It’s not just climate change, it’s a lack of forest management, combined with fire prevention against smaller fires. This allows for dangerous underbrush and small trees to grow uncontrolled. Then when a forest fire hits, it has way more fuel than it should and completely obliterates everything, instead of just burning out the underbrush and providing the conditions needed for pine cones to open and spread their seeds.
Or maybe planting a bunch of trees and properly managing them might. We know there is definitely a huge need for them (at the very least as a carbon sink and cooling the surroundings), and that there will be issues keeping them from from having fires in future, but the benefits to planting a billion (even if they very clearly are planting that many as a bit of an attention getter) are numerous and can outweight the risk.
You are right about one thing, the US does not yet have a decarbonization strategy - it is like a motor that is not quite starting; banging on a cylinder here or there but not yet running (may this analogy be completely indecipherable in another generation). But maybe things are starting to change a little?
https://www.cbsnews.com/baltimore/news/on-the-dot-climate-change-makes-it-difficult-for-forests-recover-from-fierce-fires/
Fires are burning hotter, longer, and the period after the fire is dryer and hotter too.
Climate change is killing our forests and planting trees will not fix this.
It’s not just climate change, it’s a lack of forest management, combined with fire prevention against smaller fires. This allows for dangerous underbrush and small trees to grow uncontrolled. Then when a forest fire hits, it has way more fuel than it should and completely obliterates everything, instead of just burning out the underbrush and providing the conditions needed for pine cones to open and spread their seeds.
Yup, and planting a billion more trees to mismanage isn’t going to help.
Or maybe planting a bunch of trees and properly managing them might. We know there is definitely a huge need for them (at the very least as a carbon sink and cooling the surroundings), and that there will be issues keeping them from from having fires in future, but the benefits to planting a billion (even if they very clearly are planting that many as a bit of an attention getter) are numerous and can outweight the risk.
lol
You are right about one thing, the US does not yet have a decarbonization strategy - it is like a motor that is not quite starting; banging on a cylinder here or there but not yet running (may this analogy be completely indecipherable in another generation). But maybe things are starting to change a little?