
Planting 1.2T Trees Could Cancel Out a Decade of CO2 Emissions - ToBeBannedSoon
https://e360.yale.edu/digest/planting-1-2-trillion-trees-could-cancel-out-a-decade-of-co2-emissions-scientists-find
======
Panino
A good way to take part in increasing the number of trees, if you own your own
home, is to improve the state of your shade trees. The trees absorb
atmospheric carbon while also reducing home temperatures in summer, which in
turn reduces the electricity people use for cooling. (And you save money!!) So
a shade tree is a particularly effective way to reduce both atmospheric CO2
and electric bills. You might think of shade trees as cheap, biological solar
panels.

Also, one can plant fruit trees in their yard. I put in 6 last fall and plan
to put in another dozen in the next 2-3 weeks. Over the winter I added about 6
truck loads of wood chips to the yard to reduce water usage. (My general
feeling at this point from working with the soil is that the wood chips reduce
watering needs by at least 80% here. This is a form of xeriscaping, if you're
interested.) With all this food growing in the coming years we'll be taking
fewer trips to the grocery store while eating better. And probably giving away
and trading a lot of food - we're already starting to trade for eggs from a
friend, for example.

~~~
ChuckMcM
Cuts into my solar power generation through. So its a trade-off. Interestingly
enough, from an energy production perspective the solar panels on the roof
result in more reduction in CO2 than the trees do.

~~~
jweir
Can you prove that or back that up with some facts?

~~~
ChuckMcM
I can tell you how I reason to it.

According to many sources, but I will cite this one[1] a single tree converts
about 50 lbs of CO2 in a year. There are three trees on my property, a city
tree (planted by the city) and two Birch trees planed by the original
developer. All are deciduous so lose leaves in the winter but we'll give them
full credit anyway, so call it 150 lbs of CO2 a year.

My rooftop solar system nominally puts out 5.2 kW of power under full
sunlight, although efficiencies cut that down to around 4.8 kW net into the
grid. I have over 10 years of data from the system, drilled down though it
averages out to about 4.5 "solar hours" per day with an average daily output
of about 22 kWH per day or about 8 MWH per year.

The US Energy Information Association (EIA) tracks a number of statistics, but
the one that is most relevant is the number of metric tons of CO2 per MWH per
state. You can see California's number in this report :
[https://www.eia.gov/electricity/state/california/](https://www.eia.gov/electricity/state/california/)
is 474 lbs per MWH.

Using that number, my rooftop solar system "saves" (which is to say doesn't
generate) about 3,792 lbs of CO2 a year. Which, is way more than the 150 lbs a
year the trees are taking out of the air. This is why the 1.2T trees, or 160
per person, is such a large number. A family of four would need to plan 640
trees on their lot, which would remove 32,000 lbs of CO2, which is a lot. To
match my solar panels I would need to plant an additional 76 trees.

What you can take away from that is that solar panels in places where you
can't put trees are a solid alternative. And planting trees rather than
letting unused land sit idle as a field of grass is also a good plan. As a
home owner, solar, even in places where it won't generate all your energy
needs, will help cut CO2 emissions.

[1]
[https://projects.ncsu.edu/project/treesofstrength/treefact.h...](https://projects.ncsu.edu/project/treesofstrength/treefact.htm)

~~~
yathern
Good reasoning! I agree with the basic premise - but I don't think you can
ignore the CO2 cost to _make_ a solar panel, vs to use one. A tree reduces CO2
as it's being 'built'. A solar panel requires many materials that are refined
through various industrial processes - likely some of which produce CO2 - not
withstanding the transportation CO2 cost. That all being said, I don't mean to
disparage anyone who uses solar panels - and if you already have them (sunk
cost) - less trees seems about right, to reduce carbon footprint.

~~~
ChuckMcM
Depends on whether or not you believe NREL, to wit:

 _An average U.S. household uses 830 kilowatt-hours of electricity per month.
On average,producing 1000 kWh of electricity with solar power reduces
emissions by nearly 8 pounds ofsulfur dioxide, 5 pounds of nitrogen oxides,
and more than 1,400 pounds of carbon dioxide.During its projected 28 years of
clean energy production, a rooftop system with 2-year paybackand meeting half
of a household’s electricity use would avoid conventional electrical
plantemissions of more than half a ton of sulfur dioxide, one-third a ton of
nitrogen oxides, and 100tons of carbon dioxide. PV is clearly a wise energy
investment with great environmental benefits!_ \--
[https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy99osti/24619.pdf](https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy99osti/24619.pdf)

------
jweir
But, wait... some places are clearing forest for solar farms.

Georgetown
[https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/04/01/georgetow...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/04/01/georgetowns-
green-plan-destroy-forest-solar-farm-is-met-with-resistance/)

Rhode Island [https://www.providencejournal.com/news/20190414/proposed-
ri-...](https://www.providencejournal.com/news/20190414/proposed-ri-solar-
farms-endangering-rural-forests-environmentalists-say)

Prineville Oregon(I dont' know how many trees will be cleared for this, maybe
it will be on existing farmland) [https://www.oregonlive.com/silicon-
forest/2018/07/massive_so...](https://www.oregonlive.com/silicon-
forest/2018/07/massive_solar_projects_will_po.html)

