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Although as an aside, the oceans re-releasing carbon dioxide is also desirable because it should combat the effects of ocean acidification which is a significant life-threatening issue in and of itself.

Nevertheless, it also shouldn't be the case that what you remove from the atmosphere gets released from the ocean in equal quantities - it should be seen as trees sequestering CO2 from both the atmosphere and ocean (and potentially other sinks) as according to however the equilibrium of the system works out, right?

I agree with your point that it's not a cure-all though. It might be overstated in the abstract but is still worth pursuing. The enthusiasm, I understand, for planting trees is that it's broadly seen as returning the environment to something that is more equivalent to an earlier point in history and so is seen as less likely to have adverse affects as compared to forms of geo-engineering with less of a precedent in nature.

> This is wrong. The reason is a bit technical. The issue here is that about half of the emissions going into the atmosphere get soaked up by natural sinks, e.g. the oceans. However if you take carbon dioxide out of the air the reverse happens: The oceans and other sinks re-release the carbon.

This objection doesn't make sense. The article is talking about the total estimated amount of carbon dioxide generated since the industrial revolution. That's an absolute number. It doesn't matter where that CO2 currently lives, and it's not saying 2/3 of what is in the atmosphere.

On a practical standpoint, I don't think the article tackles the concept of forest management at all. Other than what's been going on the past few months, the Amazon doesn't see wildfires like the Pacific Northwest does. An Amazon forest can be denser per acre compared to a NW forest. Thinning forests is a common practice, across America at least, to manage burnable material that naturally occurs in a forest. Plus to deal with a lot of beetles and other pests that have been killing the forests. At the end, it's not enough anymore to just plant a tree and call it day in most forests. Management needs to be apart of the plan too. It would suck to plant a ton of trees, just to see it go up in smoke.

The Amazon is wet enough that it doesn't have natural massive fires. The recent and ongoing fires are set to clear the land for agriculture. They have to cut the trees down first, wait for them to dry out a bit, and then set them on fire.

if CO2 is removed from the oceans and other CO2 sinks, won't that still leave us in the position of having less free CO2 to release into the atmosphere in the aftermath? i'm trying to understand multiple angles of this issue because i'm interested in making a company to plant trees as a service.

Yeah, sure, but the point is that it would only get you a third of the way to the goal of removing all man-made CO2 from the atmosphere (and oceans) rather than two thirds as was claimed. And the atmosphere is sort-of especially important because that's where the warming happens, CO2 in the oceans does not directly contribute to the greenhouse effect. Though it does cause acidification, which isn't exactly helpful either.

I have always wondered what would happen if we could find a way to grow floating barges that would provide an environment for algae (and potentially other organisms) to grow in the oceanic deserts. There is a huge area that could work as a carbon sink there.

And it doesn't take into account the ecologies that you'd be replacing with massive plantings of trees.

If you planted in the vast amounts of land we've deforested in the past few centuries, you'd be restoring habitats though.

But then you'd lose a lot of farmland, and have to destroy a lot of cities and homes.