Save the planet as you fly a Cessna Citation.

1 Litre of petrol makes 2.392 Kg of CO2

A Boeing Jumbo Jet makes 16.744 Kg CO2 per second while flying.

A Bombardier CRJ 200 or a Citation X pictured above makes about 0.9 Kg per second

A Boeing Jumbo Jet travels at 885 km/hr (550 mph)

A Boeing Jumbo Jet has a wingspan of 68.4 m (224 ft 5 in)

At this speed, the shadow of this plane covers 16817.7 square meters of land (or sea) every second.

This is equivalent to 1.7 rugby fields or 3.2 American football pitches every second.

These rugby fields and American football pitches need to stay green for which each blade of grass requires 0.0000014 grams of CO2 every second.

By regulation a Rugby union pitch or FIFA grade football pitch requires to have a density of 47 blades of grass per square inch (American football also requires a similar density of grass).

These rugby pitches absorb 587.46 grams of CO2 each per second (0.00217 grams of CO2 every second per square inch).

An American football (NFL) pitch needs 312 grams of CO2 per second to stay green.

In other words, the CO2 produced by a jumbo jet or Gore’s personal jet is used up by the grass covered by the shadow of that jet in a few seconds. In fact, Al Gore is personally contributing to keeping football pitches green with a private jet. That neighbour with a 8 cylinder Mustang is an inadvertent saviour of our planet. The true damage will be done when people stop flying in planes.

What is your contribution to our football pitches?!?

If you wish to save our planet, then buy a used jet, or at the least, take more holidays. Stop buying 4 cylinder engine cars and buy the 8 cylinder instead. Have a heart and do your bit. At least consider a V6. Please.

A blade of grass adds in weight by 0.0000008 grams per second. For 0.0000008 grams per second of increase in biomass (growth), you also need 1.75 times that weight of CO2 which is 0.0000014 grams of CO2 needed every second by every blade of grass on our planet. When it comes to natural grasslands, 1 square mile of grass requires about 4.4 Kg of CO2 per second. Every second.

Humans make 29 billion tonnes of CO2 which is 919,584 Kg per second. (nearly 1000 tons a second). 85,300 tons a second is needed by grass alone!!! So humans produce <1% of what grass needs every second.**

Just for the growth. Will be slightly more if you consider the bit needed to stay alive for metabolism. In fact, the above need of grass is the need for extra growth alone, more is needed for life maintenance needs. So the actual, real life “need” is always slightly more. Never less, but more.

What humans produce becomes an extremely small fraction when you add other life forms on our planet. You see, our planet *lives* of off this CO2. It is what keeps our planet and us alive.

**(Surface area of the Earth is 510,072,000 Square kilometres. 33% is land = 168,323,760 Square kilometres and 30% of land is grasslands = 50,497,128 Square kilometres.)

95% of photosynthesis (or 75% as a lower estimate) of photosynthesis happens in the oceans. Oceans needs huge amounts of CO2 unimaginable to humans to sustain oceanic life.

Let me remind you… Humans only manage to provide 1000 tons a second of CO2 back to our planetary atmosphere. If we curtail combustion, then human contribution will be further reduced. This means we are not taking care of our planet.

Yes…!

Note: Trees are the same. Aquatic/oceanic algae is the same. The increase in mass, trunk diameter of a tree etc is not from water or the sunlight, but directly solidified CO2. The sunlight and water provides the protons and photons only, so very little contribution to weight.

Thanks for reading.

I would plant one huge, long lived tree and call it overkill.

==

For me, I want to plant really large, really long lived trees.

Where I live (Georgia, USA) the sycamore tree is a native tree. Here’s a relatively young sycamore, maybe 50–80 years old.

Sycamores routinely live to be 250 years old, so the above tree has a massive amount of growing still to do. And don’t forget, even old trees add a tree ring every year. Those tree rings weigh a lot in a monster tree.

So, back to the question:

Details about mileage are a red-herring. Airlines only exist because you pay them. About a 1/3rd of what we collectively pay them goes for fuel.

If you’re a last minute first class flyer, then you’re responsible for more of the fuel they buy than the budget conscious flyer that got a deal and paid 10% of the cost you did.

Let’s assume your round trip ticket was $2K. The airline will allocate $666 of that for fuel for the plane you’re on. At $3/gallon, that is 222 gallons of fuel.

That will emit around a 1,000 lbs of carbon.

Now look back at that sycamore. I can assure you it has more than a 1,000 lbs of carbon in it. (Half the weight of a tree is carbon, and that tree including the roots weighs way more than 2,000 lbs).

So, I’d go with planting a sycamore or similar tree every time you spend $2K on airline tickets.

One huge negative with this approach is sycamores are indeed huge trees. 50 or so sycamores to the acre is max capacity: That’s based on using a 60ft x 60ft grid layout.

FYI: Here’s a massive 200–300 year old sycamore. This monster is 100 ft tall and 28 ft in circumference. Fortunately I have a 3 sycamores in my yard that are well over 100 years old. They are very handsome trees. You need to learn to maintain it and cut off the lower branches every now and then to encourage the tree to grow tall, not short and squat. In a forest, the competition for sunlight encourages them to grow tall.

here’s my guess of how you’d calculate that number:

one tree absorbs 48 pounds of carbon dioxide per year (an estimate from various sources)

Flight distance from NY-Heathrow—4000 miles (Atlantic flights stay close to land mass, so the flight isn’t ‘straight shot’—it might be as low as 3700 miles).

transatlantic jet burns fuel at a rate of 60 Passenger miles per gallon (number of gallons of fuel burned on the trip divided by number of passengers flying). This is an estimate, it might vary on the type of jetliner and how many passengers were onboard)

One Gallon of fuel producing somewhere close to 20 pounds of Carbon Dioxide when burned.

