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kickbutt_city t1_j1f9osh wrote

Reply to comment by BobbSaccamano in If you guys could have any single innovation right now, what would it be? by Practical_Put_3892

Trees do this.

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snwfdhmp t1_j1fayax wrote

Why don't we just plant trees ⬇️

https://climate.mit.edu/ask-mit/why-dont-we-just-plant-lot-trees

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kickbutt_city t1_j1fbaha wrote

I never said plant trees. Any environmentalists knows that preserving old trees is more impactful than planting new ones.

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LouSanous t1_j1fj6bp wrote

That's not entirely true. While old large trees represent significant stores of carbon, forests that are early in their maturity absorb more carbon from the air. As they get older, they reach a steady state where the decomposition of old material reaches relative parity with the atmospheric absorption for new material.

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MysteriousPenis t1_j1fn6yv wrote

And any environmentalist knows one of the best ways to combat greenhouse gases is to inhale your own farts. Though, tragically, I hear pretentiousness is a common side effect. 😔

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skellis t1_j1favlh wrote

Trees also decompose or burn releasing the CO2 they captured.

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AuburnElvis t1_j1fbyum wrote

Victim blaming trees now?

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BadBillington t1_j1fh5yi wrote

This what causes them to turn on this according to M Night Shyamalan’s documentary “The Happening”.

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deinterest t1_j1fasdl wrote

Efficient? Planting trees and keeping them alive is hard. Soil quality isnt the best in many places either.

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kickbutt_city t1_j1fb2cx wrote

Are you kidding me?? Trees grow on their own without any need for human assistance and have for roughly 400 million years.

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deinterest t1_j1h4ff2 wrote

If we want to reverse global warming we will have to plant trees and manage these forests. And that is not easy.

Some data:

The mean survival rate computed on a sample of agroforestry private trees was 51% while on public trees it was 30%. In woodlots and forest plantations, private trees survived at 65% while the public ones survived at 40%.

On average, about half of trees planted in tropical and sub-tropical forest restoration efforts do not survive more than five years.

Tropical rain forests at some point can no longer sustain themselves either. It's delicate.

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Thoguth t1_j1fc4hu wrote

They aren't that great at doing it at the point of production.

Wouldn't it be awesome to have a tree-like thing that just turned the output of a car or power plant into ... I dunno, construction materials or something, without any extra CO2 going anywhere else?

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