~~~
dfuego
This is total non-sense. There are so many deserted areas in the US and all
over the planet -where radiance is actually a lot higher- where to install
solar panels.

~~~
ncmncm
Transmission losses are not negligible, so power generation generally needs to
be near people.

If the power could be used to create and concentrate ammonia, much of needed
generation could be shifted to farms. Of course farms have other uses for
sunlight, so wind is a better choice there.

Generating ammonia with wind power eliminates the problem of intermittent
availability. You only produce ammonia when there is power for it.

~~~
inflatableDodo
Making your transmission line a lot longer doesn't scale your losses by that
much surprisingly. The main transmission losses are at the conversion points
and in the utility voltage cabling at the end, having long distance
interconnects really only loses a percent or two over having short ones.

~~~
mrpopo
That's just a very naive simplification of a huge branch of electrical
engineering.

To have low power losses in long distances, you use high voltage. The higher
the voltage, the bigger (and more expensive) the "conversion points" need to
be. Power losses will also be bigger.

To simplify greatly, having low-loss transmission lines costs more money, more
equipment, more investment, more time. That's why it makes more sense to build
the power source closer instead.

~~~
inflatableDodo
>That's just a very naive simplification of a huge branch of electrical
engineering.

Anything I am going to squeeze into a comment on hacker news regarding the
subject is likely to be. So are you against the concept of continent wide
grids and transmitting power long distance from sparsely populated equatorial
desert regions to the more populous temperate ones?

------
strainer
Studies on this are very valuable. The IPCC's AR5 advises this kind of action
to be funded and analyzes different policy approaches to enable action.

There is no justification at skepticism and entertaining back-of-the-envelope
gotchas about the climactic and environmental value of tree planting and
enhanced forestry at this late stage. It needs to be supported !

[https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2018/02/ipcc_wg3_ar5...](https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2018/02/ipcc_wg3_ar5_chapter11.pdf)

" Reducing emissions from deforestation; reducing emissions from forest
degradation; conservation of forest carbon stocks; sustainable management of
forests; and enhancement of forest carbon stocks (REDD) consists of forest-
related activities implemented voluntarily by developing countries that may,
in isolation or jointly lead to _significant climate change mitigation_. REDD
was introduced in the agenda of the UNFCCC in 2005, and has since evolved to
an improved understanding of the potential positive and negative impacts,
methodological issues, safeguards, and financial aspects associated with REDD
implementation. " (page 865)

------
burlesona
Not to be too snarky, but my first reaction to the headline was, “ _only_ 1.2
trillion? What are we waiting for!”

More seriously, though: the article claims there’s “ample acreage” for such an
endeavor but I didn’t see where exactly they’re referring to. Are we supposed
to imagine these are sprinkled here and there around the earth, and that
there’s plenty of space just waiting for a tree to be planted, or is this
something where we need to create or re-create vast forest lands for it to
work?

~~~
jandrese
That's only 160 trees for every man, woman, and child on Earth...

It doesn't seem like a particularly practical solution.

~~~
ALittleLight
It seems incredibly practical to me. I've seen a quote for 40 dollars to plant
a thousand trees. That's something like 50 billion to offset a decade of
global warming? Doesn't sound so bad. Spread the cost out worldwide, 5 billion
a year, split between a few big countries?

[http://forestandrange.org/southernpine/magement/planting/rea...](http://forestandrange.org/southernpine/magement/planting/reasons/costs.html)

~~~
ed_balls
I don't think planting trees is the biggest issue. Access to water is. More
practical solution would be to fill some desert with sea water and grow
plankton, kelp etc.

~~~
Latty
I recently saw a video about doing this - apparently the desert is actually a
really bad option if we want to combat climate change - the core problem is
that the desert currently reflects a lot of light from the sun. If we cover it
with forest or whatever, then suddenly we adjust the albedo of the earth and
absorb more heat, negating some of the impact. Combined with the energy need
to pump (and desalinate for trees - your suggestion of kelp would presumably
help there) water, etc... make it not really work.

