I think most people reading a headline about tree count would care primarily about deforestation and loss of habitat of indigenous species.
This article isn't about that, and explicitely states it doesn't touch deforestation per se, just sheer tree count, including production targeted tree farms.
TFA:
> While the classification may seem simplistic, powerful conclusions can be drawn from the data, including assessing agricultural expansion, climate-driven expansion and contraction of ecosystems, and forest clearing and recovery.
Make the case that "deforestation" is the primary things we should care about. Start by explaining what it is.
It's just a word to most people, something drilled into them by 90s era Captain planet type environmentalism
Similarly things like species population decline is insignificant and driven primarily through a few highly visible cases. And this ignores the dynamic nature of life. For instance I remember hearing about how great barrier reef will disappear in a few decades. By 2024, AIMS measured the highest coral cover in 38 years of monitoring in the northern and central regions: roughly 40% and 34%, respectively.
Not to say we shouldn't worry about things but it's just naive and overly doomer to believe everything negative even when presented w evidence of the contrary
"The contemporary rate of extinction is estimated at 100 to 1,000 times higher than the natural background extinction rate—the typical rate of species loss through natural evolutionary processes."
I see "deforestation" as the destruction of an existing ecosystem.
Convincing people on the internet to care for local ecosystems is a fool's errand. I see your point about cartoon ecologism, but you seem to be jumping way too far in the opposite direction, and only looking at numbers will never tell what's actually happening on the ground. I'm not a diver, and don't know much about the great barrier reef, but the 40% and 34% number don't resonate in any way to me...was the volume of the coral the only point that mattered ?
There is evidence for the benefit of wood production done at a pace and in a way that preserves the forest's balance, but that's also not what the article is about, and explicitely so.
There are certainly more trees where I lived than there were a hundred years ago, but there are also more trees than there would have been a thousand years ago. I live in an area that should be natural prairie and humans have planted a lot more trees than the ecosystem would support in a natural situation.
I don't know if this is good or bad from an environment situation, but it is a part of a reason I am suspicious of claims that more trees are good.
With efforts some desert areas get reclaimed with trees. Sure, ic nature took its course the deserts would grow, but there are efforts to push them back and some have had success. I think that’s positive despite going against the natural course of things.
Tell that to the desert-dwelling species that rely on that habitat for survival. Deserts aren't empty wastelands that are valueless without human development.
Maybe I saw too many Disney movies as a kid, but it took me a very long time to consider, “There’s nothing inherently good or right about what would have happened in the absence of people.” There’s nothing kind, nurturing, decent, or fair about natures course. It’s a thing without direction, not a “one true course of events” that we interrupted.
It makes those kinds of situations much harder to evaluate than the simple worldview, but I think it’s more honest.
And yeah, the hazard is in thinking the opposite is true. Lord knows we’ve done some objectively dumb shit, too.
One thing I found is that the people that most believe there is some kind of natural order without humans is preferable or more "natural" than the nature we make suited to humanity, is that these people are almost always atheist or agnostic.
Of course you can not believe this and be atheist. But the deep sense of indifference to humanity is much more prelavent with godless people.
Humanity is part of nature. And undeniably a part with outsized impact on the remainder of nature. Seeing humans as just a part makes a lot of folks more humble and desire balance.
A more extreme view on the other side is that people should "go forth and multiply", consequences be damned. Which reads as naive as middle schoolers who think the bacteria in their enclosed experiment will grow and florish forever.
> A more extreme view on the other side is that people should "go forth and multiply", consequences be damned.
I think the best part of nature are human beings. I don't think it's a naive middle schooler idea. It's in fact the most lindy, biologically rooted idea that exists. Ignore it at your own peril (or the peril of your genes).
> I think the best part of nature are human beings. I don't think it's a naive middle schooler idea. It's in fact the most lindy, biologically rooted idea that exists
Every sentient species probably feels the same about their kind. That doesn't make it objectively true.
> Ignore it at your own peril (or the peril of your genes).
Genes of every species that ever lived have gone--or soon enough will go--extinct. We're just the lucky ones who've made it this far.
Life is worth preserving (IMO), and I've passed on my own personal set of genes a few times. I just don't think burning the world at the expense of everything else is worthwhile or sustainable.