First part of problem is how many gallons of fuel per passenger per trip. 66 gallons.

Second part of problem is how many pounds of carbon generated on trip. 66x20 =1320 pounds of carbon

Third part of problem, divide total number of pounds by 48 (which is how much a tree would absorb): 27.5 trees to absorb the carbon generated or 55 trees round trip.

Again, this is all estimates from various groups that may have reasons to minimize how much fuel you’d use on such a trip.

Look, I am not denying man made climate change. In fact, I am all for very radical steps to solve it.

But the media is giving you the wrong idea.

Trees remove carbon dioxide in the day. They exhale carbon dioxide at night.

It is not planting the tree, it is the living tree that “offsets” the carbon.

A far better way to do this is to have passenger jets only use methanol made from trees (actually bamboo is better) that grow very fast - in this year.

Count the quantity of bamboo that goes in. Count how many barrels of methanol goes out.

That is the only FAIR way to do it. Making sure of course that you do not use any bamboo that year that did not grow that year.

We are so obsessed with fossil fuel that we do not even understand that “carbon offset” only works for bio-fuel.

Let’s do the math:

According to the International Energy Agency, global carbon emissions in 2017 were 32.5 gigatons, which equals 71.7 trillion pounds.

How much carbon does a single tree absorb? North Carolina State University College of Agriculture and Life Sciences puts the number at 48 pounds of carbon dioxide per year.

So in order to sequester all the carbon released in 2017, we would need to have planted a number of trees equal to 71.7 trillion divided by 48. This comes out to 1.49 trillion, or 1,490,000,000,000,000,000 trees.

There are estimated to be three trillion trees currently on earth. We would need to plant almost half as many trees as there currently are on earth.

Unfortunately, deforestation is also occurring. About 3.5 - 7 billion trees are being cut down each year. And many of these are older trees, which have sequestered more carbon over their lifetime than newly planted trees.

Planting trees alone is unlikely to be enough to offset world carbon emissions. We need to also invest in renewable energy, energy efficiency, electrification, and carbon capture technologies.

The thing about planting trees is that they eventually die. When they do they return their integrated carbon to the active carbon cycle. What humans are doing is removing carbon sequestered under ground and below the sea bed for hundreds of millions of years and dumping it into the atmosphere in just a few centuries..

So, go ahead and plant all the trees we can, and while at it, save much of the effort by not cutting down already existing forests in places where they will tell you where to stick it. No doubt it will help as part of a more inclusive mitigation strategy.

A far more efficient and effective action would be to stop dumping 39 billion metric tons of the stuff into the atmosphere to begin with.

For carbon sequestration, instead of looking at average tree, we should look at the fastest growing. That’s because the most efficient way would be to plant a lot of trees, cut them, use them (in a manner that doesn’t just add the carbon back to the environment), plant more, rinse and repeat.

If these are our constraints, then the best contender, in my opinion, is bamboo.

Bamboo is an excellent plant in terms of CO2 absorption, since it’s extremely fast growing, and can be grown in high density. It also helps with pollutants since it rapidly biodegrades it within the lower level detritus.

If the fast growing bamboo is used to build houses, then the carbon is effectively stored for the life span of the house. Borates can successfully preserve bamboo for well over fifty years. Thus, bamboo houses become a carbon capture and storage system.

Magical houses, made of bamboo (TED Video)

There is some evidence that intensely managed plantations of clumping bamboo in tropical and subtropical climates produce significantly more biomass than trees. Therefore, bamboo is able to produce more houses and sequester more carbon than the same area planted in trees.

Also, why stop at houses, it even helps with the plastic problem:

The above is not realistic for an ICE (Internal combustion engine) but for electric vehicles (preferably autonomous), I’m sure engineers can design a battery-powered light-weight electric car made out of bamboo.

Hello, This is Kavita Verma answering your Question. So here it is:-

There are many ways you can shrink the size of your carbon footprint: bike to work, eat less meat, turn down your thermostat. All of which are great.

But there is one way to reduce your emissions and also make your property and community more beautiful, improves water quality, and provides numerous economic and social benefits... planting trees!

Wondering how? Here are just a couple ways in which trees are vital to reducing carbon emissions and so much more.

Natural Carbon Eaters

Every living thing on Earth is made up of four basic elements: carbon, hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen. Those four elements make up about 96% of your body, and most of a tree's roots, trunk, branches, and leaves.

While we humans get most of our carbon from food, trees breathe it in (just like we breathe in oxygen). But when a tree breathes, it inhales carbon dioxide and exhales oxygen — the exact opposite of humans. And as a tree matures, it can consume 48 lbs. of carbon dioxide per year (among other greenhouse gases like ozone), and releases enough oxygen for you to breathe for two years!

Removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and releasing oxygen in its stead also helps limit global warming, providing for a cleaner, healthier climate.

So, by planting trees, you can help clean the air and fight climate change!

Energy Savers

The significance of the shade provided by trees cannot be understated.

Trees in an urban setting make temperatures in cities bearable. According the to EPA, the shade from trees, in combination with the water vapor they release, can reduce peak temperatures by as much as 20–45°F(11–25°C) compared to unshaded areas.

And when shade is cast onto an office building or home, internal temperatures can drop 8–10°F. Some estimates say the shade from a single tree can save the same amount of energy it takes to power 10 room-sized air conditioners for 20 hours a day!

And a tree's energy saving abilities don't stop during the winter. Trees provide important windbreaks around buildings to reduce heat loss by as much as 50%, lowering heating costs and energy consumption — and saving you money!

