There is at least one bright piece of science coming from a different study. The Climate Change Initiative Biomass project is combining ground-based measurements with satellite imagery of the largest forests in the world, which sprawl across Russia’s great western expanses. There they find that the forests are doing more to store carbon than we thought. For several years, we’ve known that, in general, there is increased vegetation productivity and tree cover; however, this work puts a number on that, and the number is a 47% higher sequestration of carbon than previously thought.

This study spanned from 1988 to 2014, and while the data for that period is good, the news for today is more troubling. Since then, fires have become more frequent, and dead trees can’t transform carbon dioxide into oxygen. The smoke of fires changes things not generally for the better.

Folks, our individual footprints can’t stop climate change. Most of the pollutants we worry about are coming from a handful of megacorps. We still have voices, however, and we can sometimes influence those corporations to do better by our world.

More Information

ESA press release

“Russian forest sequesters substantially more carbon than previously reported,” Dmitry Schepaschenko et al., 2021 June 17, Nature Scientific Reports