Climate change (a biologist friend insists this is a better usage than global warming) is the greatest challenge facing humanity today. There has been recent discussion of strategies to abate warming involving more than just reducing carbon dioxide emissions. One proposal has involved raising the Earth's albedo (reflectivity)so that more solar radiation is reflected back into space. (It was mentioned in the news last week but I can't find a cite.) This idea has some merit, since the reduced cover of ice and snow in the Artic has the effect of lowering reflection of solar energy.
However, I have another idea.
Permafrost is just what the name seems to imply, a region of the Artic where the ground is permanently frozen. The Permafrost line is the southern boundary of the Permafrost. Actually, there is permafrost south of this boundary. It actually represents where the permafrost becomes continuous.
One consequence of the warming of the Artic is the recession of the permafrost. The site:
http://bbs.keyhole.com/...
shows some spectacular images of permafrost erosion.
My suggestion would be to create crews to work along the receding edge of the permafrost. They would plant fast growing trees and shrubs in the areas that have thawed. This would be a labor intensive method of carbon sequestration. The weblog cited above contains an estimate that the permafrost is receding 20 meters (about 66 feet per year). Multiply that by the thousands of miles that the Permafrost line stretches across the Artic and you have a huge project that could soak up both carbon and excess labor.
The one disadvantage that I am aware of is that this would lower the albedo of the region during the summer, so more solar radiation would be absorbed.
Comments? Suggestions?