
The most effective way to tackle climate change? Plant a trillion trees - woutgaze
https://edition.cnn.com/2019/04/17/world/trillion-trees-climate-change-intl-scn/index.html
======
dang
For those interested, there's an Ask HN thread about this now too:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20361651](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20361651).

------
abdullahkhalids
Pakistan completed a billion tree plantation project in 2017 [1]. This is
currently being followed up with a 5 year 10 billion tree plantation project,
at an annual cost of 7.5 billion PKR (~47 million USD) [2]. Planting 989bn
trees for the other 200 countries should not be too difficult.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billion_Tree_Tsunami](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billion_Tree_Tsunami)

[2] [http://www.radio.gov.pk/04-07-2019/pms-vision-of-clean-
green...](http://www.radio.gov.pk/04-07-2019/pms-vision-of-clean-green-
pakistan-getting-intl-acclaim-amin)

~~~
onion2k
Does that $47m cost include the price of the land?

If the government doesn't have that much viable tree-planting space available
then they either have to seize it which would make some people _very_ unhappy,
or compulsorily purchase it which would push the cost up _a lot_. That isn't a
reason not to do it, but in order to talk about it you need to be clear about
what you're actually talking about.

~~~
pharke
Why only those two options for getting trees onto private land? Why not an
incentive system for landowners to plant and maintain trees? Let the
government plant trees on your lawn and get a reduction in your land tax.

~~~
onion2k
That would still be a significant cost (in lost tax receipts).

~~~
wolco
Tax credit on new greenhouse tax. Revenue neutral if done right.

------
growlist
Can't come quickly enough in the UK as we have a significantly lower
percentage of tree cover compared to Europe, and I love forests dearly. It was
said that after WW1 there was barely a tree left standing in the country, and
we've never recovered. It pains me that the average Brit seems to think a
green field is nature, whereas many are virtual deserts in terms of
biodiversity. I'm just hoping we get a decent mix of trees as part of this
planting and that it is not subverted by commercial interests into massive
monoculture plantations as was the case in Scotland.

~~~
kieranmaine
Any idea which UK charities would be the best to contribute to to get tree
coverage up as quickly as possible? I've looked at the woodland trust, but
equally I'm thinking that in terms of reducing CO2 my money might be more
effective being deployed in another country.

~~~
arethuza
There is Trees for Life in Scotland:

[https://treesforlife.org.uk/](https://treesforlife.org.uk/)

Edit: Most of the Scottish Highlands are a particularly bizarre landscape that
people generally think of as natural but is really rather artificial as deer,
lacking natural predators and being popular for hunting, tend to eat young
trees.

~~~
mrec
Bit like Dartmoor - looks spectacularly wild and romantic, but used to be
forested until Bronze Age farmers cleared it for agriculture and the soil
turned acidic.

~~~
desas
The Lakes and the Peaks are in the same boat too, probably the other national
parks.

------
lucideer
One thing that I rarely see mentioned when tree-planting is suggested is
species, biodiversity, and impact of selection of trees to be planted on the
environment.

1 tree is not equivalent to 1 tree of a different species.

Reports such as this one[0] hint to the impact of tree choice on things like
human health, but I'm curious about the effects it has on climate in general
(and sustainabiilty of tree populations: disease resistance, etc.).

[0]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19835537](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19835537)

~~~
vijayr02
The first few tree planting drives in Tamil Nadu (a southern state of India;
it's capital Chennai recently ran out of water) got significant public
backlash [0] for this reason: they planted nothing but Acacia trees (due to
their short growth term) and the leaves took a long time to degrade, killing
all the undergrowth and creating a monoculture.

[0] [https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/tamil-nadu/Acacia-
rem...](https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/tamil-nadu/Acacia-removal-
starts-in-Palayamkottai/article16983121.ece#)!

~~~
heymijo
> it's capital Chennai recently ran out of water

This casual statement made my eyes bulge. Like, what does this mean? How does
it happen? Is water permanently gone? What are the ramifications?

