5 ms·

Adding 1B hectares of forest could help check global warming

30 points by tsar_nikolai 7y ago

neals 7y ago
So does anybody here know how to make a 2%+ revenue from running a forest?
- geogra4 7y ago
  would be possible with a global cap/trade system with real enforcement mechanisms
- toomuchtodo 7y ago
  https://www.afforestt.com https://www.afforestt.com
- anon1m0us 7y ago
  Ziplines? Tree houses? Truffles? Exotic Mushrooms? Hunting? Exotic woods? Food Forests?
- jefft255 7y ago
  Sustainable forestry practices (selective thinning and cutting)?
- lazyjones 7y ago
  Apparently you can get "Gold Standard Land Use and Forests" certification for your forest and sell carbon credits for $18 USD/tonne or so to polluters. https://www.goldstandard.org/luf https://www.goldstandard.org/luf Here they calculate carbon benefit for 7500 hectares in Cameroon, which appears to be ~3 million tonnes annually: https://www.cifor.org/fctoolbox/download/Topic-4-Section-D.pdf https://www.cifor.org/fctoolbox/download/Topic-4-Section-D.p... ($7200/hectare annually seems like a lot of money to me...)
  - edf13 7y ago
    Seems good until Carbon Credits are pulled or altered at some point in the near future due to abuse
- bparsons 7y ago
  Sustainable forestry is not a particularly complicated business, and if you are selling the wood for buildings etc. the carbon is not released back into the atmosphere for quite some time. A lot of jurisdictions are looking at updating building codes so you can use treated wood for larger construction projects. If this was done in a number of large markets, it could reduce demand for concrete, which is the number two contributor to GHG emissions. UBC completed a wooden 18 story apartment building a couple years ago. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G22kYhaT-h4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G22kYhaT-h4
- biql 7y ago
  Forest bathing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forest_bathing?oldid=487393303 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forest_bathing?oldid=487393303
boxcardavin 7y ago
I've done this math before and it's not encouraging. Global carbon fuel burning is more than two cubic miles annually. A billion trees will capture about a trillion kgs of carbon over 10-20 years, but yearly we're burning about 4 trillion kgs of just crude oil.
- ssijak 7y ago
  1B hectares od trees is much different than 1B trees
  - goatlover 7y ago
    Up to 2500 hundred trees can be planted in a hectare. Which is over a trillion trees. I think that coincides with an article on planting a few trillion trees to offset climate change.
    - geogra4 7y ago
      Each human being on this planet just needs to plant about 140 trees - to give a sense of the scale of this number
      - etrautmann 7y ago
        On face value that sounds absurd, though in reality seed distribution may be automated and scaled in a feasible manner. Certainly the number of corn plans planted in the US alone must be an astonishing number if calculated per capita.
- tsar_nikolai 7y ago
  1B hectares of trees supports approx. 1T trees. As with everything, it will not be the solution to climate change and has to live alongside other measures. But it is one of the cheapest (in terms of money) and least radical (in terms of lifestyle adaption) measures we can take for the effect it will have. This study shows that the earth has enough space. It will require a shift in priority for many governments (e.g. Brasil) though.
sampo 7y ago
Some scientists are criticizing that the authors have maybe 2× overestimated. https://twitter.com/SimonLLewis/status/1147114505949855744 https://twitter.com/SimonLLewis/status/1147114505949855744 https://twitter.com/pepcanadell/status/1147066574299377664 https://twitter.com/pepcanadell/status/1147066574299377664
- tsar_nikolai 7y ago
  Interesting! What's interesting to me as well, is that despite their criticism, both scientists do seem to support the opinion that it is an extremely important measure to add to our portfolio of climate measures.
ishtanbul 7y ago
one important aspect in this is that forests have lower albedo than grassland. This means they absorb more solar radiation. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-00122-z https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-00122-z
ars 7y ago
You can take this a step further and just cut down trees, bury them in the ground and let new trees grow. Do your part, and don't recycle paper, instead make sure to bury it. (I'm only sort of kidding.)
- manifestsilence 7y ago
  That's an important point - where those trees go when they die is part of the puzzle. Systems thinking is important. When a tree decays, I wonder how much carbon goes into the soil vs. into the air. What about when a forest fire goes through? More frequent controlled burns help prevent catastrophic forest fires, but do they cause a smaller or larger overall co2 release? On the one hand, a firestorm causes entire trees to explode that would otherwise survive with little damage. On the other hand, frequent burns might burn material that would otherwise decay into soil...
  - etrautmann 7y ago
    The form of carbon is also important - if methane is produced during decomposition it is much worse as a greenhouse gas than CO2
- MertsA 7y ago
  Any paper in a landfill is going to decompose back into CO2. You'd be better off recycling it and reducing demand for lumber.
ajharrison 7y ago
Ending the factory farming animal agriculture industry is the only long term solution.
- etrautmann 7y ago
  This may be one component, but certainly not sufficient
hirundo 7y ago
I just heard Paul Stamets say that soil is around 30% fungal mass, dead and alive, and that makes fungus the greatest repository of carbon in the biosphere. So to sequester a maximum amount of carbon maybe we should be optimizing for fungus rather than trees. Is a forest the best way to do that? Trees do have a lot of surface area for fungal growth. If so maybe we should be selecting kinds of trees to plant based on their fungal friendliness.
- tsar_nikolai 7y ago
  forests are known to support huge fungal networks https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mycorrhizal_network https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mycorrhizal_network
- manifestsilence 7y ago
  That makes me think prairie may compete well with forests in effectiveness. Many prairie plants have 10' roots or more, and the root systems are dense. Over time they do quite a bit for the soil and sequester a lot of biomass.
dang 7y ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20360513 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20360513 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20356859 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20356859

