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Comment by wbillingsley | Hacker News Reader

The amount of deforestation that we've engaged in, reducing "surface roughness" on a large quantity of the Earth's surface, that's a lot of wind energy we've stopped from being extracted.

We can draw an enormous amount before we'd even get close to break-even on our influence on the wind.

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The amount of forest biomass on Earth is going up rather than down. https://theconversation.com/despite-decades-of-deforestation...

Quick "I have no idea how plants work" question, would a more carbon rich atmosphere promote faster growth?

That depends on the plant. Some plants are CO2 limited, and would grow better. Thus out competing other plants that are limited by something else. This is not necessarily good though, such plants tend to be ones we already consider weeds with little useful value.

Of course in the dry deserts everything is water limited. There are also temperature and altitude (air pressure) limits that affect various other regions/climates.

In specific controlled environments, yes. In the real world not so much. https://www.skepticalscience.com/Increasing-Carbon-Dioxide-i...

> In specific controlled environments

I think you mean, with sufficient soil nutrients, yes. That's not a controlled environment, that's a environmental requirement.

That's an interesting point. I wonder what exactly happens to wind (kinetic) energy when it is absorbed by trees moved by the wind. Does it turn into anything useful, like heat available to the tree for easier transportation of fluids, i.e. have some trees adapted to benefit from wind (other than by transporting seeds/pollen over longer distances)?

Without wind, trees don't grow strong enough to support themselves. The wind toughens them up. (This was a problem in the Biosphere project studying how to build a closed environment for use on other planets.)

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