I found a WaPo article on Chennai, which I see has about half a million more
people than NYC.

> The city’s reservoirs and lakes are parched and its wells have run dry after
> two years of scanty rains here. Local authorities are trucking in water and
> desalinating seawater, but the supply is less than half the city’s basic
> requirement.

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2019/06/28/major-
indian...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2019/06/28/major-indian-city-
runs-out-water-million-people-pray-rain/?utm_term=.889860296b61)

~~~
heymijo
This reminded me about Yemen. Eight years ago I read that Yemen may be the
first country to run out of water. I went to check on where they are. It's not
good. Drought is being compounded by conflict and politics.

I can't help but think that this is a harbinger of the future in more places
than Yemen as climate change continues.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_supply_and_sanitation_in...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_supply_and_sanitation_in_Yemen)

[https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/menasource/an-
update-o...](https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/menasource/an-update-on-
yemen-s-water-crisis-and-the-weaponization-of-water)

~~~
wolco
Yemen hasn't invested properly because of other pressing concerns. Yemen is a
reminder of the past, Africa is a glimps of the future. It is not all
terrible.

------
trickstra
Yes, but not only plant them. You also need to keep them and then you can
never let them decompose or burn. Or you have to keep planting a new tree
whenever one dies. Basically the "Plant 1T trees" means "increase the total
number of trees by 1T and keep it that way". Also we would need to increase
that number every time we increase our greenhouse gas emissions. No matter how
"green" that sounds, that's just unsustainable. We still need to decrease our
fossil fuel extraction to basically zero. And we need some way to put that
sequestered CO2 back into ground or somewhere where it doesn't get back to
atmosphere.

Just planting 1T seedlings, collecting subsidies, and congratulating each
other how we sequestered that calculated amount of CO2 is a totally fake
activity.

We really need to do this one right.

~~~
fulafel
If the trees are used for wood or paper production, replanting logged trees is
economically a no brainer.

~~~
trickstra
Yes, but then you still have the same problem when you discard that paper or
wood product. It either decomposes or burns, which releases the stored carbon,
and you have to catch it again with another fully grown tree.

What I'm saying is that yes, we should plant more trees, but it must not be
just about "planting", like this article and many others are trying to
portray. Otherwise it will be all for nothing. And we still have to do the
other two parts - lowering our overall energy demand and getting off of fossil
fuels. We have to do all three.

------
env123
Philippines law would require students to plant 10 trees if they want to
graduate [https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/philippines-
tr...](https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/philippines-tree-
planting-students-graduation-law-environment-a8932576.html)

~~~
daveloyall
Suppose 8 billion people and 1 trillion trees. Each person should plant 125
trees. Neat law though.

------
dredmorbius
Bioremediation of carbon is almost certainly the best possible option. Plants
are natural carbon-sequestration factories.

Hectare for hectare wetlands are even more effective than forests, and
encouraging and protecting swamps, bogs, marshes, wetlands, and mangrove
forests would be an even better notion.

------
Arbalest
I like that the headline on this one actually gives a number. 1 Trillion!
Something like 139 trees per person.

I read an article similar to this earlier today (not on HN like I posted
before I edited this).
[https://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2019-07-05/climate-
chang...](https://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2019-07-05/climate-change-tree-
planting-carbon-dioxide/11267556)

~~~
krageon
It's closer to 129, though that is still a big number.

~~~
fit2rule
Not so difficult. I'm sure most people could plant 10 trees a month, given the
motivation.

Trouble is, how are we going to get people motivated to do this?

~~~
abdullahkhalids
Make it mandatory (and pay) for schools to ensure that each secondary school
or higher kid plants 10 trees a year. The motivation multiplier on the rest of
society from this policy will take care of the rest.

~~~
eitland
Used to be a thing in Norway until the 70ies or early 80ies. Now we Norwegians
are busily blaming ourselves for planting Sitka spruce instead of native
species, but I guess the right answer might not be to stop planting trees but
to be a little more considerate in what we plant and where.

