8 ms·

I do not have a complete well-sourced answer, but the common argument against your suggestion is that such a carbon sink would work for only a couple of decades

I do not have a complete well-sourced answer, but the common argument against your suggestion is that such a carbon sink would work for only a couple of decades until it reaches a steady state, and these couple of decades do not seem to be enough to make a dent. Also, it is difficult to plant trees in a desert. Also, algae blooms are dangerous for other life forms. However, there are some startups working with super-fast-growing (ugly) trees that are then used as construction material, which would be a longer-term-functioning sink. Not very clear whether that scales.

nostromo 5y ago
Productive forests in the US are a carbon sink. The trees grow. We cut them down. We make houses out of them, which are wrapped to prevent deterioration. The sunk carbon becomes our buildings. Other uses of the wood are also usually carbon sinks. Paper either gets recycled (the carbon is preserved) or it gets buried in a sealed landfill where is takes decades or longer to break down. It'd be cool to calculate how much carbon Weyerhaeuser sucks out of the atmosphere each year.
- soperj 5y ago
  Wouldn't it break down into methane instead though? I doubt that building buildings are carbon neutral, let alone a carbon sink.
  - krastanov 5y ago
    Dried up wooden building material is pretty stable and a fairly common (even commercialized) suggestion for a carbon sink. If you let it rot/burn, then no, it is not a carbon sink.
    - soperj 5y ago
      Sure, but the way we build buildings, there's no way that's actually the case. Transport alone to the sawmill, then the lumber yard, then the job site might actually release more carbon than the tree is storing. A 25 year old maple will sequester 400 pounds of co2 in it's lifetime. An average commuter car will emit that in 2 weeks. Hauling all that carbon out of the forest will likely emit far more than that.
      - cesarb 5y ago
        > Transport alone to the sawmill, then the lumber yard, then the job site might actually release more carbon than the tree is storing. If we're building the buildings anyway, we have to compare with alternative building materials. That is, how much more would transporting that lumber emit, compared to transporting for instance brick?
        Nydhal 5y ago
        It's not going to be "anyway". Once you add incentive for wood you will also create incentive for building. Complex systems 101.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
wyager 5y ago
All fossil fuels were eventually living biomass. I don’t see any reason we wouldn’t “resuscitate” that biomass back into living organisms. It would take a long time for the living biomass to be re-interred into fossil fuels.
prox 5y ago
Beyond carbon capture, trees cool an area, which is good in its own right.
- jazzyjackson 5y ago
  Yes, everyone here seems to think CO2 is the most important thing to reduce, but we're not suffering from CO2 (2*C never hurt anybody), we're suffering from increased weather volatility as the homeostatic influence of the biosphere has been destroyed, slash and burned for cow pasture, drained for corn and soy farms, overfished and trawled until nothing is left. But since CO2 is easier to measure than biomass and ecosystem complexity, everyone is focused on sucking carbon out of the air when we need to be restoring grasslands, forests, and coral reefs. Source: Charles Eisenstein's "Climate: A New Story"
  - blamestross 5y ago
    I'm scared of "climate change" not because of temperature rise, not because of dangerous weather, not even because of ocean acidification. We have practice in handling all those things. I'm scared of C02 directly. It sure as hell does hurt people, we are looking a 685 ppm in 2050[1], over 1000 ppm in 2100[2], spiraling worse than that for the next 5000 years. The problem is that c02 makes us dumber, even small amounts.[3] Carbon Sequestration technology, on a globally ubiquitous and household scale is an overriding priority simply because we might be too dumb to fix it later. If we don't head off this escalation of c02, we are looking at a 5000 year dark age from the cognitive results alone. [1]https://www.oecd.org/env/cc/Outlook%20to%202050_Climate%20Change%20Chapter_HIGLIGHTS-FINA-8pager-UPDATED%20NOV2012.pdf https://www.oecd.org/env/cc/Outlook%20to%202050_Climate%20Ch... [2]https://www.acer-acre.ca/resources/climate-change-in-context/introduction-2/global/scientific-projections/projections-for-carbon-dioxide https://www.acer-acre.ca/resources/climate-change-in-context... [3]https://www.businessinsider.com/carbon-dioxide-indoors-could-reduce-cognitive-abilities-2019-12 https://www.businessinsider.com/carbon-dioxide-indoors-could...
    - prox 5y ago
      What if we build co2 scrubbers in every home?

