Bad news for buyers of ecological Christmas presents and seekers of environmental quick fixes: offsetting carbon emissions by planting extra trees might not work as well as we had all hoped. It always seemed too easy, didn't it?
New research presented at a meeting of the American Geophysical Union suggests that the carbon reducing benefits of the trees is outweighed by their tendency to trap heat close to the ground - especially when they are planted in the normally snowy, higher latitudes.
So while they cool the planet by taking carbon out of the atmosphere, they also warm it, like a winter blanket.
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