Source:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lfo8XHGFAIQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lfo8XHGFAIQ)

I recommend watching the video - it explains it better and goes into detail -
it cites its own sources.

~~~
nojvek
I assume trees are good at trapping the energy from sunlight + combining it
with c02 and water to produce carbon, oxygen and more water.

So planting trees in deserts with somewhat decent access to underground water
tables should help cool the planet and create a great renewable resource
right?

------
acd
How many trees has been removed in total by deforestation? Planting trees is a
good thing, but at the same time there is deforestation. The deforestation
must also stop.

[https://www.bbc.com/news/science-
environment-34134366](https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-34134366)
Earth's trees number 'three trillion'

"Scientific research has shown that there were once six trillion trees on our
planet, and now there are around three trillion left.[1] Human activity was
the main driving force for this decrease and humans can, therefore, be the
main driving force in increasing it again!" source: Trillion Trees Three major
international conservation organizations – the Wildlife Conservation Society
(WCS), the World Wide Fund for Nature - UK (WWF-UK) and BirdLife International
(BLI)

We probably also need to remake the economic system what parameters it
optimise's for, so that it does not focus on exponential economic output
growth as that will drive exponential energy consumption. Reasoning, the
planet is already literally on fire due to global warming, why put more fuel
on the fire?

------
cl0ckt0wer
It doesn't look like they factored in the CO2 emissions from planting that
many trees.

The actual presentation:

[https://aaas.confex.com/aaas/2019/meetingapp.cgi/Paper/23744](https://aaas.confex.com/aaas/2019/meetingapp.cgi/Paper/23744)

Under a business-as-usual climate scenario our model suggests that warming
would drive the loss of ~55 gigatons of carbon from the upper soil horizons by
2050. This value is around 12–17 per cent of the expected anthropogenic
emissions over this period.

~~~
m0zg
Nor the emissions when those trees burn because they were planted in a place
where waterbed can't support their density. This is happening in CA nearly
every year.

~~~
jayd16
The burning an decay of a planted tree would at worst be carbon neutral.

~~~
asdfasgasdgasdg
Right, but if the point of planting the trees is carbon amelioration, than
carbon neutral would somewhat defeat the point.

I've seen this argument before, and I think the real place it falls down is
that there just isn't that much space. For mature growth forest, you have
something like 40-ish big hardwood trees per acre [1]. Those are, to my
understanding, the only ones that are really relevant because they make up
most of the biomass. Other types of trees are just a rounding error. `1.2e12 /
40 acres -> square miles` (frink) is 4.7e7 square miles. That is more than the
whole land area of Earth [2]. There is certainly not enough land that would
support mature forests available to plant so many trees, unless I have made a
serious calculation error.

[1]:
[http://www.sbcounty.gov/calmast/sbc/html/healthy_forest.asp](http://www.sbcounty.gov/calmast/sbc/html/healthy_forest.asp)

[2]:
[https://hypertextbook.com/facts/2001/DanielChen.shtml](https://hypertextbook.com/facts/2001/DanielChen.shtml)

~~~
hannasanarion
That only holds true if you assume that every tree ever planted burns down
within ten years. Many, possibly even most, of them will be harvested for
wood, becoming a permanent carbon sink, or will be left alone to grow to
maturity.

~~~
asdfasgasdgasdg
That in turn only works if you assume that wood never rots, burns, etc. I
don't have any solid information on the annual growth in processed wood in
existence, but I suspect that, to the extent it is increasing, this will
gradually taper off as population growth slows. Now if you're saying we could
bury the wood somewhere where it won't rot, well enough. That does seem
feasible. But normally when I read stuff like this, people think just planting
and leaving the trees will be sufficient. And it won't.

At any rate, if that's what the research is getting at, they probably need to
title it differently, or explain early on that merely planting the trees is a
necessary but not sufficient condition to achieve the wins they envision.

------
d33
This makes me wonder - could trees be modified genetically to handle more CO2
in order to make this number lower? Could we, instead of trees, have huge
walls made of plants that would consume our CO2?

~~~
Zenbit_UX
I believe the Californian Redwoods are very good at this but one of their main
disadvantages is they take forever to grow in their native climate.

Ironically, they grow much faster on the other side of the world (New Zealand)
due to its wetter climate but the wood is not as hard due to this so they
aren't useful in construction. Basically the ultimate carbon sync and useless
for humans.

~~~
Ericson2314
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redwoods_Forest,_Whakareware...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redwoods_Forest,_Whakarewarewa)
neat! When I was young I used to wonder what redwoods would be like introduced
outside their native range. Now, 15 years later, I know!

------
progfix
That's a lot of trees though and it cancels out only a decade.

EDIT: I just looked it up: there are roughly 4-10 trillion trees on earth
right now.

~~~
scottostler
That is a lot of trees, but a decade’s worth is a lot of emissions

~~~
tim333
Also when they are grown (30 years?) you could chop them, stack the wood or
use it in some way that doesn't release the carbon and then grow another lot.

