While planting (trillions of) trees could help us absorb more CO2, are there real risks to this human intervention in nature’s biodiversity? Won’t our “trees of choice” be wildly different from what would grow naturally? Can we even measure/foresee the longterm impact of planting trillions of trees ourselves?
In: Biology
There is a chance of it having a bad effect on global warming. Everything, including the planet as a whole, has something known as albedo which just means how much light bounces off of it. Trees have a lower albedo than sand or snow so some proposals like covering the Sahara desert with trees could actually have the effect of warming the planet further because the desert, as it is now, reflects a lot of light into space. Trees could reduce this reflection and overall warm the planet.
This is just a possibility though and climate modeling and prediction is too complex for me to give a definite answer on what would be better or worse.
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