House Republicans propose planting a trillion trees | Hacker News Reader

House Republicans propose planting a trillion trees

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Lots on snark in this thread. Adding a few real projects to the discussion:

There is the UN Trillion Trees project that aims to work to restore global forests [1]

CMU engineered a self-planting seed carrier that can enable mass planting by aerial platforms [2].

China’s Gobi Desert Reforrestation project “The Green Wall“ [3].

Nature Conservancy Billion Tree Project [4].

Yale University report examining the pros and cons of large tree planting projects [5].

[1] https://trilliontrees.org/

[2] https://www.cmu.edu/news/stories/archives/2023/february/engi...

[3] https://youtu.be/lbEkCeKvpb4

[4] https://www.nature.org/en-us/get-involved/how-to-help/plant-...

[5] https://e360.yale.edu/features/are-huge-tree-planting-projec...

The Republican party really embodies the old adage that the Americans will always do the right thing after they tried everything else. Looks like they are at the bargaining stage now.

Except planting trees would be ineffective.

Interestingly, in the house only 13 Democrats and 6 Republicans and only 2 Democrat and 1 independent senators have PhDs. COTUS is largely a collection of minimally-educated, medium-information shills for their donors who know nothing about science or engineering. List of members of COTUS who should be in prison: https://www.opensecrets.org/industries/recips.php?cycle=2022...

Yeah, this is why I call this the bargaining stage. Acceptance will come later.

The vast majority of COTUS has at least an undergrad, with more than a few having Ivy League credentials or JDs, making them more educated than 70% of the people in the country from some of the highest tier law schools in the country. I know HN has a bias toward SV, and therefore against non-STEMlords, lawyers, and MBAs, but that’s not “minimally-educated”.

Also, it’s probably not donors when the majority of their base is still skeptical of climate science: https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/04/18/for-earth...

>Planting one trillion trees would also require a massive amount of space — roughly the size of the continental United States.

This doesn't seem viable / a serious proposal.

About 320 trees per square mile in continental US.

    10^9 trees.
    Area of continental US is 3,119,884 square miles.
    10^9 / 3,119,884 = 320.5 trees per square mile.

Throw in Alaska which has an area of 665,400 square miles were at about 264 trees per square mile. Get Canada to help out -- that about halves the number.

Let's see. Plant 10,000 per day.

    10^9 / (365 * 10000) = 274 years.

OK that's seems a bit unreasonable.

The most significant part of the headline was left out:

House Republicans propose planting a trillion trees as they move away from climate change denial

A consensus about climate change is essential to move from division and obstruction toward more decisive action.

Reforestation has been occurring in North America for several decades now. It would be more effective to focus on South America and Africa.

Also, in terms of O2 production, ocean algae are the biggest factor. We need to get ocean plastic waste under control before this garbage permeates the food chain, with mostly unknown but possibly catastrophic consequences.

Anything to keep the oil and gas money rolling in.

> As Speaker Kevin McCarthy visited a natural gas drilling site in northeast Ohio to promote House Republicans’ plan to sharply increase domestic production of energy from fossil fuels last month, the signs of rising global temperatures could not be ignored. Smoke from Canadian wildfires hung in the air.

I hope it wasn’t too hot out during this event. You can always count on America to do the right thing after exhausting all other options. Almost there.

House Republicans, now with more #TeamTrees.

"TeamTrees vs REALITY!!"

https://youtu.be/gqht2bIQXIY

Climate change can best be solved by scalable biological means like phytoplankton and seaweed grown, processed, and sequestered by autonomous robotic platforms. (Sacrificial areas of deep water seem unavoidable.) Fractional distillation of air, planting trees, spraying substances in the air, and solar shades aren't going to work.

Mosses sequester around 6.43 billion metric tons more carbon in the soil than is stored in the bare patches of soil without any plants typically found nearby them in global semi-arid areas.

https://www.futurity.org/moss-carbon-soil-climate-change-292....

That's not a viable option. Sequestration be must permanent and not subject to forest fires (in the case of trees) or decomposition.

Moss doesn't just grow in the woods. For instance it grows and is very viable for long term carbon storage in peat bogs. The reason for me adding to your suggestions was that it's clear that there will need to be multiple solutions to the problem since we also don't know what ocean warming/cooling in different parts of the world will do for phytoplankton and seaweed growth in the long term and banking on one medium for a solution could be catastrophic for us all.

They could also attempt to slow down the deforestation of the forests in Brazil.

No, that's would defeat the purpose. The trillion trees would be GMO and therefore patented by a mega-crop like monstanto, gov would only be able to buy trees from them (at considerable markup), Monsanto becomes any even bigger campaign financer. Welcome to the tree-planting-industrial-complex.

This is surprisingly close to what some folks are working on, or so i am told.

Green goo endgame!

Aside from criticizing the particular number of trees proposed and planting the wrong kind in the wrong places, what's wrong with wanting to plant more trees? I'm asking because I honestly don't understand what the commotion is about. I've planted dozens, and I don't understand why that would be a problem.

