Africa's forests have switched from absorbing to emitting carbon | Hacker News Reader

Africa's forests have switched from absorbing to emitting carbon

phys.org

55 pointspseudolus26 comments

> The losses are concentrated in tropical moist broadleaf forests in countries such as the Democratic Republic of Congo, Madagascar, and parts of West Africa, driven by deforestation and forest degradation

If I read this correctly: No, forests are not suddenly emitting carbon. People are just felling enough trees and treating them badly enough, that their forests are now dying faster than they are regrowing

What horrendous title. Quick! They are emitting carbon! Cut the forests down!

I’m not sure I understand why the headline is wrong.

Whatever the reason might be, the point is that African forests have gone from absorbing more carbon than they release, to releasing more carbon than they absorb.

IOW, they have become net emitters as opposed to net absorbers.

One could argue the forest itself hasn't started emitting carbon, its the loss of biomass due to clearing that has had a net reduction in total biomass.

While technically correct, I think your comment is disingenuous and distracts from the issue.

You're right that the forests themselves are not emitting carbon. However, human deforestation is causing the sequestered carbon in the trees to be removed from the forest and that is also reducing the forest's ability to absorb carbon.

TFA

> their forests are now dying faster than they are regrowing

> ...driven by deforestation and forest degradation.

Due largely to deforestation caused by humans.

A search for "logging in congos protected forest" will reveal numerous articles on this:

> Despite the ban on new industrial logging, the DRC has one of the highest rates of deforestation in the world, losing 490,000 hectares (1.2m acres) of primary rainforest in 2020, according to Global Forest Watch.

There is a top level comment taking the article's wording as meaning the trees have evolved to emit carbon because of the confusing wording. I think it's a very helpful comment to clarify what the article is trying to say, not a distraction from it.

Forests in their equilibrium state are not carbon sinks, they're mostly carbon neutral. So it doesn't really take much to go from "slight carbon sink" to "slight carbon emitter".

That's tautological. But nature has a tendency to grow, even when it can't, so it seems natural to me to expect forests to be carbon sinks.

How exactly are forests absorbing carbon?

Shouldn’t this carbon be released when the tree eventually dies and decomposes? I’d expect it to be carbon neutral over its lifespan?

The vast majority of carbon in trees is pulled from the atmosphere during growth. A dead tree is still made of organic molecules, which have carbon in them. So trees are not "Carbon Neutral", they're "Carbon Negative" until the wood is burned, or it decomposes enough to become crude oil and then, well...

That’s my point. It decomposes, at which point the co2 it was made up of is released back into the environment.

But not necessarily into the _atmosphere_.

is this terminilogy as a "source of carbon" used widely ? because it doesn't seem the loss of forests somehow actively increases CO2

The organic matter that was once a forest has to go somewhere. If you put it in a big plastic bag and sterilize it that'd be CO2 neutral, but if you leave it to decay or even burn it you release most of the carbon in the plants as CO2

It's a one-time process. But so is forests absorbing CO2 as they grow bigger and denser, and we commonly consider that a carbon sink. Makes sense to do the same for the reverse

So you're saying we need to speed up the generation of new oil reserves underground? :)

Ideally.

Next MAGA talking point- the trees are killing us!

If they switched to carbon emission in a significant way, it must be an evolutionary response to some trigger. How does this response help forests? Does it increase production of leaf or seeds to compensate for logging? What chemical process is releasing carbon from trees?

In 2010, Africa’s total population was estimated at about ~1.07 billion.

By 2025, the population is estimated at roughly ~1.53 billion.

That means the continent has seen an increase of abou 450-500 million people over merely 15 years! (~44% increase!)

No wonder the forests are disappearing. Without strict birth control and population planning, things will continue to become worse.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/314546723_Populatio...

PS: Projected population is over 2.5 billion by 2050!

> Without strict birth control and population planning

Education, financial security, and personal liberty are actually proven to work… but they also result in economic gains for the state and increased QoL for the populace, so literally anything else I guess…

> Education, financial security, and personal liberty are actually proven to work

When numbers are being added at the rate of several hundred million in a decade, none of those can work and most especially when your religion is a major impediment.

How do you plan on "educating, providing financial security and personal liberty" for multi-billion people in Africa yearly ? The rest of the world is not going to sign up for that.

Then you will agree that by having China stepping in to raise the standard of living across the whole developing world, we can expect a significant reduction in the drive to have children by impoverished and uneducated populations in africa and elsewhere as basic utilities and services become normal.

China is a nation state that absolutely looks out for themselves first and foremost. They will invest as long as it is profitable for them and they can gain land and benefits. They are not supplying free food and education to Africa. Incidentally, much maligned Russia was the nation who did so free for nearly 2 years when Africa was in trouble.

china is stepping in with access to technology, products like cell phones solar panels and infastructure, roads, rail, shipping ports, education programs, special trading zones where ANYBODY can show up in china, by ship and buy wholsale, no questions asked, medical equipment, etc ,etc, China is giving nothing away....except huge margins , which in China are honed to hard razor sharp edges, plus the fuckers are crazy, they will let you! set the price, and fight each other finding a way to deliver, africa and the rest of the devolping world is loving this, real oportunity, a chance to compete,and establish supply chains, that go BOTH WAYS, completly unlike the exploitive resource extraction models still bieng imposed by colonial countrys

> China is a nation state that absolutely looks out for themselves first and foremost

As opposed to... every _other_ nation state?

Anyone arguing for “strict birth control” must answer why it has to be applied to “those other people over there” instead of applying to the people who are responsible for the most energy use per capita.

https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/field/energy-consumpt...

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