Scientists Show Reforestation Helps Cool the Planet Even More Than Thought (msn.com) 54
"Replanting forests can help cool the planet even more than some scientists once believed, especially in the tropics," according to a recent announcement from the University of California, Riverside.
In a new modeling study published in Communications Earth & Environment, researchers at the University of California, Riverside, showed that restoring forests to their preindustrial extent could lower global average temperatures by 0.34 degrees Celsius. That is roughly one-quarter of the warming the Earth has already experienced. The study is based on an increase in tree area of about 12 million square kilometers, which is 135% of the area of the United States, and similar to estimates of the global tree restoration potential of 1 trillion trees. It is believed the planet has lost nearly half of its trees (about 3 trillion) since the onset of industrialized society.
The Washington Post noted that the researchers factored in how tree emissions interacted with molecules in the atmosphere, "encouraging cloud production, reflecting sunlight and cooling Earth's surface." In a news release, the researchers acknowledge that full reforestation is not feasible... "Reforestation is not a silver bullet," Bob Allen, a professor of climatology at the University of California at Riverside and the paper's lead author, said in a news release. "It's a powerful strategy, but it has to be paired with serious emissions reductions."
The Washington Post noted that the researchers factored in how tree emissions interacted with molecules in the atmosphere, "encouraging cloud production, reflecting sunlight and cooling Earth's surface." In a news release, the researchers acknowledge that full reforestation is not feasible... "Reforestation is not a silver bullet," Bob Allen, a professor of climatology at the University of California at Riverside and the paper's lead author, said in a news release. "It's a powerful strategy, but it has to be paired with serious emissions reductions."
Re:What about the trees that fall over? (Score:5, Informative)
the study is comparing climate models with given amounts of forestation. It's not simulating the mechanics of replanting, it's just showing what happens if different levels of forestation are achieved.
Did you read the summary?
Re: What about the trees that fall over? (Score:1)
Did you read the summary?
I did.
The study is based on an increase in tree area of about 12 million square kilometers, which is 135% of the area of the United States
They lost me here.
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So they estimated the forest cover of North America before the arrival of the Europeans. I don't see the issue. Obviously we're not going to replant the maple forests occupied by modern Detroit, today but as a modeling experiment it's perfectly reasonable.
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It's not the cities. They don't take up much land compared to the rural farm areas that have been cleared to support industrial animal production.
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It's impressive to see the amount of damage humans have done to out natural environment.
Fortunately, others have demonstrated that "rewilding" is possible without a great effort. All you need to do is stop clearing and burning and let nature do the rewilding. When you consider that 70% of cleared land is used to support industrial meat production, a logical first step would be to let this land recover. There would be less meat but that is a good thing for human health as well as the environment.
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There's an episode of the "Long Way Up" motorcycle-touring series on Apple TV, in which Ewan McGregor and Charlie Boorman visited a site at which a conservancy was conducting a reforestation. I think that was in Ecuador. They had achieved a huge amount of regrowth in under 10 years, if I recall correctly.
What if they fall and there's no one to hear them? (Score:2)
Do they still contribute to cooling?
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Fallen trees are an important part of the forest ecosystem, so I'm pretty sure they assume some trees fall over.
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I didn't know (Score:5, Funny)
Thought could cool anything, let alone a planet.
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Thought could cool anything, let alone a planet.
Username checks out. I'm not surprised you don't know about cooling given you dedication to heating XD
Sounds good (Score:4, Funny)
Replace all of the fields currently being used for corn-to-ethanol (often heavily subsidized) with forests.
And maybe replace Capitol Hill with enough trees to hang the lot.
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Corn-to-ethanol is dumb but ethanol is not dumb. I actually never knew a farmer who grew corn to make ethanol, they would make ethanol from the husks and parts of the plant which aren't edible and most farmers don't grow sweet corn that a human would eat in any case... they grow feed corn for livestock.
Grow feed grain [not corn], grow fowl [quail are more efficient than chickens but whatever], most of the feed is now tainted by bird poop, rinse the poop away and use it for fertilizer to grow feed... use the
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See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Notice the size difference between your bog standard chicken and the bog standard quail egg. You'd need to raise a LOT of quail to get enough of the little eggses to supply a family. Of course you could go all full Ag-Dept whose Moron-in-Chief was encouraging people to grow their own chickens if they wanted cheap eggs. Also, quail migrate. Good luck keeping them over the winter, but do not let that stop you. Maybe you could go with them?
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You'd need to raise a LOT of quail to get enough of the little eggses to supply a family.
Technically, the plural of "egg" is eyren [wikipedia.org]. (At least, on the Kent side of the Thames in 1490.)
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Migrate? You don't free range quail, optimally you keep at least 3 per square foot in a pen. Because they are flighted and very small keeping the cages short stops them from hurting themselves. Quails stop laying if stressed so we know they are happy this way and as long as the waste falls out the bottom of the cage they are healthy as well. That means you can stack quail cages vertically. If you use a brood box for the bottom layer and offset it to function as a step you can comfortably have a brood box an
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in this case vegan quail and quail eggs
"vegan" quail and quail eggs LOL !
Clearly you don't know what "vegan" means.
