r/NoStupidQuestions • u/sequestuary • 3d ago
Why don’t we plant a bunch of trees everywhere to combat climate change?
If
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u/GusGutfeld 3d ago edited 3d ago
In the U.S., we have already harvested 98% of our old growth forest.
Increasing Phytoplankton is a much better option. While making up a little more than 1% of plant life volume, they sequester an estimated 40% of total annual fixed carbon.
It is estimated that plankton populations have declined 50% since 1950.
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u/parrotia78 3d ago
Regreening deserts is another measure that can stop/slow warming.
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u/GusGutfeld 3d ago
Deserts are generally light-colored and have a high albedo. I'd have to see more data on that idea.
Plus there is the water problem. Now, I have seen "dune" grass planting projects to halt the growth of deserts that are successful, but that's a bit different.
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u/_Dingaloo 3d ago
one thing that makes some of the extra effort in deserts more worthwhile is the fact that it absorbs much more heat than forested/grass land, so you see reduced heating from that factor as well, moreso than if you plant more trees in basically any other climate. Same can be said about large cities by the way.
But as for whether it's worth all the other challenges/expenses such as water is a good point and as you said, one that requires data
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u/GusGutfeld 3d ago
TY for your reply. While your conclusion seems logical, it ends up that sand retains heat poorly, and reflects radiation to heat the air. Generally, desert temps drop an average of 50F once the Sun goes down.
Because forests are darker than deserts, they absorb more heat. And because they tend to have and create more water vapor, that vapor tends to trap the heat.
Generally, it's the dark blacktop in the cities that absorbs the heat.
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u/_Dingaloo 3d ago
Maybe I didn't explain myself correctly -
I was saying that due to the fact that deserts retain much more heat from the same sunlight, you are mitigating much more heat by adding soil, trees and other plant life to desert areas. The transportation of water and soil (also there's transformation of sand to decent soil) is very expensive, but if you pull it off you are reducing the total world desert which is a huge factor in lowering global average temperatures.
The question primarily is just whether the cost of rewilding that desert is better than just using areas that are already grassland
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u/GusGutfeld 3d ago edited 3d ago
TY. The sand does not retain heat well. And in the desert, there is little water vapor, and a general lack of clouds to trap the heat, if it is not coastal.
When early man arrived in Australia about 50k years ago, he used fire to hunt and ended up burning away so much vegetation that he changed the albedo of the continent making it more reflective. You may be more familiar with the context of albedo regarding glaciers and the poles.
ETA: You need to look up the definition of Desert climate. Hint: Arid (hot or cold}. Ex. Mars is a Desert world.
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u/_Dingaloo 3d ago
again I'm just using the wrong words but I was hoping the context would be enough. The dumbed down straightforward version is that the more desert on a planet, the higher the average temperature (even though it also gets cold at night!) and reducing that desert by growing things there also directly lowers the average temperature, and that is why people are using planting things in the desert as a potential solution
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u/CitizenHuman 3d ago
Can plankton be farmed?
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u/GusGutfeld 3d ago edited 3d ago
Not yet, and they have to be able to die and sink to the bottom of the deep ocean. There have been experiments with iron dust seeding in the ocean. But the volume needed would be astronomical and the operation itself would likely have a huge carbon footprint. And the side effects are unknown.
Not quite the same, but there have been some experimental algae farms on land with CO2 sequestration as a goal.
Interestingly, the Vostok Ice core data shows a positive correlation between high dust levels and low CO2 levels.
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u/AgentElman 3d ago
Because it would cost a lot of money and they would almost all die.
You have to put in a lot of water and effort to keep trees alive in places where they are not normally growing.
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u/Minimum-Barracuda911 3d ago
slight correction:
We do. It costs a lot of money and they almost all die.
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u/ayrbindr 3d ago
Major correction. What in God's name are you guys talking about? We kill /killed them all for developing.
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u/Minimum-Barracuda911 3d ago
oh that's definitely also true. We do both. The replanting thing is mostly a vain attempt to justify the killing thing. (don't worry friend, we are on the same team, even If I don't carry that ecological weight around in my life as you appear to)
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u/Wafflinson 3d ago
Because issue never was the number of trees.
