Today the Guardian sent confused messages over planting trees carbon to offset co2. The paper reported that Trees might not be green in carbon offsetting debate. The writer Alok Jha bases his article on a piece of research that was written 4 months ago, and has already been written at the time, by the BBC, and the New Scientist, amongst others.
Dr Greg McPherson, Director, Center for Urban Forest Research refutes the findings applicability to trees grown in urban environments.
The simplified argument of the research by Govindasamy Bala is that in Winter snow reflects the sun greater than trees, therefore forests are bad in northern climates.
In southern England snow is a rare occurrence, so how does Bala research apply to the United Kingdom? Alok Jha report does not address this important question.
Dr McPherson points to a second problem with Bala's paper in that it does not deal with Urban and built up places. The reflectivity (Albedo) of a tree canopy is in the same order of magnitude as a road or a house. So planting a tree does have a net beneficial effect if the tree is planted in a Urban Environment in the northern climates.
I also wonder about about the accuracy of computer simulations like this to predict the future in 100 years times. As super computers models get it so wrong about economic conditions in a year or the weather next month.
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