A dense forest is like a heart and lungs for the earth, it can purify the air and absorb a lot of carbon dioxide, some people may think, if only the earth was full of forests.

Is it true that more forests are better? As early as 306 million years ago, the Earth already gave the answer.

The "history" of the forest

Just like humans, forests did not arise out of thin air, but evolved from lower flora.

You know the universe was born among the Earth is bare, at the beginning, the Earth is an endless sea of hot fire, not even oxygen.

Then the Earth started from scratch, lost its "temper", and the environment became easier to live in, and the first plants began to appear.

One study found that the first plants on Earth appeared 400 to 500 million years ago during the Ordovician period, and in the beginning, they were moss-like plants that were attached to the surface of the Earth.

At that time, the Earth's environment was still poor, the atmosphere was not dense, and the solar radiation was too strong and not suitable for large plants.

These mosses are not afraid of high temperatures and do not need much water. They are extremely hardy and have been preserved in the evolution of the earth, becoming the ancestors of many plants.

One might wonder if it would be too absurd to think that the ancestors of the giant trees were actually moss-like plants.

You know that in the theory of evolution, the ancestors of human beings are still "fish", all animals come from single-celled organisms, moss-like plants ancestors how can not be the ancestors of the forest?

As the environment changed, these moss-like plants evolved, and multi-species genera of plants emerged, with some taller plants clustered together and gradually developed.

When time entered the Basin Mud Period, forests were slowly formed, and the Earth was full of light and a surprising amount of carbon dioxide, and the forests developed and grew.

The environmental conditions were so good that some ferns were able to grow to a height of several tens of meters, and the vegetation coverage reached more than ninety percent, making them the masters of the earth.

A catastrophe is coming

As the saying goes, the increase of forest in modern society and the emission of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, human beings always want to increase the forest area in large quantities.

It is undeniable that forests do absorb greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide and can clean up small amounts of pollution in the environment.

Forests are also an important natural resource for human beings, who can use them for various activities, and the trees in the forests are the raw material for many manufacturing industries.

But the problem arises if there are too many forests, which absorb a large amount of carbon dioxide, resulting in a rapid increase in the oxygen content of the air.

The increase in oxygen itself is not a bad thing, but the oxygen in the collision with the fire in the problem.

The Devonian period had such a high area of forest cover, which further enhanced the air quality and concentration at that time.

With the loss of time, the high concentration of oxygen laid the groundwork for the subsequent biological extinction.

You know, whether it is a thunderstorm, or the surface temperature is too high will have the risk of fire, when the biological extinction is in the middle of a fire.

Perhaps caused by lightning, the lightning that struck down exploded with tens of thousands of degrees of heat, instantly setting the surrounding forest trees on fire.

It is also possible that the weather was so hot that some trees spontaneously combusted in the midst of the extremely concentrated oxygen.

Whatever the reason, the fact that archaeologists have found traces of carbon in the fossils is indisputable and indicates a fire-induced biological mass extinction.

In that period, the sections of the continents had not yet undergone violent movements, and there was only a difference between a land and an ocean, and the creatures on land suffered unprecedented fires.

The whole earth is like a natural oxygen tank, the fire released carbon dioxide and other substances, quickly absorbed by the forest, and the newly exhaled oxygen to supply the burning trees.

The continuous fires kept spreading, with no trend of containment, because the forest covered an area that was just too large, a large area right next to each other, so that the fires had no tendency to stop.

The fire burned for a full thirty years, the fire will be nearly half of the Earth's species extinct, some creatures began to escape the land, into the ocean.

The fire also announced the end of the era of giant insects, the land above the ash, oxygen levels dropped sharply, more than three times lower than today.

Without a superior living environment, creatures whose food can not provide nutrition for the huge body size, in order to survive, certain creatures began to change genes, small-sized creatures began to appear.

The good thing is that the earth has its own regulating ability, after a period of time, it will enter a new epoch.

The root cause of this violent fire is the widespread forest.

Imagine if the forest covered a more appropriate area and each forest was spaced a certain distance apart, would this fire still have happened?

The answer is no. Therefore, more forests are not better, and history has given the answer.

In addition, there are many disadvantages to the unlimited increase in forest cover.

The disaster brought by the forest

First, forests bring high oxygen content, which will accelerate human metabolism and promote human aging.

Imagine living in a high-oxygen environment, a forty-year-old guy with gray hair and a stooped physique, simply unpleasant to look at.

In fact human ancestors also proved for future generations the fact that high oxygen accelerates aging, among the archaeological discovery of a group of ancient human fossils, found skeletal differences with the same period of human.

After the comparison found that this group of human life expectancy seems to be even shorter, for ancient humans, short life expectancy is not an uncommon thing, after all, a random beast in the wild can kill human life.

But from the point of view of natural death, the bodies of this group of ancient people did pass through three periods of human eventually natural death.

After a lot of data research, experts found that this group of ancient people lived in a wooded environment, and in the middle of the basin, the oxygen of the forest is difficult to be well distributed out, so it was hoarded in the interior.

These ancient people lived in a high oxygen environment, cells became active after full contact with oxygen, accelerating the body's metabolism, resulting in faster cell aging.

Of course, allowing the body cells to take in the right amount of oxygen will not cause the body to develop this problem, but will instead make the body fit.

Second, the Earth's temperature drops, the excess forest will quickly absorb carbon dioxide from the air for photosynthesis, and the temperature naturally drops after the greenhouse gases in the air are reduced.

Many people say that this is a good thing, in the era of greenhouse gas flooding, the Earth is long overdue for a drop in temperature.

If the right amount is naturally good, it is important to know that gases such as carbon dioxide are used to preserve the temperature of the earth, and if all of them are absorbed, the insulation effect of the atmosphere will become very weak.

It is possible for the Earth to have a situation where the temperature is as high as tens of degrees during the day, and at night the temperature instantly plunges to a few degrees below zero or even tens of degrees is possible.

During the cold winter months, the Earth becomes colder without the warming properties of greenhouse gases, and in the North and South Poles it can even be more than 100 degrees below zero.

The third is that the diversity of organisms will be changed as a result. Today's Earth has formed a complete set of ecological chain, no matter which link changes will affect the balance of the entire ecosystem.

With the endless increase in forest area, the habitat of large carnivores of the jungle species became more extensive, they had a larger area to find food, and their numbers increased dramatically in a short period of time.

This time some other desert and other species that have adapted to the drought will become extinct because they cannot adapt to the environment, and after a small number of adaptations survive and become completely new species.

Wild animals are beginning to crowd out the living space of human society, and within a decade or so, a conflict between humans and wildlife is bound to arise.

The loss of the city to survive, humans must adapt to the new environment, whether in the brand new environment, still dominant, or an uncertainty.

In short, the unlimited expansion of the forest area, in the short term does not find any problems, but in the long run is definitely a hundred disadvantages.