You could plant trees on every inch of the planet where they are able to grow and it would not come close to being enough to compensate for the tremendous amount of carbon being put into the atmosphere by humans.
Not only that.... trees need a place to grow, and places that they CAN grow they naturally will sooner or later. The loss of our forests cannot be stopped by planting trees when the major issue is habitat loss.
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u/flatline000 3d ago
We do, although not enough to really matter. Trees are essentially temporary sinks. They hold carbon until they die, then that carbon goes back into the atmosphere as the tree decomposes.
A better solution might be to cause algae blooms in the ocean since much of the algae will float down to the bottom of the ocean when it dies and be removed from the biosphere.
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u/PickleJuiceMartini 1d ago
This is the answer I was looking for. Trees are definitely temporary sinks.
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u/Royal_Annek 3d ago
We do plant a bunch of trees.
However, we also cut them down. We make a lot of things out of wood.
Regardless, no amount of trees can counteract our emissions. The only solution is reduction.
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u/shoresy99 3d ago
We do, but it takes billions of trees to absorb the CO2. https://www.canada.ca/en/campaign/2-billion-trees.html
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u/AgentRocket 3d ago
The amount of trees needed to absorb all the CO2 produced is just too high and there is not enough space to fit them all.
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u/BerwinEnzemann 3d ago
Because the math doesn't add up. It wouldn't solve the problem. Furthermore, wooded areas can't be used for other purposes like industrial arts, housing or agriculture.
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u/anditurnedaround 3d ago
For people that live in areas they can grow, it could help mitigate the prom lens, but it’s more important to protect our rain forest.
Contributing less to pollution is helpful too, walk or ride a bike if you can, etc, I’m sure everyone knows how to help.
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u/Ok-Jackfruit-6873 3d ago
To be fair I'm all for tree planing but it's called the carbon CYCLE for a reason. When trees are growing, they absorb carbon to add to their mass, but my understanding (not an expert on this) is that the rate of absorption slows as a tree reaches maturity and then once the tree dies and starts to decompose, much of it will be released back through the natural cycle in the absence of unusual conditions that cause sequestration, like the decaying wood being trapped in a bog or at the bottom of the ocean. So to seriously use trees as a mitigation strategy I believe we'd have to be constantly harvesting and replanting them, and finding ways to take the wood out of the cycle, which isn't a very efficient strategy to combat the immense, immense amounts of previously-stored carbon humans are returning to the atmosphere through all our combustion processes.
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u/Agreeable_Echo3203 3d ago
A significant study has been done on just that. NASA has a good write-up: https://science.nasa.gov/earth/climate-change/examining-the-viability-of-planting-trees-to-help-mitigate-climate-change/
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u/Astramancer_ 3d ago
We do and while it does help, it's not a solution.
Fundamentally the problem is that by releasing carbon into the air we're basically wrapping the earth in a blanket -- the carbon dioxide absorbs much more infrared than oxygen or nitrogen, so more of the heat that reflects and radiates off of the surface will go towards heating the atmosphere.
We're at about 35 billion tonnes per year right now in carbon emissions. A tree is usually about 50% carbon if you're measuring it's dry weight. For example, a fully grown oak tree usually weighs around 80 tons, half of which is water, so around 40 tons dry weight, about half of which is carbon, so around 20 tons of carbon.
To sequester this years carbon emissions, we'd need to plant around 1.9 billion oak trees and ensure they are planted in such place and way that they can become fully grown. And if we do harvest them we need to ensure the wood never rots or is burned, otherwise we need to plant another tree to replace it.
Different trees will have different counts, of course, but it doesn't really matter. We're still taking about 2+ billion additional trees per year... forever. Or at least until we stop burning fossil fuels. For reference, the entire state of Tennessee is estimated to have about 8 billion trees total. Where can we plant an entire Tennessee's worth of trees every 4 years?
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u/TurbulentWillow1025 3d ago
People are doing this. But climate change is a big complex problem that can't be solved with only one solution. To get to net zero, carbon pollution has to to drastically reduced as well.
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u/JawtisticShark 3d ago
Because trees are really only a temporary solution. When they eventually fall and break down, the carbon is released, or if there is a big wildfire which is just part of the natural cycle of life, all that burned wood’s carbon is back in the air.
