Who would have thought that planting trees in the UK could be detrimental to net zero? Read on to see why.
London, 12 April – Findings by an international team of climate scientists suggest that the government’s Net Zero project to plant millions of trees in Britain is likely to increase rather than decrease global temperature.
In a new paper published in Frontiers in Forests and Global Change the scientists look at the climate effects of deforestation at different latitudes.
The researchers find that at latitudes 50°N to 60°N – in other words essentially all of the UK – and above, deforestation contributes to global cooling, so afforestation (which has opposing effects to deforestation) will contribute to global warming. That is because increased forestation reduces reflection of solar radiation, substantially outweighing its cooling effect via carbon dioxide sequestration.
As part of their Net Zero strategy, the government is spending £750 million on reforesting in England by 2025, at a time when public finances are under immense strain, and with food shortages threatened.
The new research findings, however, suggests that the Government’s plans are not only wasteful – and often detrimental to the environment and food security – but may actually increase global temperature, the opposite of the intended effect of the Net Zero project.
Full paper: Deborah Lawrence et al. (2022) The Unseen Effects of Deforestation: Biophysical Effects on Climate, Front. For. Glob. Change, 24 March 2022
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Dr Benny Peiser
Director, Net Zero Watch
When you read through the paper that Benny is cricizing, it is actually covering a wide variety of aspects of the forestry effect. I find the paper interesting in that there can be both cooling and warming effects of forestry. Benny is very one sided about climate and cannot be relied on to be balanced and trusted on this issue of AGW.
ReplyDeletehttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benny_Peiser
Benny Josef Peiser (born 1957) is a social anthropologist specialising in the environmental and socio-economic impact of physical activity on health. He was a senior lecturer in the School of Sport and Exercise Sciences at Liverpool John Moores University (LJMU)[1] and is a visiting fellow at the University of Buckingham.[citation needed]
Peiser established the Cambridge Conference Network in 1997. Peiser acknowledges that he is "not a climate scientist" and has "never claimed to be one". His interest as a social anthropologist, is in "how climate change is portrayed as a potential disaster and how we respond to that".[2]
As an outspoken climate change denier, Peiser became director of the newly established UK lobbying group Global Warming Policy Foundation in 2009. He serves as co-editor of the journal, Energy & Environment and is a regular contributor to Canada's National Post.[3][notes 1][1]
However, forests also impact climate directlythrough controls on three main biophysical mechanisms: albedo,evapotranspiration (ET) and canopy roughness
ReplyDeletehttps://www.researchgate.net/publication/359536317_The_Unseen_Effects_of_Deforestation_Biophysical_Effects_on_Climate
Instead of relying on Benny Peiser's opinion, go through and puruse the paper for yourself. I think you will this an intelligent paper on the subject of forestry on the local climate.
Don't concentrate on Benny Peiser, he is simply pointing out this research, which is, as you say an intelligent paper. What it concludes is that at the latitude of the UK the net effect of increasing tree cover is to increase warming. If you can find a quote from it that disagrees with that then please show it.
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