Justin Gillis has written a sophisticated piece for the NY Times about the role of trees in storing CO2 and how the risk of climate change could be accelerated if tree populations are decimated.  I respect that the piece has an honest debate about the benefits and costs of CO2 for trees and the piece highlights what leading climate scientists do and do not know.  Gillis points out the high frequency risks that forests increasingly face because of climate change. These include bug invasions and droughts and temperature shocks that can kill off a forest which will take decades to grow back. This lack of resilience is an important point that merits more research.
“This lack of resilience is an important point that merits more research.”
Which is undoubtedly being done, and if you’re actually wired into climate change research, why don’t you mention it?
Gosh, climate-change worriers have only been talking about this for 30 years or so.
In addition to the research on natural forest migration and destruction, there have been a few projects where forests have been moved short distances as part of real-estate development schemes. The ballpark figures from that work are probably a lower bound on what it would cost to mitigate the CO2 spikes resulting from massive forest die-off. About $10,000 per tree.
This lack of resilience is an important point that merits more research
I spoke at the annual Resilience conference this year. I assure you two things: folks are well aware of this. And we have a looooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooong way to go to operationalize and make policy out of such work.