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I'm referring to the quail's diet.
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And they are still making civilization possible in this scenario, we are giving them to an animal which was meant to eat them and turn them into human food.
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If all 83 million acres of U.S. soybean farmland were converted to this closed-loop quail farming model[outlined here https://slashdot.org/comments.... [slashdot.org] , it could theoretically feed:
~5.08 billion people per month
That includes:
Clean meat protein (quail)
Daily egg supply
Fully offset fuel costs
Self-fertilized feed production with surplus fertilizer to sell
With efficient methane capture and recycling, the quail farming system scaled to all U.S. soybean acreage (83 million acres) would generate:
~6.5 billion kWh o
Re: Sounds good (Score:2)
Ethanol is a dumb general purpose motor fuel because of the low energy density and the hygroscopicity. You could make butanol with the same feedstocks. It would keep longer and not draw as much water into the fuel system. And even better you could make it from agricultural waste or from algae instead of growing crops for it.
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"even better you could make it from agricultural waste"
That's exactly what I'm proposing here. I don't know any farmers who grow crops to produce ethanol, they grow the crops for other purposes and use the waste like waste like stalks/hulls/etc to make ethanol and use it around the farm. But if you raise quail instead of the more obvious chicken you get a far more efficient produce that is more filling and actually contains enough fat for our nutrition requirements with much higher density and if you've eve
Re: Sounds good (Score:2)
I can't digest soy products, even tempeh. I can tell if they were hidden in a meal when I get indigestion and feel sick for hours.
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I'll count that as one 'yay' in the plan to replace soy farming with quail production.
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Re: Sounds good (Score:2)
What you want for cooling is to increase forest extent. By definition that means planting trees where they are not already.
I'm up for living in a forest .. (Score:2)
.. speaking as an ape man.
I'm an apeman, I'm an ape, apeman, oh I'm an apeman
I'm a King Kong man, I'm a voodoo man, oh I'm an apeman
'Cause compared to the sun that sits in the sky
Compared to the clouds as they roll by
Compared to the bugs and the spiders and flies I am an apeman
(The Kinks)
Tarzan? (Score:2)
The lord of the jungle? :P
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You, Sir, make no sense.
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Claiming the Earth is greener from increased CO2 in the atmosphere is counter to the models used by climate scientists.
I've been watching the Scott Adams (the person that writes the Dilbert cartoons) for some time and he repeatedly points out that there's likely to be something big that happens when the current climate models are proven wrong. All models are wrong, some are useful, that's not from Scott Adams but it is something I expect he'd agree with.
The planet is "built" in a way to maintain a climate
Re: this will upset some (Score:1)
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People always confuse Humans and Life. Yes, Life will continue with increased CO2 levels and higher temperatures. But humans will have a hard time. For some reason, Life in general is not so important to me as humans are.
(*) In general, dicotyledons will grow better than monocotyledons at higher CO2 lev
Plant trees, not solar panels (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
If you cover about 10% of the roofs of an average city, Solar can generate enough electricity on average to cover the energy needs of that city. And it does not take away any areas from agriculture. Imagine covering 10% of a city with nuclear power plants!
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It looks like they covered a desert, what's the problem?
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It looks like they covered a desert, what's the problem?
If you've seen a desert in bloom then you might see a problem. Do a search on "blooming desert" in your favored web search engine to see how "desert" does not mean "devoid of life".
Just because a place appears to be a dry flat area of sand at the time doesn't mean it will remain so. Give it a few years and a rainfall can bring all kinds of dormant seeds to life. I recall a high school trip to the "badlands" in the western parts of the USA and being told as part of this trip how the badlands are slowly di
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Can you admit a cattle ranch or a corn farm fits your meme just the same? It's covering the environment in "a corporations products", how much rainforest has JBS cut down and covered with their products?
Generalizations (Score:2)
If you cover about 10% of the roofs of an average city, Solar can generate enough electricity on average to cover the energy needs of that city.
It depends very much on where that city is. Where I live, which has cloud cover for about 50% of the year, and snow cover for another 25%, it absolutely would not cover our energy needs, especially when heat is needed in the winter.
Re: Generalizations (Score:2)
Yeah, you would have to cover 20 or 30%. Oh noes.
More (Score:2)
Re: More (Score:2)
At latitudes where snow is a problem, you can have heated panels that shed snow in the morning, as the angle is sufficiently steep. Once clear they tend to stay that way unless there is so very much snow that they will not generate anyway. You need more panel and more battery, but solar still works.
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Oh lord, here we go with MrBeast again (Score:2)
More trees, fewer people (Score:4, Insightful)
If you reduce the number of people while increasing the number of trees, the amount of cooling will be even more substantial. Fewer people means less pollution and less need to cut down trees to make space for people. With more trees able to grow, as the study suggests, cooling will increase and the people will have better lives.
There's a reason places with parks, where there's large expanses of grass and trees, have happier people [spring.org.uk].
Central Park (Score:3)
Central Park is larger than anyone's back yard will ever be. It's possible to go jogging, biking, on gondolas... People in Manhattan don't need back yards because Central Park is right there. And no, it's living in isolated cookie-cutter stroadvilles that makes people unhappy, not living in cities.