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Right, but if the point of planting the trees is carbon amelioration, than carbon neutral would somewhat defeat the point. I've seen this argument before, and

Right, but if the point of planting the trees is carbon amelioration, than carbon neutral would somewhat defeat the point. I've seen this argument before, and I think the real place it falls down is that there just isn't that much space. For mature growth forest, you have something like 40-ish big hardwood trees per acre [1]. Those are, to my understanding, the only ones that are really relevant because they make up most of the biomass. Other types of trees are just a rounding error. `1.2e12 / 40 acres -> square miles` (frink) is 4.7e7 square miles. That is more than the whole land area of Earth [2]. There is certainly not enough land that would support mature forests available to plant so many trees, unless I have made a serious calculation error. [1]: http://www.sbcounty.gov/calmast/sbc/html/healthy_forest.asp http://www.sbcounty.gov/calmast/sbc/html/healthy_forest.asp [2]: https://hypertextbook.com/facts/2001/DanielChen.shtml https://hypertextbook.com/facts/2001/DanielChen.shtml

hannasanarion 8y ago
That only holds true if you assume that every tree ever planted burns down within ten years. Many, possibly even most, of them will be harvested for wood, becoming a permanent carbon sink, or will be left alone to grow to maturity.
- asdfasgasdgasdg 8y ago
  That in turn only works if you assume that wood never rots, burns, etc. I don't have any solid information on the annual growth in processed wood in existence, but I suspect that, to the extent it is increasing, this will gradually taper off as population growth slows. Now if you're saying we could bury the wood somewhere where it won't rot, well enough. That does seem feasible. But normally when I read stuff like this, people think just planting and leaving the trees will be sufficient. And it won't. At any rate, if that's what the research is getting at, they probably need to title it differently, or explain early on that merely planting the trees is a necessary but not sufficient condition to achieve the wins they envision.

hannasanarion 8y ago

That only holds true if you assume that every tree ever planted burns down within ten years. Many, possibly even most, of them will be harvested for wood, becoming a permanent carbon sink, or will be left alone to grow to maturity.

asdfasgasdgasdg 8y ago
That in turn only works if you assume that wood never rots, burns, etc. I don't have any solid information on the annual growth in processed wood in existence, but I suspect that, to the extent it is increasing, this will gradually taper off as population growth slows. Now if you're saying we could bury the wood somewhere where it won't rot, well enough. That does seem feasible. But normally when I read stuff like this, people think just planting and leaving the trees will be sufficient. And it won't. At any rate, if that's what the research is getting at, they probably need to title it differently, or explain early on that merely planting the trees is a necessary but not sufficient condition to achieve the wins they envision.