this post was submitted on 16 Dec 2023
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Discussion of climate, how it is changing, activism around that, the politics, and the energy systems change we need in order to stabilize things.

As a starting point, the burning of fossil fuels, and to a lesser extent deforestation and release of methane are responsible for the warming in recent decades: Graph of temperature as observed with significant warming, and simulated without added greenhouse gases and other anthropogentic changes, which shows no significant warming

How much each change to the atmosphere has warmed the world: IPCC AR6 Figure 2 - Thee bar charts: first chart: how much each gas has warmed the world. About 1C of total warming. Second chart: about 1.5C of total warming from well-mixed greenhouse gases, offset by 0.4C of cooling from aerosols and negligible influence from changes to solar output, volcanoes, and internal variability. Third chart: about 1.25C of warming from CO2, 0.5C from methane, and a bunch more in small quantities from other gases. About 0.5C of cooling with large error bars from SO2.

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Stop Planting Trees, Says Guy Who Inspired World to Plant a Trillion Trees (www.wired.com)
submitted 11 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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[–] [email protected] 37 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (2 children)

Most of the climate benefits from "tree-planting" really derive from reforestation. Forest ecologies are complex and take decades-centuries to develop to the point where they can function as meaningful carbon sinks. The cycle was covered in my biology 101 class in college, can't find a graphic covering the overall cycle at the moment, but the point is it's not just lots of trees = carbon sink, it's the enormous community of life that develops around (and also often precedes) the trees that makes forests -- not just "groups of trees" or even "a rather large group of trees" -- function as carbon sinks.

It's a fantastic idea for the long-term considering all the other problems we're running into with global deforestation anyways, but businesses whittled the concept down to plant tree = good because that's easier than dealing with the causes of global deforestation (hint: businesses)

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago (1 children)

If you’re interested in the complex ecology of forests the book “The Hidden Life of Trees” is a really good book that talks about all of the symbiotic relationships of forests and how they work together to make a forest strong. Can’t recommend it enough

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

Good book. I think the thumbnail sounds up the main problem with mindless tree planting. Monocultures, isolated from historic biomes won't become healthy ecosystems at all but fall prey to bugs and disease. Same as with human culture, biodiversity is needed for it to thrive.