10 ms·
14M ton of carbon offset forest is burning in California
- RyJones 5y agoCarbon offsets were always a very lightly disguised scam. Who knew?
- mtnGoat 5y agoyea.. not a very good idea to invest in forests unless someone is going to actively log, graze or manage them, otherwise its just destined to burn and there goes your carbon. as we are learning now.
- mtnGoat 5y agoguess the downvotes are from folks that dont understand how forests work? :)
- user-the-name 5y agoMost forests do not burn.
- elihu 5y agoOver what timescale? Forest fires were a regular occurrence in North America before fire suppression was the standard policy. Now it looks like they're happening quite a bit despite that policy.
- user-the-name 5y agoPretty long time spans. There are a lot of forests where fires are not part of the life cycle.
- cmrdporcupine 5y agoLarge scale forest fires have never been a large part of the lifecycle of the moist northeast. That might change, but around the great lakes region at least our forest type is entirely different than the western half of the continent. Rain is fairly consistent here. The first nations did practice controlled burns for the sake of wildlife management (to increase open grazing land) for sure, and smaller scale forest fires did/do happen. But nothing like out west.
- mtnGoat 5y agoAgreed. The eastern forests don’t burn like the western ones do. I guess my original posts were more aimed at the western coniferous forests, which is what this is related to.
- nick__m 5y agoIs this northeast enough: https://vocm.com/2021/08/10/forest-fire-burning-east-of-churchill-falls-near-trans-labrador-highway/ https://vocm.com/2021/08/10/forest-fire-burning-east-of-chur... ? Forest fire are sufficiently cyclical that some trees, like the pitch pine, depends on them for the seeds to open.
- cmrdporcupine 5y agoThat's an entirely different biome, boreal/northern conifer forest on the Canadian shield. What does that have to do with the great lakes and atlantic northeast? Forest here is composed of oak beech maple and some white pine and rainfall is consistent.
- themaninthedark 5y agoOver the course of time, most forests do burn. Recently, there was a story about how when we keep the forests from burning we are causing major issues.
- user-the-name 5y agoSome. Not most.
- rahimiali 5y agoforests go in cycles. averaged over time, any given acre of forest contains some carbon.
- gruez 5y ago>otherwise its just destined to burn and there goes your carbon It depends on what you're comparing it against. A forest contains more biomass (and therefore more carbon) than a grass field or a corn field. If before tree planting a plot of land had 100 Tons of biomass, and after planting + growth it had 200 Tons, then you sequestered 100 tons of carbon. If it goes up in flames some of that biomass will get released, but it will eventually grow back, recapturing all the lost carbon. With that in mind, I don't see anything fraudulent about selling carbon offsets during the initial planting. Sure, it's not as good as burying carbon deep underground, but you're still sequestering carbon.
- mtnGoat 5y agoAgreed, but it’s only temporary because the tree will burn at some point releasing carbon dioxide. At least in any coniferous forest in the western half of North America. Don’t get me wrong, it’s much better than nothing. I just think they should probably pick locations that aren’t as prone to burning as the colville forests. So the carving stays locked a bit more long term.
- gruez 5y ago>I just think they should probably pick locations that aren’t as prone to burning as the colville forests. Or apply a discount factor. eg. for a simple model: if a forest has n Tons of sequestered carbon when fully grown, but every 40 years it gets burned bare for 4 years, then it's really only sequestering 0.9n tons of carbon over the long run. > So the carving stays locked a bit more long term. I think you got the adjectives flipped. If anything the sequester is long term, but there's cyclical short term release/recapture.
- ErikVandeWater 5y ago> If before tree planting a plot of land had 100 Tons of biomass, and after planting + growth it had 200 Tons, then you sequestered 100 tons of carbon. Trees are pure carbon?
