Irrigated Afforestation of Deserts to Thermostat the Earth, End Global Warming and Provide Enormous Sustainable Sources of Wood to Replace Non-renewable Fossil Fuels

Large-scale irrigated afforestation of sub-tropical deserts; reduced-impact logging (RIL) of fallen trees in ‘virgin’ tropical forests; and managed ocean macroalgal afforestation of ocean ‘deserts’ have been proposed [1, 2, 3] as techniques to sequester more CO2 than has been dumped into the atmosphere, by the burning of fossil fuels and by deforestation, since the beginning of the industrial revolution (~1850). These three techniques could also provide a sustainable, low-CO2-foot-print1 replacement for the (non-renewable) fossil fuels that presently sustain world economies. Yet such opportunities have been almost totally neglected in discussions of mitigation of anthropogenic global warming (AGW). This essay reviews this problem and argues that such techniques, that can often be accomplished with well-established, (rather than new) technologies, provide an affordable way to thermostat the earth and preserve and improve quality of life (QOL).