The viral post claims that trees do not help mitigate climate change; however, they are responsible for the global warming

By Vivek Saini 

Claim: Trees don’t reduce climate change. Forests are responsible for the increase in global warming.

Fact: Misinformation. Earth’s forests and soil absorb about 30 percent of atmospheric carbon emissions, partially through forest productivity and restoration. 

Claim post:

What does the post say? 

In his misleading Twitter post, Steve Milloy shared a quote from Adrian Benepe, President of Brooklyn Botanical Garden, from an article in New York Times. He stated that he likes trees too but claimed that trees don’t reduce climate change and are ironically increasing global warming. Adrian Benepe replied to the same tweet that he didn’t entertain such trolls and dopes and showed his disinterest in the claims of Steve Milloy. CFC has previously debunked many other such kinds of climate change related claims by Steve Milloy.

What we found

For the climate, forests act as a stabilizing influence. They maintain healthy ecosystems, preserve biodiversity, are crucial to the carbon cycle, support livelihoods, and provide commodities and services that can promote sustainable growth.The importance of forests in combating the consequences of climate change makes them one of the most crucial solutions. One third of the CO2 emitted by burning fossil fuels, or around 2.6 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide, is absorbed by forests every year.

How Forest productivity and restoration can mitigate climate change? 

There is a global emergency right now. In North America, Turkey, and Russia, dreadful heat waves and fires are raging. Extreme flooding devastates areas and kills people in Europe, Africa, and Asia. The levels of carbon in our atmosphere and ocean temperatures have risen to previously unheard-of heights. The hottest month ever recorded was July. The United Nations has just warned that our planet is flashing a “code red for humanity.”

An issue this big can’t be solved by one thing alone. The Paris Agreement requires that nations uphold their obligations. Businesses, especially those in the Fortune 1000, must achieve net zero emissions and industries must decarbonize. To unleash creative climate solutions, we must enable a new breed of ecopreneurs—entrepreneurs committed to preserving our world.

Carbon dioxide is exhaled by humans while being taken in by trees. It’s among the first things that kids are taught about the carbon cycle, or the routes that carbon takes as it travels among the living and nonliving things that make up the earth. Because of this, it’s possible that forests and trees have long been prominent in the discussion of carbon sequestration. As part of their efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, dozens of businesses have made commitments to plant and preserve trees, and the Trillion Trees Campaign seeks to triple the number of trees on Earth by the year 2030.

The best “device” we have to remove carbon from the atmosphere is a tree; they are the planet’s natural air filters. For instance, in the United States, forests capture and store up to 15% of yearly carbon dioxide emissions, which is equivalent to the emissions from 163 million cars each year. Tragically, just when we most need trees, they are disappearing. Deforestation costs our world a tropical rainforest the size of a football pitch every six seconds. Due to drought, pests, and wildfires made worse by climate change, forests in cooler regions are losing millions of acres of land, and our fast expanding cities frequently lose the natural cooling provided by trees.

The potential of trees to mitigate climate change is overburdened 

The interest with planting trees around the world stems from the idea that trees provide important services. This enthusiasm extends to local projects, business programmes at the national level, and international campaigns like the Trillion Trees campaign. While it’s a prevalent misconception that reforestation and planting trees can remove carbon from the atmosphere, scientists caution that it might not be as easy as that. While it is true that trees serve as significant carbon sinks, research indicates that the potential for trees to significantly slow down global warming by absorbing up to 200 gigatons of carbon has been greatly overstated.

The average annual absorption of CO2 by Earth’s forests is 16 billion metric tonnes, according to research published in the Nature Climate Change. Forests, however, can become carbon sources due to human activity: Forests are also predicted to release 8.1 billion tonnes of the gas back into the atmosphere due to land removal, wildfires, and burning of wood products. The remaining CO2 absorption by forests amounts to 7.6 billion tonnes annually, or about a fifth of the 36 billion tonnes of CO2 that people emitted in 2019. The equilibrium is being quickly shifted by deforestation and forest degradation.

Due to deforestation and unchecked fires, Southeast Asian forests today exhale more carbon than they take in. By 2050, the Amazonian forests may transition from carbon sinks to sources of carbon. Many people concur that conserving our existing trees should be our first priority in order to slow climate change.

Forests: Vital carbon sinks at risk 

The state of the world’s forests is being significantly impacted by rising temperatures, levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide, changes in precipitation, and the frequency and severity of extreme weather events. For instance by altering the length of growing seasons or warming winters. Forest pests and the harm they cause can be affected by climate change, particularly extreme weather events, by directly affecting their growth, survival, reproduction, and spread; changing host defenses and susceptibility; and indirectly affecting ecological relationships by changing the abundance of competitors, parasites, and predators.

Earth’s forests continue to be a net carbon dioxide sink despite these perturbations and the slower disintegration process. There are currently 4 billion hectares of forest on the earth, which together generate 8.1 billion tonnes of carbon annually and absorb 16 billion tonnes. The most biodiverse biomes on the terrestrial world, tropical rainforests, might be expected to be the most substantial carbon sinks. But because of fires, land clearing for plantations, and peat soil drainage, Southeast Asia’s tropical rainforests, one of the three largest systems in the world, are now a net source of carbon emissions.

Due to similar changes, the Amazon rainforest is on the verge of becoming a net source. The only rainforest in the top three that is still a substantial carbon sink is the Congo River Basin’s second-largest tropical rainforest. These sobering facts play a role in why conserving forests, particularly rainforests, has emerged as a major topic of discussion in the effort to reduce atmospheric carbon dioxide and halt global warming.

References:

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