Another approach to cleaning our air

Climate Central - Large forests planted with a single species of tough small trees could capture enough carbon from the atmosphere to slow climate change and green the world’s deserts at the same time, researchers say.

A group of German scientists says the tree Jatropha curcas is resistant to arid conditions and can thrive where food crops would not survive.

Unlike other geo-engineering schemes, which are expensive and rely on humans interfering with nature, this project merely encourages natural tree growth.

Under the slogan “Nature Does it Better,” the scientists say the costs are comparable with the estimated cost of developing carbon capture and storage technology at power stations. With only a small proportion of the world’s deserts, they say, these trees could take out most of the additional carbon dioxide emitted by humans since the beginning of the industrial revolution.

The study, published in Earth System Dynamics, a journal of the European Geosciences Union, says “carbon farming” addresses the root source of climate change by taking carbon out of the atmosphere as fast as we put it in.

One hectare (.0039 square miles) of Jatropha trees can take 25 tons of carbon dioxide out of the air annually over 20 years. As it grew, a plantation occupying just 3 percent of the Arabian Desert would remove from the atmosphere the same amount of CO2 as all the motor vehicles in Germany produced over the same period.