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this post was submitted on 15 Aug 2026
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Well, as long as trees magically suck pollution out of the atmosphere in extremely high numbers, and sequester it for at least a few million years, that should be fine
Otherwise, we're probably fucked.
In case it was not your intent to point this out with sarcasm, for anyone reading:
not all forests are created equal: new growth forests are simply not as good at long-term burial of carbon.
carbon sinks only work so long as the carbon stays sunk, so if a tree dies and rots before it's buried, all of that carbon just goes back to the atmosphere, except a lot of it is now methane, which is MANY times worse than CO2.
this means that it is possible for a poorly - managed tree to actually be an effective carbon source for the purpose of greenhouse gas emissions, rather than a sink, since a single molecule of methane can do the damage of a hundred molecules of carbon dioxide.
the largest carbon sink on earth is not the forests, but the ocean, and that carbon only really has two ways out: back into the atmosphere, or buried at the bottom in the calcareous ooze. Now if you really want to understand how fucked we are, read up on the following:
i dont trees can safely do it fast enough. also its mostly co2 , pollution is a different matter. Also algae, phytoplankton make half of the carbon capture as well, a net benefit when they become marine snow and sink to the bottom of the ocean.