As a climatologist shit like this is so fucking amazing dude.
Like… we know humans can have immense impacts on environments we interact with, but physically changing an area like this in a sustainable way (the trees continue to survive and spread instead of dying after one generation) is incredible.
Not really sure if this is common knowledge or not so I’ll say it anyway: Most areas that have been clear cut in the Amazon will simply no longer be able to sustain rainforest. The trees create a self sustaining cycle of heavy rainfall, and once they are cut down this cycle ends, turning what used to be forest basically into savanna even if humans left it alone. I wrote about China’s “Green Wall” initiative about 15 years ago when it was undergoing its first successful trials, and now to see it going full scale successfully makes me happy in ways I can’t really describe to you guys. This means that there are hopes of one day replenishing and rehabilitate our rainforests and other biomes that have been essentially destroyed by human habitation.
It also speaks to the ability to utilize more natural methods to keep crops watered and cut down on droughts in the most vulnerable areas (more greenery=more rain and more rain=more greenery)
Ive been educating myself on this and posting as well for a few months. Its really inspiring. Simply planting trees, on a massive scale, literally solves all of our problems. Carbon in the atmosphere, draughts, floods, wildfires, rain shortages. Or course, its more complicated than just planting trees, but that’s the objective. Use all the techniques new can to reforest our degraded land and rain can come back. We can actually create “climate change” in our favor. And the carbon sink business of engineering a fake tree that eats carbon is so fucking stupid. It doesn’t have to be a business.
Anyways, I came across an article about reforesting on Cambodia, and they brought regular rainfall back, having started in 2014. So its possible and doesn’t have to take forever either.
Well yes but also no, the main thing I’d like to highlight is that forests are not all that effective at sequestering CO2 from our atmosphere. A mature forest is pretty much carbon neutral.
We need large scale removal and sequestration of carbon to combat climate change on a meaningful scale
Where your source on a mature forest being carbon neutral? The mass of the trees is literally carbon thats come from the atmosphere, and they grow in mass more as theyre bigger. And when branches and leaves fall to the ground, the carbon is buried. Thats pretty much the goal.
And by the way, when its buried, it turns to healthy topsoil more vegetation can grow from. Its a positive feedback loop moving carbon from the air to the ground and cycling water around locally instead of going away.
Simply planting trees, on a massive scale, literally solves all of our problems.
lol no
But the eco-doomers here keep telling me that we’ll all literally boil to death in 20 years, so what’s the point?
Wait so the Amazon will never be able to be a rainforest again or not? Tell us more.
If we get maybe a decade or two more of clear cutting, no. It will likely reach a tipping point where the transpiration (read: plants sweating into the atmosphere, increasing humidity) will be low enough that the cycle starts to leave its positive feedback loop and will no longer be able to recolonize parts of the forest that were clear cut.
This is already the case for places detached from the main mass of forest