This is one new tree for every three existing trees on earth.

https://terra.nasa.gov/news/terra-helps-see-earths-3-trillio...

Planting a significantly large number of humans in the ground might also be an answer...

Turns out you can only do this to people from your own country https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Bk_pHZmn5QM

Why does this feel so similar to the idea that they way you address mass shootings of children is to train the on how to navigate mass shootings?

This is an unserious proposal from an increasingly unserious party, proposed as a throwaway idea just as the hottest summer on record shows that we need to be taking a much more sober approach to addressing climate change.

At least they're stepping away from the idea that humans cannot influence the climate, if we can plant a trillion trees to do so.

True, though I can just see them making a half-hearted attempt at pushing this through then throwing their hands in the air and saying nothing can be done when it inevitably proves impractical.

I don't have a crystal ball, but I would not bet against you. :)

They've flirted with it before, only to go dashing back to denialism at the next snowflake.

So I suspect this is temporary: "This egregious summer is not a problem. We have a trivial solution so we can go on burning fossil fuels." They hope it will blunt the criticism while continuing the path of doing nothing at all.

Just because it comes from a side you don't like don't throw it away.

This was based on an article published in Science (Trust the science):

https://www.science.org/content/article/adding-1-billion-hec...

Here is Al Jazeera reporting on it.

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/7/4/best-way-to-fight-cl...

I read the original proposal before posting. It's an interesting idea on its own but it's far from practical and not even the study's authors are claiming it will be a solution to climate change. It's just one more possible mitigation.

That the Republican Party is promoting it as a solution in the way they are is what's so unserious.

How about saving the Phytoplanktons?

Too many syllables...

That seems impossible. It would require every US citizen to plant 2500 trees. There’s not enough space, nor time.

Oh, look. It’s ben studied, and the answer is “it won’t work”: https://climate.mit.edu/ask-mit/how-many-new-trees-would-we-...

Tree planting machines are a thing...

I don't think there's enough space in the US to plant a trillion trees.

Two words - Bonsai Trees...

”Planting one trillion trees would also require a massive amount of space — roughly the size of the continental United States.“

TIL, area on Earth = area of the continental United States

It's a proposal to compensate for the US' CO2, so it should be doable on their own territory.

Actually, there is! I according to the article all we have to do is move the entire US population to megacities on Hawaii, and leave the rest of the country as forest.

Although that might be to get to a trillion trees total, not add a trillion. It's unclear.

It’s a ludicrous proposal, requiring these trees to be planted in other nations. And nothing to say of the logistics of keeping 1 trillion trees alive long enough to maturity. Or even to just produce the saplings and ship them. If you do the math on just raising a trillion saplings, it’s mind boggling.

The math on the saplings is easy. Grow 10,000 before the next election, then grow the rest right after that. :)

> It’s a ludicrous proposal, requiring these trees to be planted in other nations.

Doesn't everything to address climate change require things to be done in other countries?

True, I didn’t mean working with other nations is ludicrous, only that the largest countries by area that could host these trees are the US, China, and Russia, and we’re not best friends right now. You’d have to pick a lot of smaller area countries to cooperate and when you bring in the logistics, it goes out of control.

Not to compensate for the US' own CO2 production.

It is a global proposal.

https://www.science.org/content/article/adding-1-billion-hec...

> Oh, look. It’s ben studied, and the answer is “it won’t work”:

No, it hasn't. That is just one guy's analysis.

> No, it hasn't. That is just one guy's analysis.

Your article doesn't even attempt an in-depth analysis. It just counts the area required. From that article:

> Those added trees could sequester 205 gigatons of carbon in the coming decades, roughly five times the amount emitted globally in 2018.

So that's enough for 5 years. And after that? Plant another trillion? That article says there's only space for 0.9T, period.

I didn't do the math on the area (actually I did and it looked plausible, but I'm super jetlagged rn and really don't trust my work :-D ), but there is an awful lot of space in the western US.

And trees can be mechanically planted at rates of up to 5000 per hour "at a well-prepared site".[1]

Sadly, the US is becoming increasingly intolerable to trees and forests are dying off.

[1] https://www.fs.usda.gov/t-d/seedlings/planting/mechplan.htm

It's pretty hard to believe a machine can do 5000 per hour. Trees need to be well spaced, but ok. 5000 trees per hour, that's 200M hours or 23000 years.

So: build 2000 machines and achieve it in 11 years? Well, there's no factory to build 2000 such machines. It would also require an enormous supply chain, since these machines are going to work over an area of roughly 3000x5000 km.

And: it says "a well prepared site". That means leveling the whole of the US. You cannot do that in 10 years, not even in 100.

Large parts of the US are unsuitable for planting. Other large parts are already forested: you'd have to remove billions of existing trees to plant 1 trillion.

It's sheer lunacy, only to avoid upsetting the Republicans' wealthy friends. Note that I didn't mention fraud and bribery.

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