~~~
mrec
What's wrong with Sitka spruce?

~~~
eitland
Replaces local species.

------
chronolitus
Very interesting. I see non-profit orgs advertising 1 planted tree for $1 [1].
Depending on how that scales, and whether this article is true, it should make
it possible to effectively combat carbon increase for $1T.

Seems like a rather low number, all things considered.

[1]
[https://onetreeplanted.org/products/kenya](https://onetreeplanted.org/products/kenya)

~~~
chrsstrm
I can't speak on the Kenyan project you linked, but I did recently complete a
3000 tree habitat project. Even at bulk rates we purchased our trees at
between $0.80-0.90 per tree. It took 3 people about 5-6 hours to complete the
actual planting using a tractor and a tree planter. Outside of the actual
purchase of the trees, other things to consider are: Labor was unpaid, however
the county has a cost-sharing program we could have applied for which would
have paid ~$8/hr per person to offset labor costs. I wouldn't be surprised if
many of these non-profits use volunteer labor but also take advantage of
reforestation grants to offset the cost. We borrowed the equipment and only
used a couple gallons of diesel, but normally renting that equipment for the
day would have been in the hundreds of dollars. Plenty of hours were spent
meeting with state foresters to plan where the trees would go for maximum
effect and deciding which species to plant. We had to transport the trees from
the nursery and store them until they were planted. There is also a very
limited window of time between when they are harvested at the nursery and when
they need to be planted. If you wait too long many will die. Also to note that
we had to call at least 4 nurseries to get the order we wanted. There is a
limited supply of seedlings available each season and you have to plan well in
advance if you need more than a couple hundred trees. At about a month out
we're noticing about 10% dead loss, which is better than expected. Over the
next year that could inflate to 30%. The goal shouldn't be to just plant 1T
trees, it needs to be adding 1T new healthy trees to the environment, which
means you would have to plant 1T + X0B extra to cover the dead loss.

So $1T in cost is a good ballpark to start with, but don't be surprised if it
balloons pretty quick. Tree planting doesn't scale as efficiently as we might
like.

~~~
robocat
> which means you would have to plant 1T + X0B extra to cover the dead loss

It depends if the dead trees are in groups that leave large gaps in coverage
or random deaths (Alopecia versus thinning).

Also surely the actual number of trees is almost irrelevant - the important
factors are: carbon capture per acre per year, and risks of carbon release
(fire, conversion back to farmland, milling etc).

------
ryanmercer
Planting trees isn't a viable (complete) solution though for various reasons.

\- Healthy forest has 40-60 trees per acre

This means you need 31,250,000~ square miles which is 15.87% of the Earth's
landmass.

\- You need adequate rainfall where you plant the trees

\- For the healthiest trees, and best carbon sequestration, you also need to
'seed' the mycorrhizal networks that work in cooperation with tree roots.

\- You'd have to pick appropriate species for appropriate areas

\- Mature trees, the vast majority of the time, sequester far more than
younger trees

\- There is considerable variation in the amount of carbon various trees can
sequester in a given time

Some land that actually used to sustain decent tree populations, is now nearly
barren. A good example of this is Iceland. When the first settlers reached
Iceland in the latter half of the 9th century, forests covered between 25 and
40% of the landscape (nearly 10-16k square miles), it is now around 0.5% with
active efforts to reintroduce trees with the reintroduction going very slow.
This year they are attempting to plant around 4 million trees but a fraction
of those will likely survive.

~~~
thinkingemote
Yes. A tree can be planted when its the size of a bean sprout. I can put a
million sprouts in one acre. The target is easy to achieve. Out of those
million trees I plant, only 50 will survive.

------
adrianN
And then keep on planting trillions more because we keep digging up coal and
oil?

It would probably be better to cover 1-3% of our land and coastal areas with
solar panels and wind turbines.

~~~
11235813213455
nuclear obviously, the most effective and green way to produce energy

~~~
adrianN
Now show how to build enough reactors in the next twenty years to completely
replace fossil fuels. If your strategy doesn't show at least 75% CO2 reduction
by 2030 you've likely missed the 1.5° goal.

