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Dare you to post it on Facebook

02 Jun 2021 | Science Notes

This week’s provocation concerns trees. Specifically the forests that are going to be wiped out by climate change. Except they’re not. So if you want to irritate the fact-checkers at Facebook, try this on them (and then click the link to see the source). “I thought the greens want us to be nice to trees. Well global warming is exactly what trees want. It will accelerate tree growth, and as long as the forest industry adapts, the result will be more trees and lower costs for wood, which will benefit consumers everywhere. Poor countries near the equator stand to gain too. About the only downside is wood may drop in price so much that big forest companies in Northern Europe and North America lose revenue. Other than that it’s win-win all over.

This gem comes from, you guessed it, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, in their  5th Assessment Report (2013) Working Group II Chapter 10, section 10.5.1.2. It’s a short section that gets right to the point. This is what they said:

Including adaptation in forest management, climate change will accelerate tree growth. This will reduce prices to the benefit of consumers everywhere. Low to mid latitude producers will benefit too as they switch to short rotation forest plantations. Mid- to high-latitude producers will be hurt by lower prices while their productivity increases only modestly.

Dare you to post it on Facebook.

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