Said another way, I'd be fine with humanity going extinct if it meant nature could go on making more interesting things. In fact, I think humanity is bound to be replaced by something else eventually. After all, there's no magical sky daddy who made us in some divine image or who is determined to preserve us exactly like this forever.
I think this is similar to those denialist articles that made the rounds a few years ago, about how bees aren't really dying, because look, there's so much honey produced nowadays (and obviously anyone who thought otherwise was just a woket*rd).
The reality was (is) that the honey is obviously coming from industrialised bees, who are destroying habitats for all of the other non-honey bees and insects.
I will link only to the rebuttal, as I don't enjoy linking to reactionary stuff
We still need more trees! Trees do not only act as carbon storage, potentially offsetting CO2 emissions. They also provide shade, which helps mitigate the effects of global warming. Through evapotranspiration they also participate in the water cycle and help carry humidity further inland. We need more trees in our cities, we need more trees in our villages, we need more trees in our agricultural systems. Plant more trees!
Trees alone aren't enough. For example, ecosystems like the Amazon rainforest are highly balanced ecosystems that are in a perpetual recursive loop. You can't tear them down and then rebuild them by just planting trees. The rainfall the Amazon gets is itself generated by the canopied rainforest. And you can't bring back all the diversity of life that gets lost.
And this goes for any other ecosystem.
And the staggering statistic is that only 30% of the Earth is covered by forest now, a drop from 60% prior to humans going nuts.
Exactly. I have seen some estimates that if you tear down a forest and then let it re-grow it is estimated to be upwards of 300 years until it starts to resemble the kind of diversity that was originally present.
Tree counts or green coverage is an awfully reductionist statistic. It can use a truthful statistic to imply something that isn't as clean cut as presented.
We use less farmland to produce the same thing mostly because we artificially juice land with fossil fuel derived fertilizer. Declining farmland utilization could be a good thing, but I think in most actual cases it isn't because it represents higher fossil fuel usage and more aggressive usage of the top soil, which leads to its depletion.
This could change though, with better top soil management and more green energy production to produce fertilizer without fossil fuels it could turn into a good thing in practice.
> Agricultural land area expanded 7.6 percent between 1961 and 2020 and currently occupies 32 percent of the world’s land area. Irrigated area more than doubled.
The process started in the first decade of the 20th century. It was largely finished by the 1980s. As for increases in irrigation, that's a few different things, but the largest part is substance farmers finally getting some infrastructure. I'm sorry to tell you, but the world isn't ending. Guess you will have to find another way to scare the plebs.
No one thinks the world is going to end. What we know is that it's going to be a harder to much harder world to live in if we are not able to coordinate globally. It's not just the climate, it's how much food we can grow, scarcity, poverty the politics of scarcity (authoritarianism), massive migration waves and how long we are going to be able to enjoy life outside during the year.
Wood the rarest material? Pfft! I know you're joking, but I'm glad you raised that things that are common on Earth can actually be rare in the universe, and vice-versa. I forget that unless reminded. There must be zillions of times more gold than bronze in the universe.
I tried to think of the rarest thing in the universe, but decided it's probably whatever short-lived element was created recently that hasn't decayed yet. How many people in the world know whether there's any Mendelevium in existence today? There are plenty of gold and silver price-tracking websites. Is there one for Mendelevium? Commodities futures?
Thinking instead of the rarest naturally occurring material would just depend on how specific you wanted to get. Do Oak Apples just count as wood? How about Saint Helena Olive seeds?
Not without steady water. Photosynthesis has 3 inputs. Sunlight energy, CO2, and water. Easy to forget the water but that is the most variable and volatile.
This study is 10 years old and in many of the most important carbon sink areas there is a decline.
It's also that afforestation efforts to replenish lost forests have worked in some countries.
Can you imagine the trillions of trees we would need to have sufficient carbon fixation to level out the burning of 100 million oils of barrel per day?
Didn’t read, but let me guess. We’re gaining more trees in countries like China where large scale project to prevent desertification exist or in places like Russia or Canada where warming climate is opening more space where trees can grow. All the while tropical countries like Brazil, Indonesia and Malaysia are losing tropical forest covers in ecological hotspots because of soybean or palm oil cultivation.
Tbh headlines like these do more damage to the climate change and ecological preservation conversation because they can be used to intentionally mislead what’s happening in the world.
