This was a weird week for forests and the climate. Two big stories dominated the headlines.

In Science (paywalled — summary here and here) researchers calculated how many CO2 emissions could be cancelled out by reforesting the earth.

In a parallel world, scary articles described the pace of deforestation in the Amazon — one football pitch a minute (see also: one football pitch a second worldwide).

My first impression was of a total absence of crosstalk between the two. This turned out to be false: see, e.g., here and here.

So what is it that bothered me?

Mostly the false hope embedded in the Science article. Like that feeling you get when someone is hiding behind a chair in a slasher movie and the dude with the sharp knife is in the middle of the room, sniffing for human.

False hope is a very strong “do nothing” motivator for members of society not ready to accept that their lifestyle is unsustainable.

[[And since when did the football field become an international unit of measurement? I feel this would be a good PhD project.]]