Analogy: The faucet is pouring water in faster than it can leave via the drain, but I'm sure we can keep the water level from getting too high by dumping in dry sponges every year, forever.
I read the headline the other way around. I rather see a huge risk of loosing part of this sink which immense effects. The world has been a rough equilibrium for a long time. Majorly messing it up in roughly 100yrs was probably not a good idea independent of the different weights on the positive sides.
riedel (deeper in the comments) is interpreting the headline correctly - if plants absorb 31% more CO2 than previously thought, then it means that their destruction is even worse for CO2 levels than previously believed.
We're not planting more than we're destroying. If we were, this would be great news. But since we're not, this is terrible news.
The 28.3 Mha loss you quoted is for the single year of 2023, not over 13 years. The sum of yearly losses for (2010, 2023] is 315.2 Mha according to that website.
18 comments
[ 2.0 ms ] story [ 65.1 ms ] threadWe're not planting more than we're destroying. If we were, this would be great news. But since we're not, this is terrible news.
That is not entirely certain. According to the Global Forest Watch [1]:
A loss of 0.7% in 13 years. That might sound bad, but my feeling is that this is well below the level of measurement accuracy.[1] https://www.globalforestwatch.org/dashboards/global/?categor...
So about 8.0%, not 0.7%.
Here's for 20 years (at the bottom of the page):