- vegetablepotpie 5y agoYour comment does not give readers anything to learn or benefit from. If your goal is to broadcast to your political tribe on HN that you have the right beliefs, then good job, you’ve accomplished your goal sir. If you wanted to provide an insightful comment that promotes curiosity, then we’ll need a little bit more effort from you. What do you mean by “carbon offsets are a scam”? Does that mean that the way that some are implemented (I.e. the carbon credit system in California) are scam? Do you mean that the idea of them and any possible implementation is a scam? Do you mean that the issue that they are designed to counter (climate change) is a scam? What do you mean by your comment and why?
- tylerhou 5y agoSaying carbon credits are a scam is like saying phones are a scam — they both come in different qualities. (If one phone model’s battery explodes, do all phones explode?) There are various ways of offsetting emissions that aren’t vulnerable to leakage. For example, you can capture methane from landfills and burn it. Since methane is a much more potent greenhouse gas than CO2, burning it has a net greenhouse reduction. And there’s no chance of leakage — water, CO2 and oxygen aren’t going to spontaneously turn back into methane in the atmosphere. In addition, in some cases it’s more cost effective to make a mostly reliable system and correct errors than to build perfectly reliable systems. Would you rather plant 2M T of trees and have none burn down or 10M T and have 20% burn down?
- dang 5y agoPlease don't post shallow dismissals, especially on divisive topics. It's flamebait, and we're trying for curious conversation here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- mtnGoat 5y agothe tweet is about forests burning in washington state, not california. apparently they lease trees up here for carbon offset programs and its not gonna work out very well in the long term based on the fires lately. :x
- sp332 5y agoAlso, it's not 14M tons that are at risk of burning from this fire. 14M is the total from which a fraction will be lost. This project (according to other tweets in the thread) is only contributing 2% to a risk pool. What I'm interested in is, do they have time to make up the losses? If they re-plant, can they wait ~100 years before measuring how successful the project was?
- mtnGoat 5y agoi do not think so, here in washington Weyerhaeuser is selling off large sections of old logging land because the trees are growing much slower than they did historically at these locations, that coupled with increased fire risk, its easier to just divest. based on that, we cant use historical stats to project the success of the project. if you want cheap land, you can get a full 640 acre parcel(one square mile) for ~$500-600k, they even have roads on them.
- elihu 5y agoThat sounds awesome. I assume that's for plots of land that are a long ways from any other towns/cities. I kind of wish there was something like "Kickstarter for cities". Basically, you get a few thousand or more people to put down some amount of money that would collectively cover buying a few square miles of land and connecting it to roads and electrical and water infrastructure. Everyone gets a plot of land in the new city, and the development and funds are managed by a non-profit that eventually becomes the new city government once people start moving in and there's enough population to run elections. The non-profit/government retains unsold lots that are auctioned off to finance construction of schools, fire departments, police stations, additional roads, and so on. Ideally, you'd partner with one or more major employers and/or a University that wants to build a new campus so that people coming in have jobs. This is potentially a workaround to the problem of "there's only a few cities that everyone seems to want to move to, and those are getting really crowded and housing is unaffordable". We just need more nice places to live.
- pengaru 5y agoTerrestrial vegetation is part of the planet's natural carbon cycle, i.e. forest fires are normal, expected, and necessary. Unlike oil and coal which hasn't historically extracted itself from deep underground to combust in the atmosphere. It escapes me how anyone can consider it for long-term carbon storage/offsetting of excess atmospheric co2 derived from fossil fuels.
- guerrilla 5y ago> It escapes me how anyone can consider it for long-term carbon storage/offsetting of excess atmospheric co2 derived from fossil fuels. There's been a lot of talk about burying it as it matures. I have a question though. Why can't we compost it and make soil out of it? I gather that this would release some carbon back to the atmosphere (in both anaerobic and aerobic composting) but wouldn't it be a net capture?