> The planet is actually greening due to warmer temperatures and more co2.
For now... No guarantees that's "the new normal" (and it very likely isn't going to be).
Do a bit of research into recent discoveries regarding that "greening" and how it's likely to play out in the longer term if we continue on this reckless path. It's definitely not looking very good for humanity's future overall when you zoom out a bit and start looking at "big picture" of it all... Worst of it is that we probably had multiple chances along the way to steer this mess in a more positive direction, but we're most likely well past the point of handling things in a "mostly painless" way now.
Climate change is a lot of different things. For the statement that the count matters and a "tree is a tree",
Carbon sequestration? A giant redwood stores more carbon than a fir.
Healthy ecosystems? Different trees fit into different roles in a healthy forest.
The loss of biodiversity? Once a forest dies, a new forest somewhere else doesn't bring back the lost biodiversity.
In theory, Carbon sequestration is the closest to "a tree is a tree", you can plant large amounts of fast growing trees can capture more carbon over time, but that's specifying the later tree, which then matters.
Why did you mention ecosystems and biodiversity? Is the idea that those store more carbon, too, or was it just gratuitous?
Edit after downvote: but why though? It looks like conflation of climate change with the entirety of environmentalism. That is a misleading thing to do.
Not on a per tree basis. Young forests sequester more carbon per year because you aren’t losing old trees, however sustainable harvesting changes the dynamics here. IE a 50k year old natural forest is very close to carbon neutral, but you can harvest wood from an old forest and change the equation as you don’t need to let dead limbs or trees rot.
Unfortunately when you cut down an old forest and convert it into a young one the old forests root mass rots thus releasing a great deal of stored carbon.
If you cut a bunch of crappy pines and borderline brush (beyond whatever trivial square foot exemption they give you) the environmental authorities will be on your case same as if you cut down a 120yo hardwood forest.
Can't have your cake and eat it too. Either they're all the same or they're not.
IIRC, there is no actual 'tree' biologically - there is no taxonomic group of 'trees'. It's a colloquial word for 'tall woody plant' or something like that.
>Tbh headlines like these do more damage to the climate change and ecological preservation conversation because they can be used to intentionally mislead what’s happening in the world.
The graphs show this pretty clearly.
But despite your misgivings the number of new trees growing 3 times faster than trees lost seems pretty good?
Like tropical countries have local issues for sure.
Honestly I prefer these bad headlines compared to "Lung of world gone we are dead in 15 minutes" sensationalism we usually get, and the data is good too.
I think most people reading a headline about tree count would care primarily about deforestation and loss of habitat of indigenous species.
This article isn't about that, and explicitely states it doesn't touch deforestation per se, just sheer tree count, including production targeted tree farms.
TFA:
> While the classification may seem simplistic, powerful conclusions can be drawn from the data, including assessing agricultural expansion, climate-driven expansion and contraction of ecosystems, and forest clearing and recovery.
Make the case that "deforestation" is the primary things we should care about. Start by explaining what it is.
It's just a word to most people, something drilled into them by 90s era Captain planet type environmentalism
Similarly things like species population decline is insignificant and driven primarily through a few highly visible cases. And this ignores the dynamic nature of life. For instance I remember hearing about how great barrier reef will disappear in a few decades. By 2024, AIMS measured the highest coral cover in 38 years of monitoring in the northern and central regions: roughly 40% and 34%, respectively.
Not to say we shouldn't worry about things but it's just naive and overly doomer to believe everything negative even when presented w evidence of the contrary
"The contemporary rate of extinction is estimated at 100 to 1,000 times higher than the natural background extinction rate—the typical rate of species loss through natural evolutionary processes."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocene_extinction#Extinction...
I see "deforestation" as the destruction of an existing ecosystem.
Convincing people on the internet to care for local ecosystems is a fool's errand. I see your point about cartoon ecologism, but you seem to be jumping way too far in the opposite direction, and only looking at numbers will never tell what's actually happening on the ground. I'm not a diver, and don't know much about the great barrier reef, but the 40% and 34% number don't resonate in any way to me...was the volume of the coral the only point that mattered ?
There is evidence for the benefit of wood production done at a pace and in a way that preserves the forest's balance, but that's also not what the article is about, and explicitely so.
