4 ms·

I don't see how this could work. You need a place to plant all of those trees and let them grow and then store them so that they don't decompose and release CO

by amock 10y ago

I don't see how this could work. You need a place to plant all of those trees and let them grow and then store them so that they don't decompose and release CO2 back into the atmosphere. That's a lot of land and it seems like if you continually harvest trees without letting them decompose you'll need to fertilize the land to keep the trees growing well.

thatcat 10y ago
You can convert the trees to biochar, then a large percentage won't decompose. You don't need to fertilize trees because they get their nutrients from microbial life[0], which is increased by fertilization with biochar. [0] elane ingham, food web talk - https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=x2H60ritjag https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=x2H60ritjag
- amock 10y ago
  Microbial life has to get the nutrients from somewhere, so you do need fertilizer and the biochar is the fertilizer. It's not impossible to sequester carbon this way, it's just that it seems like it's going to cost significantly more than $15/person/year.
  - thatcat 10y ago
    The soil has unavailable nutrients in large supplies that get converted by microbes. The biochar is technically inert and doesn't get absorbed, it stimulates microbial life because it has massive amounts of surface area. It's not technically necessary.
ph0rque 10y ago
My calculations assume a tree will sequester the carbon for 10 years. I'm sure we can do a lot better than that, but even with these assumptions, it's pretty cheap to sequester the CO2 on an ongoing basis.
- abraae 10y ago
  Timber buildings.
  - ph0rque 10y ago
    Yes, and also food (fruits, leaves, etc), medicine, wooden furniture, clothes (http://www.treehugger.com/clean-technology/will-your-next-t-shirt-be-made-from-trees.html http://www.treehugger.com/clean-technology/will-your-next-t-...), and many other items.
- Tannic 10y ago
  A great deal of carbon is stored not just in trees themselves, but in the humus/soil that develops in thriving ecosystems. What we need is not just trees, but diverse ecosystems, which means wild land. The topsoil in America before man was by some accounts in the hundreds of feet thick.
ph0rque 10y ago
As far as your other concerns, they become a problem at scale. Which is what startups are all about solving, right?
- amock 10y ago
  I don't see how startups would help this, but this only becomes useful at scale so if it doesn't scale it's not useful. If we had unlimited land to grow things on we would have far fewer problems to begin with, but land is rapidly being cleared of trees for farming. Since we're already decreasing the amount of land we use to grow trees, we could just stop doing that instead.
  - ph0rque 10y ago
    I was merely pointing out that startups are good at solving problems that arise from taking products to scale. The organization I linked to helps families grow food forests, so they both farm and plant trees on a given piece of land.

by amock 10y ago

thatcat 10y ago

You can convert the trees to biochar, then a large percentage won't decompose. You don't need to fertilize trees because they get their nutrients from microbial life[0], which is increased by fertilization with biochar. [0] elane ingham, food web talk - https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=x2H60ritjag https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=x2H60ritjag

amock 10y ago
Microbial life has to get the nutrients from somewhere, so you do need fertilizer and the biochar is the fertilizer. It's not impossible to sequester carbon this way, it's just that it seems like it's going to cost significantly more than $15/person/year.
- thatcat 10y ago
  The soil has unavailable nutrients in large supplies that get converted by microbes. The biochar is technically inert and doesn't get absorbed, it stimulates microbial life because it has massive amounts of surface area. It's not technically necessary.

ph0rque 10y ago

My calculations assume a tree will sequester the carbon for 10 years. I'm sure we can do a lot better than that, but even with these assumptions, it's pretty cheap to sequester the CO2 on an ongoing basis.

abraae 10y ago
Timber buildings.
- ph0rque 10y ago
  Yes, and also food (fruits, leaves, etc), medicine, wooden furniture, clothes (http://www.treehugger.com/clean-technology/will-your-next-t-shirt-be-made-from-trees.html http://www.treehugger.com/clean-technology/will-your-next-t-...), and many other items.
Tannic 10y ago
A great deal of carbon is stored not just in trees themselves, but in the humus/soil that develops in thriving ecosystems. What we need is not just trees, but diverse ecosystems, which means wild land. The topsoil in America before man was by some accounts in the hundreds of feet thick.

ph0rque 10y ago

As far as your other concerns, they become a problem at scale. Which is what startups are all about solving, right?

amock 10y ago
I don't see how startups would help this, but this only becomes useful at scale so if it doesn't scale it's not useful. If we had unlimited land to grow things on we would have far fewer problems to begin with, but land is rapidly being cleared of trees for farming. Since we're already decreasing the amount of land we use to grow trees, we could just stop doing that instead.
- ph0rque 10y ago
  I was merely pointing out that startups are good at solving problems that arise from taking products to scale. The organization I linked to helps families grow food forests, so they both farm and plant trees on a given piece of land.