Question: would planting more trees solve our problem with the ice caps

Carys Cook answered on 21 Jun 2011:

Planting more trees is actually an excellent way to combat global warming as they will suck up the rising carbon dioxide levels we are producing. Rising levels will warm up the atmosphere with more energy, making it more prone to extreme weather events and causing melting of the ice sheets of the Earth. As well as planting new trees, we really should focus on stopping cutting down existing tress, especially in sub-tropical environments like the rainforest. Rainforests act as what is know as a ‘carbon sink’, meaning out of the whole of the climate system, they are an incredibly important as they are fantastic at converting carbon dioxide into organic matter. When we chop them down, not only are we reducing the amount of plants to suck carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere, we are also letting alot of the carbon dioxide they removed from the atmosphere when alive back into the atmosphere.