if we plant a billion trees will that stop the carbon going into the atmosphere?

Answer 1

Perhaps. Where are you planting them?

Answer 2

A billion trees would probably provide a carbon sink for a localized area, but definitley not for the entire planet. In the province of British Columbia, Canada, there are millions of trees replanted every year to replace the harvested ones, and newly planted trees absorb more carbon dioxide than mature trees. But, that is not going to change global warming. The key is to move away from using the big carbon sinks (oil and coal) which took in all the excess carbon millions of years ago before human life existed.

Answer 3

No, but it WILL cause the CO2 to get soaked up again once it is already in the atmosphere. If you look at the atmospheric CO2 concentration curve, over the course of a year, you will see that it goes up and down seasonally. There is less CO2 in the air at the time of northern hemisphere autumn, because the trees and algae and all the other green plants have soaked up a bunch of it, but the concentration then rises after that and peaks in the spring just in time for the plants to start soaking it up again.
This question is in the realm or "CO2 sequestration" and it is a hot topic these days. Many strategies have been put forward to accomplish this goal. One of the more innovative was the dumping of Iron sulfate into the open sea, causing a huge algae bloom, thus soaking up tons and tons of CO2. Another strategy was to liquefy the CO2 and pump it into the bottom of the various deep sea trenches where it would stay undisturbed for millions of years. I personally have thought of buying charcoal from Brazil and storing it in huge quantities somewhere. Brazil has a very large charcoal producing industry. The charcoal comes from biomass which comes straight out of the atmosphere, so it would reduce CO2 levels by the amount of charcoal stored and never again used.
Your idea is a good one, but it would require many thousands of square miles devoted to new forest. Where would you obtain all of this land? Most land that could grow trees but is not currently forested is used by man for agriculture. You would have to curtail agriculture , or else figure out a way to grow trees in the Sahara desert, perhaps, as an alternative. Anyway, most photosynthesis, i.e. 80-90% occurs in the ocean. This is why the infamous Biosphere II experiment in the Arizona desert ended in failure, due to the lack of open water for Oxygen production.
But your idea is an interesting thought.
Me, I look forward to the day when all humans will leave Earth and spread out across the galaxy, allowing the entire Earth to return to its former wild state. But this will not happen for at least another 1,000 years or so, I believe. The great Yogi Berra once said: "The trouble with predicting the future is that it is really hard. "

Answer 4

No will not stop the addition of carbon into the atmosphere.
Could help to stabilize the climate change IF the trees are:
1 right type of trees - able to cope with droughts & flash floods
2 planted in the correct place
3 planted in a way they can grow -Natural Regeneration is best- instead of put in a hole with no access to a water supply and strangled by abandoned tree ties.
4 Managed sustainablly by coppicing to produce food, building materials and fuel like they used to do before being devalued by the present economic system.
5 The temporary store of carbon in wood being made more permanently by burying it under tons of impermeable material to replace some of the millions of years of carbon that has been released in the past two hundred years.
More importantly Preventing the destruction of the existing forests like the Amazon through
(a) clear felling of vast swathes to extract a few mahogany trees to make garden benches.
(b) land theft
(c) cattle ranching to supply unhealthy milk & burgers.
The main cause of the climate change we are experiencing is the economic system based on the type of theft called profit which rewards those who get out of paying the true cost of their actions.
However business is easier to force to change than politicians obsessed with plundering oil from the Middle East.
Business will respond to Public Pressure in the form of boycotts of their damaging products eg burgers & cow’s milk so you gain health & save money.

Answer 5

Of course not. The trees will absorb carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere but that doesn't mean there is no more going into the air from all the car tail pipes and power plant smokestacks. And by they way, do you know where all that carbon that the trees take out of the air goes? Into the wood. So when the tree dies and the wood decays on the forest floor, all that carbon dioxide goes right back into the air.

Answer 6

It will help to an extent.

Plant the right tree in the right place and it can remove up to 40kg of CO2 from the atmopshere each year. It's mainly the larger broadleaves and fruit trees and they need to be planetd in tropical climates (the wrong tree in the wrong place can do more harm than good).

One drawback - a tree is only a temporary store for the carbon, if the tree dies or is burned the carbon is released again, to prevent this it would be necessary to preserve the timber intact.

Whilst a billion trees sounds a lot it's only going to sequester a maximum of 40 billion KILOS of CO2 per year, last year we emitted 29 billion TONS of CO2. A solution involving trees alone would require approx 750 billion mature trees.

They have a role to play in sequestering CO2 but they can only go so far. Plus, we need to address the problem of the other greenhouse gases such as methane and nitrous oxide.

Answer 7

Growing trees absorb carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, not prevent it going into the atmosphere in the first place.

A little easier than planting one billion trees is to stop cutting down the ones already planted and growing, principally deforestation in the Amazon and other rain/ancient forests.

Think twice about hardwood window frames etc people.

Answer 8

Algae and grass are better at CO2 sequestration than trees. Trees generally grow very slow, grass has vigorous growth patterns when night time temperatures stay above 68 degrees F. When you look at a field of cattle, all the carbon that the cattle are made of is made possible only from grass and possibly other herbaceous plants. And the carbon the grass and other flowering plants are made up of comes from the atmosphere.

As far as the evolutionary tale goes their was no such thing as grass until the Cretaceous period.

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Answer 9

Carbon dioxide will always be in the atmosphere because living things breathe it out. And if there was no carbon dioxide, there would be no trees or plants because they need carbon dioxide in order to live.

It would decrease the amount but there is no way to stop it without killing everything because we couldn't breathe.

Answer 10

yes definetly. One tree in its average life time takes in about a billion tonne of CO2 from the atmosphere and gives out oxygen . so if we plant a billion trees ( evenly distributed over the globe or a particular country) global warming will be greatly reduced.

P.S - GLOBAL WARMING IS NOT A SCAM. IT IS A TRUE AND A HARSH REALITY WHICH PEOPLE LIKE US CANNOT SEE.

Answer 11

No. The only thing that wll stop carbon from going into the atmosphere is implementing modern energy technologies and stop using the obsolete technologies that rely on burning fossil fuels.