Building reactors takes a long time. We probably first need to ramp up the
industries that manufacture pressure vessels. The forging presses able to
produce pressure vessels for modern reactors can manufacture maybe half a
dozen a year, and there aren't too many of these massive presses around. You
can of course argue that we build a different kind of reactor that doesn't
require pressure vessels, but then you need additional time for R&D and
proving the design in practice. Don't forget that we also need to train the
engineers that staff the new power stations. Nuclear engineering is not a
terribly popular major right now.

Wind and solar on the other hand are well suited to reducing our CO2 output
starting today. Building a wind turbine doesn't take ten years.

~~~
orf
Are there any videos of these presses? The process sounds interesting: the
entire industrial capacity of the world to produce these is only a dozen a
year? How many are there, and how long does each one take? Surely not that
long...

~~~
noir_lord
It's not 12.

France was bringing 4 reactors a year online for 15 years.

France is not 1/3rd of global manufacturing capacity..

------
thinkingemote
Planting trees is easy. Trees grow from seed. My back yard can have a million
trees. What counts is how many survive and what they are used for. Are the
trees sustainable or do we just care about the equivalent of lines of code?

Many trees are planted to be used as bio fuel. More are planted to be
converted to paper and pulp, others for construction.

All forestry involves thinning weaker trees from the forest. Planting trees
shouldn't be what's measured at all but areas of sustainable forest created.

------
rfonseca
Photographer Sebastião Salgado and his wife have re-forested his family's
farm, planting over 2M trees over 20 years, and have developed the know-how to
make this reproducible at much more granular scales than big government-led
projects.
[http://www.institutoterra.org/eng/conteudosLinks.php?id=22&t...](http://www.institutoterra.org/eng/conteudosLinks.php?id=22&tl=QWJvdXQgdXM=&sb=NQ==)

------
alecmg
I would love to have more trees.

But not for reason of sucking CO2. Please understand that forests are CO2
neutral. Any CO2 a tree consumes in its lifetime will be converted to leaves
and wood and eventually fall to the ground and be converted by insects, fungi
and bacteria BACK to CO2.

To get rid of CO2 from atmosphere we almost need to do the opposite, chop down
trees and bury trunks somewhere where the don't decompose.

~~~
cygx
_Existing_ forests are neutral. Growing _new ones_ is not.

~~~
GlenTheMachine
Exactly. I get very frustrated by these conversations..

Wood sequesters CO2. Growing more wood will, trivially, sequester more CO2. Is
that sequester "as good" as sequestering it deep underground? That depends. If
it is sequestered by an ecosystem that persists over time - in other words, if
it is sequestered in a forest, and that forest remains there even if the
individual trees die and decay - then yes. The CO2 that is pulled out of the
atmosphere stays out of the atmosphere unless the forest disappears.

------
Roritharr
For the briefest moment I just considered buying a forest in Germany, one that
I could visit with my son, having some high-minded talk with him about
sustainability while feeling very smug.

Then I found a german forest marketplace[1], that has a good FAQ regarding the
regulations of owning a forest in Germany.

After reading this I don't want to go anywhere near owning a forest, having to
have insurance for the case anyone walking through my forest trips and injures
himself, having to pay taxes for the very rain that penetrates the ground and
may end up in the sewage system...

[1] [https://www.wald-boerse.de/wald-kaufen/](https://www.wald-boerse.de/wald-
kaufen/)

------
thomk
Here's my question: which type of trees would be best? I assume the trees that
convert co2 to o2 the quickest, which means the trees that grow the fastest,
right? Maybe is it better to plant trees that are more disease resistant
instead.

------
gdubs
One of the best resources I’ve found lately is the book “The Carbon Farming
Solution.” [1]

If you’re interested in how different species of plants and trees compare in
terms of carbon impact, different types of land-management, perennial staple
crop exploration, etc, it’s really well written and researched.

Bottom line: planting trees is great, and there’s a ton of ways we can improve
the land. But maybe the single biggest impact thing we can do is stop cutting
down forests for grazing cattle. At the end of the day the planet needs
natural, wild forests, at a massive scale.

