As Green Wombat reported Thursday, California utility Pacific Gas & Electric will invest in forestry projects to neutralize greenhouse gas emissions from its customers’ energy use. Today, scientists presenting research at a San Francisco conference said, in effect, don’t bother. At least not in North America and Europe. The reason: computer modeling shows that while trees indeed do remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, in the planet’s mid-latitudes their dark leaves also absorb heat and thus have a marginal benefit in reducing global warming, according to Govindasamy Bala, a climate scientist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California. If the scientists’ findings are confirmed by further research, it could
spell trouble for corporate efforts to mitigate companies’
contributions to global warming by planting trees rather than taking
action to actually reduce their emissions of greenhouse gases. "This suggests that planting forests would not slow down global
warming," Bala told fellow scientists attending the big American
Geophysical Union confab as he showed slides depicting the results of
the study he co-authored.
Tree-planting also is being used by so-called carbon offset services
that promise to neutralize consumers’ personal emissions of carbon
dioxide from driving, flying and their consumerist lifestyle. It makes more sense, Bala said, to plant trees in the southern hemisphere as tropical forests also absorb more water vapor, creating clouds that cool the planet. Bala cautioned that his conclusions come from a preliminary investigation based on computer modeling of what would happen if the planet was deforested – temperatures would drop slightly, the scientists found – and not on actual on-the-ground measurements. "Forests have a lot of value in our economy and for ecosystems," Bala emphasized.
Scientists: Planting Trees No Cure for Global Warming
December 15, 2006 by Todd Woody
Green Wombat 
If this research is found to be correct and we take it to its logical conclusions, We should all get out our chainsaws and start felling these climate criminals – the trees of the northern latitudes. This story reminds me of the one about trees producing methane. It was taken out of context and the authors spent the next few months trying to explain that. View a letter in todays Guardian Newspaper by one of the authors of the report you quote (Prof. Caldiera) demonstrating this process.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/letters/story/0,,1973331,00.html
Be cautious in what you write. We are still learning and none of us as yet have the full picture.
The authors of the study make quite clear the value forests play. The point they make – and they stress it is a very preliminary one – is that corporate efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions would be more effective if companies made actual reductions through energy efficiency and other efforts rather than by trying to offset emissions through planting trees. It’s also clear that forest conservation has many other environmental benefits beyond the impact on global warming.
Prof. Wangari Mathaai’s 2005 Nobel Peace Prize was as in part as a result of her promotion of tree planting for environmental protection. Further more, she recently appealed to all nations to plant trees to tame the threat of global warming. This being contrary to your findings, do you think she was worth the coveted prize?
To Todd:
Winning a nobel prize does not make her work factual.
Forgive me.
That was in reply to Solomon, not Todd.