Bury the trees--and C[O.sub.2]--in the ground.

• Position: Carbon Mitigation

Of the current global environmental problems, the excessive release of carbon dioxide from the combustion of fossil fuels (and the related global warming) is among the most pressing, maintain a number of scientists. Proposing a new approach to an old solution concerning this dilemma are Fritz Scholz and Urich Hesse from the University of Greifswald, Germany, who say that deliberately planted forests--once they bind C[O.sub.2] through photosynthesis--should be removed from the global carbon cycle by burial.

Whereas other environmental difficulties can, at least in principle, be solved by the appropriate modern technology, "there are no realistic solutions for the C[O.sub.2] problem," contends Scholz. At present, 32 gigatons of carbon dioxide are released into the atmosphere every year. Previous proposals to pump this greenhouse gas into the oceans are not practical--or are ecologically problematic. The only way to bind sufficiently large quantities of C[O.sub.2] from the atmosphere is photosynthesis. However, the resulting biomass cannot be burned or composted, because that would release the bound...