To prevent possibly catastrophic climate change we can't just bring C02 emissions to zero - we have to go negative, sucking the CO2 that's already there. The best tech is a billion years old: trees. Massive Reforestation could Slow Global Warming.https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/massive-forest-restoration-could-greatly-slow-global-warming/ …
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Replying to @sapinker
Fully admitting that this is far afield of any expertise I have, some of the assumptions here seem dubious — for example, would foresting every surface of the planet that could possibly support it really "restore biodiversity"? Is all life really amenable to perfect shade cover?
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Replying to @webdevMason @sapinker
(My understanding is that the most biodiverse regions have heavy tree cover. But ought we replace all other habitats & expect global biodiversity to increase? If Bob is the most productive employee at company X, it doesn't follow that all staff should be replaced by Bob clones.)
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Replying to @webdevMason @sapinker
But in the last 1000 years or so we deforestated a large part of the world. So we should try to revert that (at least in part).
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Whole Germany for instance used to be a forest. Now it’s mostly agriculture here.
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Replying to @martinpallmann @sapinker
I'm not against reforestation, it just seems to me that the precautionary principle didn't get much play here when it comes to impact discussion. We've certainly bungled reforestation before:https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/2019/04/how-to-regrow-forest-right-way-minimize-fire-water-use/ …
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I think it's important to remember that even when reforestation looks like an entirely natural return to a prior regional state, humans are capable of getting it wrong. And when we're talking about actually repurposing entire habitats, considerably *more* caution is called for
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Very interesting take. Personally I wouldn't say more caution. Definitely some caution. And the entire premise of reforestation to me implies that the area be reverted as much as is possible to pre deforestation conditions. However humans are not brilliant at playing God.
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The arguments made in this piece are about maximizing forestation to cover *all* land not in use by humans or obviously unsuitable (e.g. deserts). Unfortunately, forests are complicated even where they arise naturally, restoring them properly is hard, and there are serious risks.
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