1: [http://carbonfarmingsolution.com](http://carbonfarmingsolution.com)

------
dang
Discussed at
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20356859](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20356859).
But this story has been so popular that we might as well let run again.

~~~
mehrdadn
I twice submitted a great talk that goes into more depth on this and other
things, but both times it failed to get many views ([1] [2]), despite my
having a hunch that there would be significant interest in it. Any thoughts on
how to give the talk some more visibility?

[2]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20150835](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20150835)

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20057134](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20057134)

------
mjfern
How about creating a simple campaign website, trilliontrees.org, that serves
as a rallying call to plant trees and that compares and provides guidance on
the myriad of nonprofits involved in planting trees?

Anyone interested to partner on this?

~~~
uep
I almost think you're joking, since this already exists.

[https://www.trilliontrees.org/](https://www.trilliontrees.org/)

~~~
mjfern
Weird. I visited this url earlier today and took me to a godaddy parking page.
Maybe I mistyped or tried the .com.

------
Gupie
When we are currently losing (deforestation) 18 million acres of forest per
year!

------
zimbatm
You can help by switching your search engine to Ecosia:

[https://www.ecosia.org/](https://www.ecosia.org/)

Each search result generates revenue (through ads) that sponsors tree
planting.

------
tmaly
I think trying to slow the cutting of trees would also help.

How many Christmas trees are cut down every year? I bought a synthetic tree
many years ago, and I just keep using that to save on killing a tree every
year.

~~~
southerndrift
You can also look at this the other way round:

By buying a Christmas tree, you create a market for those trees which makes
people plant them. This leads to several generations of trees growing at any
time, so that there is a net-reduction of CO2.

~~~
notabee
To make the reduction permanent however, the ultimate fate of all those
Christmas trees is important. That market also entails more (fuel burning)
economic activity surrounding Christmas and transportation of those trees. If
they are disposed of in such a way as to be decomposed by microbes, much of
the carbon returns to the environment. It's very hard to store carbon in a
more permanent way than deep underground, which was where it was before we
foolishly started pulling it all up and burning it.

------
grandridge
I'm already over 100, way ahead of all you virtue signalers ;)

------
robocat
What about 50 years later when the CO2 capture of the forest reaches
equilibrium?

Do we then plant another trillion trees?

It's still worthwhile (and I also like trees, although usually not
monocultures).

~~~
eloff
Is it really only fifty years? I would have guessed a couple hundred at least.
Climate change is really a time problem. Given hundreds of years we'll be off
carbon based economies purely for economic reasons. In fact I think that will
largely be true in less than a century. So anything like this that buys us
time may actually be all it takes.

But how about stopping deforestation? That seems like it would be more
effective - pay developing countries based on maintaining their forested
areas, policed using satellite data. I think we should also focus on planting
trees and basically every other mitigation we can at the same time - doing one
thing doesn't preclude others.

This is being done with some success in the rain forests of one of those
deforestation happy palm oil producers, Indonesia.

[https://www.wri.org/blog/2019/02/indonesia-reduces-
deforesta...](https://www.wri.org/blog/2019/02/indonesia-reduces-
deforestation-norway-pay)

------
mh8h
Wildfires and insect infestations will be an issue, and they are very
difficult to model. Canada has a lot of trees, but they emit more Carbon than
they absorb. [1]