This reduction in energy goes a long way when it comes to shrinking your carbon footprint, because over 1/3 of U.S. carbon emissions are caused by the production of electricity.

Beyond Carbon Benefits

Helping to reduce carbon emissions is only one aspect of how trees help improve our lives.

Trees have an incredible ability to absorb and retain water. As rainwater falls, much of it gets picked up by trees, preventing it from overwhelming storm drains. On average, a mature tree in a city can absorb up to 1,000 gallons of rainfall every year that would otherwise need to be pumped and filtered, requiring additional energy.

In New York City, urban trees help retain nearly 900 million gallons of rainwater annually, saving the city more than $35 million dollars in stromwater management costs.

Trees also provide social, economic and health benefits. They create jobs, shelter, medicine and so much more (check out the Six Pillars, which explain why trees are so vital). These less obvious benefits of trees help raise people out of poverty and achieve sustainable development, which ultimately improves our environment.

As more people gain access to cleaner sources of energy, improved water treatment facilities, and more, our environment will most certainly feel the benefits.

Plant a Tree Today!

If you're looking to reduce your carbon footprint and give back to the planet, trees are one of the most effective and personally beneficial ways to do it. A nicer home, a better environment, and more money in your wallet.

Those are some pretty good reasons to Plant a tree.

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Environmental Challenges

Planting a tree causes the growing tree to remove CO2 from the atmosphere and to incorporate it in forms which are isolated from the atmosphere. I try to encourage people to think about climate change as two separate stages of problem: first, we have to stop making it worse, and second, we have to figure out how much of the damage we can repair.

This is dreadfully confusing to some people. It’s not that complicated if you understand the issue well enough. The Earth’s atmosphere now has about 416 ppm of CO2, up slightly more than 50% since 1850. 90% of that is from burning fossil fuels, and ten percent (none of these numbers can be precise, but all of them are close enough to allow an intelligent conversation to be held) is from losing pre-1850 living biomass carbon. Deforestation is the source of this carbon which most people like to talk about, but we also lose carbon by depleting the health of soil with agriculture, and we lose a lot of biomass through desertification.

It gets really difficult to try to nail down the precise shares of these different sources. I prefer to ask people to assume that we are generally correct, and think about what we can do.

We can end all fossil fuel use by using utility scale wind and solar, which is cheaper. All we have to do is build the wind turbines and solar panels, and use them. We can eliminate fossil fuels faster if we also increase existing utility efficiency programs. If we do that, we end about 60% of the cause of human influence on climate. Then the other 40%, which is a variety of refrigerants and other chemicals and a few land use issues and odds and ends - all become worth doing.

If we do all of those things, then offsetting carbon in the atmosphere, by planting trees, restoring soil carbon and reversing desertification becomes valuable.

The most complicated part of all of this is that the order of importance is not the same as the order in which these things can and should be done. We should be doing them all as fast as possible.

But if we don’t end fossil fuel use, none of the other things are large enough to matter.

I have a lot of difficulty with people who describe tree planting as offsetting carbon. Some otherwise respectable organizations have gone so far as to sell tree-planting or tree-preservation with words which convey a false impression that this actually does offset the use of fossil fuels. It does not, for a very simple reason: CO2 from fossil fuels remains in the atmosphere for hundreds, or thousands of years. Trees seldom live for more than a century. When the tree dies, its carbon is returned to the atmosphere, unless it is somehow buried in a way which permanently isolates it from the atmosphere. We don’t know how to make that happen systematically.

A couple of other points deserve mention: few people know that the Earth has been bathed in fossil fuel soot and smog for so long, that for the last 80 years we have shifted rainfall in distinct and important patterns. The most common shift is rain that used to fall in areas which have become deserts in the last 80 years. Most of this is rain that used to fall on land, but now falls in the ocean before it gets to land. The soot and smog acts to seed the clouds.

As we have seen from the COVID-19 lockdowns, we can live without that pollution. Replacing fossil fuels with renewable electricity will create an economic boom unlike anything we have seen since the 1960’s. And it is entirely possible that eliminating fossil fuels, creating a solution to the hardest part of climate change, restoring some of the economic ground we have lost, will also enable regrowth of forests in significant areas, certainly faster than we can replant forests by hand or mechanically.

These droughts have been responsible for crop failures that have caused tens of millions of deaths over the last century.

The fossil fuel and nuclear industries have fought climate conversations by injecting nonsense for decades - not because they care about climate, but because they knew that wind and solar would eventually become cheaper than their products. Now that utility scale wind and solar are cheaper than fossil fuels, they have nothing left but delay, and misinformation causes delay.

Planting trees, and doing anything which improves soil health is valuable. It does not justify continued use of fossil fuels. If accounting matters (which it does) we can’t really count any tree planting toward reducing fossil fuel emissions until we have planted enough trees to offset all the trees that have been harvested in the last 150 years. And that, by itself, is still a pretty big challenge. The U.S. reports about 40% increase in forest cover since 1900 (1865 was the peak year for deforestation, according to some more detailed sources). But that “increase” includes a lot of land with juvenile trees, and trees which are absolutely sure not to reach maturity, and I’m not sure if there is a good inventory of real standing biomass.

Finally, only half the biomass in a tree is above ground. That is why termites are included as one of the sources of methane. When trees are cut down, termites eat the roots and convert the cellulose to methane. This is an especially important factor in tropical forests, but it is true throughout most of of the world.

There’s a whole lot more to learn about every part of this. What’s important is that we do what works. Planting trees is good. So is expanding grasslands, reversing desertification, and eliminating fossil fuels. There is a tendency to overlay some of this with misinformation. The sooner we learn to leave that by the wayside, the better.

