1990s- Tropical Forest Carbon Uptake 46 Billion tons; 2010s - Tropical Forest Uptake 25 Billion Tons

[hatrack]

EDIT

This research shows that relying on tropical forests is unlikely to be enough to offset large-scale emissions. “There is a lot of talk about offsetting, but the reality is that every country and every sector needs to reach zero emissions, with any small amount of residual emissions needing to be removed from the atmosphere,” said Lewis. “The use of forests as an offset is largely a marketing tool for companies to try to continue with business as usual.”

The uptake of carbon from the atmosphere by tropical forests peaked in the 1990s when about 46bn tonnes were removed from the air, equivalent to about 17% of carbon dioxide emissions from human activities. By the last decade, that amount had sunk to about 25bn tonnes, or just 6% of global emissions. The difference is about the same as a decade of fossil fuel emissions from the UK, Germany, France and Canada put together.

Climate scientists have long feared the existence of “tipping points” in the climate system, which when passed will condemn the world to runaway global heating. There are many known feedback mechanisms: for instance, the melting of Arctic ice leaves more of the sea uncovered, and, as it is darker than the reflective ice, it absorbs more heat, thus leading to more melting.

These feedback mechanisms have the potential to accelerate the climate crisis far ahead of what current projections suggest. If forests start to become sources of carbon rather than absorbers of it, that would be a powerful positive feedback leading to much greater warming that would be hard to stop.

EDIT

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/mar/04/tropical-forests-losing-their-ability-to-absorb-carbon-study-finds

[mjvpi]

1. I'm 62. When I was 16 I had a scientist explain to me

Why coal was ultimately worse for the planet than nuclear power. Smart people have understood this for a long time. Greedy people have ignored it for a long time. We are past the point of being able to be incremental in our problem solving. We have to beat Trump. But this article points to the need for anything but slow, incremental change that won’t piss anybody off. That ship sailed twenty years ago. Twenty years of Republican lite.