Expert prognosis for the planet

[dpfarr]

Originally Posted by weederr33

Oh... this logic.

Easy in your descriptions there!

[TommyW]

Originally Posted by weederr33

Oh... this logic.

And your logic makes as little sense to me

[Spuds]

Originally Posted by TommyW

Well weren't we supposed to be underwater by now and all these other horrible things? Always follow the money with science research. But if we pay money it will help stop something that has been changing for billions of years..

Who said we were all going to be underwater by now? Please let me see this source?

[Bonburner]

Originally Posted by Spuds

Who said we were all going to be underwater by now? Please let me see this source?

Wasn't Al Gore going around saying that?

For what it's worth, we did push towards more green initiatives. Just not hard enough.

[strat61caster]

Originally Posted by Bonburner

Wasn't Al Gore going around saying that?

For what it's worth, we did push towards more green initiatives. Just not hard enough.

google so complicated

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/ic...elt-gore-2014/

[weederr33]

Originally Posted by TommyW

And your logic makes as little sense to me

Considering I haven't dispensed any makes your logic of questioning my logic illogical

[soundman98]

Originally Posted by Spuds

Who said we were all going to be underwater by now? Please let me see this source?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waterworld

[dpfarr]

Not having the gills behind my ears gene is precisely why I was confident a vasectomy was the right choice.

[86MLR]

https://climateone.org/audio/populat...n-paul-ehrlich

[Irace86.2.0]

We aren’t having kids earlier. My brother and wife adopted. Idiocracy is clearly where we are headed, which is why we are doomed because we will eventually destroy ourselves.

[Irace86.2.0]

So Elon Musk has offered a 100 million prize for anyone who can create an effective carbon capturing system/technology. I don't know if he set a standard for what it takes to win the prize. There are already many carbon capturing technologies available, but they aren't very scalable, nor are they very efficient, so I'm assuming he has higher expectations than the status quo.

Many people have been suggesting there is already a solution: plant trees.

According to the Arbor Day Foundation, in one year a mature tree will absorb more than 48 pounds of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and release oxygen in exchange. In one year, an acre of forest (or 400 trees at 10x10 spacing) can absorb twice the CO2 produced by the average car's annual mileage.

A typical passenger vehicle emits about 4.6 metric tons (10k pounds) of carbon dioxide per year. This assumes the average gasoline vehicle on the road today has a fuel economy of about 22.0 miles per gallon and drives around 11,500 miles per year.

Well, there are 273.6 million vehicles in the US, so half of that would equate to the 136.8 million acres of forest we would need to offset those cars. We would need to plant enough forests to fill an area the size of California and Alabama, which would require 54.7 billion trees. If everyone in the US aged 18-65 planted 250-300 trees then we could do it. Then we could tackle planting trees to offset carbon produced from industry, utilities, agriculture, commercial and residential buildings.

Trees might not be the realistic answer, but they could be part of the solution. We definitely are capable of planting a lot of trees and have made strides to preserve our forests and replace what we take, but this isn't done everywhere:

But overall, the U.S. has 8% of the total forests in the world, and reached a point in 1997 where growth “exceeded harvest by 42%” and we were growing forests at a rate of roughly four times faster than we were in 1920, when our chop-happiness began to level out due to environmental and recreational concerns regarding timber harvest.

Today, annual tree harvest vs. production on a world-wide scale shows that humans cut down approximately 15 billion trees a year and re-plant about 5 billion.

That’s a net loss of 10 billion trees every year, and a rate that would mean the loss of all trees within the next 300 years.

[soundman98]

could the US actually spare an area the size of california and alabama to re-plant those trees in a hospitable location?

i have my doubts. the concrete jungle's taken over.

just look at farm land. farmers in my area are now constantly selling to builders for subdivisions. just in my lifetime, the 2 nearest farming communities are down to about a 1/4 of farmland that they were when i started driving in the early 2000's.

[weederr33]

While planting trees to offset the carbon emissions from vehicles is a bit outlandish, even planting enough to take on 1/4-1/2 would still help.

[Irace86.2.0]

Originally Posted by soundman98

could the US actually spare an area the size of california and alabama to re-plant those trees in a hospitable location?

i have my doubts. the concrete jungle's taken over.

just look at farm land. farmers in my area are now constantly selling to builders for subdivisions. just in my lifetime, the 2 nearest farming communities are down to about a 1/4 of farmland that they were when i started driving in the early 2000's.

There is far more land that has not been developed for agriculture or living. Many areas could have trees that are open plains. The trees would need to be spread out in specific areas, of course, but it is possible.

https://zoom.earth/