------
gustaf
Y Combinator funded [https://www.pachama.com/](https://www.pachama.com/) in
the batch of YC. They're building a marketplace of carbon credit to enable
exactly this. They're hiring for engineering and operations in San Francisco
right now [https://angel.co/pachama/jobs](https://angel.co/pachama/jobs)

~~~
dfuego
Thanks Gustaf! Yes, we will be hiring for many roles soon. Email us to
jobs@pachama.com!

------
thinkingemote
Just an aside, if you see campaigns such as "we have planted 2 trees for each
widget you buy" you should understand that this is often in a forestry program
where the new trees often get pruned or removed to make room. So a claim like
"we planted 10k trees last year" doesnt mean much at all. the majority of
trees planted in forestry do not survive. In terms of carbon a forestry
program is neutral at best just replacing fallen trees and negative most of
the time.

It's not the planting that counts, it's the leaving the trees alone.

~~~
noja
> It's not the planting that counts, it's the leaving the trees alone.

And that's what's missing from the title (the "if we stop cutting down so many
trees" part)

------
G8WyaX
"Trees are supposed to slow global warming, but growing evidence suggests they
might not always be climate saviours."
[https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-00122-z](https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-00122-z)
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19690382](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19690382)

------
ai_ia
I wonder if desert soil can be gradually converted to make the land fertile.
That would definitely be helpful to convert a lot of land to plant trees which
is currently of no particular use.

Any research or innovation on that front ?

~~~
michelpp
The soil is generally fine, the limiting factor is water. In Central Oregon's
"Lake County" near where I live, 10-20k years ago was dense forest and
thousands of deep clear water lakes. It's all desert now except for the "Lost
Forest" near Christmas Valley. A fascinating enclave of ancient trees that
somehow survive in the middle of the desert due to what is suspected to be an
unusually shallow ground water system.

~~~
weberc2
I’ve heard that a critical mass of trees can effectively generate their own
moisture and counter desertification. No idea how this works or if it is true,
but I’d love to be corrected and/or learn more.

------
tcbawo
Planting floating seaweed forests seems like a more feasible thing to do at
scale. It might even help with marine ecology.

~~~
jacknews
I agree, in addition to planting trees.

Eg [https://medium.com/invironment/an-army-of-ocean-farmers-
on-t...](https://medium.com/invironment/an-army-of-ocean-farmers-on-the-
frontlines-of-the-blue-green-economic-revolution-d5ae171285a3)

Also floating solar, with compressed-air energy storage in under-sea airbags
(could work on hydro reservoirs too)

------
lifeisstillgood
So humans are pumping, each year, 100 Billion trees worth of CO2

100 Billion trees.

Holy Crap.

So if every household in the UK planted a tree in their (often non existent)
garden, that would be about 22 Million trees - or about 2 hours worth.

Holy fucking crap. that's a lot of CO2

------
aj7
If the US share is 10%, that amounts to planting 40,000 trees per square mile
over 3 million square miles. That is a square grid of trees, every 26 feet in
X and Y, over 80% of the US landmass. Say what?

~~~
true_religion
One tree every 26 feet is barely anything. Every suburban yard could support
that instead of grass, and more rural environments would simply have actual
forests.

------
maelito
> Trees are “our most powerful weapon in the fight against climate change”

No, our most powerful weapon against climate change is reducing human GHG
emissions.

~~~
rebuilder
You have to find a way to do that, though, in a way that doesn't result in a
revolt.

~~~
antaviana
It's a difficult endeavor. It involves greatly reducing human population, and
both quick (war, massive deaths) and slow (fewer births than deaths) come each
with their own set of issues.

------
filleokus
My gut reaction to suggestions like this one is that it seems so hard to do
stuff that is as geographically distributed as this. I mean, to plant a
billion trees we need to find suitable locations that have an enormous area
(twice the US per some comment here). The odds, I'm guessing, are that this
will be spread among many/all the continents over multiple countries,
involving so many local stakeholders and potential nimby/yimby-disputes.

In my mind a solution needs to be implementable in a meaningful way by single
actors. I'm not sure about the state of the art of direct air carbon capture,
but for me it seems like a much easier solution. "Just" push X
billion/trillion USD into an enormous plant somewhere in a dessert with access
to solar/nuclear power and suck it up.

Maybe negative emission solutions will turn out to be not feasible anyways,
and the best we can do is to focus our efforts on reaching close to zero new
emissions.

~~~
rebuilder
The problem with a push-button solution like you describe is that anyone
trying it would be fighting an exponential growth curve. Economic growth
remains closely correlated with increased demand for energy. Any solution that
doesn't address the consumption side of the equation will run into a brick
wall sooner or later.

At the current rate of growth, we're not that far from directly producing more
heat than the earth can radiate into space.

------
bencollier49
If there are seven times more trees than previously thought, as per the
article, and 1.2 trillion would have this effect, then what effect does that
have on climate models which counted sequestration by trees?