[1] [https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/canada-forests-
carbon...](https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/canada-forests-carbon-sink-
or-source-1.5011490)

~~~
lixtra
> but they emit more Carbon than they absorb

That’s a strange way to put it. The trees form a carbon reservoir. If they
burn or decompose then they release carbon. But they cannot grow and release
carbon indefinitely. If they emit carbon long enough then there won’t be trees
left. On the other hand if the total mass of trees grows long enough they will
have trapped more carbon.

------
Doubl
Cool, that's 167 per person alive and our family of 5 already planted 1500
over a decade ago. I am awesome.

------
warmcat
Planting is only effective when trees are nurtured and watered after planting.
I have seen too many planting efforts over the years where, after the initial
enthusiasm, there is no care for the saplings and they die off only for people
to lament and blame the government.

------
new299
The publication mentioned has now been published, I believe this is it:

[https://science.sciencemag.org/content/365/6448/76/tab-
pdf](https://science.sciencemag.org/content/365/6448/76/tab-pdf)

------
hunterx
That's quite absurd. Planting 1T trees would be extremely nice to the
environment yet we fail to see the big picture. In oceans we have less than
half of the phytoplankton than we used to have only a century ago[1].

""The amount of carbon that we can restore if we plant 1.2 trillion trees, or
at least allow those trees to grow, would be way higher than the next best
climate change solution," Crowther told CNN."

Phytoplankton actually contributes more than trees do to tackle the big
construct of "climate change".[2]

In the article, all the climate change action is taken against the CO2 levels
in the atmosphere - but I think we can all agree there is more to it than just
CO2 (and we can go quite deep on that rabbit hole and slash apart lots of this
big amorphous mass of a construct).

On top of that, there are quite some theories on what drives climate change
[3] and different views on it [4]. Yet all mediums speak from the same theory
which is CO2 is bad. Period.

Now, as said before on a comment by Krageon and Arbalest, it will be the
comparable to a person planting 129 trees.

Don't get me wrong I love trees, forest and all that - no question that's
beautiful and has more profound effects than climate change alone in our
environment and society - but one gets fed up by the `simplicity` we think as
a society of these problems.

I guess this is my personal opinion but I think we can do better with
technology (which is why we are all in this community anyway) than that. And,
again in my opinion, should be the way we lead and liaise with this problem
instead of `go plant more trees`.

[1] [https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/nasa-study-shows-
oceani...](https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/nasa-study-shows-oceanic-
phytoplankton-declines-in-northern-hemisphere)

[2][https://novapublishers.com/shop/phytoplankton-biology-
classi...](https://novapublishers.com/shop/phytoplankton-biology-
classification-and-environmental-impacts/)

[3][http://climatica.org.uk/climate-science-information/long-
ter...](http://climatica.org.uk/climate-science-information/long-term-climate-
change-milankovitch-cycles)

[4] [https://www.bettermeetsreality.com/a-history-of-earths-
carbo...](https://www.bettermeetsreality.com/a-history-of-earths-carbon-
dioxide-levels-over-time-carbon-dioxide-level-timeline-how-fast-c02-levels-
are-increasing/)

~~~
pgeorgi
> should be the way we lead and liaise with this problem instead of `go plant
> more trees`.

Why should it be one or the other? Let's do both (plus many more things).

Even the authors of this study mention that "planting trees" isn't enough,
even for the CO2 issue alone, since planting trees is merely a mitigation for
past damage.

~~~
hunterx
The point I was trying to make is not that it's exclusive and hence why I
reiterated I'm not against planting trees. Or trees in general, in any case I
like them quite a lot as I come form the countryside and miss the forest and
mountains a lot.

One of the points I was trying to converge is on the danger these types of
articles pose and is they are delusional. It makes society think oh well,
that's a big problem but we have a readily available solution, just plant more
trees and all is solved.

The other is on one of the statements which is dubious.

I do a lot of work on this area hence why I'm saying all of the above and
that's what I found when speaking with general public. And also with people
with `high educational degrees` which (in theory) take things more critically
and think them through.

------
tluyben2
I am trying to turn my garden into a small forest by checking out what grows
with most leaves and least water. So far that seems to work; some of them die
because then are too young and fragile. But most of them survive and keep
growing; it's a nice hobby too.

------
ecoled_ame
I think if only 1% of the global population reproduced for a few generations
it would be way more effective than tree planting. It seems like all the
environmental "fixes" are external, and not related to our replication rate.