There are certainly more trees where I lived than there were a hundred years ago, but there are also more trees than there would have been a thousand years ago. I live in an area that should be natural prairie and humans have planted a lot more trees than the ecosystem would support in a natural situation.
I don't know if this is good or bad from an environment situation, but it is a part of a reason I am suspicious of claims that more trees are good.
With efforts some desert areas get reclaimed with trees. Sure, ic nature took its course the deserts would grow, but there are efforts to push them back and some have had success. I think that’s positive despite going against the natural course of things.
Tell that to the desert-dwelling species that rely on that habitat for survival. Deserts aren't empty wastelands that are valueless without human development.
Maybe I saw too many Disney movies as a kid, but it took me a very long time to consider, “There’s nothing inherently good or right about what would have happened in the absence of people.” There’s nothing kind, nurturing, decent, or fair about natures course. It’s a thing without direction, not a “one true course of events” that we interrupted.
It makes those kinds of situations much harder to evaluate than the simple worldview, but I think it’s more honest.
And yeah, the hazard is in thinking the opposite is true. Lord knows we’ve done some objectively dumb shit, too.
Being such a wildly powerful species is a burden.
One thing I found is that the people that most believe there is some kind of natural order without humans is preferable or more "natural" than the nature we make suited to humanity, is that these people are almost always atheist or agnostic.
Of course you can not believe this and be atheist. But the deep sense of indifference to humanity is much more prelavent with godless people.
Humanity is part of nature. And undeniably a part with outsized impact on the remainder of nature. Seeing humans as just a part makes a lot of folks more humble and desire balance.
A more extreme view on the other side is that people should "go forth and multiply", consequences be damned. Which reads as naive as middle schoolers who think the bacteria in their enclosed experiment will grow and florish forever.
> A more extreme view on the other side is that people should "go forth and multiply", consequences be damned.
I think the best part of nature are human beings. I don't think it's a naive middle schooler idea. It's in fact the most lindy, biologically rooted idea that exists. Ignore it at your own peril (or the peril of your genes).
> I think the best part of nature are human beings. I don't think it's a naive middle schooler idea. It's in fact the most lindy, biologically rooted idea that exists
Every sentient species probably feels the same about their kind. That doesn't make it objectively true.
> Ignore it at your own peril (or the peril of your genes).
Genes of every species that ever lived have gone--or soon enough will go--extinct. We're just the lucky ones who've made it this far.
Life is worth preserving (IMO), and I've passed on my own personal set of genes a few times. I just don't think burning the world at the expense of everything else is worthwhile or sustainable.
Said another way, I'd be fine with humanity going extinct if it meant nature could go on making more interesting things. In fact, I think humanity is bound to be replaced by something else eventually. After all, there's no magical sky daddy who made us in some divine image or who is determined to preserve us exactly like this forever.
It’s not taking back historical desserts but rather reclaiming more recent desertification or simply stopping the advance of desertification.
> It’s not taking back historical desserts but rather reclaiming more recent desertification or simply stopping the advance of desertification.
Any successes in that specific regard are probably an overall good thing really. Fingers crossed for the folks doin' such things...
I think this is similar to those denialist articles that made the rounds a few years ago, about how bees aren't really dying, because look, there's so much honey produced nowadays (and obviously anyone who thought otherwise was just a woket*rd).
The reality was (is) that the honey is obviously coming from industrialised bees, who are destroying habitats for all of the other non-honey bees and insects.
I will link only to the rebuttal, as I don't enjoy linking to reactionary stuff
https://www.vox.com/down-to-earth/2023/1/19/23552518/honey-b...
> I will link only to the rebuttal, as I don't enjoy linking to reactionary stuff
Link to everything. And if you are going to link to just one thing don't link to commentary.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-022-25290-3
"Deforestation and degradation rates remained stubbornly high in 2024, pushing the world even further off track from the shared goal of halting and reversing forest loss by 2030." https://forestdeclaration.org/resources/forest-declaration-a...
Group that raises money and influence to fight problem says problem is worse than ever.
Timelines 5-10 years away. More than 10 years, no one cares. Less than 5 and people would actually expect progress.
Dog bites man.
