FORESTS are the best carbon-capture system on the planet to fight #climatechange........

[riversedge]

Imagine if all the states did their share of planting and preserving forests!



The Best Technology for Fighting Climate Change Isn't a Technology

Forests are the most powerful and efficient carbon-capture system on the planet


https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/the-best-technology-for-fighting-climate-change-isnt-a-technology/




By Han de Groot on December 5, 2018

The Best Technology for Fighting Climate Change Isn't a Technology
A forest planted on an abandoned open-pit coal mine, Germany. Credit: Hans Blossey Getty Images

The latest IPCC report does not mince words about the state of our planet: we must act now to achieve global change at a scale that has “no documented historical precedent” in order to avoid the climate catastrophe that would result from a 2 degree C rise in average global temperature. Climate change already disproportionately affects the world’s most vulnerable people including poor rural communities that depend on the land for their livelihoods and coastal communities throughout the tropics. Indeed, we have already seen the stark asymmetry of suffering resulting from extreme weather events, such as hurricanes, floods, droughts, wildfires and more.

So far, advocates and politicians have tended to focus on reducing fossil fuel consumption through technology and/or policy, such as a steep carbon tax, as climate solutions. These proposals are, of course, essential to reducing manmade carbon emissions—71 percent of which are generated by just 100 fossil fuel companies. For this reason, fossil-fuel–related emissions reductions rightly figure heavily in the national climate commitments of the 181 nations that signed the global Paris Agreement.

Yet the international focus on fossil fuels has overshadowed the most powerful and cost-efficient carbon-capture technology the world has yet seen: forests. Recent scientific research confirms that forests and other “natural climate solutions” are absolutely essential in mitigating climate change, thanks to their carbon sequestering and storage capabilities. In fact, natural climate solutions can help us achieve 37 percent of our climate target, even though they currently receive only 2.5 percent of public climate financing.
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Forests’ power to store carbon dioxide through the simple process of tree growth is staggering: one tree can store an average of about 48 pounds of carbon dioxide in one year. Recent research shows intact forests are capable of storing the equivalent of the carbon dioxide emissions of entire countries such as Peru and Colombia.

For this reason, policy makers and business leaders must create and enforce ambitious policies and incentives to prevent deforestation, foster reforestation of degraded land, and support the sustainable management of standing forests in the fight against climate change. Protecting the world’s forests ensures they can continue to provide essential functions aside from climate stability, including producing oxygen, filtering water and supporting biodiversity. Not only do all the world’s people depend on forests to provide clean air, clean water, oxygen, and medicines, but 1.6 billion people rely on them directly for their livelihoods...............................

[Igel]

1. Yes and no.

They do a great job. But once a forest has reached steady state, with as much falling and dying and growing, it's sequestered all it's going to unless peat bogs are forming (or something else is letting all kinds of organic crap pile up, undecaying).

We've put millions and millions of tons of carbon in the air that *didn't* come from forests. The best forests can do is take out what was lost by deforestation.

Note, as well, that many reports on how bad countries are doing include deforestation but omit reforestation with a small note buried on page 23 in Hittite, the small note merely saying "we're not including reforestation". It mitigates some increases.