~~~
SlowRobotAhead
Likewise, is the water needed for 1.2 trillion trees calculated?

------
nojvek
After reading a ton about genetics I wonder if it’s possible to modify one of
our existing tree species to make them a better store of carbon without
destroying wildlife habitats.

Entertain my thoughts: Suppose you could have a tree X. It grows fast, is very
water efficient and better at trapping sunlight and C02 than existing
specifies. It’s wood grows straight and makes a great building material. We
could plant billions of it in semi-deserts and it would terraform the land
into a livable habitat.

Basically the promise is rather than planting trillions of trees, can we plant
billions of 1000x efficient trees in places where current trees don’t exist.

------
gameswithgo
Until those trees die, then its all back again. Trees are just a buffer, and
how much co2 would be produced mobilizing the planet to plant 1.2 trillion
trees?

~~~
jhrmnn
Not necessarily. As other posters in this discussion point out, you can for
instance create biochar from trees, which can be permanently planted in the
ground, thus finally returning in the place of origin the carbon we earlier
dug out in the form of oil and natural gas.

~~~
bpfrh
but biochar requieres high temperatures, which usually produces co2... The
problem with all this CO2 Storage is that we have a perfect storage for co2:
Oil. Since we burn this storage, we release more and more of that CO2 without
anyway to put it back to storage. The tree idea can maybe slow down the
climate change, but it is in no way a solution, merely a short stopgap.

~~~
ncmncm
Biochar can be produced (and is) by burning off the hydrogen. This is done by
restricting oxygen availability, which the hydrogen preferentially bonds with.
When the hydrogen is used up, you are left with charcoal, which powdered and
mixed into the soil improves it wonderfully.

Look up "terra nigra", invented in the Amazon basin.

------
Uptrenda
There used to be this series about "guerilla gardening" where people would
throw all kinds of seeds in an urban area and weeks later it would be over-run
with beautiful flowers. You could do the same thing to plant trees with a
drone and even water them. Throw in some IOT sensors and incentives, and
you've got yourself a crap coin for tree drones that might actually help the
environment.

------
vbuwivbiu
[https://www.trilliontreecampaign.org/](https://www.trilliontreecampaign.org/)

[https://onetreeplanted.org/](https://onetreeplanted.org/)

anyone got any other suggestions for organizations to donate to to get trees
planted fast ? Because I love trees regardless of whether they going to help
save our home planet

~~~
DesiLurker
Here is one I like:
[https://www.projectgreenhands.org](https://www.projectgreenhands.org)

they have Guinness record for most tree saplings planted in a day, over 28M
planted so far.

~~~
vbuwivbiu
where are the best places on the planet to plant trees ? From the point of
view of stabilizing soil, controlling local climate and politically.

~~~
DesiLurker
One analysis I read some time back claimed that Trees are net positive when
they are closer to equator, IIRC 30deg each way. fortunately for this topic,
the areas close to equator are also significantly poorer countries thereby
maximizing the roi of a fixed dollar expense.

Overall I believe that if a functioning carbon credit marketplace is
established we can fund the whole green movement with a fraction of world GDP
and might even end up creating a whole bunch of jobs doing it.

------
EamonnMR
This is a great illustration of how there is no hope of sequestration as a
solution. We're unlikely to plant even just a billion trees.

~~~
typon
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billion_Tree_Tsunami](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billion_Tree_Tsunami)

Successfully completed in 2017

~~~
riffraff
So we need the same effort only 1200 times over, which means something like 5
times for each country on earth including the very tiny ones.

Still, every little helps.

------
mrfusion
An interesting idea I had. Obviously it’s destructive but maybe still a net
win?

Go through every forest on earth and cut down every third tree and sequester
it so it won’t decompose and release the carbon. Then the forest rengerates
itself and pulls all that carbon out of the atmosphere.

Or an idea for a billionaire. Buy out the entire worlds annual output of
lumber and sequester it.

~~~
riffraff
The tree grows anyway, plausibly at a faster rate than a small one (slower
proportionally,but more in absolute volume) while keeping the existing volume
sequestered, so cutting it down does not seem effective.

You could dump vegetables or corn in a hole though, but I've read that's not a
cost effective solution either.

~~~
mrfusion
I heard forests were carbon neutral since old trees die and decompose and then
new ones replace them.

