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There are certainly cases where a more holistic view is very important. For example a plan to plant trees in the Sahara desert, irrigated by desalination plants powered by solar, at first glance seems like a "reasonable" plan to sequester carbon. But once you account for the fact that the desert reflects a lot more light then trees do it actually looks like it would accelerate global warming. The plan gets kind of "saved" once you consider the effects of the new forest on weather patterns: the trees cause more clouds to form which are quite reflective and bring the plan back into the green, but not enough to be useful.

So not a great plan, but a great example of how some of the solutions can be a lot more complex than just "remove CO2". At the same time any plan that cools without removing CO2 (e.g. planetary sunshades[1]) have the downside that they don't solve ocean acidification.

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_sunshade



don't the rainforests depend on that desert being windswept, in that the dust contains several hundred thousand tons of phosphorus...




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