There are some very good answers here. I'm no expert, and I don't want to detract from what some of the OP's have given, but something that very few people know about "co²” in the atmosphere is how much there actually is. It seems like there are huge amounts, if you go by the paranoia swirled up by mainstream media as well as being repeated by their ardent followers. Yet polls have shown that almost no one knows the answer.

Google it.

It's 0,04 to 0,06%, depending on the source of your answer.

CO² is not the problem.

Where experiments have increased CO² levels in an environment to see the result on plant life they found the counterintuitive result that trees increase in size when CO² is increased. This is also what has been observed in nature.

So the planet is greening, which the UN data has declared (but no one knows about this as it goes against the narrative) for a long time already, and we are trying to do that by regulating CO², because higher levels than 0,04% is going to do what exactly? Make the earth more lush and green? Do we want the opposite of that?

I'm not sure if anyone has seen the meme about Al Gore? When He was born there were 130,000 glaciers, and today, 73 years later, only 130,000 glaciers remain. Shocking information.

We are being duped. Despite the fact that the information is at our fingertips. We like drama. And the media likes giving it to us.

What taxes are they after to fix it now? More money to whom? And what will they do with that money? More studies?

Rather plant trees.

By all means, decrease toxic elements, such as lead in fuel (which they did already) or carbon monoxide concentrations in dense areas of cities. But CO² is not our enemy. They took the wrong brand to promote as “the problem", and can't let it go now because their ignorance and their agenda will be exposed.

That's my non professional opinion.

How many trees would need to be planted in order to offset anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions?

A very good question. Unfortunately, most AGW proponents and experts dismiss the holistic effect of trees. They prefer to concentrate on economy-destroying oil and gas control schemes than tree plantings. International AGW conventions also restrict the types and numbers of trees preferred.

While the oceans are in total, a greater absorber and fixer of carbon dioxide, reforestation has a multi-faceted approach to environmental balance. Trees, of course:

• Trees absorb CO2, and release O2 in response to increased environmental carbon.
• Trees fix carbon in their branches, trunks, leaves, bark, and roots, and can hold it there for centuries.
• Trees also condition the soil, fertilizing it with their leaves branches, and roots, again fixing CO2 in the soil and in other plants.
• Trees also help fix soil in place preventing erosion by water and wind, once again helping maintain carbon fixed there.
• Trees help foster an environment conducive to other carbon absorbing plants and animals nearby.
• Trees create cooling shade, diffusing enough light to allow select plants at their base, and keeping the ground and air substantially cooler in the summer.
• Trees, in winter, without their summer leaves, allow the ground direct sunlight. Mitigating extremes in winter temperature.

So you see, trees have multiple great benefits affecting both the local and the global environment. They are a great moderator for the environment. With innumerable species of trees for every latitude, altitude, and region. As an indicator of their dynamic and suitability for Earth’s ecosystem, almost the entire Earth was forested before man’s arrival and expansive population growth. Ocean to ocean.

Literally, except for the highest mountains, driest deserts, and most extreme arctic and Antarctic ecosystems, trees were everywhere. So, in order to replicate the pre-industrial Earth’s evironment, we would need, essentially, wall-to-wall trees. Trees instead of lawns. Trees in parking lots. Forests replacing cattle farms (cattle do just as well living on scrub lands unsuitable for forests). In short, trees again becoming the dominant plant life on the entirely of the planet.

As it was when the ebb and flow of climate change was measured in the natural contraction and expansion of woodlands. And not an arbitrary measurement of temperature at a blacktop-ringed weather station or questionably calibrated orbital sensor.

Trees are actually very slow when it comes to extracting CO2 from the atmosphere. Grass is much faster. Bamboo and sugar cane (both of which are grasses) are very quick growing and so rapidly turn sunlight and CO2 into starch, sucrose and cellulose.

When a forest reaches steady state, such as is the case with old forests, the amount of CO2 being absorbed equals the amount of CO2 being emitted from decaying matter and the animals that consume composting material.

Grass is a much better “trapper” of CO2 so if you want to remove CO2 from the atmosphere, cut down all the trees and grow grass. Just kidding…. Let’s leave things pretty much as they are. Trees are things of beauty and habitat for many different species of animals. Wood is an amazing resource that I love working with. I love the different smells, especially camphor, Melaleuca(also called “Tee-tree”or “Paperbark” and the beautiful grain you find in woods such as red gum, turpentine, swamp mahogany, silky oak and so on..

Responsible logging ensures new growth and also ensures that fire trails and fire breaks are maintained as well as the clearing of copious deadfall that could give rise to a “hot” burn when a fire comes along. A “hot” burn is bad for the trees and for the animals in the forest. Responsible logging also involves taking inventory of the native animals living in the forest and the eradication of introduced species such as wild dogs and cats that annihilate the native animals.

So, if you get the chance, let people know that they should encourage responsible logging of old growth forests. It’s good for everyone, nature included.

Holy. Crap. Do I hate this kind of question. I don’t hate you for asking it, it’s a legit question. But how do you define a tree?

A mangrove tree is going to offset A LOT more carbon than a two year old oak tree. A mature old growth forest tree will offset way more than a dead tree planted in the wrong place as a photo-op. A tree grown in Africa’s Green Belt across the Sahel isn’t going to offset as much as a tree in the temperate rain forest on the edge of the northern Pacific Ocean, but it still contributes hugely to protecting a vulnerable habitat and preventing desertification.

You have to figure out how much carbon dioxide a tree transforms into sugar (carbon fixation) and then figure out how much of that goes into long term storage, instead of being used by the tree for respiration and just releasing it back into the atmosphere as carbon dioxide. The ecological term is NPP - net primary production, how much fixed carbon is left after the plant uses it for its own energy needs. And that can vary a lot, depending on what species and what ecosystem.

