I've been very careful to not wade into one of these threads too readily, as when I read them, I almost always find a huge range of variability around what people understand or don't understand about forests, soils, or ecosystem scale biogeochemical cycling. There also seem to be some very assertive, and often very uninformed claims around voluntary versus compliance marketplaces, and what role nature based mitigation efforts play currently or might play in the future.

However, it's becoming increasingly clear that most authors in the pop science journalism space have a limited capacity for understanding the nuance or uncertainties associated with remote sensing models and principles of biogeochemistry. As well, the armchair analysts make many wrong assumptions about forests, forestry, or how carbon cycling works.

Number one, is that forests work as long term carbon storage and sinks. There are often claims made around what forests can or cant do with regards to carbon cycling, and almost always they tend to fundementally misunderstand how carbon cycling, and nutrient cycling work in relationship to long term carbon stability. Not used taking advantage of forests and their ability to represent both (relatively, 10's-100's yr) short term stores of carbon, as well as less labile longer term storage pools (100's-1000's yr). We've been basically mining the world's forests and haven't even remotely attempted using natural ecosystems ability to not only sequester carbon, but to provide significant opportunities for climate resilience.

Granted, we have an extraordinary limited understanding of the upper and lower bounds of many of these systems, but that's hardly any argument that we can't engage with and begin learning about the potential of these systems.