------
ggm
The great thing about a million nay-sayers is they tend to drown by each other
out. Almost all unintended consequences or downsides will play out, but in a
Darwinian sense what remains will be the tractable part. Trillions of
plantings will only leave behind hundreds of billions of trees but also
millions of jobs and effective enriched lives and for every damaged water
table depleted another will be renewed and remediated. The downside of
inaction is staying depressed about a solvable problem. The downside of acting
is dying on your feet not on your knees. The far more likely upside is
succeeding in some places and learning everywhere.

I'm tired of the jeremiad of gloom from Eeyore. Boastful optimism is tiring
too, but somewhere in-between is a nice place. Can we have some realism
tempered optimism in our kids ability to un-fuck-up the last 100 years?
Please?

------
viburnum
Everybody just keep doing what you’re doing, because problems could be solved,
hypothetically.

------
paraschopra
Even though planting trees seems like an overall good idea (and I certainly
believe so), I recall a recent article where scientists debated whether
planting trees will have any impact.

From
[https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-00122-z](https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-00122-z)

> Several analyses in the past few years suggest that these warming effects
> from forests could partially or fully offset their cooling ability.

What's consoling is that at least planting trees is unlikely to harm (although
rapid tree plantation will certainly send ripples in the complex, inter-
connected ecological chains).

------
NeedMoreTea
Not cutting down rainforest, and encouraging their expansion again, seems a
far better plan somehow.

The satellite images of continuing, and still accelerating, forestry loss were
the most striking part of Attenborough's Climate Change prog for me.

------
IvanK_net
I think we need a system, where the rest of the world will pay countries like
Brazil or Indonesia to keep their current rainforests.

Currently, we are paying them to cut down rainforests and plant oil palms, so
that we can buy cheap oil from them.

~~~
piadodjanho
In Brazil the deforestation in mostly for agricultural active and live stock.
I'm curious to know how much the land would have to cost so the country made
as much tax with the planted land as with other activities.

------
derdot
An easy way to contribute to tree planting is ecosia.org (more info at
info.ecosia.org). We've already planted more than 55 million trees and won't
be stopping there.

------
781
Noob question here: what is stopping nature doing this, seeds and all that?

~~~
strainer
Most often its grazing livestock, they like to eat seedlings.

~~~
ToBeBannedSoon
Livestock actually enriches the soil by their poop.

~~~
Retra
Livestock eat to extract nutrients. Their waste is not more nutrient rich than
the stuff they eat. That would be impossible.

~~~
chrisco255
Manure is fertilizer.

[https://www.gardeningknowhow.com/composting/manures/cow-
manu...](https://www.gardeningknowhow.com/composting/manures/cow-manure-
compost.htm)

------
bjourne
I made some rough calculations yesterday and user strainer corrected me:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19701879](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19701879)
It would seem that even with his corrections and this article's data capturing
carbon isn't feasible. 1.2T trees increases earth's forestation by 40% but
only nets us 10 years of emissions. It seems very inefficient in relation to
trying to reduce emissions.

~~~
ddxxdd
It seems to be more cost-effective than forcing everybody- including the poor-
to buy brand new Teslas. Assuming that:

* It costs $0.50 per tree planted,

* trees absorb 1 ton of CO2 each,

* Teslas cost $15,000 more than regular cars

* Teslas emit 1 gallon of fuel less than regular cars per 25 miles (starting after 50,000 miles: [https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424127887324128504578346...](https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424127887324128504578346913994914472))

* 1 gallon of gas produces 20 lbs of CO2

* Cars will last 250,000 miles

Then we have Teslas saving us: ( (250,000-50,000) miles * 1 gallon per 25
miles * 20 lbs per gallon)/$15,000 = 10 pounds of CO2 saved per dollar spent
on Teslas, compared to 4,000 pounds of CO2 saved per dollar spent on planting
trees.

This is why I associate myself with climate skeptics despite their negative
reputation. An economic analysis of climate change seems to suggest that the
world will be worse off with climate change mitigation, as it's currently
being practiced, than with climate change itself.

Edit: It's actually quite interesting to see that your username resembles the
name of Bjorne Lomborg, a famous scientist who often makes arguments about the
economics of climate change and comes to similar conclusions as I do.

~~~
DesiLurker
So then you'd support a kind of carbon credits market for such tree planting
scheme?

~~~
ddxxdd
I likely would, with caveats.

There could be an even cheaper scheme for climate change mitigation that we
haven't thought of (like stimulating plankton growth with iron, for instance).

And it's actually possible that the total cost of allowing climate change to
progress unmitigated may actually be cheaper than 50 cents per ton of CO2;
creating more fertilizer for farmland and building seawalls may become cheaper
100 years from now than the future growth-adjusted value of the proposed
carbon-based tax credits.

------
mrfusion
People wonder if we have the space to plant these.

How about creating giant floating tracts of mangrove trees. They’re naturally
able to live in saltwater.

Maybe make the islands out of waste plastic.

