More Trees May Not Be the Answer

[global climate change]

Take this with a grain (or more) of salt, I can't vouch for this group.

Planting  forests in temperate regions such as the United States and Europe may not yield any benefit for the global climate, and may instead contribute to warming, according to a new study set for presentation last December at the American Geophysical Society annual meeting in San Francisco.

By contrast, trees planted in tropical rainforests could indeed help to slow global warming, say scientists with a U.S . government laboratory, a French university, and a private scientific institution who collaborated on the study.

Afforestation has been promoted in mid-latitudes as a means of mitigating climate change. But this combined carbon-climate modeling study indicates that it does not work.

The process by which less sunlight is reflected and more is absorbed by forest canopies, heating the surface, cancels out the positive effects from the trees taking in carbon, conclude scientists from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Universite Montpellier II, and the Carnegie Institution.