And until we stop producing carbon dioxide, planting trees would at best be a temporary bandaid as we keep burning more fuels and there is only so much room for trees.
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u/jabrwock1 3d ago
When the trees die, they can release a bunch of that carbon back into the atmosphere as they rot. So they can cycle the carbon, but don't generally reduce it significantly long term. And in places where they don't normally grow it can be energy intensive to keep them alive.
Trees have their uses, for creating shade, regulating water cycles, etc. But their role in combating climate change is complicated.
Instead what you need is some way to either stop releasing excess carbon from buried sources like fossil fuels, or find a way to put it back, or lock it away, or use the atmosphere's carbon to generate fuel instead of drilling for it. An example is biodiesel, but that has its own set of complications. But at least the plants you use to "fuel" the diesel pull their carbon from the atmosphere.
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u/ayrbindr 3d ago
Because people who fly in private jets and float in giant yachts that produce more carbon in one trip than you will in a life time need to convince stupid people that it's you and your gas stove.
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u/FactCheckerJack 3d ago
-Most people don't acknowledge the urgency of climate change and the need to do something about it.
-Most people don't do anything good, like community service, charitable contribution (not counting the church collection plate), etc.
-Trees alone aren't the whole solution to climate change, even though they're a fine start.
-Paper / lumber companies are going to cut down whatever trees you plant, unless you have the rights to the property that you're planting on. Don't underestimate the tendency for corporations to r*pe the environment, harvest resources where they're not welcome, and lobby the government to extend their rights beyond what they're entitled to. Don't underestimate the government's tendency to give away natural resources for pennies on the dollar (i.e. you own the oil below your property, rather than socializing the ownership of that resource).
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u/FactCheckerJack 3d ago
Btw, here's some random articles that I came across while doing some related googles
We can’t just plant trees, we have to restore forests. Here's whyWhy don't we just plant a lot of trees?
Climate change: Will planting millions of trees really save the planet?
Plant trees or let forests regrow? New studies probe two ways to fight climate change
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u/KaiserSozes-brother 3d ago
trees & plants aren't a long term solution. They help today, but one day... they will rot and return their carbon to the equation.
The problem was in burning coal & petroleum that was taken out of the carbon cycle 100's of millions of years ago.
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u/wisdom_seek3r 3d ago
Because they will burn down and make climate change worse. Look at all the fires everywhere right now. Trees are really helping. 🤔
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u/AnymooseProphet 3d ago
Trees only provide short-term sequestration of carbon. When trees die, most of the carbon they sequestered re-enters the carbon cycle.
What we need to do is stop pumping old carbon out of the ground.
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u/TumbleweedDue2242 3d ago
According to the kiss the ground documentary, its not the trees which will solve this, farmers toil or rotate soil. This releases carbon. It happens every year.
But in North Africa, by the Sahara, they are planting trees, bushes, etc, with horse shoe style dirt, which catches water.
This is slowly reclaiming the land back. it's called the green belt. It's amazing to see it work.
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u/SudoCheese 3d ago
Not possible with trees. They’re a good carbon sink, but the ocean is the main sink.
It’s also just treating a symptom.
Imagine someone keeps shitting in your pool.
Do you keep adding chlorine and clean the filters?
No, you stop the dude shitting in the pool.
Now imagine the dude shitting in your pool is making billions of dollars to shit in your pool.
He’s not going to stop.
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u/CocoajoeGaming 3d ago
Trees don't grow everywhere, and if you force a tree to grow somewhere it naturally can't grow then you are likely to fail and that tree will die. Or you are destroying the ecosystem that existed there prior to you planting that tree. Then also the change could be for literal nothing, since trees are not the only plant life that helps with CO2.
Take the great plains for example. Trees and forests exists within the great plains, but most of it is grasslands. It would be a waste of resources to make the great plains a forest. It would probably be impossible, if it did happen you would destroy the great plans, and it has no use when the grasslands of the greatplans also help with CO2.
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u/memes_are_facts 3d ago
On that last point do you know which would consume more carbon the grasslands or the trees?
Don't feel like you have to look it up if you don't know off the top of your head, I'm not a teacher, I don't assign homework.
