Wanted: Forests to counter global warming

Sounds nice in theory. But the couple of decades it would take to get a forest underway if it were planted RIGHT NOW wouldn't be of any good as it's going to take MUCH more than that RIGHT NOW. It's here and I'm afraid there's no reversing it.

I think that forests are important and they do help to control the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. However, before we foolishly start throwing money around in an attempt to solve perceived problems we should first make sure that we identify the problem correctly. Global warming is probably real and is probably occuring now. However, the existance of global warming is not the same as humans being responsible for it. How exactly are we to go about paying third world nations to stop cutting down their trees? They usually cut down trees to clear land to grow food which they need or to use for firewood to heat their homes and cook their food. Rather than giving money to third world government bureaucrats (who live in cities with stores and heat provided by more efficient forms of energy like oil) why don't we encourage economic progress in the third world. As the economy expands and the people get wealthier they no longer have to resort to cutting trees for firewood and have more efficient ways of growning food. Look at the U.S. we now have more trees than we did when Columbus discovered the New World. Here is an article on the tree situation in the U.S. http://tinyurl.com/2wfmgp . While we are on the subject of the discovery of the New World there is evidence that climate is subject to long cycles and what we may be currently seeing in terms of global warming is simply a cyclical change in climate. There is evidence that our current climate is the result of changes that occured about 1,000 years ago when the earth cooled to its present temperature from a warmer (and survivable as evidenced by the fact that people had been living on earth many years prior to the year 1,000 A.D.) climate. Here is a link to an article on Lief Errickson, http://tinyurl.com/yuwo6j , which suggests that global cooling in the years around 1,000 A.D. forced the Vikings to give up their colonies in North America as well as Greenland as the cooler climate killed the trees in Greenland and made transportation between North America and Greenland more dangerous due to increase ice flows.