Could we solve global warming by increasing plant cover?

Increasing our plant cover (e.g., in forests, crops fields, pastures and deserts) is a deceptively simple way to lower local, regional and global temperatures

Here’s something I believe. I believe that if we increased plant cover worldwide, then that could solve global warming.

I can’t prove it. But let’s try this thought experiment.

Let’s define “plant cover” as an area of ground covered by plants. It could be forest or grassland or crop fields or pasture. But the ground is covered by plants. And let’s say there’s a lot of opportunity to increase plant cover because there is a lot of bare ground out there.

Let’s say that the amount of plant cover could be increased by 10%. And then let’s ask whether that 10% increase in plant cover would eliminate the greenhouse effect. I say, yes, it would. And if the magic number is not 10%, then maybe it’s 15% or 20%. But there is a number that, if we increased plant cover by that amount, it would eliminate the greenhouse effect and would result in the elimination of global warming.

As opposed to what? As opposed to this idea that global warming is this existential crisis that can only be solved by reducing greenhouse gases, namely CO2. And the only way to do that is to reduce or eliminate fossil fuel consumption.

This is virtually the only story we hear related to climate change. Anybody who knows anything about climate change “knows” that this is an existential threat caused by the burning of fossil fuels which have resulted in warming due to excess CO2. So logically, the only way to solve this problem is to reduce the CO2 by reducing the burning of fossil fuels.

Can we agree that this is the dominant narrative?

Ok. But what if we increased plant cover? Surely, we can measure plant cover from space. Satellites can tell whether any given acre of land is covered by plants or not.

Examples

Here’s a forest over here, but there’s a clearcut over there where the forest used to exist. Here’s a functioning grassland over here, but there is a desert over there. It used to be a functioning grassland but is no more. Here is a bare crop field after harvest over here, but there is a crop field over there and it is covered with cover crops.

Human activities, human decisions

In all these examples, human activities have determined whether you have plant cover or not. These are choices, not forces. As a species, we decide how much plant cover will exist.

50% loss of biomass

According to Canadian scientist Vaclav Smil, we have eliminated about half the biomass in the last 5,000 years. We have done this via deforestation, overfishing, overhunting, pesticides and tillage, which eliminate the soil food web, the underground ecosystem.

We can reverse the process

If we have eliminated this biomass and these ecosystems, we can add them back, at least theoretically. Whether we will is an entirely different question. But we can reverse the loss of biomass and ecosystems and plant cover if we choose to.

Would plant cover increase cloud cover?

What if we did? What if we increased the plant cover by 10%?

That would increase the cloud cover over land by about 10%. We can only increase plant cover on land. Land is about 30% of the earth’s surface. So increasing plant cover by 10% should increase the cloud cover over land by 10% and the cloud cover over the entire surface of the earth by about 3% (10% times 30%).

Now, clouds block sunlight. But some sunlight gets through. So let’s say the clouds block half the sunlight. That’s 1.5% (half of 3%).

Eliminating the greenhouse effect

If we were to block 1.5% of the sunlight, that should eliminate the greenhouse effect. The greenhouse effect is only a 1% excess of incoming heat over outgoing heat.

According to Walter Jehne, the average incoming heat is 342 watts per square meter, and the average outgoing heat is 339 watts per square meter. That’s a difference of 3 watts per square meter, which is less than 1% of the total.

This should eliminate most or all of the greenhouse effect, simply by increasing the cloud cover. But you have other cooling mechanisms as well.

Cooling mechanisms

One cooling mechanism is that these extra plants cast shade. Another is that the extra plants improve the soil so that the soil holds more water, which has a cooling effect. You also have the effects of evaporative cooling, which is the cooling effect that occurs when water evaporates. That’s why we feel cool when we step out of the shower or the pool, or when we sweat.

And not only that … all these plants serve to draw carbon dioxide out of the air.

So there’s that!

Would this eliminate the greenhouse effect?

If we increased plant cover by 10%, would it eliminate the greenhouse effect? I don’t know if 10% is the number. But there is a number, a percentage increase in plant cover, that would eliminate the greenhouse effect.

My point is not to come up with the exact right number, but to conduct this little thought experiment and ask, “Why are we not even talking about this? Why is this not--at all--a part of the climate conversation?”

The dominant climate conversation

The climate conversation is all about lowering atmospheric CO2 by lowering CO2 emissions. And the way we’re going to do that is to re-engineer the entire energy system via solar, wind, geothermal, biofuels, biomass energy, hydrogen, etc., while electrifying the vehicle fleet.

Can this occur?

One might entertain serious doubts as to whether this can occur or will occur. Or if it does occur, there are serious questions as to the effect it will actually have on atmospheric CO2. And then, if we stopped emitting CO2 today--big if--how long would it take for atmospheric carbon to again reach pre-industrial levels? Some say decades, if not centuries.

Carbon emission and a growing economy

There is a serious question as to whether carbon emissions will ever be reduced in the context of a growing economy.

Here’s that logic. GDP is energy, and energy is GDP. They are about 99% correlated. As long as GDP is going up, energy consumption will go up. And nobody is talking about allowing GDP to go down, including the most visible and vocal environmentalists.

Is GDP the measure of human flourishing?

