The environmental repercussions of global warming could be catastrophic to the future wellbeing of the planet, but scientists are now claiming that there is a chance that the effects could be totally reversed.
Researchers claim that burning trees for energy, as well as storing captured carbon dioxide could help to offset, or even totally reverse emissions.
Experts caution that this is just a theory, at present, and that restoring the wellness of the planet is not quite as simple as it sounds. For a start, this approach needs to be trialed before the earth’s temperatures reach dangerous levels, because climate change is already reducing the number of trees that are available to burn for bioenergy. Whilst in theory burning trees, as well as crops, for energy and capturing the resulting carbon dioxide to be stored underground is a great way of reversing global warming, a lot more research is required before this could be put into practice and make any kind of real difference to the environment.
The team that carried out the research was based at the Chalmers University of Technology, in Sweden, and they published the findings of the study in the journal Environmental Research Letters. As part of this write up, the scientists claimed that using this approach could not only offset but actually help to reverse the emissions currently given off by fossil fuels.
World leaders have currently agreed to avoid the world temperatures rising two degrees, but these researchers feel confident that even if temperatures did rise beyond this agreed point, their methods could still help to bring temperatures down again. The authors feel that political gridlock could lead to increase problems with global warming, including the temperature rising above the agreed two degrees margin, but they say that this is not a concern as their methods would totally reverse the effects of this.
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