ARE MORE TREES THE SOLUTION TO GLOBAL WARMING?

 First, a few pandemic graphics from the New York Times this morning:

Also:

The federal government is likely to approve the next generation of booster shots— designed to be even more effective against the latest variants — in coming days. Within a week or two, these new shots will probably be available to Americans 12 and older.

Tomorrow I'll focus on, next to death, the most concerning COVID-19 worry:  LONG-HAUL.

Today is Wednesday science day, so I start with a Time magazine recently published article, Trees Are the Secret Weapon of America's Historic Climate Bill:

• Trees and forests are the key to natural carbon removal.
• An average tree will capture 1200 pounds of carbon dioxide over its lifetime.
• Together, trees and forests capture and store 17% of the USA's carbon dioxide.

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  The Nature Conservancy found potential to increase tree-based carbon capture across American by nearly half if we reforest 133 million acres of ecologically suitable land to grow more than 60 billion trees.
• Trees will provide habitat for threatened and endangered species.

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  Tree canopies cool the area beneath them by more than 20 F in cities like Phoenix.

• 
  This latest congressional package provides:
• $1.5 billion for urban trees.
• $1.25 billion for private landowners to protest forestland and $3 billion to restore ecosystems and prevent forest fires.
• $20 billion to help farmers and other landowners to increase carbon in soils.  The Farm Lobby scored again.

How great, right?  How can you argue against the above benefits?

Well, for a long time now I, for one, have wondered if planting more trees could actually be bad.  Read my postings explaining this contrary position:

• CAN TREES BE BAD FOR THE ENVIRONMENT? (August 2014)
• HOW SERIOUS IS GLOBAL WARMING?  (July 2019)
• CAN MORE TREES PREVENT GLOBAL WARMING?  (September 2019)

You can read them for details, but here is a crystallization of those articles:

• Methane...is from 20 to 62 times more dangerous than carbon dioxide in causing the Greenhouse Effect, depending on which reference you use and the parameters of consideration.  Begins at 100 times worse when first released into the atmosphere.

• 
  The worst mass extinction in history, killing off 95% of all marine species and 70% of terrestrial life, occurred 251 million years ago, according to Gregory Ryskin of Northwestern University. Methane from bacterial decay or from frozen methane hydrates, stimulated by a meteorite impact, earthquake or volcano, could have triggered a catastrophic eruption of methane gas.

• 
  A team from Germany, the Netherlands and Northern Ireland reported in Nature in 2006 that ordinary plants produce significant amounts of methane, both in the growth cycle and the decay process. The latter was previously known, but trees being a contributor to global warming just by growing, thus contributing up to 30% of all the methane generated?
• In any case, that 2006 "bombshell" indicated above was quietly suppressed by the Max Planck Society, possibly because an anti-tree message subverted the Kyoto Protocol strategy, and nothing much surfaced after that neutralizing declaration. 

• 
  The fact of the matter is that there are green myths, and one of them is that trees consume carbon dioxide and emit oxygen, so they must be good for the environment.  The problem is that if methane is 20-62 times worse, per molecule, than carbon dioxide to cause the Greenhouse Effect, plus there are other detrimental products being produced--AND, WHATEVER CARBON DIOXIDE CAPTURED BY THE TREE IS IN TIME ALL RELEASED BACK TO THE ATMOSPHERE WHEN THEY DECAY--maybe we shouldn't plant trees to reduce global warming.

That bottom bullet is a point that environmentalists miss.  All biomass, like trees, eventually die.  And much of this is in an environment where, in the normal process of degradation, all the captured carbon dioxide is released back into the atmosphere, but worse, in a slightly moist environment, a fair percentage of the decay ends up as methane.  So here is the total picture:

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  Trees do take carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and generate oxygen.  That's good.  This what we all learned in school.
• However, they eventually die, and return all this carbon dioxide into the air.  That's very bad.  Worse, instead of carbon dioxide, some of this emittance is methane, which is terrible.
• Thus, what we gain is time, and only that.  And this can be from 50-100 years, so that's okay, for by then one hopes that technology will have overcome the problem.  But can we be sure?

• 
  Of course, as I have been underscoring, some of this returned carbon dioxide actually end up as methane, so on balance, over time, we actually increase the prospects for global warming by growing a tree.  I haven't seen one analysis of the ultimate balance.  Maybe I'm over worrying.

Mind you, I'm not the only one sending warning messages.  While the popular media, and most citizens, love trees, here is a recent article saying trees are not a cure-all.

So far, carbon offset protocols and markets have not really grappled with this updated scientific understanding of the risks that forests face from climate change. This tells us that climate policymakers and offset developers need to be very careful about how they count on forest offsets to deliver benefits.

But this article never mentions methane, which makes the above even more a concern.  Perhaps I should just go away and let well-meaning experts do what they think is right.  That is the current pathway.  Most of what I have advocated, such as a Hydrogen Society and the Blue Revolution, will not reach any kind of prominence for maybe a century.  Such is my legacy and plight.

Ah, why end so depressingly.  Here, some elephant fun:

Super Typhoon Hinnamnor reached 160 MPH yesterday, but has dropped to 145 MPH today.  Still predicted to make a right turn into the East China Sea.

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