~~~
helkafen
To reach the 2030 and 2050 targets (-45%, -100%), this change alone would be
very insufficient. It would help during the second half of the century though,
when emissions will likely need to be negative.

~~~
ecoled_ame
Cool, because I'm trying to plan for humanity's distant future, not just
50-100 years from now.

------
coinward
Turns out trees are great carbon capture devices and oxygen production engines

------
lolive
Is there an economical value to that? It will predate a lot of good lands for
non-producting results. And probably require some human management. Who will
pay for that?

~~~
otikik
It has a similar economical value to having an army.

------
HugoDaniel
Here is a fork:

Plant 1T trees in the defrost areas of the artics ?

~~~
AMerrit
The light difference between winter and summer get too extreme for most trees
far enough north. The soil is also extremely poor. This gets brought up by
people who think Canada would be hugely successful in a warmer climate, but
even if there's no permafrost, the growing season won't change.

------
stunt
I wonder if the UN can just divide this number to countries base on mass, GDP,
pollution, wealth, etc and mandate them to do it.

------
ptah
is that 10^12 or 10^18?

~~~
treerock
Trillion is 10^12 in both British and US English.

~~~
pgeorgi
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trillion](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trillion)
disagrees and
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_and_short_scales#Short_sc...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_and_short_scales#Short_scale)
goes into more detail.

~~~
tomxor
Oh crap, how are other countries still using this, is that really true?

[edit] however @treerock is correct britain formally switched to short scale
since 1974 so english is unambiguous, in all but historical contexts.

Also recommends using SI prefixes just as done in the article which is
unambiguous in all languages. I guess translators must be aware of this when
converting words from billion and up.

~~~
pgeorgi
German has Tausend (1000), Million (1000 Tausend) , Milliarde (1000
Millionen), Billion (1000 Milliarden), Billiarde (1000 Billionen), Trillion
(1000 Billiarden), and there aren't even proposals to change, and why should
we?

~~~
tomxor
> and there aren't even proposals to change, and why should we?

becaaause.. it's intermediate scales are un-prefixable, because it names
adjacent intermediate orders of magnitude with only subtle mutations of the
previous name, because it's inconsistent with itself (<x 10^9), and finally
because in 2019 it's extremely ambiguous, in all languages SI prefixes have
been around since 1960 all of science and engineering uses these. In other
words the same reason English abandoned the long scale.

Then again it was probably far easier for Britain to change in 1974 than it is
for the remaining long scale countries to change today since the discrepancy
will have been built into all software and systems dealing with currency and
other things between countries since then... So i guess you are probably stuck
with it and all it's disadvantages whether you are aware of them or not.

~~~
pgeorgi
> its intermediate scales are un-prefixable

huh? Mrd, Brd, Trd, ...

> it names adjacent intermediate orders of magnitude with only subtle
> mutations of the previous name

million and ten million are also rather close. So what?

> it's inconsistent with itself (<x 10^9)

Those are explicitly named for historical reasons, which is well in line with
how names for numbers are handled: we generally work in a decimal system, yet
have "eleven" and "twelve", followed by lastdigit-teen while everything above
twenty is decimaldigit-y-lastdigit. (German has similar quirks, although the
order remains the same. Still: neunzehn, nine-ten vs. neunundzwanzig, nine-
and-twenty).

And let's not start with French (ten, twenty, thirty, fourty, fifty, sixty,
sixty-ten, four-twenties, four-twenties-ten, hundred). [to be fair,
Switzerland and Belgium fixed that in their dialects, using septante,
huitante, nonante]

> in 2019 it's extremely ambiguous

It was ambiguous since the 17th century when the short scale was invented.

I'm not sure if the UK officially switched by now, all I see is a random
statement by a Prime Minister 45 years ago that I'm not sure is normative
([https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/written-
answers/1...](https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/written-
answers/1974/dec/20/billion-definition#S5CV0883P0_19741220_CWA_439))

> in all languages SI prefixes have been around since 1960

Sure, and it's used sometimes, but are SI prefixes defined as normative
numbering scheme anywhere? That is, which language and which country uses
Gigagrams officially?

~~~
tomxor
Majority of your arguments against it are that other bad things also exist...
really?