nostromo 5y ago

Productive forests in the US are a carbon sink. The trees grow. We cut them down. We make houses out of them, which are wrapped to prevent deterioration. The sunk carbon becomes our buildings. Other uses of the wood are also usually carbon sinks. Paper either gets recycled (the carbon is preserved) or it gets buried in a sealed landfill where is takes decades or longer to break down. It'd be cool to calculate how much carbon Weyerhaeuser sucks out of the atmosphere each year.

soperj 5y ago
Wouldn't it break down into methane instead though? I doubt that building buildings are carbon neutral, let alone a carbon sink.
- krastanov 5y ago
  Dried up wooden building material is pretty stable and a fairly common (even commercialized) suggestion for a carbon sink. If you let it rot/burn, then no, it is not a carbon sink.
  - soperj 5y ago
    Sure, but the way we build buildings, there's no way that's actually the case. Transport alone to the sawmill, then the lumber yard, then the job site might actually release more carbon than the tree is storing. A 25 year old maple will sequester 400 pounds of co2 in it's lifetime. An average commuter car will emit that in 2 weeks. Hauling all that carbon out of the forest will likely emit far more than that.
    - cesarb 5y ago
      > Transport alone to the sawmill, then the lumber yard, then the job site might actually release more carbon than the tree is storing. If we're building the buildings anyway, we have to compare with alternative building materials. That is, how much more would transporting that lumber emit, compared to transporting for instance brick?
      - Nydhal 5y ago
        It's not going to be "anyway". Once you add incentive for wood you will also create incentive for building. Complex systems 101.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]

wyager 5y ago

All fossil fuels were eventually living biomass. I don’t see any reason we wouldn’t “resuscitate” that biomass back into living organisms. It would take a long time for the living biomass to be re-interred into fossil fuels.

prox 5y ago

Beyond carbon capture, trees cool an area, which is good in its own right.

jazzyjackson 5y ago
Yes, everyone here seems to think CO2 is the most important thing to reduce, but we're not suffering from CO2 (2*C never hurt anybody), we're suffering from increased weather volatility as the homeostatic influence of the biosphere has been destroyed, slash and burned for cow pasture, drained for corn and soy farms, overfished and trawled until nothing is left. But since CO2 is easier to measure than biomass and ecosystem complexity, everyone is focused on sucking carbon out of the air when we need to be restoring grasslands, forests, and coral reefs. Source: Charles Eisenstein's "Climate: A New Story"
- blamestross 5y ago
  I'm scared of "climate change" not because of temperature rise, not because of dangerous weather, not even because of ocean acidification. We have practice in handling all those things. I'm scared of C02 directly. It sure as hell does hurt people, we are looking a 685 ppm in 2050[1], over 1000 ppm in 2100[2], spiraling worse than that for the next 5000 years. The problem is that c02 makes us dumber, even small amounts.[3] Carbon Sequestration technology, on a globally ubiquitous and household scale is an overriding priority simply because we might be too dumb to fix it later. If we don't head off this escalation of c02, we are looking at a 5000 year dark age from the cognitive results alone. [1]https://www.oecd.org/env/cc/Outlook%20to%202050_Climate%20Change%20Chapter_HIGLIGHTS-FINA-8pager-UPDATED%20NOV2012.pdf https://www.oecd.org/env/cc/Outlook%20to%202050_Climate%20Ch... [2]https://www.acer-acre.ca/resources/climate-change-in-context/introduction-2/global/scientific-projections/projections-for-carbon-dioxide https://www.acer-acre.ca/resources/climate-change-in-context... [3]https://www.businessinsider.com/carbon-dioxide-indoors-could-reduce-cognitive-abilities-2019-12 https://www.businessinsider.com/carbon-dioxide-indoors-could...
  - prox 5y ago
    What if we build co2 scrubbers in every home?