Pirate's Cove

So, trees are now bad? This means the whole carbon market where they (say they will) plant trees was a scam?

Forest preservation can worsen climate change, UN affiliate says

Carbon markets that fund forest preservation and tree-planting might actually be worsening climate change by increasing risks for wildfires that emit massive levels of greenhouse gases, a new United Nations-affiliated report says.

Forests have been seen as one of the most effective places to counter climate change by absorbing carbon emissions. But that’s changed, says a May paper from the United Nations University Institute for Water, Environment and Health (UNU-INWEH), an academic arm of the international U.N.

In the past decade, wildfires of record-breaking size have erupted in places such as Canada, Australia, Siberia and the Amazon rainforest. This week, forest wildfires forced evacuations of thousands of Canadians in Manitoba and Alberta provinces.

“Forests and peatlands have increasingly transitioned into massive carbon emitters in many parts of the world due to increasing wildfires,” the report says. Climate policies and carbon-mitigation activities ”fail to account for these substantial emissions.”

The report highlights weaknesses in a central global strategy for addressing climate change — planting and protecting trees — which has attracted billions of dollars from polluters that fund the projects to offset their own carbon emissions. A large share of the money is paid through the voluntary carbon market, a largely unregulated system that has come under increasing scrutiny over its integrity.

The rest is behind a pretty strong paywall, but, you get the idea. Has anyone considered doing proper forest management, clearing brush and dead trees, keeping wackos who set fires out, and doing backburns (like the Native Americans did)?

They do understand that wildfires are, in fact, a natural part of the world, right?