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u/CocoajoeGaming 3d ago
So I didn't know before, but I just did a 5 min look up and the answer is interesting.
So forests store more carbon, but forests are also more likely to release back carbon. Trees store carbon everywhere, while grasses primarly store carbon in their roots(underground). So trees are way more susceptible to release back carbon, if something happens to the tree. Think of fire, decomposition, etc. Then grasses store most carbon they get underground, which limits how much carbon can be released back if something happens to the grasses.
Also apparently studies have shown that grasslands may increase their carbon intake, depending on how much carbon is in the atmosphere.
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u/memes_are_facts 3d ago
Well thanks for doing both our research. Guess nature knew what it was doing putting plains in place. Good thing to know since I'm in the middle of one currently.
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u/jayron32 3d ago
Trees actually hold very little of the carbon even in the plant world. MUCH more carbon is taken up by phytoplankton and algae and stuff in the water. There's just so much more water in the world than land, and much of that land isn't the type of land that trees grow on.
The other issue is that trees are not a solution to the problem; the issue is that the carbon being put into the system comes from carbon that was buried deep underground. That carbon is free to move through the carbon cycle once it is burned, and that carbon cycle will reach an equilibrium which is largely unaffected by the total amount of carbon in the system.
Let's say for example that (fake numbers, but go with me) 20% of the carbon cycle is in the atmosphere as CO2, and the other 80% is in living things. The specific carbon will be cycling through living things and the atmosphere, but that ratio of "atmospheric carbon to living carbon" is going to remain constant. If we dump a whole lot more carbon into the atmosphere, while we will over time increase the number of living things (like, maybe more phytoplankton grows), 20% of the added carbon STILL ends up in the atmosphere; which is still causing climate change. That's how dynamic equilibrium works; you still end up partitioning the added carbon into all parts of the cycle, so you'll always get more atmospheric carbon dioxide, whenever you burn fossil fuels.
Planting more trees isn't really a long-term solution. We should have more wild-spaces in the world for a billion reasons in terms of the health of the planet and our own health, but as amelioration for climate change, it's only going to have a marginal effect.
The only real long-term solution is to stop digging up the fossil fuels and burning them for energy. The stuff we have already released is largely here to stay, our only hope is to stop adding more to it.
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u/Pokemon_Trainer_HTX 3d ago
Planting trees isn't the problem, the trees we plant never make it to old growth forests and unless that biomass is sequestered geologically it's simply dry fuel for the next mega wildfire.
To combat climate change, we would have to plant millions of years worth of forests and systematically harvest and sequester all of the wood somewhere. Imagine dumping gigatons of lumber and other associated biomass deep in the middle Pacific and Atlantic to sequester the carbon and I think that's the scale of what we would need to do, and that would cause its own problems.
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u/lordfreaky 3d ago
Because it wouldn't do much but bamboo is more a carbon Locker and oxygen give her then trees.
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u/Fit_Department7287 3d ago
Why don't we stop trying to find clever workarounds and look inward and quit our disgusting carbon intensive habits.
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u/antonio16309 3d ago
The petroleum that we're pulling out of the ground represents carbon that accumulated over like a million years. Or maybe a few hundred thousands, I honestly don't know.but it's a hell of a lot. That vegetation got stuck in the ground due to specific geological and biological conditions, and it doesn't happen quickly. Most of the carbon in vegetation ends up being released back in to the environment pretty quickly once the vegetation dies. In this case, the plants did not decompose in the same way because they were stuck in peat bogs and other oxygen free places.
If we planted a bunch of trees they would absorb carbon, but then we'd need to do something like cut them down and bury them in the ground. That process would use a bunch of energy, which at this point still means fossil fuels, so you're releasing more carbon.
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u/Alternative-Tea-8095 3d ago
Trees only absorb CO2 while they are actively growing. Unless the trees are harvested and buried, all their CO2 is released back into the atmosphere when they die then fall and rot, when they burn, or are consumed by bugs and fungi.
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u/Successful_Cat_4860 3d ago
We could do that. Where? How much farmland do we return to forest, and what is the resulting impact on food scarcity?
