But it won't affect the warming levels of co2 this side of the industrial revolution.

Before we started burning fossil fuels, there was this thing called a carbon cycle. Carbon gets emitted by lifeforms, through various methods including decay, as well as by digestion/respiration. And that same exact carbon gets recollected by lifeforms, usually plants. Those plants were collectively eaten by animals, or decayed straightaway, and were the cyclical source of the carbon in the air, just as well as being the cyclical recovery system.

If we removed what you might call a carbon bank, such as a tropical forest, then we've disrupted that original carbon cycle (in addition to the harm from burning fossil fuels). If we put the forest back, it isn't undoing our industrial revolution. It's only returning a proper piece of that slightly older carbon cycle.