Overflowing with Intelligence!

I don’t get it… don’t they think climate change is a woke conspiracy?

Trees only sequester carbon until they die. If they decay on the surface or get burned, all that carbon goes back up.

Aspiring earth scientist here, providing an “🤓actually”:

Trees don’t really help with sequestering carbon. In the short term (50-70 years), carbon stored in the soil might even decrease after planting new trees.
The trees themselves do store carbon of course, it’s just one extreme natural event away from being released again.

For those who do not know, this is not what trees due. Trees are carbon nuetral long term. They take carbon to make more tree. Tree dies, carbon is used as fuel by animals, CO2 is released again. To “sequester durable” is to make it so the CO2 isn’t released again.

I am all for planting trees, and Elon is an asshole. But he is right on this one. CO2 reduction is hard, and planting trees does not fix the problem.

Anything but turning off the taps

It isn’t quite that simple. In some stages of their life trees actually emit some emissions or stop consuming carbon dioxide.

A much better alternative in my opinion is iron fertilization.

Trees dont store carbon durably and sustainably…they die, fall over and rot releasing the carbon in a cycle. 100 years isnt long enough. The grail of carbon sequestration is to find a more permenant means of containing and storing atmosphwric carbon.

Its a funny quip but it honestly shows a lack of understanding of the problem.

The problem with trees is that they’re flammable and when they burn they release the CO2 back into the atmosphere.

Can we get a fireproof tree that doesn’t decompose?

I think the idea is that we need to find a way to do this more efficiently than a tree can. We’ve fu**ed the planet up so badly that no degree of human assisted reforestation will be enough to stop our extinction. More realistically is the problem that the greed of our wealthy classes won’t allow the resource allocation required for an attempt; unless a new technology allows them to personally profit from selling clean air back to the working class.

Trees are not mineralized carbon. They decompose and release most of that carbon into the atmosphere. The carbon remains in the environment.

He’s asking for a way to remove the carbon from the environment.

Hey now! That MD means he didn’t study all the sciences. I’m pretty sure he knows his way around a <insert body part> though.

We’re in trouble