'Settled Science' chronicle: world has 7.5 times more trees than previously believed

It seems that scientists were a little off in calculating the number of trees on the planet. You remember trees: they turn CO2 into oxygen and water. In fact, if you buy a “carbon credit,” you are paying to plant trees to buy an indulgence for your private jet travel -- just like Al Gore and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. supposedly do.

Well, all those calculations of doom over purported CO2-caused global warming may be a little more unsettled. The Wall Street Journal reports:

 There are slightly more than three trillion trees in the world, a figure that dwarfs previous estimates, according to the most comprehensive census yet of global forestation.

Using satellite imagery as well as ground-based measurements from around the world, a team led by researchers at Yale University created the first globally comprehensive map of tree density. Their findings were published in the journal Nature on Wednesday.

A previous study that drew on satellite imagery estimated that the total number of trees was about 400 billion. The new estimate of 3.04 trillion is multiple times that number, bringing the ratio of trees per person to 422 to 1.

The hubris of claiming “settled science” on global warming becomes ever more apparent.  Science is always a hypothesis, subject to revision.

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