halcyon742
27590
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Doesn’t have to be all in the same area, but it’ll probably be cheaper than sucking it out of the air.
Throw everything at it.
https://apnews.com/article/tree-planting-fossil-fuels-carbon-offsets-climate-a0969fbe98905391f53d34780b88256d
clarkWhogotsanity
Just turn all the golf courses in giant swaths of algae bio reactors. Water infrastructure is already there just drop the reactors in place. The excess algae can be skimmed for other uses rather than use natural resources they can supplement
imNotThisCleverIRL
We can’t win if we never start! https://media3.giphy.com/media/v1.Y2lkPTY1YjkxZmJlOHhiNTFiN216YjJldTU2ejFsdzVkZG1uMTdhYndpNTg2eGtqbjloZiZlcD12MV9naWZzX3NlYXJjaCZjdD1n/3oeSAD00YsGzUPTmqA/giphy.mp4
Idontcareatall62
armstrongdavidmorgan360
The ocean, coral reefs.
HiccupsAreReverseThrowUps
I'm w ya bud. If it grows let it go
duktayp
"what you people don't seem to understand is, there's no profit to planting trees everywhere" https://media0.giphy.com/media/v1.Y2lkPTc5MGI3NjExbWdkeWFxODFlcWhoeWVlYXJmYXIxZnA5NGkyZWpmeHpzZW16bjk1ciZlcD12MV9pbnRlcm5hbF9naWZfYnlfaWQmY3Q9Zw/uldv9YWW1tQw0VKsac/giphy.gif
rusty42marlin
You need to visit the SE USA. Trees are a 20 year row crop, they plant them everywhere. And there is LOTS of profit in planting trees, absolutly everywhere.
Wuz314159
https://imgur.com/OTLfiV3.jpg
squirreltactics
What about algae?
Jedoc
Algae is good for a lot of things, so-so at carbon sequestration.
HarebrainedYeti
To properly do it I think we'd need to rebury all the carbon captured by the trees, then plant more, and keep doing that?
DevineEscapes
Leave the leafs. Compost. Native meadows instead of lawns. Huglekulture. As I understand t free ranging bison do much to sequester carbon. Research "regen ag".
swedeonamoose
Taking a quick wiki look, apperently only around 57 countries have a forest coverage over 50%, and many of those are very smal nations with lets be real, pretty smal forests all things considered.
Akurei00
That's not a fair metric.
Even though a lot of the US (east and PNW) are heavily forested, a good chunk of the US is desert and grasslands and it's similar for others as well.
Egypt is pretty low on that list being primarily Saharan desert.
Nepal is largely the Himalayas.
Brazil is 60% Amazon rainforest and is suffering deforestation but is more forested than any of the other examples by far, as a percentage. The US has 7.6% (#3) of the entire world's forests behind Brazil with 12.2% (#2).
abc987
And russia probably has that #1 place. Luckily they rather cut down trees to reinforce their tanks against drones instead doing anything even remotely usefull to climate.
Akurei00
They do with like 20% of the world's trees. But that's to be expected with that much land and low population density,
DaisyfromDownunder
Or an ocean. Or just stop burning fossil fuels you fools.
freshthrowaway1138
The Climate Denier's Playbook podcast (from the guy who does Climate Town) covered the reality of planting tons of trees. It's just not going to work. Not saying, don't plant trees, but just that there are smarter and more efficient programs that can be done to fight climate change.
https://youtu.be/_l7lWUTa_a8
ViolentlyJaded
It will take many approaches to solve this problem, if we can.
HelikaformerNubisKnight9
We should stop draining the moors. They bind lots of CO2.
SwissScars
Trump is planning on skipping Global Warming and moving straight on to Global Burning.
EatPieLander
Grow More, Mow Less.
Instead of McMansions w/"golf course" lawns, why not wild flowers and shrubs, as well.
WaxedApple
Instead of having a yard at all, live in an apartment. Minimize your footprint
EatPieLander
nefroye
I don't think people realize just how much of the world does *not* support tree-growing. It's too dry. Not only that but they the release the CO2 right back into the atmosphere when they die and/or are consumed in a forest fire. Conditions have to be just right for their carbon to be sequestered into the ground via peat and then coal etc. That's very rare and takes millions of years. Bottom line: planting trees to combat atmospheric CO2 growth is futile. Sorry.
mediumrarechickenstrips
originaljbw
A mature forest is effectively carbon neutral. Trees die and decay producing carbon just as fast as new growth replaces it. The real carbon scrubbing is done by the ocean.