We still need more trees! Trees do not only act as carbon storage, potentially offsetting CO2 emissions. They also provide shade, which helps mitigate the effects of global warming. Through evapotranspiration they also participate in the water cycle and help carry humidity further inland. We need more trees in our cities, we need more trees in our villages, we need more trees in our agricultural systems. Plant more trees!
Trees alone aren't enough. For example, ecosystems like the Amazon rainforest are highly balanced ecosystems that are in a perpetual recursive loop. You can't tear them down and then rebuild them by just planting trees. The rainfall the Amazon gets is itself generated by the canopied rainforest. And you can't bring back all the diversity of life that gets lost.
And this goes for any other ecosystem.
And the staggering statistic is that only 30% of the Earth is covered by forest now, a drop from 60% prior to humans going nuts.
Here's also an article that provides some counter arguments to the original paper: https://www.weforum.org/stories/nature-and-biodiversity/plan....
Exactly. I have seen some estimates that if you tear down a forest and then let it re-grow it is estimated to be upwards of 300 years until it starts to resemble the kind of diversity that was originally present.
Tree counts or green coverage is an awfully reductionist statistic. It can use a truthful statistic to imply something that isn't as clean cut as presented.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewel_Changi_Airport
that's just about the turnover period for fast-growing pine clearcuts
We also use far less farmland than we did in the past, mostly due to the "green revolution" in the 1970s.
We use less farmland to produce the same thing mostly because we artificially juice land with fossil fuel derived fertilizer. Declining farmland utilization could be a good thing, but I think in most actual cases it isn't because it represents higher fossil fuel usage and more aggressive usage of the top soil, which leads to its depletion.
This could change though, with better top soil management and more green energy production to produce fertilizer without fossil fuels it could turn into a good thing in practice.
That's isn't true globally. For example, see here: https://www.ers.usda.gov/amber-waves/2024/september/global-c...
> Agricultural land area expanded 7.6 percent between 1961 and 2020 and currently occupies 32 percent of the world’s land area. Irrigated area more than doubled.
The process started in the first decade of the 20th century. It was largely finished by the 1980s. As for increases in irrigation, that's a few different things, but the largest part is substance farmers finally getting some infrastructure. I'm sorry to tell you, but the world isn't ending. Guess you will have to find another way to scare the plebs.
No one thinks the world is going to end. What we know is that it's going to be a harder to much harder world to live in if we are not able to coordinate globally. It's not just the climate, it's how much food we can grow, scarcity, poverty the politics of scarcity (authoritarianism), massive migration waves and how long we are going to be able to enjoy life outside during the year.
I didn't argue anything. I only pointed out that your statement was incorrect as stated.
Trees are awesome. Wood is probably the rarest material in the known universe :)
Agree trees are awesome!
Wood the rarest material? Pfft! I know you're joking, but I'm glad you raised that things that are common on Earth can actually be rare in the universe, and vice-versa. I forget that unless reminded. There must be zillions of times more gold than bronze in the universe.
I tried to think of the rarest thing in the universe, but decided it's probably whatever short-lived element was created recently that hasn't decayed yet. How many people in the world know whether there's any Mendelevium in existence today? There are plenty of gold and silver price-tracking websites. Is there one for Mendelevium? Commodities futures?
Thinking instead of the rarest naturally occurring material would just depend on how specific you wanted to get. Do Oak Apples just count as wood? How about Saint Helena Olive seeds?
Looked up Saint Helena Olive... "extinct" :(
Also do you know that Earth is the only place in the known universe where fire has been known to occur?
Awesome. And remember CO2 is food for plants.
Too simple: https://skepticalscience.com/co2-is-plant-food-too-simple.ht...
True, but the limiting factor for plant growth is sun, not CO2. And when they have full sun the limit is how fast they can absorb it.
So far as I know plants are not limited by co2 absorption, so adding more doesn't really help them.
Isn't 35% more definitionally demonstrating that that limit was surpassed already or we're fighting facts?
Not without steady water. Photosynthesis has 3 inputs. Sunlight energy, CO2, and water. Easy to forget the water but that is the most variable and volatile.
How would they be 35% more if water would be a problem for these?
This study is 10 years old and in many of the most important carbon sink areas there is a decline.
It's also that afforestation efforts to replenish lost forests have worked in some countries.