The largest pool of carbon in the land is in the soil, not in plants. How trees and plants build up soil carbon is what pulls carbon out of the atmosphere the most. Wood also holds a lot of carbon, but it can eventually decay and release the carbon back into the atmosphere as microbes eat it.

Best bang for your buck, removing (sequestering) carbon: Mangrove forests, the northern boreal and temperate forests, and then the rainforests.

Go look up Project Drawdown for more ways to offset atmospheric carbon.

Yes and no.

A tree can turn about 20–30 kilos of carbon dioxide into cellulose every year.

The problem is that we dump hundreds of billions of kilos of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere every year. You would need a lot of trees.

Tree sequestration is part of the “climate plan” (and I use that term loosely) of my home province of Ontario. I did the math - you would need 10 billion trees to sequester the CO2 currently produced by all the people in Ontario. That’s not impossible - Ontario has about 80 billion trees already. However, there are still several problems with that scenario:

1. Ontario is already 66% forested. Some land in Ontario (urban and Canadian shield) won’t support trees. Do we plant trees on agricultural land?
2. Ontario had a plan to plant 50 million trees. The trees were already being prepared - you raise saplings in a nursery. Then it cancelled the plans, which would have meant destroying 50 million saplings. The federal government stepped back in to restore the planting program, but it is only going to plant about 5 million trees a year. That’s 200 years to plant 10 billion trees.
3. Wildfires. With the climate the way it is now (hot and dry in the summer) trees planted in marginal places are subject to burn, which will release CO2 back into the air.

And that’s just Ontario. I’ve seen global estimates to the effect that it will take 1 trillion trees to absorb all the CO2 we produce. That’s going to be expensive.

And there are places where growing trees just isn’t an option, like Australia (too dry), Mongolia (ditto), Brazil (topsoil is too thin) and so forth.

And there’s still going to be a demand for wood. One of the biggest problems in Africa right now is cutting trees to turn into charcoal. Frankly, that’s what happened to most American forests east of the Alleghenies in the 18th century.

Yes and no. Currently trees (and the rest of the terrestrial biome) are only absorbing approx. 30% of the amount of CO2 being released into the atmosphere each year. Given the current trends, that number (30%) will only get smaller, as the amount of CO2 being released is increasing, and the amount of CO2 the terrestrial biome is able to absorb is decreasing (due to deforestation). However, if we were to begin to plant more trees than we harvest, allow trees/forests to grow bigger and older (the bigger the tree the more CO2 it absorbs), and suspend or even reduce the amount of CO2 humans release into the atmosphere, then planting trees would be a good way to help offset the remaining CO2 emissions.

In other words, there is an amount of CO2 humans can release into the atmosphere that the terrestrial biome can absorb and therefore not contribute to rising atmospheric CO2. Right now that number is about 30% of what we are releasing (40 billion tons). If we planted more trees and stopped cutting down the ones already alive, and our forests got bigger and older that number would go up (as long as we stop increasing the amount of CO2 we release).

If we increase our forests capacity to absorb CO2 AND decrease the amount of CO2 we release, that number (30%) would get bigger much faster.

At the end of the day planting trees and letting forests grow and expand is a great way to offset carbon emissions. But it won’t be enough if we keep releasing more and more CO2.

The researchers found that nearly 247 gigatons (billion tons) of carbon was sequestered in tropical forests, with 193 gigatons stored above ground in trunks, branches, and leaves, and 54 gigatons stored below ground in the roots.

Seeing Forests for the Trees and the Carbon: Mapping the World’s Forests in Three Dimensions

Since 1751, approximately 356 billion metric tonnes (gigatons) of carbon has been released into the atmosphere from burning fossil fuels (and cement production, which accounts for about 5% of global CO2 emissions because CO2 is a by-product of converting calcium carbonate into lime). Half of all fossil fuel emissions have occurred since 1980. (Biogeosciences, 9, 1845-1871, 2012)

http://www.climateconsent.org/pages/carbonmaths.html

356 div 2 = 178

178 div by 247 = 0.72

Assuming each tree never dies or at least is replaced , to go back to 1980 levels, you need to expand forests by 72%. For comparison

Forests cover 31 percent of the world’s land surface, just over 4 billion hectares. (One hectare = 2.47 acres.) This is down from the pre-industrial area of 5.9 billion hectares.

World Forest Area Still on the Decline

4 div by 5.9 = 0.68

72 - 68 = 4

So to go back to 1980 levels you need to increase the amount of forests to 4% above that pre industrial and still have enough land for human use (farming, cities, etc).

Not an easy task

This is an interesting question because of what is left out - time. When people talk about CO2 emissions, or really any form of environmental pollution, it is almost always described as a rate. For instance, the average American’s carbon footprint is about 16 tonnes of CO2 equivalent per year. That same concept of rate can help make this question answerable.

Let’s just say we’re talking about one tonne of CO2 per year. This makes the problem tractable because it gives it a definite scope. Through some regular activity— let’s say driving a car— you figure you add 1 tonne of CO2 to the atmosphere over the course of a year. How many trees does it take to offset that amount?

