A large percentage of CO2 emitted comes from coal, coal came from trees.
Yes planting more trees will reduce CO2 levels, trees also produce leaf litter which ends up as top soil, soil contains huge amounts of carbon, and some forms of soil such as terra petra can lock carbon away for thousands of years.
People say it would take very large numbers maybe a billion to make a difference, well this planet has room for a billion trees, especially if we plant in semi desert areas, these areas will support trees once they gain a foothold, all that is needed is to support the saplings in the first years.
More trees will provide a superior climate on Earth, more atmospheric moisture, less extremes of temperature, more oxygen more habitat for creatures. more lumber for construction, and if fruit bearing trees, more food.
A trillion dollars spent on planting trees would reduce CO2 much better than all the windmills it could build.
http://ri.search.yahoo.com/_ylt=A2oKmLa2...
Edit for Larry quote
” A 100-ft tree, 18″ diameter at its base, produces 6,000 pounds of oxygen.” per year
But that same tree will also consume (get rid of) 8251.875 (8000 to significant figures) pounds of carbon dioxide"
It won't reduce emissions but it will remove CO2 from the atmosphere. That Carbon is stored in the wood fiber, if you don't burn the wood it is a very effective carbon sink . Burry it for a few hundred million years and it becomes coal. Our problem is we're burning 450 million year old trees and both that CO2 and solar energy it took to grow those trees back into the atmosphere.
The effect of planting trees is overall a good one. If they don't work the CO2 through the cycle then what happens is algae in the ocean will come out enmasse and do the job, with more regretable results. This is the only way O2 is produced so live with it.
If the trees that are planted have babies that grow into big trees before their parents die, then there is a long term net reduction, although (do the numbers), it would take a huge forest to have a meaningful impact on global CO2 levels. And the reduction is not in emissions, but in already emitted CO2 in the air. Same logic applies to trees used from lumber. As long the houses, furniture, etc, are replaced, when they wear and rot away, with new wooden items (and the trees used for the new lumber are themselves replaced by new trees) then the use of wood in lumber also has a (small) but reducing effect on CO2 levels.
That would take a lot of trees. To offset the CO2 emissions of one pickup truck would require several thousand trees.
It increases trees as a carbon sink, but plant lots of them it is said we need to plant a billion trees to absorb the excess CO2 and we keep pumping it out
no because more trees means more animals, including microbes, which takes in oxygen and release CO2
No.
No. The carbon absorbed by photosynthesis is re-released into the atmosphere by respiration, fermentation and combustion.
Trees take in CO2 and release oxygen. However, long term a tree will die and carbon goes back into the atmosphere. Is the overall effect of planting trees CO2 neutral?
Is it possible some of the carbon will end up in the ground, perhaps in coffins?
How about if you keep planting trees every year?