Also I am British, i've never come across long scale until now, we definitely
don't use it, and haven't in a very long time. I'm also well traveled but
apparently not enough in Europe to notice this.

------
amriksohata
Do trees reduce diesel based particulate emissions? What about nitrogen? Or
will this just impact co2

~~~
ryanmercer
>What about nitrogen?

There are several trees are nitrogen fixing species, they're a pretty
important part of permaculture. Some of the mycorrhizal networks that exist in
many forests also fix nitrogen. Also, some species like pine trees get a lot
of their nitrogen from endophytes living in their tissue.

~~~
contravariant
Unfortunately the nitrogen fixing species mostly absorb N2. Which I'm fairly
sure isn't the compound that OP wanted removed from the atmosphere. They were
probably thinking about nitrogen oxides.

------
alephnan
I'm surprised no one has mentioned using robots to automate planting of trees.

~~~
true_tuna
There are a couple really cool drone tree planter projects out there that are
able to plant thousands of trees an hour.
[https://www.fastcompany.com/40450262/these-tree-planting-
dro...](https://www.fastcompany.com/40450262/these-tree-planting-drones-are-
about-to-fire-a-million-seeds-to-re-grow-a-forest)

------
sunkenvicar
This is better than nuclear? How?

~~~
gshdg
Replacing fossil fuels with nuclear helps prevent further CO2 emission but
doesn’t mitigate past emissions.

What’s already been released is enough to have already changed the climate and
will continue warming the planet as long as it’s in the atmosphere.

Planting trees helps remove CO2 from the atmosphere that we’ve already
released.

We should be both planting trees (to reverse past emissions) and changing our
energy sources (to minimize future emissions).

------
b_tterc_p
Why don’t we try making super fast growing, sterile GMO trees to do carbon
capture and reduce the cost of wood?

------
hathym
Maybe stop cutting trees ?

------
fallingfrog
I can’t get the whole article to load.. but my hot take is, for the most part,
in all the places where the conditions are right for trees to grow, there are
trees there already. The exceptions are just those places where the trees have
been deliberately cleared by humans, to make room for agriculture or grazing
animals (as in pre-Columbian America as I suspect the article points out). But
allowing all those areas to regrow cant be sufficient: If it were, could you
not make the argument that it was the clearing of all those areas in the first
place that caused all the warming we’ve seen so far?

~~~
Tepix
No, trees don't just regrow if you've cut them down on a large scale. The
landscape changes permanently.

~~~
fallingfrog
Well, “permanently” on human lifetime time scales perhaps. I’m just saying you
probably can’t get forests to grow in places where they never occurred
naturally pre-civilization.

~~~
gshdg
There are enormous swathes of land that used to be forested that no longer are
because we cut or burned trees either to use the lumber or to clear the land
for agriculture.

Sure, in tens of thousands of years, trees would likely eventually repopulate
that land; but that’s an extremely gradual process, as most trees’ seeds don’t
disperse very far, and it takes years for each new tree to mature enough to
produce seeds to extend the forest’s reach.

Whereas if we seed those areas directly, we could have forests again within
decades.

~~~
fallingfrog
Ok, that may be true but you're still not really understanding my argument.
I'm going to spell it out.

Assume: The land we're reforesting is land that humanity deforested. Hopefully
I don't need to make that argument, it should be clear.

Assume: If reforesting land causes cooling, then deforesting the same land
caused the same amount of warming.

Let A=the amount of warming you get by deforesting some land, also the amount
of cooling you get by reforesting the same land.

Let B=the amount of warming you get from shoving CO2 into the atmosphere.

Let C=the total amount of warming so far.

Then A+B=C

If you're making the argument that A=C, then B=0

But B is not equal to 0.

Therefore A is not equal to C.

That means: reforesting all the land we deforested is not going to cancel out
the CO2 we've put into the atmosphere.

Does that help clarify my point? Reforestation BY ITSELF cannot be enough.

~~~
electricviolet
> Reforestation BY ITSELF cannot be enough.

Of course it's not. That's stated very clearly in the article.