Trees grow by extracting CO2 from the air and turning it into sugar, which ultimately becomes starch, lignin, and other materials that, when combined with water, make up a tree. Different trees grow at different rates, and young trees grow at different rates from old trees. This article [2] reports in its abstract that “at the extreme, a single big tree can add the same amount of carbon to the forest within a year as is contained in an entire mid-sized tree.” The article (which can be found free of charge here [3]) finds that a tree with a trunk diameter of 100 cm (so, a very large tree) adds between 10 kg and 200 kg of dry mass per year, averaging 103 kg, though this includes leaves and branches as well as the main stem. Smaller trees would add considerably less than this. Another article [4] estimated annual carbon sequestration per year for around 50 different tree specimens of 3 species and found it to be in the vicinity of 6–20 kg carbon per year, averaged over the life of the tree, but being very far below that value for the first 10 or even 20 years of the tree’s life. 6–20 kg of carbon biomass translates to 22–75 kg CO2 removed from the atmosphere.

Taking the high end there, for your car-driving activity releasing 1 tonne of CO2 per year, you would need a grove of around 16 mature trees sucking in 75 kg per year apiece and turning it into biomass to offset it. Those trees would have to stay alive and not be cut down. If you planted new trees, it would take either a lot more of them, or else a delay of many years, before they would remove the same amount of CO2.

[1] List of countries by carbon dioxide emissions per capita - Wikipedia

[2] Rate of tree carbon accumulation increases continuously with tree size

[3] https://www.researchgate.net/publication/259766087_Rate_of_tree_carbon_accumulation_increases_continuously_with_tree_size

[4] The impact of tree age on biomass growth and carbon accumulation capacity: A retrospective analysis using tree ring data of three tropical tree species grown in natural forests of Suriname

Growing trees leads to carbon consumption, but how do you equate how much carbon as compared to the almost uncountable number of daily air flights around the World. Sure it will offset some of those carbon emissions, but I think there would need to be many acres of trees planted daily. Already there are way more acres of forest being clear felled daily than what there are acres being planted, so first we need to balance those figures… Then there is the carbon emissions from petrol and diesel vehicles, including trucks, trains shipping, etc. Not to mention coal and oil fired power stations, the steel industry and much other industrial usage.

Trees grow slowly, but oil burns quickly. Apart from reducing overall carbon emissions, the best thing we can do is plant more trees, and many of us are working on it. Unfortunately, where governments and industries are involved in tree planting it is with the intention of felling them in 30 years or so for the sake of profiteering. Here in New Zealand our present government has a ten year goal of planting a billion trees, but they are promoting the planting of pine trees for future log exports, not the replanting of our destroyed native forests with permanent reforestation.

While I can see that your question has been answered with a “yes”, take a look at this: The Science of Composting

And, it’s all about balance. Australians burning desire is to burn bushland in the belief that if sixty thousand years ago it was a good idea then it must also apply today, but in my opinion, it does not.

So, not only do we have a kill all mentality but also we also have a diminishing global tree population. All the fuel burned by aviation though huge is nowhere near to vehicular emissions. Burning the candle at both ends and now in the middle.

What I’m sure is a “best idea”, is to have more tree cover in all countries, and not just one.

Anything is possible given the will to do it.

Yes, but the optimal application of trees is in intensive silvopasture.

Let's say you have the American dream: a house and a 2 acre grass yard.

You should:

• plant enough trees to reduce wind and soil erosion losses. The roots act as an anchor to keep the deeper soil in place and the reducing wind keeps the topsoil from experiencing a driving sideways rain. You want the grass to still grow, so not too many trees, just enough to protect your lawn.
• Inoculate your lawn with mycorrhizal fungi. Pennington introduced a lawn fertilizer in 2018 that includes a mycorrhizal fungi inoculate: Amazon.com : Pennington Ultragreen Lawn Fertilizer 34-0-4 5M, 12 lb : Garden & Outdoor. (Note the red icon in the top corner of the packaging and the “myco advantage” in the feature list.
• Let your grass grow to the point of starting to form seed heads (yes the neighbors will hate you, but explain you’re doing it for the good of the world!)
• bring in a small herd of sheep or goats to eat the top 1/3rd to 1/2 of the grass. Remove them from your lawn when that is done and let the grass grow until seed heads start to form again. (Where you find sheep/goats I have no idea!)
• repeat the grow / graze cycle ad infinitum

Doing the above should sequester about 3 tons of carbon per acre per year. That's about 10 tonnes of CO2 equivalent.

You can find websites that provide the carbon footprint of a flight.

Unfortunately, most of us aren't ranchers so the above isn't practical. But just the trees and the mycorrhizal inoculant is a good start and should achieve about half the carbon sequestration that the above does.

Clear fell yields about 100 ton per acre for 400 trees on short rotation say 15 years. That’s about 1/4 t per tree. If we times 40 billion by 4 we get 160 billion trees each year. However if the rotation is 15 yr then it comes out at 2.4 trillion trees in one year, and then 14 years with no tree planting, for the required annual average absorption rate. Also one ton of wood is made from 3.7 ton of CO2, so it looks like we devide 2.4 by 3.7 and get 640 billion trees total.
This appears to come out at 3.2 million sq miles, which is really a more easily applicable way of looking at the question of carbon uptake by trees, than total number of trees.
This is about the same as the land area of Europe.
However, the dark cloud inside this silver lining is that after 15 years, there will be no further net soakage of CO2 as rate of decomposition balances rate of growth in a general sense. Then we will have to find another 3 million sq miles. (Unless we just harvest the trees and pile them up in the Arabian desert, replant Europe and hope the trees piled in the desert don’t rot away.)
So the conclusion of all this is that yes we could give ourselves a few extra years of zero net emissions by planting the worlds marginal land, but that’s about it.
(Looks like I have a “helpful credential”, for a change.)

Trees are part of the short carbon cycle, they really don’t offset your fossil fuel impact at all. This is because very nearly all the CO2 they pull from the atmosphere will relatively quickly be returned via photo-respiration, decay and fire.

