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Plant a tree.
by tdons 7y ago
Plant a tree.
- ur-whale 7y ago>Plant a tree. How does it compare to what they offer? (as in, metrics please).
- themagician 7y agoAbout half the mass of a tree is carbon. Seeds cost a couple cents. Plant a big tree (oak, let’s say) in an area where it’s unlikely to burn down and it’s probably good for 1000kg of carbon storage. Comes with a lot of other benefits too.
- Scarblac 7y agoWhat was the land used for before? It doesn't come for free.
- jamil7 7y agoThis is addressed on the website. I think at scale afforestation becomes a very risky prospect financially and requires a much larger amount of land putting biodiversity at risk and infringing on agriculture as apposed to the proposed CO2 remove technology. The cited paper for this on their website is unfortunately paywalled but I would be really interested in finding out more about this.
- themagician 7y agoBig brain time. Biodiversity isn’t at risk if you plant different kinds of trees in different places. You don’t need to build a massive forest in any given place. Simply rebuilding the forests we used to have would go a long way.
- jamil7 7y agoNo one is advocating for stopping conservation efforts or reforestation. But we will need a combination of solutions in order to reverse existing damage and meet targets.
- philshem 7y agoTrees that grow and die and decompose release their carbon back into the atmosphere. The only way to make tree-growing carbon negative* is to sequester the grown trees underground. *edited from “neutral”, sorry, typo
- raverbashing 7y agoIt takes years for a tree to grow and decades, possibly hundreds of years for a tree to decompose in its entirety through natural processes (that is, after possibly decades of life). It is a viable solution. Edit: if anyone disagrees look up about the Carboniferous period
- notabee 7y agoThe Carboniferous period stored that much carbon because the microbes at the time were unable to break down wood[1]. So yes, everyone should read about the Carboniferous period in detail to understand just how many millions of years of stored carbon in ancient plant material we're recklessly blowing out into the atmosphere all at once. 1. 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...
- raverbashing 7y agoYes, and trees still take a lot of time to decompose > The computer model calculates that the “residence times” (how long a tree will take to completely decompose) for conifer species range from 57 to 124 years, while hardwood species are typically around on the forest floor for 46 to 71 years (I'll stand corrected on the hundreds of years, but it's still a long time) https://northernwoodlands.org/knots_and_bolts/tree-falls-in-a-forest https://northernwoodlands.org/knots_and_bolts/tree-falls-in-...
- ehnto 7y agoWe use trees though. We build all kinds of things with them. Granted I would rather see native revegitation, often not great for building with depending on where you live. But given the circumstances and timescales involved, planting trees may give us some buffer time in the form of an initial dip in carbon.
- aresant 7y agoThey have a nice graph on this page describing the problematic nature of that comment: https://climeworks.shop/how-it-works/ https://climeworks.shop/how-it-works/ EG the land area + fresh water cost to support a similar revmoval of C02 through forestation is an untenable strategy
- tdons 7y agoI don't know man, the world is a big place and growing trees parallelizes nicely. Cut them down and make buildings out of them, land area problem solved. The fresh water cost I don't buy, there's rain man, it's free.
- graeme 7y agoWhat people miss is that we both cut down trees and burned buried carbon. To reverse global warming we need to reverse both.
- valw 7y agoBetter: protect a forest. Most solutions to climate change are subtractive, not additive.
- notabee 7y agoTrees require arable land. Trees require water and nutrients. Trees that aren't turned into treated lumber (to prevent decomposing) or buried return the carbon to the system when they die. Most interventions to plant them, water them, fertilize them, or store them at the end will use additional carbon-based energy and negate the benefit. They typically take 10 or 20 years to grow to consume the promised amount of carbon. Trees are great, but they will not solve the climate issue alone and the notion that they can needs to be put away so that we can plan realistically.