[MCN] forests didn't slow climate change.Why?

[Lance Olsen]

Forests are supposed to help stop climate change. These forests didn't
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2016/02/04/forests-are-supposed-to-help-stop-climate-change-these-forests-didnt/

Washington Post article is based on article in Science, here:
http://science.sciencemag.org/content/351/6273/597

Excerpt from Washington Post article:

"European forests have failed to realize a net [carbon dioxide] 
removal from the atmosphere, and this is due to the fact that humans 
extracted wood from unmanaged forests by bringing these forests under 
management," said the study's lead author Kim Naudts, a researcher 
with the University of Versailles' Climate and Environmental Sciences 
Laboratory at the time the work was conducted.

"Even a well-managed forest today stores less carbon than its natural 
counterparts in 1750," Naudts said.

Additionally, the researchers found that replacing broadleaved 
forests with conifers had another unintended warming effect. Conifer 
leaves tend to be darker than those of broadleaved trees, Naudts 
pointed out, so they allow more sunlight to be absorbed.

And, Naudts added, "the other effect is that they are more 
conservative with water, which leads to less evapotranspiration, and 
to drier air." Evapotranspiration is the process by which water 
evaporates out of a tree's leaves into the atmosphere. The resulting 
drier air also contributed to a warming effect.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2016/02/04/forests-are-supposed-to-help-stop-climate-change-these-forests-didnt/

-- 
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"As an endangered species and an endangering one, we need, collectively,
all the self-understanding and self-direction that we can muster."

M. Brewster Smith. "Perspectives on Selfhood."
American Psychologist, December 1978
==================================================================
"Localized ecological systems are known to shift abruptly and 
irreversibly from one state to another when they are forced across 
critical thresholds. Here we review evidence that the global 
ecosystem as a whole can react in the same way and is approaching a 
planetary-scale critical transition as a result of human influence."

Barnovsky et al. "Approaching a state shift in Earth's biosphere."
Nature.  07 June 2012,Volume 486, Pages:52-58
doi:10.1038/nature11018

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