Tiny Poisonous Trees Could Fight Climate Change In The Desert
Jatropha curcas Wikimedia Commons Like something straight out of Dune, but the boring, terraforming parts. Five German scientists have proposed a new strategy for mitigating the effects of climate change: turn coastal deserts into forests. Why? Forests, full of trees that consume carbon dioxide, are a great bulwark against the gas most responsible for global climate change. Deserts, with their lack of plant cover, are terrible at doing the same thing. Key to this process is carbon sequestration. Plants sequester some of the carbon dioxide they breathe in, storing it in their branches and trunk and roots, as well as depositing some in the soil they live in, offsetting somewhat the carbon dioxide increase in the atmosphere. To turn deserts into a viable spot for carbon sequestration, the researchers assembled a diverse team of specialists, with knowledge ranging from irrigation and carbon sequestration to desalination and economics. Short, poisonous, and hardy, the Jatropha...