In case it was not your intent to point this out with sarcasm, for anyone reading:
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not all forests are created equal: new growth forests are simply not as good at long-term burial of carbon.
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carbon sinks only work so long as the carbon stays sunk, so if a tree dies and rots before it's buried, all of that carbon just goes back to the atmosphere, except a lot of it is now methane, which is MANY times worse than CO2.
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this means that it is possible for a poorly - managed tree to actually be an effective carbon source for the purpose of greenhouse gas emissions, rather than a sink, since a single molecule of methane can do the damage of a hundred molecules of carbon dioxide.
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the largest carbon sink on earth is not the forests, but the ocean, and that carbon only really has two ways out: back into the atmosphere, or buried at the bottom in the calcareous ooze. Now if you really want to understand how fucked we are, read up on the following:
- Carbonate Compensation Depth (see how it relates to the amount of calcareous ooze being buried in the ocean)
- Methane Clathrate Hydrate
- Permafrost Methane