If you want to have someone offset your carbon footprint, you need to support grassland restoration that is holistically managed. For the average person in US or Western Europe, it takes about 1 ha(2.5 acre) of restored grassland/prairie biome to offset their yearly fossil fuel footprint. In other parts of the world as little as 1/5th that. Just depends how much your country’s average is:

List of countries by carbon dioxide emissions per capita - Wikipedia

Or if you prefer, there are footprint calculators you can find out your specific footprint rather than an average.

Free Carbon Footprint Calculator

and you can calculate the acreage of healthy grassland needed to offset your footprint by using the baseline of 5–20 tonnes CO2e/ha/yr. There are many factors that make each acre sequestration potential different but as a general rule the 5 tonnes CO2/ha/yr is the drier more arid land, and the well watered land is the 20, and the majority somewhere in the middle. This does require proper management though. Your yard probably isn’t doing much :P Although as was pointed out to me by a comment on a different related answer, it certainly is possible to manage a yard in a similar fashion as a prairie biome with limited but creative use of a mower and seeding native prairie grasses and prairie flowers.

Then recognize that between the algae in the oceans and the healthy grasslands already in the world, roughly about 1/2 of your emissions are already being offset.

The other 1/2 is what you need to be concerned about really.

Types of proper grassland management that can sequester CO2e in those ranges would include Grasslands birds sanctuary acreage like this:

Grassland Birds: Fostering Habitats Using Rotational Grazing

Or it could include crop farmers changing their management to pasture cropping like this:

Why pasture cropping is such a big deal

and here are a few more ways in video form that can work. Please remember though. We never want to cut down a healthy forest to convert to grasslands, forests have their purposes too! It just happens that sequestering CO2 from out of the short cycle and into the long cycle isn’t one of them. (with a few rare exceptions) So the strategy is rather to support the restoration of either desertified land that we used up then abandoned, or to convert farmland from destructive tillage practices and restore prairie biomes on them.

There are experimental systems also being tested and some might include trees managed like a savanna biome, but again it’s the grasses between the trees that sequester the carbon long term. Here is one in development:

Introduction to Woody Agriculture

I have an experimental project of my own for vegetable cropping systems, (to fill in some gaps left by the above) but so far I haven’t had the funding to run the baseline proof of concept. If you want to help with that funding, even 5 or 10 dollars can help reach the goal. And as long as the proof of concept results are in the range of that 5–20 tonnes CO2/ha/yr, then it could be added to the list of production models used to offset emissions long term. (I think they should be, but can’t say for sure until I get the soil sample results of a controlled trial back)

Click here to support Sustainable Ag Research by Scott Strough

Edited to add: If you want a more detailed plan on how we might offset the whole world’s carbon footprint and reverse manmade global warming, here is a conservative plan to mitigate AGW: Can we reverse global warming?

Executive summary:

Yes we can offset our carbon footprint and reverse Global Warming.

It does not require huge tax increases or expensive untested risky technologies.

It will require a three pronged approach worldwide.

1. Reduce fossil fuel use by replacing energy needs with as many feasible renewables as current technology allows.
2. Change Agricultural methods to high yielding regenerative models of production made possible by recent biological & agricultural science advancements.
3. Large scale ecosystem recovery projects similar to the Loess Plateau project, National Parks like Yellowstone etc. where appropriate and applicable.

Thanks for taking time out to read up on this.

Footnotes

How many trees do you need to offset your carbon footprint?

Here in the UK, our energy suppliers take an interest in the climate, with some more than others. I have just joined Bulb (also available in the US), one of the smaller companies that are keen on being responsible in climate matters, including the option to calculate your footprint giving a direct answer to your question after giving some relevant background... This post reads like a sales pitch for zero carbon energy because of the climate benefits, as changing home energy supply here is a relatively trivial process, please therefore change to zero carbon home energy supply if you are in the UK as it is almost certainly the easiest and most trivial way to make a big cut in your carbon footprint (or other countries if you have the option available), hence links (links from online search, obviously Bulb have incentives!). Bulb first as they are specialising in zero carbon, although many of the points they make apply to some of the other companies providing renewable / zero carbon energy:

Electricity through this company comes from renewable resources:

“During 2018 to 2019, the sources of our renewable electricity were:

• wind - 73%
• solar - 24%
• hydro - 3%”

Bulb's electricity: where it comes from and how it reaches your home

Gas tends not to be renewable, there is however some gas on the market that is not as damaging as fossil fuel gas:

Bulb's green gas: where it comes from and how much is renewable

The solution is therefore to offset gas consumed by funding projects that remove atmospheric carbon equal to the amount released by gas consumed here, not ideal but a temporary solution:

Carbon offsets: what they are, how they work and what that means for Bulb

Bulb also offer a webpage where you can calculate your personal carbon footprint:

Bulb - Making energy simpler, cheaper, greener

There are other UK energy suppliers that offer renewable energy out of the 60 or so energy suppliers available to UK residents, including:

• Bulb specialise in renewable energy products: Bulb - Get a quote
• Ecotricity who are active in providing battery electric car charging points Get a quote and switch to Ecotricity
• Engie to some extent (becoming part of Octopus)
• Good Energy were most likely the first in this field in 1999 Renewable Energy for Business
• Green Energy focus on home generators such as rooftop PV panels, Get a Quote | Green Energy UK
• Octopus invests in solar PV farms Octopus Energy
• Outfox where energy is bought at wholesale from 100% renewable sources Outfox The Market
• OVO Energy offers a 100% renewable tariff OVO - Quote & Switch
• Powershop with an innovative and unique way to buy and sell-back energy Get a Quote - Best Energy Deals | Powershop
• even Shell are in the market with Shell Energy selling 100% renewable electricity Get a quote | Shell Energy

from a recent review of the UK energy supply market, there are no doubt others providing zero carbon electricity that were missed from the list with apologies to them... The UK energy market is actively moving towards zero carbon energy, with switching your energy supplier probably the easiest way to make a big cut to your energy footprint as your home’s energy consumption is a significant part of your carbon footprint, and switching home energy supplier in the UK is a relatively trivial process. As a result my carbon footprint is relatively small (equal to the average rural carbon footprint in some less developed parts of the world!):

Considering my answers on Quora, my footprint is as low as possible within my means, and that although my footprint is 86% below the UK average, I would still need 984 TREES PER ANNUM to offset this tiny footprint, costing far far far more than my home to balance the footprint.