- gruez 5y ago>I gather that this would release some carbon back to the atmosphere (in both anaerobic and aerobic composting) but wouldn't it be a net capture? You can sequester carbon with any kind of organic matter. As long as the compost product contains carbon, you'll be sequestering it. The only problem is that if you just leave it around, plants will eventually extract it for nutrients, which means it will reenter the carbon cycle. To sequester it long term you have to prevent it from being used by lifeforms, eg. burying it really deep.
- zumu 5y agoThe idea that we dug up a bunch of sequestered organic carbon and released it into the atmosphere, only to now try to re-sequester it and stick it back into the ground is really amusing to me.
- Retric 5y agoYes, it seems like a really dumb idea when we are also still extracting nearly pure carbon as coal from the ground to burn. I just picture someone trying to optimize it by buying coal to then burry.
- nashashmi 5y agoWe need to start thinning the forests of dead wood. And use it for fuel. Capitalize this and start saving forests. And create new trees. Imagine if all of those fury forests were to be converted to power
- hadlock 5y agoA lot of that dead wood is sitting on a hillside* with approximately 45 degree slope, more than 300 feet from the nearest fire/logging road. It's possible to harvest it, but the cost/reward ratio is not very good, and the wood is likely not high quality at this point. There's also just a tremendous amount of it. Not quite "boil the ocean" hard but walking in that direction. *Really rough, rugged mountainous terrain, that most ski resorts would love to have
- fasteddie31003 5y agoForests can be a carbon sink if managed properly. Lumber is a carbon sink. If you build a structure with lumber, you are locking that carbon up. Smoke from a wildfire is a carbon creator. The road to hell is paved with good intentions. Environmentalists preventing California forests becoming lumber are actually producing more CO2 in the atmosphere. I'm all for building more structures with lumber, locking carbon up.
- joe_the_user 5y ago(writing from Nevada City, between two major forest fires, btw) The California timber industry is dead. It's dead because global lumber demand is shrinking, the world lumber industry is competitive, California cut down the big trees a while back and because the exurbanites don't like trucks driving by their mansions. Lumber isn't a solution to fire because companies only want to cut the big tree that would survive the fires and aren't interested in the small, spindly trees and brush that are burning. Lumber isn't a solution to overall carbon capture because humans hold a fixed amount of wood at a time and cutting more trees in a given location isn't going change that amount. And fantasies that you can open the flood gates and restart logging are ridiculous and reprehensible imo. Stopping CO2 production global is really the only solution but biochar is the only meaningful carbon capture form if we need to go there also (this would reverse coal mining, essentially - that would capture the substance). California and the North West US have too much forest (of spindly trees and brush), that and global warming is why things are burning. California mountains would be a good site for biochar but this isn't going to be a profitable venture, the government will have to pay. The present mess really can only be solved by state intervention and the OP gives further evidence that "market based solutions" are a despicable sham.
- fasteddie31003 5y agoHave you heard of modern day engineered lumber that does not care about the size of the tree it comes form? Modern structures are built from glulams, osb and lvl beams which the size of the tree dose not matter.
- 5y ago
- joelbondurant 5y agoNevada should sue it's racist pedophile neighbor for toxic air pollution.
- john_moscow 5y agoThis is bound to happen as long as we keep practicing emotional approach to solving problems. The real scientific approach consists of breaking the problem down, quantifying different solutions, and prioritizing them based on cost, benefit and risk. But, unfortunately, present-day people don't want to do that. They want instant gratification. The feeling that they are doing something to address the problem, even if it makes no sense in the long term. And the politicians keep sell them that feeling at a cost of such fiascos.
- DeonPenny 5y agoThe forest is supposed to burn right. Thats the way the ecology of cali works right.
- dendrite9 5y agoThe title here is misleading. The trees in question are in Washington, but the credits are sold in California. From the link: "The Colville IFM project represents over 14M tons of carbon offsets, or ~6% of all credits in the CA compliance market."
- kart23 5y agoTime to start getting carbon offsets on kelp forests and phytoplankton :) no way for those to burn.