------
ph0rque
Yes! And you can do so at the tune of $0.10 a tree. To offset your CO2
emissions, you need to spend $15/person/year (if you're an American resident).
I wrote a blog post about it here:
[https://automicrofarm.com/blog/2019/03/solving-climate-
chang...](https://automicrofarm.com/blog/2019/03/solving-climate-change-with-
trees.html)

~~~
harryh
Your quoted price for CO2 offsets is about $1/ton (us residents emit a bit
more than 15 tons of CO2 per year).

That's about 150x smaller than most other estimates for the cost of carbon
sequestration. I think your math is probably wrong.

~~~
ph0rque
Here's my source: [https://trees.org/faqs/](https://trees.org/faqs/) (see the
answer to question #15).

I think the more important question is, can they scale that cost per tree
planted? Hard to say until it's tried.

Also, my calculations assume 22 tons emitted by the average US resident.

~~~
harryh
Another way to know your number is wrong is to consider the fact that the US
emits ~5.5 gigatons of CO2 per year. If it cost only $1 a ton to sequester
that then the total cost would only be only 5.5 billion dollars a year.

That's....not very much at all. Global warming wouldn't be a problem if Jeff
Bezos could fix it by himself.

~~~
ph0rque
Feel free to point out where my math is wrong, or what any of the numbers
should be. I show my math work in the blog article I linked to. I would be
happy to make any corrections.

------
taf2
I hope this is the American version of a trillion and not the British..
googles how many billions are in a trillion and got back

“In the American system one billion is 1,000,000,000 and a trillion is
1,000,000,000,000 so one trillion is one thousand times one billion. In the
British system one billion is 1,000,000,000,000 and one trillion is
1,000,000,000,000,000,000 so one trillion is one million times one billion.”

~~~
seraphsf
No longer true, the divergence is archaic.

“In British English, a billion used to be equivalent to a million million
(i.e. 1,000,000,000,000), while in American English it has always equated to a
thousand million (i.e. 1,000,000,000). British English has now adopted the
American figure, though, so that a billion equals a thousand million in both
varieties of English.

The same sort of change has taken place with the meaning of trillion. In
British English, a trillion used to mean a million million million (i.e.
1,000,000,000,000,000,000). Nowadays, it's generally held to be equivalent to
a million million (1,000,000,000,000), as it is in American English.”

[https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/explore/how-many-is-a-
bill...](https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/explore/how-many-is-a-billion/)

------
Haga
So, to plant this many trees, you need Gene modification. The tree sapplings
have to be toxic to sheep, heat & dry resistant, and they need to be non
harvest able. You need to engieer a plant that is economically uninteresting
for humans. Then distribute it via drones to the post human desolation.

~~~
lvs
You can't engineer anything to be immune to exploitation except for laws.
Genetic modification is absolutely the wrong message to send for this purpose
anyway, if you want to get it done fast. We only have a decade or two in which
to do this. We go to war with the trees we have. Genetic modification for this
purpose will make clonal populations that are more susceptible to disease,
requires much more research and regulation, and makes many more problems than
it solves.

Planting ecologically native trees back into their native land is the best way
to minimize unintended consequences and just get this done.

~~~
Haga
Bad news the native lands are gone. Gone is the little layer of topsoil, gone
the biome. And your laws fix it only where poverty is not so bad it constantly
subverts all laws. In other words your approach is a reality blind first world
approach, destined to fail the moment it runs out of money support fashion and
sb pulls the ic-plug on the project. Mine is about rolling with the punshes,
fast forwarding inevitable evolution. Bamboo comes to mind. Now that is a
forrest which will survive us.

------
jacknews

      Australia has announced a plan to plant a billion more by 2050 as part of its effort to meet the country’s Paris Agreement climate targets.
    

Laudable, but a tiny fraction of the 1.2 trillion mentioned as offsetting a
decade of co2, and over a period of 3 decades.

~~~
ip26
They are 0.35% of the world population, and that's 0.08% of the 1.2 trillion
trees, so they're actually within an order of magnitude. And in their defense
they have no water.

------
ToBeBannedSoon
CNN coverage: [https://www.cnn.com/2019/04/17/world/trillion-trees-
climate-...](https://www.cnn.com/2019/04/17/world/trillion-trees-climate-
change-intl-scn/index.html)

------
gmuslera
You don't cure cancer taking painkillers. You should both go after the
symptoms (if they are bad enough at least, that they are now) and the root
cause, because if you don't solve the real disease the symptom mitigations
will be shortlived, as the patient.

~~~
elsewhen
a little extra runway on solving the problem is sorely needed. i agree that we
shouldn't get addicted to this short term solution, but if it buys us a few
extra decades, that would be a huge accomplishment.

------
maxander
For reference, there’s about 500 trillion square meters of land area on the
planet; so even if trees are crowded together one per square meter, this is
talking about a 500th of that.

But perhaps we can find a way to make the Sahara into a forest? That’s about
what it would take.

