Comments by "Tony Wilson" (@tonywilson4713) on "“Are we the idiots?” – Bill Gates on Planting Trees" video.

  1. AEROSPACE ENGINEER HERE: There Trillion Tree Estimate is Wrong because its really needs to be around 8 Trillion Trees or about 1,000 trees for every person on the planet and HERE'S WHY. I'm Australian but did my degree in America in the late 80s. During our final year we had guest lectures every month and one of those was an alumni who'd just finished a study for NASA on terraforming Mars. He started with "Its impossible!" and then explained why. He introduced us to 2 topics I now call Planetary Mechanics and Planetary Dynamics. Planetary Dynamics are things like water cycles, the thermal cycles in the oceanic currents and the gas cycles. These are insanely complex concepts even though they we know what they are. Its how to make them work on a new planet that's the problem. But before you get that far there's the question of how much stuff you need. How much air.? How much water? Planetary Mechanics is the straight forward calculations of stuff as in how much if this or that do I need. Its fundamentally about geometry and volumes of spheres and spherical shells. Things like how much air does it take to put a 1km thick layer of Earth Standard Air around an object the size of Mars. Forgetting issues like gravity and solar wind and just going on basic geometry its 178 Trillion Tons of air. That simple answer makes everything else mute because "Where do you get that much air?" For the Earth there's a really simple geometry problem and it has a very convenient number. MOST (~98%) of humanity lives within a 2km thick layer of the atmosphere and by chance that layer is approximately 1 billion cubic kilometers. Even though its about 2% out just using that number of 1 Billion makes certain math problems very easy. For example we know there's about 2.5 trillion tons of additional CO2 in the air and that number is rapidly heading towards 3 trillion tons. So in basic terms we need to process 1 billion cubic kilometers of air and REMOVE about 3 Trillion tons and then STORE IT. Once you understand the size of the task EVERYTHING changes. All those carbon capture and storage solutions you see lauded about just don't add up. Each of those proposals fall flat on either the energy requirements and/or material requirements and/or time to implement requirements AND/OR MONETARY COSTS. Sabine says it will take a decade or longer for each tree to mature enough to where it has actually removed enough carbon to be worthwhile. What she doesn't mention is that it wall take years to extract the raw materials, then years to process them, then years to make the machines to do the CO2 capture then years to do the work needed. THEN all that machinery needs to be powered and maintained. How long will all that take and more to the point WHO'S going to pay for it. However if you think of trees as cheap, low maintenance (especially once established) solar powered carbon pumps then you realise the issue isn't trees BUT HOW MANY TREES? A simple an reasonable STARTING POINT IS: If each MATURE tree traps 1-2 tons (1.5t on average) then you need about 2 Trillion trees to reach maturity. If you have a survival rate of 1 in 4 as in 1 out of every 4 saplings planted reaches maturity. Then you need about 8Trillion trees or about 1,000 trees per person. It doesn't matter if each person actually plants 1,000 trees just so long as they are responsible for them being planted and maintained which is mostly just watering. YES getting enough water is a problem but for most trees that only lasts until the trees tap roots reach the water table and considering you expect to lose 3 out of every 4 that's NOT a problem. After that becomes the issue of WHERE and WHAT TYPES of trees we plant. DON'T FORGET we are thinking in terms of a planetary system NOT Nation states. So we need access to large open areas that currently have few or no trees. YES that means we need to look at places like the edges of the Sahara, the Arabian Peninsula, China, the Russian Steppes, the Mongolian Steppes, the plains of America and Canada AND the inland sections of my country Australia. YES this will not be an easy task, but NOBODY can dismiss it by saying it will need a lot of land or that it will take decades to accomplish because all of the engineering solutions will also take decades and require staggering amounts of resources. BOTTOM LINE: We either think about and talk about planting and looking after 8 Trillion trees or we need to start looking for a new planet to live on and considering that NOTHING has fundamentally changed in the 35+ years since I had a NASA engineer explain to me and my classmates how impossible Mars is there is no practical "other planet solution."
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