> ...but there is a fundamental timing problem: you emitted one ton of CO2 yesterday, somebody else has to protect a forest forever to keep that CO2 trapped.
That is wildly exaggerated.
First, the planet has greened enormously during the satellite era (meaning since 1979 or so).
Second, crustaceans and plankton are incredibly efficient little CO2 suckers. Sure, they're not fast enough to get us to pre-industrial atmospheric CO2 levels without us reducing CO2 emissions, but if we stopped altogether I bet they'd get us down below 300ppm very quickly. The point is: a) it's not "forever" that we'd have to "protect a forest forever to keep that CO2 trapped" because the oceans alone will lock away a great deal of carbon as calcite, and b) atmospheric CO2 is not the emergency it's painted as.
I'm sure it's not welcomed here, but without the Industrial Revolution, we were on a path to extinction of photosynthetic life on Earth due to starvation. We can quibble over how many millions of years, and the process might have slowed down if the Ice Age we're in were to end, or it might speed up if it were to get colder, so there's lots of unknowns. But at some point atmospheric CO2 will run too low.
That is wildly exaggerated.
First, the planet has greened enormously during the satellite era (meaning since 1979 or so).
Second, crustaceans and plankton are incredibly efficient little CO2 suckers. Sure, they're not fast enough to get us to pre-industrial atmospheric CO2 levels without us reducing CO2 emissions, but if we stopped altogether I bet they'd get us down below 300ppm very quickly. The point is: a) it's not "forever" that we'd have to "protect a forest forever to keep that CO2 trapped" because the oceans alone will lock away a great deal of carbon as calcite, and b) atmospheric CO2 is not the emergency it's painted as.
I'm sure it's not welcomed here, but without the Industrial Revolution, we were on a path to extinction of photosynthetic life on Earth due to starvation. We can quibble over how many millions of years, and the process might have slowed down if the Ice Age we're in were to end, or it might speed up if it were to get colder, so there's lots of unknowns. But at some point atmospheric CO2 will run too low.