How can trees save the earth from Global Warming and climate change?Write in atleast 300-500 words
Answers
Forests act as "carbon sinks" - they absorb carbon dioxide from the air and retain it by turning it into more trees. And carbon sinks are what politicians charged with reducing carbon dioxide emissions call a free ride - why stop burning fossil fuels if you can just plant more trees to soak up the pollution they produce? This is why, despite concerns over their long-term usefulness, forestry projects are likely to figure in the final Kyoto protocol as something for countries to offset against their emissions.
But it's not just new trees that are important. For some time, scientists have known that something, somewhere on the earth's surface is absorbing massive amounts of carbon dioxide from the air. Each year humans produce between 8 and 9bn tonnes of carbon, about half of which stays in the atmosphere and another quarter of which is absorbed by the oceans. What happens to the remaining 2bn tonnes or so of carbon? It's secured somewhere, in what is known to scientists, rather pleasingly, as the missing sink