Decades of satellite imagery and inventories of the world’s forests have painted portraits of change, the result of human activity in very recent times. Yet the trees and forests captured by any modern technology or on-the-ground efforts are only momentary snapshots of the Earth’s deep history. The fossils and petrified pockets of plant matter reveal the stories of life long ago. The past still shapes the present and future too. If any period has drawn the most widespread intrigue (apart from the Jurassic, that is, as everyone loves dinosaurs), it is the Carboniferous, which began more than 350 million years ago. Its miry forests, primitive, lizard-like reptiles, amphibians with massive skulls, and dragonflies with meter-wide wing spans capture the imaginations of children and adults alike. Oxygen levels were much higher than they are today, maybe also partially explaining the jumbo size of creepy-crawly insects back then. The curious plant life had a high rate of turnover, meaning vegetative communities changed in waves as new members emerged and others disappeared. Paleobotanists, who study the evolution of plants, continue to debate the details. But I look back to that period as proof positive that trees can sequester emitted carbon, given that trees were the source of coal. What happened millions of years ago unexpectedly set the stage for the warming world that we face today. What happened millions of years ago unexpectedly set the stage for the warming world that we face today. From the Latin carbo (“coal”) and fero (“to bear” or “to carry”) we get carboniferous , or “carbon-bearing.” The trees of these lost forests and a collision of many factors over millions of years gave this age its greatness. What we think of today as the green above became the coal deep below, to be discovered much later, […]