised the ground level by something like 1.5 ft and spoiled the original slope (I eventually found the original grade, there was a whole brick patio down there).

We may have to be a bit more intentional than "plant a bunch of trees" to get this effect, but I think it's worth exploiting.

[lysp]

> There are good reasons to green-up our cities, but global CO2 levels isn't one of them.

I believe they can to a point. Trees, parks and greenery lower the average temperature for an area. Less heat being absorbed.

This would likely leads to less of a need for cooling and energy use.

That being said, I don't remember reading about how much of an effect it does have, just that it's not zero.

[SllX]

I’m a generally pro-Tree person but I do caution against this gung-ho sentiment because it tends to lead people down the path of 1) seeing a forest as just the trees and 2) seeing it as a single species of tree, because that’s how you get monocultures, and the lack of biological diversity in monocultures threatens the entire fake forest you worked so hard to plant.

So, plant trees, yeah, but smartly, in areas protected from animals initially that will eat the saplings and grow more than one kind and introducing other vegetation over time. All of the extra complexity will slow the work down and get people questioning you about why it’s taking so long to get a forest, but at least you’ll get something resembling a forest that will be able to sustain itself without human intervention long after we’re dead.

[fendy3002]

a good video (IMO) on this topic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BiDBAU2d7oE

[ahmedbaracat]

Couldn’t agree more. Wrote this few years back:

https://barac.at/essays/we-only-need-to-plant-1-trillion-tre...

[selcuka]

Are you sure? There are currently 3 trillion trees on earth and they only absorb about 20% of greenhouse gas emissions (~9.5 GT of CO2) per year [1]. Apparently not all trees absorb the same amount of CO2 as in your assumption. Adding 1 more trillion trees would have a negligible effect.

[1] https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1710465114

[somenameforme]

It's not just the absorption as any stroll anywhere near a forest should tell you. They somehow cool areas dramatically, not just through shade, and change local systems substantially. Anyhow, if you want papers, there was one just recently discussed here. [1]

It's expected that planting a trillion trees (amounting to global land coverage of ~8%) which is analogous to pre-industrial times, would reduce overall heating by some 25% (!!) by itself. This also opens the door to yet another not poorly understand feedback system - CO2 increases greenery which increases trees which decreases temperatures far more than previously expected.

[1] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44221489

[nitwit005]

I'm totally on board with planting trees, but as a climate solution, the accounting doesn't make sense. We're burning a hundred million barrels of oil a day or so. If you tried to compensate with forests, you'll quickly start to wonder where you're going to fit them all, and where the water is coming from.

It's almost always going to be vastly easier to reduce emissions than to try to re-absorb it.

[SwtCyber]

That said, it’s worth remembering that it’s not a magic bullet.