Can you imagine the trillions of trees we would need to have sufficient carbon fixation to level out the burning of 100 million oils of barrel per day?
Wait this post was made about 10 years ago why is it being posted now?
Blog post 2018, data ending 2016
https://globalnaturewatch.org/blog/data-and-tools/new-gfw-tr... (2024) looks like the regional pattern is correct but the sign is wrong with higher-granularity data. 2024 is pretty bad for Amazon fires but last couple years have been better.
Didn’t read, but let me guess. We’re gaining more trees in countries like China where large scale project to prevent desertification exist or in places like Russia or Canada where warming climate is opening more space where trees can grow. All the while tropical countries like Brazil, Indonesia and Malaysia are losing tropical forest covers in ecological hotspots because of soybean or palm oil cultivation.
Tbh headlines like these do more damage to the climate change and ecological preservation conversation because they can be used to intentionally mislead what’s happening in the world.
> Didn’t read, but let me guess
Why should we let you guess?
What do any of us gain by reading the opinion of someone who admits to being ignorant and who isn't willing to change that by reading TFA?
I read the article after commenting. What opinion do I need to change? Seems like I was correct?
[dead]
Commenters who don't read the article do more harm than good.
The planet is actually greening due to warmer temperatures and more co2.
> The planet is actually greening due to warmer temperatures and more co2.
For now... No guarantees that's "the new normal" (and it very likely isn't going to be).
Do a bit of research into recent discoveries regarding that "greening" and how it's likely to play out in the longer term if we continue on this reckless path. It's definitely not looking very good for humanity's future overall when you zoom out a bit and start looking at "big picture" of it all... Worst of it is that we probably had multiple chances along the way to steer this mess in a more positive direction, but we're most likely well past the point of handling things in a "mostly painless" way now.
Trees are trees.
That is not true in any but the most literal sense.
Is it true in the sense relevant to climate change?
Climate change is a lot of different things. For the statement that the count matters and a "tree is a tree",
Carbon sequestration? A giant redwood stores more carbon than a fir.
Healthy ecosystems? Different trees fit into different roles in a healthy forest.
The loss of biodiversity? Once a forest dies, a new forest somewhere else doesn't bring back the lost biodiversity.
In theory, Carbon sequestration is the closest to "a tree is a tree", you can plant large amounts of fast growing trees can capture more carbon over time, but that's specifying the later tree, which then matters.
Why did you mention ecosystems and biodiversity? Is the idea that those store more carbon, too, or was it just gratuitous?
Edit after downvote: but why though? It looks like conflation of climate change with the entirety of environmentalism. That is a misleading thing to do.
[dead]
No, a 3 foot tall sapling and a 300+ foot tall monster are both one tree but have very different impacts on the climate.
Fast growth commercial forests have high density because the individual trees are relatively small with a vastly smaller amount of root mass.
Also, a five year old pine or teak isn't anywhere near a fifty year old mahogany
If I remember correctly, the youngest trees convert the most co2 (makes sense, they grow the fastest).
Not on a per tree basis. Young forests sequester more carbon per year because you aren’t losing old trees, however sustainable harvesting changes the dynamics here. IE a 50k year old natural forest is very close to carbon neutral, but you can harvest wood from an old forest and change the equation as you don’t need to let dead limbs or trees rot.
Unfortunately when you cut down an old forest and convert it into a young one the old forests root mass rots thus releasing a great deal of stored carbon.
Good points about the roots. TIL.
There is only truly literal sense.
If you cut a bunch of crappy pines and borderline brush (beyond whatever trivial square foot exemption they give you) the environmental authorities will be on your case same as if you cut down a 120yo hardwood forest.
Can't have your cake and eat it too. Either they're all the same or they're not.
IIRC, there is no actual 'tree' biologically - there is no taxonomic group of 'trees'. It's a colloquial word for 'tall woody plant' or something like that.
>Tbh headlines like these do more damage to the climate change and ecological preservation conversation because they can be used to intentionally mislead what’s happening in the world.
The graphs show this pretty clearly.
But despite your misgivings the number of new trees growing 3 times faster than trees lost seems pretty good?
Like tropical countries have local issues for sure.
Honestly I prefer these bad headlines compared to "Lung of world gone we are dead in 15 minutes" sensationalism we usually get, and the data is good too.