Saturday, July 6, 2019

A simple and cheap solution to burning fossil fuels?

Plant trees:
OK, the study simply argues that by adding 10 million squared kilometers of forests – the area equal to the territory of the U.S. (or Canada, if you wish), 2/3 of the man-made emissions of CO2 since 1800 could be removed from the atmosphere (they apparently pre-decided that the elimination of 2/3 of a problem is a good plan). Planting a tree costs $0.30, they claim, and because one needs about one extra trillion of new trees (the number of trees would be increased by 1/3 in this project – they did use the same estimate of the number of trees in the world as I mentioned above), the total cost would be $300 billion. This is the overall amount, not an annual one.
So for $300B over 30 years we could eliminate the excess carbon dioxide that we've put into the atmosphere.  Even if this figure is off by an order of magnitude, this is a huge win compared with the $122 Trillion that the UN wants to "fight Climate Change".

Alas, planting forests does not allow the industrial scale graft that the UN has come to expect.

6 comments:

Paul, Dammit! said...

Good ol' New England is at the forefront of this. Over the past century, the number of acres of forested lands in New England has continued to increase. At current rates, 23rd century New Englanders will have a lot of fighting over parking spaces to do.

It is kinda cool to be walking through the deep woods full of century-old hardwoods and come across stone walls, knowing that you're in a colonist's pasture.

Old NFO said...

So they can plant faster than the Amazon rain forest is being depleted???

ASM826 said...

Can I buy a field and plant my own trees or is this only permitted if it's a gov't program?

Jerry said...

Oh I'd say you have the numbers right. 99.75% for "administrative costs. 0.25% for the actual work. Sounds about right for government work.

McChuck said...

So the plan is merely to reduce the crop fields of the entire world by 90%, and then there will be peace.

Richard said...

Not clear that there 10M square km to plant trees on. McChuck noted the crop problem but water is a bigger issue. Most places that would support trees already have them. Good luck growing trees in the Sahara or even E. CO.