ABOVE: A study suggested that filling in treeless spaces with forest could store considerable amounts of carbon—and mitigate climate change.
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In July, a high-profile study in Science estimated that Earth has space for another 0.9 billion hectares’ worth of trees—an area the size of the continental US. Simply allowing forests to recover in those areas would suck more than 200 gigatons of carbon out of the atmosphere, a significant chunk of what humans have emitted in the last century. “Global tree restoration is our most effective climate change solution to date,” the authors claimed in the paper.
Now, four independent groups take issue with the study’s methodology. Although reforestation remains a powerful tool in tackling climate change, the authors overstated the number of trees that could feasibly grow under Earth’s current climate, and how much carbon they could pull out of the air, according to the critiques published ...
