4 ms·

Yes, but to get a long term net effect we'd have to bury them about as deep as the fossils we are excavating. I dare claim that this won't happen (it would be f

by usrusr 6y ago

Yes, but to get a long term net effect we'd have to bury them about as deep as the fossils we are excavating. I dare claim that this won't happen (it would be far cheaper/more efficient to leave those fossils and synthesize something from those trees up here) Sometimes I wonder, as a mind experiment, how close we could get to practical carbon burial with a process based on sinking polymer blocks in the ocean: the specifics of the polymer blocks wouldn't matter at all as long as the surface doesn't degrade into spreading microplastics and total density would be high enough to sink, and they could be shaped like standard containers for easy logistics. The result of the mind experiment is always the same, even that could not possibly compete with leaving fossils underground.

TedDoesntTalk 6y ago
> to get a long term net effect we'd have to bury them about as deep as the fossils we are excavating. Why? What is wrong with capturing carbon the way trees naturally do? (Honest question)
- detritus 6y ago
  I think they mean 'after the tree has been cut down or otherwise reached the end of its life'.
- usrusr 6y ago
  Trees are part of a closed cycle: eventually they burn or are decomposed biologically (fungi and animals). As far as I know, all the high quality fossil reservoirs we excavate have been accumulated in an exceptional era when the biological defense mechanisms of trees happened to have so much of an upper hand over all potential decompositors that their corpses basically stayed around forever. Imagine a C heap when for a while free() is a noop... (it has been fixed for quite a while now). The closest thing we have today to those "eternal tree corpses" are peat bogs were decomposition is kind of broken even today (and guess who discovered that dried up peat can burn, even if it's a very dirty fire? Humans. We just love oxydating carbons).
gandalfian 6y ago
We could turn the trees into furniture and surupticiously spread them out in buildings around the world. Hey wait a minute?
- usrusr 6y ago
  So the missing link would be a second page in the manual where the reverse path from furniture back to flatpack is described? A nightmarish challenge, definitely makes me the Ikea manual guy with the questionmark, ready to phone into the help line.
fastball 6y ago
Fossil fuels are not the only thing we do that cannot be carbon neutral though, such as construction with cement. Additionally, carbon capture does not necessarily mean we are burning "fossil" fuels. Carbon capture could be using the Sabatier process to create methane from the CO2 in the air, which you then use to power rocketships/jets/etc, which we are still not very close to electrifying.

by usrusr 6y ago

TedDoesntTalk 6y ago

> to get a long term net effect we'd have to bury them about as deep as the fossils we are excavating. Why? What is wrong with capturing carbon the way trees naturally do? (Honest question)

detritus 6y ago
I think they mean 'after the tree has been cut down or otherwise reached the end of its life'.
usrusr 6y ago
Trees are part of a closed cycle: eventually they burn or are decomposed biologically (fungi and animals). As far as I know, all the high quality fossil reservoirs we excavate have been accumulated in an exceptional era when the biological defense mechanisms of trees happened to have so much of an upper hand over all potential decompositors that their corpses basically stayed around forever. Imagine a C heap when for a while free() is a noop... (it has been fixed for quite a while now). The closest thing we have today to those "eternal tree corpses" are peat bogs were decomposition is kind of broken even today (and guess who discovered that dried up peat can burn, even if it's a very dirty fire? Humans. We just love oxydating carbons).

gandalfian 6y ago

We could turn the trees into furniture and surupticiously spread them out in buildings around the world. Hey wait a minute?

usrusr 6y ago
So the missing link would be a second page in the manual where the reverse path from furniture back to flatpack is described? A nightmarish challenge, definitely makes me the Ikea manual guy with the questionmark, ready to phone into the help line.

fastball 6y ago

Fossil fuels are not the only thing we do that cannot be carbon neutral though, such as construction with cement. Additionally, carbon capture does not necessarily mean we are burning "fossil" fuels. Carbon capture could be using the Sabatier process to create methane from the CO2 in the air, which you then use to power rocketships/jets/etc, which we are still not very close to electrifying.