30 points by tsar_nikolai 7y ago

neals 7y ago

So does anybody here know how to make a 2%+ revenue from running a forest?

geogra4 7y ago
would be possible with a global cap/trade system with real enforcement mechanisms
toomuchtodo 7y ago
https://www.afforestt.com https://www.afforestt.com
anon1m0us 7y ago
Ziplines? Tree houses? Truffles? Exotic Mushrooms? Hunting? Exotic woods? Food Forests?
jefft255 7y ago
Sustainable forestry practices (selective thinning and cutting)?
lazyjones 7y ago
Apparently you can get "Gold Standard Land Use and Forests" certification for your forest and sell carbon credits for $18 USD/tonne or so to polluters. https://www.goldstandard.org/luf https://www.goldstandard.org/luf Here they calculate carbon benefit for 7500 hectares in Cameroon, which appears to be ~3 million tonnes annually: https://www.cifor.org/fctoolbox/download/Topic-4-Section-D.pdf https://www.cifor.org/fctoolbox/download/Topic-4-Section-D.p... ($7200/hectare annually seems like a lot of money to me...)
- edf13 7y ago
  Seems good until Carbon Credits are pulled or altered at some point in the near future due to abuse
bparsons 7y ago
Sustainable forestry is not a particularly complicated business, and if you are selling the wood for buildings etc. the carbon is not released back into the atmosphere for quite some time. A lot of jurisdictions are looking at updating building codes so you can use treated wood for larger construction projects. If this was done in a number of large markets, it could reduce demand for concrete, which is the number two contributor to GHG emissions. UBC completed a wooden 18 story apartment building a couple years ago. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G22kYhaT-h4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G22kYhaT-h4
biql 7y ago
Forest bathing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forest_bathing?oldid=487393303 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forest_bathing?oldid=487393303

boxcardavin 7y ago

I've done this math before and it's not encouraging. Global carbon fuel burning is more than two cubic miles annually. A billion trees will capture about a trillion kgs of carbon over 10-20 years, but yearly we're burning about 4 trillion kgs of just crude oil.

ssijak 7y ago
1B hectares od trees is much different than 1B trees
- goatlover 7y ago
  Up to 2500 hundred trees can be planted in a hectare. Which is over a trillion trees. I think that coincides with an article on planting a few trillion trees to offset climate change.
  - geogra4 7y ago
    Each human being on this planet just needs to plant about 140 trees - to give a sense of the scale of this number
    - etrautmann 7y ago
      On face value that sounds absurd, though in reality seed distribution may be automated and scaled in a feasible manner. Certainly the number of corn plans planted in the US alone must be an astonishing number if calculated per capita.
tsar_nikolai 7y ago
1B hectares of trees supports approx. 1T trees. As with everything, it will not be the solution to climate change and has to live alongside other measures. But it is one of the cheapest (in terms of money) and least radical (in terms of lifestyle adaption) measures we can take for the effect it will have. This study shows that the earth has enough space. It will require a shift in priority for many governments (e.g. Brasil) though.

sampo 7y ago

Some scientists are criticizing that the authors have maybe 2× overestimated. https://twitter.com/SimonLLewis/status/1147114505949855744 https://twitter.com/SimonLLewis/status/1147114505949855744 https://twitter.com/pepcanadell/status/1147066574299377664 https://twitter.com/pepcanadell/status/1147066574299377664

tsar_nikolai 7y ago
Interesting! What's interesting to me as well, is that despite their criticism, both scientists do seem to support the opinion that it is an extremely important measure to add to our portfolio of climate measures.

ishtanbul 7y ago

one important aspect in this is that forests have lower albedo than grassland. This means they absorb more solar radiation. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-00122-z https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-00122-z

ars 7y ago

You can take this a step further and just cut down trees, bury them in the ground and let new trees grow. Do your part, and don't recycle paper, instead make sure to bury it. (I'm only sort of kidding.)

manifestsilence 7y ago
That's an important point - where those trees go when they die is part of the puzzle. Systems thinking is important. When a tree decays, I wonder how much carbon goes into the soil vs. into the air. What about when a forest fire goes through? More frequent controlled burns help prevent catastrophic forest fires, but do they cause a smaller or larger overall co2 release? On the one hand, a firestorm causes entire trees to explode that would otherwise survive with little damage. On the other hand, frequent burns might burn material that would otherwise decay into soil...
- etrautmann 7y ago
  The form of carbon is also important - if methane is produced during decomposition it is much worse as a greenhouse gas than CO2
MertsA 7y ago
Any paper in a landfill is going to decompose back into CO2. You'd be better off recycling it and reducing demand for lumber.

ajharrison 7y ago

Ending the factory farming animal agriculture industry is the only long term solution.

etrautmann 7y ago
This may be one component, but certainly not sufficient

hirundo 7y ago

I just heard Paul Stamets say that soil is around 30% fungal mass, dead and alive, and that makes fungus the greatest repository of carbon in the biosphere. So to sequester a maximum amount of carbon maybe we should be optimizing for fungus rather than trees. Is a forest the best way to do that? Trees do have a lot of surface area for fungal growth. If so maybe we should be selecting kinds of trees to plant based on their fungal friendliness.

tsar_nikolai 7y ago
forests are known to support huge fungal networks https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mycorrhizal_network https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mycorrhizal_network
manifestsilence 7y ago
That makes me think prairie may compete well with forests in effectiveness. Many prairie plants have 10' roots or more, and the root systems are dense. Over time they do quite a bit for the soil and sequester a lot of biomass.

dang 7y ago

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20360513 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20360513 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20356859 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20356859