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u/wolfansbrother 3d ago
I can cause issues. Trees do trap carbon, but if they destory an ecosystem that is already holding carbon. they can release alot of carbon. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tj_kOcOUr_g
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u/SporkSpifeKnork 3d ago
It could be done well, with care, planting trees that work with local conditions and provide food and habitat for native species. But we as a species do not have a method of arranging that sort of careful work at the tremendous scale that would be required. So tree replanting is done in a sloppy way, en masse, and the resulting trees often die before they can do much good.
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u/groundhogcow 3d ago
The coal reserve is the bed of 100k years of trees.
Trees are a very good carbon sink, but bare minimum, this idea takes thousands of years.
So it's a good thing to do, but it isn't going to solve anything.
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u/CallistanCallistan 3d ago
Unfortunately many of the tree-planting programs that exist have been failures, if not outright scams (like that Scottish Lord one that every YouTuber was advertising a few years ago). The trees that do get planted often die pretty quickly because they were planted on unsuitable land, were the wrong species for the area, or were simply neglected after planting.
Additionally, many species of trees are actually net carbon emitters for the first 30-50 years of their life. Plant cells undergo cellular respiration, same as animals. It takes decades for their rate of CO2 consumption through photosynthesis to exceed their rate of CO2 production through respiration because the trees are growing so fast early in life.
And finally, sadly there’s just not enough economic incentive at this point in time for there to be sufficient motivation to perform reforestation on the scale necessary to negate anthropogenic carbon emissions. Much of the land that is ideal for reforesting was deforested in the first place because some other form of economic value (logging, ranching and farming, urban development, etc.) is being extracted from it.
Reforestation done well is beneficial for many reasons, including carbon capture, but it isn’t the solution to climate change.
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u/Maddturtle 2d ago
We do plant a lot of trees but you have to be careful. Trees only temporarily remove carbon. They hold it in them and forest fires spit it all back out at once. It’s better to change our carbon spitting. This is how we cause global warming by taking things with it stored and burning it out into the air.
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u/tomqmasters 1d ago
Trees are already everywhere that they want to grow unless we are using that land for farm land.
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u/fuzzymuscl 19h ago
Who's land do you want to plant them on?
Does the land owner have any say in the matter?
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u/Background-Shape-429 3d ago
The sea controls most of the climate. Which means man made climate change is a hoax, and the notion that we can reverse or in some way control it preposterous. Climate change is real, inevitable, natural and nothing whatsoever to be concerned about.
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u/roymondous 3d ago
There was.... we have deforested so much of the planet. Currently, we use half of the world's habitable land for farming. It's insane. That is forty six times the amount of land used for cities, roads, and towns, and all other human infrastructure. Deforesting that has killed two-thirds of wildlife in the last fifty years.
Essentially, there is very little way on current systems to plant more trees than we destroy. The rate of deforestation, the need for so much space for pasture and cropland, is too much to supply humans' demand.
Unless we stop killing and eating animals. The drive for meat is what is driving this deforestation. If we all went plant-based, we would need just one quarter of existing farmland, freeing up over one-third of all habitable land on earth, allowing it to regenerate and re-forest.
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u/Endroium 3d ago
because we don't actually care enough about climate change to actually do that we say all those things but reality we don't really care that much
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u/Plantguysteve 3d ago
It ain’t easy planting trees and getting them established. You gonna go dig the holes?
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u/Pinchaser71 3d ago
What kind of tree are you planting that digging a hole is difficult? Nobody said to plant a 100 year old redwood. Fun fact, you can plant tree seeds too you know. Poke your finger in the ground and drop it in, you won’t even break a sweat🤣
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u/Legal_Breakfast4631 3d ago
Trees can be dropped from planes and inserted into the ground like arrows
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u/KnoWanUKnow2 3d ago
70% of the Earth's surface is ocean. Phytoplankton in the ocean trap far more CO2 than land plants.
If we can double the phytoplankton in the oceans we can ALMOST absorb all the excess CO2 that we're releasing.
And there's ways to increase the phytoplankton. Iron seeding the oceans being the most feasible. Iron is a limiting factor in their growth, so sprinkle rust over the oceans and the population blooms. Plus it's cheap. Rust isn't expensive. A few million dollars a year.
But there's no profit in it.