the warmist religion has used the same fallacies as evolutionist have used for decades with their hopelessly flawed pseudo science. The science is however settled. Yeah!

//How much CO2 would a few million trees suck out of the atmosphere every year ?//

Lots. But the thing is, they're really only carbon sinks whilst they're growing. Once they stop growing they're carbon neutral, and when they decompose they release almost all of the carbon they've absorbed back into the atmosphere. Over the life-cycle of a tree (let's say a hundred years or so), they're effectively carbon neutral.

//Could it match the amount of CO2 being put into the atmosphere by increased coal consumption ? Is there a sort of 'balance' between one and the other ?//

There is indeed a sort of 'balance', although most scientists prefer the term 'equilibrium' because it sounds cooler.

The equilibrium we are interested is the rate of CO2 production vs. CO2 absorption: and we are pumping it out a lot faster than even a comitted global re-forestation program can cope with - and good luck convincing some parts of the world that they should make trees, not war.

But please don't stop planting trees. Trees may not be that useful overall, but they are better than no trees. And they're nice. They give us shade, and homes for cute furry animals, and vile blood-sucking parasites (I had a tick removed from my scrotum recently. It was unpleasant), but mostly they're lovely. If you find two the right distance apart you can string up a hammock, so that's an added bonus.

//My point was that, if enough trees get planted, industries can use as much coal as they like, it's a win-win situation ?//

No.

But even assuming we could plant that many trees and they actually helped, still no. Because you're still going to run out of coke. I don't mean the horrid fizzy brown stuff that comes in bottles, or the horrid white stuff that comes in the noses of company executives. I mean the horrid black stuff you use to make steel. There's a finite supply and you can't make steel from trees. You're really going to miss steel when she's gone, Joe. If you live that long. If not, who cares? Throw some more coke on the fire, it's cold out there.

As a practicing scientist for some time, I'm amazed at the lack of actual science going on here.
It seems no one actually is numerate, or interested in a contest of facts. It's just fakery.

hi Craig,

Yeah, you might be right. But hey, what if trees weren't just planted in order to leave them to grow old and die, but maybe, somehow, used. Trees, used, you may say ? How on earth ? Indeed, but we have to rack our brains: how about for furniture, house frames and panels, etc., all the sorts of things it has been used for over the millennia, except of course to burn ? Sandalwood excepted :)

Yeah, 'equilibrium' sounds heaps cooler. Scientists are so cool.

I was sort of thinking in terms of billions actually: across the four thousand kilometres of the North, with extra rainfall as the climate warms, we (or at least Aboriginal 'communities' across there)could be planting, say, an extra kilometre-wide belt, over the next hundred years @ one tree per 50 sq m, i.e. 200 per hectare, i.e. twenty million per year. Or some permutation of all that.

I knows it's a silly question but anyway, how many trees do you need to suck, say, a tonne of CO2 out of the atmosphere over its lifetime ? Probably a tonne of trees ? How many is that - one ? two ?

Of course, another use for trees (or cast-off bits) is to be mulched fine and put on crops, so that tree carbon can be converted into food carbon, etc.

Sorry for crazy ideas, Craig :( But call it 'brainstorming'. Even an idiot can unwittingly come up with something.

Joe

Honestly, the clowns pretending to the knowledge and capacity to fine-tune the balancing of all the oxidation and reduction reactions in the world, are just too ridiculous for words.

And, as the instruments of their disinterested beneficence, they *just happen* to need the large-scale confiscation of property, and redistribution to socialist political favourites?

Why do the warmists just assume that everyone else is a stupid and dishonest as they are?

And obviously if the smart money is backing renewables, then there's no need for any policy action, is there?