DoctorFunk217
anything to help. It's always going to be tough.
DoctorFunk217
but our children will thank us for every inch we give them.
SmashySashimi
You mean like how they used to be?
MrFrAnK9000
And what do we do instead ? We deforest the amazon and the boreal forest of course
TheWhiteBarry
Stop burning fossil fuels? 🤷🏻♀️
unluckyandbored
The better solution would of course be to end fossil fuel extraction and consumption. But we're not doing that any time soon. If we'd started 50 years ago when scientists first started warning the world, we might be well on our way by now. And we wouldn't be staring down the barrel of a climate catastrophe. But we didn't, and we are, and it's now too late to stop it. Best we can do is slow the rate of destruction.
ATLandNerdy
Trees are inefficient too. Algae is much better. https://www.undp.org/serbia/news/first-algae-air-purifier-serbia
RealRedbeard
I see no problem with this at all.
erickey942000
Carbon is nothing compared to refrigerants. They figured out it wasn't just ozone depletion. They have a global warming potential thousands of times worse than carbon. Even the refrigerants they told us were safe for the last 20 years. We're doomed 🫤
PowerPedant
Don't really need a study for this, just some basic maths.
Also: Once the trees die, you have to prevent their decomposition FOREVER, because otherwise the CO₂ goes right back into the air.
Planting trees won't save us. We should still do it though.
CommentMalone
So a tree does, let's just bury it. Right?
brownribbon
Where are you going to bury such an incredible volume of biomass? How are you going to prevent the bacteria and fungi that break down trees from doing so, thus realizing the carbon back into the atmosphere?
CommentMalone
My sarcasm don't turned off there for a second. Please excuse me, for not checking before sending that
brownribbon
Sometimes ya gotta turn it off and back on again. Been there.
RunawaySpoons
Something something peat bog restoration (where the conditions support it … I guess that's probably a major constraint).
However trees also release oxygen so yeah, plant them as well.
WaxedApple
About 70% of oxygen comes from the oceans. The oceans are already doing their part to sequester carbon, but if you want to have a nice day don't look up ocean acidification.
PowerPedant
Yup. The long-term goal must be to put coal back in the ground.
frenofafren
Let's start by planting trees on every golf course.
IUpvoteLOTRMemes
OxfordWriter
Those great big football stadia would make perfect nurseries. Just dig up all that fake grass and start planting saplings. A young forest at the heart of every big city would do wonders for their air quality and would be a much better use of public funds.
SarcasticComment
sorry, but my city is using tax dollars to turn move riverfront into stadium parking. they will later complain no one wants to go downtown despite parking availability
halcyon742
Scotty Schefler actually advocates for exactly that. Essentially they’ve been removed allow for longer drives
https://www.nbcsports.com/golf/news/under-darkness-of-night-oakmont-began-removing-thousands-of-trees-decades-ago#:~:text=Last%20month%2C%20Scottie%20Scheffler%20made,when%20the%20trees%20go%20away.
ILogInToUpvote
Turn it all into a spooky deep woods putt putt course. Tree? No problem, bank around it. Little stream? A bridge! Bear? Windmill!
wagnus
dang Spirit Halloween got their fingies on golf courses now?! I'm FOR it
combatwombat0
Seed bombing
DrFlukeHawkins
Start in Palm Springs. Fill in those damn lakes they have too. Fucking stupid
soylentbeef
I don't know if you have ever golfed, but the places I play are covered in trees and local plant life. I know because I routinely find myself hitting into them. If the places I played at weren't golf courses they would be shitty housing developments. I get that it's not the same for courses everywhere but I don't think they use more water in southern MN keeping these places active than they would to keep some overpriced suburban backyards green.
ongabonga
https://media0.giphy.com/media/v1.Y2lkPWE1NzM3M2U1dWlkOXpzZ2llenhlbXNtYjR2c21oNDY4eXRkdXp1aGdzdWZrMzU4NCZlcD12MV9naWZzX3NlYXJjaCZjdD1n/3oFzmkkwfOGlzZ0gxi/200w.webp
Frederf
Let's start by planting trees down BP's CEO's throat.
tEMPuSER632
Do this 3 or 4 times, and I see actual climate improvement happening far quicker than almost any other method.
