[Retired Tech]

The decade-long Free Air Carbon Enrichment (FACE) experiment, set up to test the viability of proposals to "bank" humanity's carbon emissions by growing forests, revealed that to make an impact on the amount of CO2 we are pumping out, we'd need to feed the growing trees so much extra water and fertiliser that the societal impact would be unacceptable.

Scientists working on FACE bathed four plots of trees in levels of carbon dioxide one and a half times those present in today's atmosphere. Another four plots received no extra CO2. On average, the trees with the extra carbon produced 20 per cent more biomass, but the figures varied substantially, from 5 per cent to 40 per cent, depending on the amount of nutrients and water available.

http://uk.news.yahoo...-d1d76f9_1.html

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I believe it, too. This planet is going downhill too quick to stop in a hurry!

[Troy]

I believe it, too. This planet is going downhill too quick to stop in a hurry!

[MoNsTeReNeRgY22]

Wow, and my teachers always told me to plant trees...

[ScHwErV]

This doesn't mean you shouldn't plant trees. They do help.

However this does mean that simply planting forests is not a "magic pill" to fix our CO2 issues. Other things have to be found to work in combination to fix what we have started.

[dsenette]

Proof that global warming is real (sorry...needed to lighten the mood i guess)

planting trees is deffinitely a good idea...they make oxygen, scrub the co2 out....AND give your kids something to climb

[MoNsTeReNeRgY22]

lol, thanks for the enlightenemnt. I will continue then with the gardenning in my back yard.

[Troy]

This doesn't mean you shouldn't plant trees. They do help.

However this does mean that simply planting forests is not a "magic pill" to fix our CO2 issues. Other things have to be found to work in combination to fix what we have started.

Yeah absolutely, it's gotta be the combination thingo, trees are awesome, I love them and animals need them. Recently I bought a push-bike so I could ride to work instead of drive my car every day (it's only a ten-minute ride anyway, so it's almost the same time cause I don't get stuck at all the traffic lights!), not only am I saving money but I'm also helping the environment. Just a little bit I can do to help out. One less car on the road = better.

And dsenette, that's an awesome clip

[geerhed]

[Retired Tech]

Researchers bathed plots of pine trees in extra carbon dioxide every day for 10 years and found that while the trees grew more tissue, only those that received the most water and nutrients stored enough carbon dioxide to offset the effects of global warming.

Ram Oren, the ecologist who led the project, said the research suggested that planting more trees would not be successful in slowing the pace of climate change. "More trees don't necessarily mean less carbon dioxide," he said. "Planting trees is not going to do a whole lot to decreasing carbon concentration.

"What we're finding is that extra carbon very quickly goes back into the atmosphere if there are low nutrients and water available.

"And we are not going to be able to increase the capacity of forests to hold carbon, because we couldn't fertilise such large areas or provide sufficient water. It would cause such pollution that the consequence would be much worse than carbon dioxide enrichment in the atmosphere."

But Ru Hartwell, the director of Treeflights, an offsetting company planting trees in Wales and Peru, said: "There are problems with tree planting but it is only one way in which we are going to get on top of the problems of global warming. I have complete faith that tree planting is positive and we should not just chuck away our spades and do nothing."

http://www.telegraph.../ncarbon119.xml