Global Warming: 'Cooling' Forests Can Heat Too

Pine forest. The simple formula we've learned in recent years -- forests remove the greenhouse gas CO2 from the atmosphere; therefore forests prevent global warming -- may not be quite as simple as we thought. Forests can directly absorb and retain heat, and, in at least one type of forest, these effects may be strong enough to cancel out a good part of the benefit in lowered CO2. (Credit: iStockphoto/Jeremy Sterk)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Jan. 25, 2010) — The simple formula we've learned in recent years -- forests remove the greenhouse gas CO2 from the atmosphere; therefore forests prevent global warming -- may not be quite as simple as we thought. Forests can directly absorb and retain heat, and, in at least one type of forest, these effects may be strong enough to cancel out a good part of the benefit in lowered CO2. This is a conclusion of a paper that will be published on January 22, in Science by scientists in the Weizmann Institute's Faculty of Chemistry.

Read more ....