LabsAreGoobers
We’re Sooorrrrry
RunawaySpoons
I don't know about golf courses around the world but quite a lot in the UK have shrubs and trees and mixed grass/wildflowers etc. The fairways are kept clear of shrubs and brambles of course, but it's only the greens that are kept meticulously manicured with short uniform grass and well watered. Maybe also the tees, I'm not sure. But the rest is reasonably good for wildlife - of course having the whole area wild would probably be better, but golf clubs that are open and welcoming to all (not
ps238principal
On the other hand, go look up Sherwood Forest these days. It's quite depressing.
RunawaySpoons
You'll have to enlighten me; as far as I'm aware what remains is still significantly wooded which is more than can be said for most of the old royal forests. (Royal hunting forests weren't just woodlands, btw.)
RunawaySpoons
the snooty exclusive/exclusionary ones) can be a good way of getting people outdoors and active.
However golf courses requiring huge amounts of water and cultivation of non-native vegetation, especially in areas prone to water shortage, I agree are a problem.
RunawaySpoons
Although going back to the original comment, planting trees - or native vegetation - on golf courses sounds like a good idea, even keeping the golf courses. The roots will help retain water, trees help provide shade which is good for humans and wildlife, and of course more vegetation is ALWAYS good.
frenofafren
My mate is a UK pest controller and he kills everything that is not a golfball on UK golf courses.
RobErtE87
This is not because carbon release from fossil fuels is so high, which it absolutely is, it's because trees are so bad at binding CO2. Every time you drink a beer or sparkling wine, you enjoy the microbial breakdown of carbon chains by microbes, one way or another. A large tree needs like 10sqm of ground around it to sequester a mass of only a few tens of tons of carbon (wood matter minus hydrogen). And then, when it dies or burns in a wildfire, it releases all of that carbon again.
somnif
Also gotta remember, trees exhale CO2 too, as do the fungi and microbes living on their roots. All goes into the calculations
suggestedCleverUsernameGenerator
THIS.
Proper regenerative farming would reverse almost all of it… just gotta get the whole world on board
VodkaReindeer
What about methane release when they rot?
EnderKing567
I wonder if we can genetically engineer a plant to just mass intake CO2...
combatwombat0
Maybe but algae could probably be easier
EnderKing567
Genetically engineer algae to absorb shit tons of CO2?
RobErtE87
So that occupied land area is now permanently used to only sequester that relatively small amount of CO2 by varying generations of trees in its location.
Building a machine that somehow, via solar energy, turns atmospheric co2 into dense blocks of graphite and then storing them underground would, in time, be a way more permanent option.
RoutemasterFlash
Carbon capture was invented 50 years and hasn't yet been demonstrated to work on any scale beyond a toy model.
Casually
If you are making graphite then you can do pretty much whatever you want with it besides burn it. Dumping a bunch of trees down a mine shaft isn't a bad idea though.
RobErtE87
The problem with dumping trees in mine shafts, aside from them rotting anyways, is that you extract nutrients from the soil where the tree grew, so then you will have to start fertilizing your forests. If they rot in situ, they release their nutrients there as well.
elbowdeepinagoose
Can we toss them in mineshafts for now until we can figure out to be properly green?
SirSage
Stop trying to toss all your problems down mineshafts!!
Anthedon
Almost like burning fossil fuels was both useful but never a good idea and now we need to return it all underground. Oof. Fair, though.
Flyvemaskine
But it would absorb quite a lot right away when we suddenly grow billions of new trees
abc987
It absolutely wouldn't hurt unless it is money or effort away from something more efficient. More trees are just plain good
WaxedApple
Carbon capture is a fool's dream that will never scale. The only solution is to emit less CO2. Anything that doesnt do that is a distraction.
TheWhiteBarry
This!
Navrodel
There are viable ways to - in theory - capture enough carbon to return to a "normal" climate. Some of those ways even produce enough industrial materials to get people to actively invest in them enough to work in a century or less. But absolutely none of them can compete with the scale of ongoing emissions.
We need to put out the fire before we can work on replacing all the charred boards.
WaxedApple
People cling to scams like carbon capture in their lifetime to avoid the harsh reality of giving up luxuries and the necessity of degrowth. They hope technology can fix the problem without being inconvenienced
TheWhiteBarry
Why would degrowth be needed when we're entering an era of energy abundance? The marginal cost of energy is going to plummet to near zero with solar fully scaled. No need to give up anything, technology literally is already fixing this with solar, batteries, and BEVs.