Trees are therefore clearly not a practical means to address the Climate Emergency especially in temperate regions such as the UK, the most important step is to eliminate fossil fuel combustion (or offset where you cannot). Fossil Fuel combustion over the last 150 years is the primary source of Climate Change. Anything other than cutting fossil fuel combustion is merely a sticking plaster that will at most slightly delay the serious consequences of the Climate Emergency. The only exception is meat consumption, cutting meat & dairy from your diet is the single step that makes one of the largest cuts in your footprint unless you are a regular flier or very high mileage driver. I would suggest that addressing the Climate emergency therefore means:

• Reduce your home footprint, obviously the easiest where you can is to switch to zero carbon home energy supplies (interesting old link: http://shrinkthatfootprint.com/what-is-a-carbon-footprint) or a more expensive though positive steps would be adding solar PV tiles or panels to your rooftop, convert your heating from combustion based heating to a heat pump, maximise your home insulation; other options: only boil enough water for that hot drink (a full kettle for one cup for every drink over a year wastes the equivalent of a short to medium haul flight in both carbon & money costs), LED light bulbs throughput your home, etc, etc.
• cut frequent flying,
• cut meat & dairy from your diet, this may well be the largest single step you can take,
• drive a battery electric car which if recharged from renewable sources adds no carbon for each additional journey even though the initial construction footprint is a bit higher for the car,
• reduce use of peat based fertiliser, peat is one of the bigger natural carbon sinks in this part of the world, and being damaged by being removed for garden fertiliser products.

Once we have significantly reduced fossil fuel consumption and therefore stopped continuing to dig this great big hole we are falling into, then trees will provide a useful resource to help mop up the excess of carbon in the atmosphere on top of the many other benefits that trees offer that alone make planting trees worthwhile..

First, it is important to understand that a considerable portion of the carbon that is taken up by trees will be released again what the tree dies and decomposes. Trees are a part of the “fast” or “modern” carbon cycle and they do cycle carbon. So planting and maintaining trees is a critical aspect of maintaining most ecosystems, but it is not a free ride for continued burning of fossil fuels (which extracts fossil carbon, or carbon in the “geologic” carbon cycle and inserts it into the “fast” or “modern” carbon cycle.).

To answer the question from a traditional standpoint, though - if the person is an American we can assume their carbon footprint is around 42,000 pounds of CO2 annually (or about 373,000 cubic feet of man made greenhouse atmosphere).

On average, a tree will consume 40–50 pounds of carbon annually. There is a huge swing though - the amount depends on the species, the age, the climate the tree lives in, its location (is it on a South facing hill or a north face, etc), the quality of the growing season that year, etc. if we assume an average of 48 pounds of carbon per tree, that means 875 mature trees are required to consume the carbon produced by 1 American every year. Note…to be considered as an offset, these would need to be trees that exist specifically as an intentional add to the total existing tree stock because all existing trees are already a part of the base natural carbon cycle, so if you are going to add carbon to the system you need to add new trees to the system (you cannot just go tag 875 trees that already exist and call it good). These trees also have to be maintained and continue growing annually, and replaced if any die.

Trees can’t offset a person’s carbon footprint. That takes long term sequestration in the soil. Grasslands do that.

To biologically offset a person’s carbon footprint would require on average 2 acres of restored grasslands and/or regenerative agriculture to replace our standard corn and soy rotations (or other destructive agricultural crops).

It can be done. There is actually enough agricultural land worldwide to do it. We know how to accomplish it for all the major crops grown worldwide, including animal husbandry too.

However, it would require a massive effort that simply isn’t even being tried on that scale. One person offsetting their personal carbon footprint isn’t enough unless everyone else chips in too!

I discuss it in more detail here:

Scott Strough's answer to How can we combat climate change?

Keep in mind though. There are at least 2 different people making claims their personal results are almost four times greater than even that.

For crops on arable land

and with animal husbandry

So this means that rather than it taking 2 acres per person, it could potentially be done on only 1/2 an acre dedicated to these even more advanced regenerative organic methods.

I am an organic farmer. I am not afraid of change. I am the change.

Footnotes

I assume you have calculated your carbon footprint - if not try this -

WWF Footprint Calculator

That will tell you how much you are using in tonnes. The WWF says we in the UK ideally need in 2020 to be down to 10.5 tonnes per person to meet our national carbon targets which no doubt will go down each year. The next website suggests the USA uses 16 tonnes per person. They also think each tree creates 31lbs of absorbed carbon per year. Meaning you would need to plant a lot of trees. But as the mass of trees grows each year, then actually over time you will be in positive territory. Assuming large trees of course. Also, bear in mind that a large number of people in a house will also reduce the heating on a per person basis.

Or you keep planting more trees each year. Always a good thing especially if you reduce the number of tonnes you use each year, use less fuel etc as we get better at producing more efficient heating systems. Walk and cycle and take public transport.

Carbon Footprint Calculator: Trees Needed to Offset Your CO2 Emissions