8 ms·
If the purpose is carbon sequestration, you'll have to include the cost of storing that wood. Indefinitely. Won't be cheap.
by ovi256 8y ago
If the purpose is carbon sequestration, you'll have to include the cost of storing that wood. Indefinitely. Won't be cheap.
- rbanffy 8y agoWe can bury it until it becomes oil again.
- torpfactory 8y agoDoesn’t a forest tie up the carbon in live trees? A mature forest will be more or less carbon neural but a certain amount of carbon won’t be available to the atmosphere.
- ForHackernews 8y agoThe trees will die eventually. The problem is that we've released a lot of CO2 from trees that died millions of years ago.[0] If you want to get that out of the atmosphere, it's not good enough to grow trees today because in 50-100 years (or whenever a tree dies) you're right back where we are today. [0] https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/phenomena/2016/01/07/the-fantastically-strange-origin-of-most-coal-on-earth/ https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/phenomena/2016/01...
- gascan 8y agoThe tree which dies is replaced by a new tree. You're right that we've added more carbon than can be stored in living forests. But reversing deforestation can & should be part of the solution.
- FartyMcFarter 8y agoYou'll also need to store it in a way that does not release the wood's CO2 back to the atmosphere by biodegradation.
- rbanffy 8y agoWood used in construction seems to degrade very slowly. I've lived in houses whose the floor alone was a couple hundred years old.
- Cthulhu_ 8y agoThat's in dry conditions though, it'd probably be gone by now if there wasn't a roof.
- discreteevent 8y agoScorched timber can last a hundred years. I have seen a cabin from 1740 made of timber from trees that were scorched in a forest fire but remained alive.
- mrob 8y agoIf you turn it into charcoal you keep most of the carbon locked up in a non-biodegradable form.
- barry-cotter 8y agoAnd you can add it to soil where it works wonderfully at increasing biomass, reducing water runoff and increasing the number and variety of microorganisms in the soil, sequestering more carbon. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terra_preta http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terra_preta
- black6 8y agoIf you use it to build homes you provide shelter for more people.
- taejo 8y agoBuilding houses is great, but if you're growing the trees in order to sequestrate carbon, you'd better be reasonably sure a decent proportion of the wood doesn't release it's carbon within the next fifty years. I don't live in a country where wood is a major building material, but I'm imagining that most wood that goes into building gets discarded within a few decades and ends up decomposing or being burnt.
- bastawhiz 8y agoYou could sell it, maybe trick people into doing stuff with it, like making buildings or durable goods.
- Already__Taken 8y agoThis was interesting: https://www.ted.com/talks/michael_green_why_we_should_build_wooden_skyscrapers?language=en https://www.ted.com/talks/michael_green_why_we_should_build_...
- johncole 8y agoBest comment I have read all day.
- swongel 8y agoBurn them for their energy and keep more coal in the ground seems like a good first step.
- chii 8y agobut wood burns so much more dirtier than coal, and leaves much more uncombusted remains that then have to clean. The problem is energy (or lack thereof) - and so why not solve it directly by adding ever larger sources of renewables, which eventually will becomes enough that there's no need to burn any fossil fuels!
- Cthulhu_ 8y agoIs that so? Even when ground fine and with enough oxygen? For local heating, I heard good things about the efficiency and cleanliness of wood pellet heaters.
- DanBC 8y agoDid you hear those things from either people trying to sell you a wood pellet burner, or people who've just spent a lot of money money on a wood pellet burner?
- topkai22 8y agoPersonal anecdote- i bought a house with a wood pellet stove as a primary heat source. There was smoke damage to the paint everywhere.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]