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Nature already has powerful carbon-removing technology, it's called a tree. Why reinvent the wheel? Simply fund reforestation efforts. Plus many wildlife specie

Nature already has powerful carbon-removing technology, it's called a tree. Why reinvent the wheel? Simply fund reforestation efforts. Plus many wildlife species will be saved from extinction. For example, orangutans in forests of Borneo island. EDIT And besides, humans will survive climate change, we are 7.8 billion. But we made 1000s of species go extinct. So I say carbon capture is the wrong problem to solve.

bpicolo 6y ago
This is exactly the sort of effort that this revenue redirection goes to. You can see their applicants: https://github.com/stripe/negative-emissions-source-materials/tree/master/Project%20Applications https://github.com/stripe/negative-emissions-source-material... Droneseed, for example, is directly applicable
JumpCrisscross 6y ago
> Nature already has powerful carbon-removing technology, it's called a tree. Why reinvent the wheel? Trees haven’t been carbon sinks for hundreds of millions of years [1]. They absorb carbon while growing, but release it in decay. Short of planting and burying gigatonnes of forest, trees aren’t going to be our way out of this. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carboniferous https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carboniferous
- 908B64B197 6y ago
  What about trees used as building material?
  - FooHentai 6y ago
    Extends the period during which some carbon is sequestered but still ultimately returns to the atmosphere - Typical wood building construction periods are in the order of 50 years expected lifespan. That's with treated woods too, which introduce issues with environmental contamination from their treatment methods. Untreated lumber construction is more in the order of 10 years useful building life and another 10 years (guesstimate) breakdown period.
- 15243user 6y ago
  > They absorb carbon while growing, but release it in decay Can you backup this claim? I haven't been able to find anything conclusive. This is the furthest I've gone: https://earthscience.stackexchange.com/questions/9089/does-organic-decay-release-the-same-co2-as-burning https://earthscience.stackexchange.com/questions/9089/does-o... https://www.gardenmyths.com/forests-remove-co2/ https://www.gardenmyths.com/forests-remove-co2/ Have there been any reputable studies on the subject? Is this the consensus?
DennisP 6y ago
The problem is scale. Doing a lot of carbon capture with trees doesn't mean you're growing a nice biodiverse forests, it means you're growing vast tree plantations that you periodically chop down and sequester, e.g. with biochar. A while back I saw a paper in Nature claiming that we could use trees to absorb up to 1 gigaton carbon annually, but more than that and we'd seriously impact biodiversity. There are probably other estimates around, but regardless of the exact threshold, it wouldn't be a bad thing to have technology able to do the same thing with a thousand times less land area. Then we can let the forests grow undisturbed. To your edit: climate change itself is making species go extinct, so it's not like we can solve the extinction problem without addressing climate change too.

bpicolo 6y ago

This is exactly the sort of effort that this revenue redirection goes to. You can see their applicants: https://github.com/stripe/negative-emissions-source-materials/tree/master/Project%20Applications https://github.com/stripe/negative-emissions-source-material... Droneseed, for example, is directly applicable

JumpCrisscross 6y ago

> Nature already has powerful carbon-removing technology, it's called a tree. Why reinvent the wheel? Trees haven’t been carbon sinks for hundreds of millions of years [1]. They absorb carbon while growing, but release it in decay. Short of planting and burying gigatonnes of forest, trees aren’t going to be our way out of this. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carboniferous https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carboniferous

908B64B197 6y ago
What about trees used as building material?
- FooHentai 6y ago
  Extends the period during which some carbon is sequestered but still ultimately returns to the atmosphere - Typical wood building construction periods are in the order of 50 years expected lifespan. That's with treated woods too, which introduce issues with environmental contamination from their treatment methods. Untreated lumber construction is more in the order of 10 years useful building life and another 10 years (guesstimate) breakdown period.
15243user 6y ago
> They absorb carbon while growing, but release it in decay Can you backup this claim? I haven't been able to find anything conclusive. This is the furthest I've gone: https://earthscience.stackexchange.com/questions/9089/does-organic-decay-release-the-same-co2-as-burning https://earthscience.stackexchange.com/questions/9089/does-o... https://www.gardenmyths.com/forests-remove-co2/ https://www.gardenmyths.com/forests-remove-co2/ Have there been any reputable studies on the subject? Is this the consensus?

DennisP 6y ago

The problem is scale. Doing a lot of carbon capture with trees doesn't mean you're growing a nice biodiverse forests, it means you're growing vast tree plantations that you periodically chop down and sequester, e.g. with biochar. A while back I saw a paper in Nature claiming that we could use trees to absorb up to 1 gigaton carbon annually, but more than that and we'd seriously impact biodiversity. There are probably other estimates around, but regardless of the exact threshold, it wouldn't be a bad thing to have technology able to do the same thing with a thousand times less land area. Then we can let the forests grow undisturbed. To your edit: climate change itself is making species go extinct, so it's not like we can solve the extinction problem without addressing climate change too.