If we wanted to, we could talk about how humans might thrive in the context of an economy that is not necessarily growing. But we are not having that conversation at any scale.

We should. But we are not.

Are carbon emissions correlated to energy usage?

Carbon emissions are correlated to energy usage. The whole renewable energy project is driven by the goal of decoupling energy from carbon emissions. But is this occurring? And can it occur?

Some say that this or that country, like Sweden or the UK, are lowering their emissions while growing their economy. But I think that can occur only if you are outsourcing your emissions, e.g., by outsourcing your manufacturing to China, which is building most of the solar panels and is--by no coincidence--building numerous coal plants per year.

Fossil fuels and “renewable” energy

Ok, I don’t want to make anyone mad, but I probably am doing so at this point. But from where I sit, it takes fossil fuels to build and run solar panels and wind turbines. These technologies require fossil fuels, plastics, steel and concrete. And they cost a lot of money. Every dollar is a claim on energy. Every dollar represents a certain amount of energy usage, on the theory, as stated above, that GDP and energy usage go together and grow together.

Power Down, The Third Way

To me, there is a third way … Power Down. We have the proponents of fossil fuels. And we have the proponents of (so-called) renewable energy. Or we can Power Down. We can use less energy. To do that, we would have to figure out how to eliminate some of those activities and industrial processes that use the most energy without a corresponding benefit to most of us regular people.

The Many and The Few

But can we not? Let’s identify those activities that benefit the very few and no one else, then let’s eliminate those activities. In this scenario, The Many start to tell The Few how things are going to go. Currently, The Few tell The Many how things are going to go. We’re supposed to have this big democracy. But do we?

The Few don’t control every little detail. But they control the major systems. They get to decide how agriculture is going to work, and the rest of us have to go with the flow. Agriculture uses a lot of energy, a lot more than it has to. The Few get to decide how much war we have. It’s not little people making war. It’s big people. And the rest of us have to go with the flow. They get to decide how transportation is going to go, and the rest of us go with the flow. They get to decide how much deforestation we have. I could go on and on.

Our Technocratic Sandbox

I’m only saying we don’t get to have these conversations on any scale. We who care about climate change get to talk about carbon emissions, and not much else. We get our little technocratic sandbox called climate change. And climate change is understood to mean warming due to greenhouse gases from fossil fuels. And the solution--we are told-- is to change our energy system.

We are supposed to change how we generate our energy. We are not going to change how we do business. And we are not going to change who makes most of our big decisions.

We are stuck here in this little technocratic sandbox talking about carbon credits and electrification of vehicles and the rapid buildout of solar and wind and industrial scale battery arrays, for which we don’t have the materials.

Ah, there’s an issue … do we have the materials, the copper, the lithium, the rare earth metals, for this big buildout of solar, wind and EVs? Not according to my friend Simon Michaux, cited below.

Questions for further discussion

Look here, my friends and family … I do not have all the answers. That’s why I invite further discussion. And here are some questions for further discussion.

1. What would it look like to actually lower carbon emissions?

   1. Are we on the path to lowering carbon emissions, even in the best case scenario? How do we know? Why do we believe we are actually on a path to lowering carbon emissions, if we only follow the UN IPCC?

   2. Do solar and wind actually lower carbon emissions? If so, to what extent?

2. What would it look like to lower our total energy demands?

   1. What activities could be eliminated or curtailed?

   2. Could we lower carbon emissions by making fundamental changes to agriculture or defense or transportation? What would be the downside in each case, and what would be the advantages?

3. Do we have the necessary materials to build out the solar, wind and electric vehicles required to replace fossil fuels?

   1. See this paper by my friend Simon Michaux. Estimation of the quantity of metals to phase out fossil fuels in a full system replacement, compared to mineral resources, by Simon Michaux

   2. Are solar and wind truly renewable? Or are they just machines that must be built and then rebuilt?

4. What would it look like to increase our plant cover?

   1. To what extent would we have to increase plant cover in order to increase cloud cover enough to eliminate the greenhouse effect?

      1. Does plant cover increase cloud cover?

      2. To what extent does the sun penetrate the clouds, and how much is reflected back into space?

   2. To what extent would this increased plant cover create a cooling effect in other ways, besides increasing cloud cover? (casting shade, evaporative cooling, improving soil, etc.)

   3. Are we not talking about this because it is impossible or infeasible? Or is there another reason?

5. Can we reimagine “energy” to include biological energy?

   1. Should we not seek to rebuild the energy within our biological systems, such as the soil, our forests, our wildlife, our livestock and our crop fields?

   2. If we rebuilt the energy within our natural and agricultural systems, would that not be usable for practical purposes, not least of all cooling the planet and producing food?

   3. Can we rethink the amount of energy it takes to run our daily lives and ask whether we want what we have or would we rather enjoy our local communities, local food and farming, local cuisine, live music, dance, visual arts and local theater? Is this a pipe dream, or is there a direct tradeoff between what we want and what gets imposed upon us.

“Normal is getting dressed in clothes that you buy for work and driving through traffic in a car that you are still paying for - in order to get to the job you need to pay for the clothes and the car, and the house you leave vacant all day so you can afford to live in it.”

—Ellen Goodman

Let’s rethink “normal.”

Let me know what you think. This is a conversation.