Posted on 07/26/2017 6:58:39 PM PDT by TigerLikesRooster
Which Trees Offset Global Warming Best?
Some trees are better than others at absorbing carbon dioxide
by Earth Talk
Updated March 29, 2017
Trees are important tools in the fight to stave off global warming because they absorb and store the key greenhouse gas emitted by our cars and power plants, carbon dioxide (CO2), before it has a chance to reach the upper atmosphere where it can help trap heat around the Earth’s surface.
ALL PLANTS ABSORB CARBON DIOXIDE, BUT TREES ARE BEST
While all living plant matter absorbs CO2 as part of photosynthesis, trees process significantly more than smaller plants due to their large size and extensive root structures.
In essence, trees, as kings of the plant world, have much more “woody biomass” to store CO2 than smaller plants, and as a result, are considered nature’s most efficient “carbon sinks”.It is this characteristic which makes planting trees a form of climate change mitigation.
According to the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), tree species that grow quickly and live long are ideal carbon sinks. Unfortunately, these two attributes are usually mutually exclusive. Given the choice, foresters interested in maximizing the absorption and storage of CO2 (known as “carbon sequestration”) usually favor younger trees that grow more quickly than their older cohorts. However, slower growing trees can store much more carbon over their significantly longer lives.
Based on this argument, it seems that we have a simple answer to all Global Warming hysteria. Plant trees to absorb CO2. If climate cools, cut down and burn them to release CO2.
There is absolutely no need for a gargantuan scheme to sequester CO2.
However, the warming and cooling of climate could be determined by other factors. I suspect Man-made CO2 makes little impact.
And who is supposed to care?
Giving Trees are the best for CO2 absorption.
"It adds biomass faster than any rain forest."
Because we know how chilly it is in the Brazilian rain forests, right? All those trees and plants absorbing all that CO2 and practically causing the indigenous peoples to get frostbite. It’s a shame, really.
Who is supposed to care?! During the mini ice age, 1350-1750 the trees grew at a slower rate. The wood from those trees had rings which were closer together thus making for many of the best sounding violens ever made. This, we need a new ice age or maybe plant trees at higher latitudes for slower growth. The fiddles of the future need the cold.! Seriously series I say.
I’ve always thought zucchini as a rapid growing plant that could take in a lot of CO2.
Willows? And you can make great teas from their bark that relieves all sorts of bodily pains. Aspirin.
Didn’t read the article.
Is it live trees? The dead ones, they don’t do much.
We're better off growing saltwater algae to make petroleum.
Actually, trees are not the most efficient converters of CO2 to oxygen. Planet-wide, algae is. Look it up.
Algae is the greatest producer of oxygen for the earth.
CO2 is only .0345 % of the air you breathe.
There is unrest in the forest....
I don’t know. I’m just an old lady who has lived in the same county for almost 64 years. There has been absolutely no change in the general climate here.
We’ve had years that were cold, or hot, or stormy - and years that evened it all out. (It amuses me when I hear of people who are astounded that a Christmas in our area gets up to 70 degrees sometimes, because I remember riding my Christmas Gift bike in 70-degree weather back in the 1960s. The ‘global-changists’ seem to think that these occasional anomalies are somehow New :-)
We go through cycles of different extremes of weather; I think it’s natural. I don’t believe that a mere 150 years or so of ‘industrialization’ could possibly impact climate on this resilient Earth as much as they are suggesting. I believe that it’s a politically-driven sham.
(When I was young and in school, they were warning of an imminent Ice Age!)
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