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Comment by NiceWayToDoIT | Hacker News Reader

I read the other day that in recent wildfire in Siberia, burned as much trees as it was planted in the entire world. And planted trees are young saplings they do not have ability to sequester same amount of CO2 like full grown trees.

I think it is this one: 'Russian fires burned 4.7 billion trees, seven times more than were planted' https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2021/08/11/siberia-fire...

Just for the comparison 1 trillion trees project as of 30 May 2021, 164 restoration projects participate in the campaign and 13.96 billion trees have been planted worldwide.[7]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trillion_Tree_Campaign

And if we take that idea was founded in 1977 that means 44 years ~320 million trees planted per year...

And that damage is only Siberia, what with Australia, Canada, California, Alaska, Amazon ...

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You're assuming that wildfires cause damage always, most of those places you listed purposefully burn huge fires to create humus in order to grow crops to feed the overpopulated Earth. I was watching a off-road 4x4 channel where there were indigenous Australians setting fire a huge grassfields in Kimberly outback because that's the way their ancestors always did it and there was no other way to clear 14 ft tall grass in the entire valley.

No, I am not assuming anything, I gave you the facts, so 4.7 bn trees was past year in Russia, Australia's 2019-2020 more than 10 million hectares of land burned, California 2020 4,397,809 acres (1,779,730 ha).

So, yes indigenous people used those techniques, to replenish forest but biologist say that 2019-2020 was not normal event. Especially considering number of animals burned was around 3 billion. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-australia-53549936

So, of course they will stop burning when there is nothing to burn anymore, they will stop burning. Also our ability to plant new so far was not exemplary, and as I said, ability of sapling to sequester CO2 is very small. And each tree needs 15-20 years to grow to full size that can sequester more considerable amounts of CO2.

One more issue with trees worth mentioning is that past certain temperature, trees like humans, suffer a heat shock so they start dying. Which is again complication for growing new forest as saplings get exposed to higher temperature (not having collective cooling effect of fully grown forest) https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/pce.12417

Damn fuck that’s depressing.

The five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance... so depression is not bad, many are still in denial phase. I look all those facts in a different way - not as a source of fear, but more in the way when you know facts that is it. I mean after acceptance, we can start thinking how can we improve things a bit, and maybe something good can come out of it.

I do not know, maybe like a cancer patient, they can choose not to know or to know, and then either do something about it or nothing about it. And only very narrow path can lead to recovery, but only, and only if they have a will to live.

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