~~~
johnchristopher
> But perhaps we can find a way to make the Sahara into a forest? That’s about
> what it would take.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19557497](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19557497)

------
ykevinator
This is a greet solution to a problem only half the population believes
exists.

------
ww520
I wish the government gives money or tax credit to home owners for planting
trees, like X amount for first year and a little bit more every year for the
next 5 years, instead of the punitive approach some cities taking now.

------
jloughry
This is one global-scale geoengineering project I can rally get behind. It has
the smallest chance of catastrophic second-order effects of any of the several
methods I've heard of.

------
tbabb
I wonder how increasing the forestation of the planet by 40% would affect the
planet's average albedo, and by extension the solar thermal energy retention.

------
noja
We need to stop buying stuff we don't need, chucking food we didn't eat, and
eating beef like there's no tomorrow.

~~~
massive-tea
Why not both? The best solution is probably somewhere in the middle.

~~~
noja
We must do both.

------
Aeolun
If only every person in the world could plant roughly 150 trees...

I mean, this is a great conclusion, but what are we supposed to do with it?

------
jammygit
Its hard for me to plant a tree, but I could expand my garden or add a bush.
How many gardens are needed to equal a tree?

~~~
Eric_WVGG
166 trees per living person, so however many gardens that is, multiple by that

~~~
jammygit
That's probably more lettuce and zuccini than I can easily eat, maybe not
practical...

~~~
pacifist
Find a group that makes this happen in local parks and forests. Help them.

------
dalex00
Any donation organisation which convert donated money into trees and keep them
alive or other co2 activities?

------
avip
Size aside, we need to plant some 15 Billion trees a year just to break-even
on trees.

------
gigatexal
If there’s land for them to be planted let’s do it!

------
ouid
that's only 160 trees per person...

------
Bluestrike2
To put the number in perspective, that's a 40% increase in the estimated
number of trees worldwide. That's a positively enormous increase, and would--
by necessity--in large part be planted on and around existing agricultural
land. That comes with a host of significant opportunity costs; just to start,
population increases are projected to require a ~70% increase in food
production from 2005 to 2050[0]. While there's a great deal of progress being
made in improved agricultural efficiency and food waste reduction that will
help lessen the environmental impacts of that increase, land for food
production is still likely to directly compete with biomass plantations for
carbon removal.

There are also recent studies that highlight some of the potential
environmental impacts of large-scale terrestrial carbon removal as a primary
mechanism for reversing the effects of climate change. Optimizing for
sequestration means converting the most productive agricultural land or using
even more natural land, devastating either food production or natural
ecosystems,[1] in addition to drawing heavily on water resources and
fertilizers on a massive scale, risking other planetary boundaries.[2] The
more realistic scenarios risk both, albeit to less catastrophic degrees, but
do so by decreasing potential sequestration and limiting its effects on global
temperatures. Put a bit glibly, it's jumping out of the frying pan into the
fire.

That's not to say that it isn't part of the solution. It is, as the first
paper explicitly states in its conclusion, and "can significantly contribute
as a “supporting actor” of the mitigation protagonist, if it gets started and
deployed immediately." But it won't be a primary mechanism, nor will it reach
anywhere near 1.2 trillion trees. Even the more limited "pertinent options
available now, which include reforestation of degraded land and the protection
of degraded forests to allow them to recover naturally and increase their
carbon storage" need to be priorities.

Other geoengineering proposals, such as possible solar radiation management
techniques, might extend the period during which we can use tCDR and other
carbon removal mechanisms to mitigate past emissions beyond just slowing the
rate of temperature increase. But without drastic emissions reductions in the
immediate future, all of those possible options become more difficult, with
even more deleterious consequences. Not to mention more expensive.

In other words, there's no easy or even optimal answer. Assuming, of course,
that 1.2 trillion trees can be considered "easy."

0\.
[http://www.fao.org/fileadmin/templates/wsfs/docs/Issues_pape...](http://www.fao.org/fileadmin/templates/wsfs/docs/Issues_papers/HLEF2050_Global_Agriculture.pdf)

1\.
[https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/a712/e761c2360f927cbff0ee54...](https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/a712/e761c2360f927cbff0ee54d64761bb5d0709.pdf)

2\.
[https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-017-0064-y](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-017-0064-y)

------
sooham
At one tree per second It would take 38000 years to plant 1.2 trillion trees.
This proposition is beyond our currently available resources.

~~~
tbabb
I don't think that's the right metric for assessing feasibility. Humans can do
more than one thing at the same time.

