How Can We Address Climate Change Besides Limiting Emissions?

[Ruken]

Afforestation in CONUS has potential to sequester about 3% of annual US carbon emissions, per study discussed here:

Is there a possible way to scrub carbon from the atmosphere on a planetary scale?

Even if all of the wood rotted immediately when the tree dies, that would still tie up carbon in the biosphere. But it’s slow and results in increased carbon in soil, litter, etc. It’s not like we’re lacking tools to account for this: https://www.fia.fs.fed.us/library/database-documentation/current/ver80/FIADB%20User%20Guide%20P2_8-0.pdf But you can’t grow trees everywhere. These folks estimate the increased carbon sequestration capacity of CONUS forestlands to be <200 MMT CO2 per year: http…

A paper from a few years back listed the global potential as an additional 0.9 billion hectares (an increase of 25%) storing a total of ~200 gigatonnes at maturity. But people threw a shitstorm about the authors’ math/assumptions and I haven’t dug into it since then. They did end up publishing an erratum.

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aax0848