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I see an even more fundamental problem: we have taken carbon that was sequestered underground over a period of hundreds of millions of years and released it int
by lisper 5y ago
I see an even more fundamental problem: we have taken carbon that was sequestered underground over a period of hundreds of millions of years and released it into the atomsphere in a period of a few hundred years. That genie will not go easily back in its bottle. Even if we could turn all that carbon into wood, it's still above the surface in close contact with oxygen. So not only do we have to grow all that wood, we have to keep it around, i.e. we have to keep it from burning. Forever. As a resident of California, I'm not sanguine about our prospects in this regard.
- svnt 5y agoYeah but just think, it can be laced with heavy metals when it burns! Also it can be impossible to process in sawmills because of the dust, and it will chew through sawblades like no wood you’ve ever seen before!
- tinco 5y agoSo it's basically perfect.
- cheschire 5y agoSend it to the moon, use it to build lunar airbnb log cabins. /s
- kube-system 5y agoYou only have to grow more than you burn, to be carbon negative. The entire world is not dry like southern CA.
- lisper 5y agoYes, that's obviously true, but it's not so simple. You still have to put all the wood somewhere. The more you have, the harder it will be to find places to store it. The more concentrated the storage, the larger the resulting fires will be when they do inevitably start. Remember, we have to sequester this carbon forever. It's a harder problem even than storing nuclear waste. At least that only needs to be stored for a few tens of thousands of years, and there is a lot less of it.
- robbomacrae 5y agoIs storing wood really more difficult than nuclear waste? The Endurance was pretty well preserved after 100 years and was never at risk of burning up. Perhaps we can build a carbon silo down there?
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- lisper 5y agoThat might work if the climate were stable but it’s not. The only reason the Endurance was found at all is because of reduced sea ice in the Weddel sea. Give that process another 100 years and there will be little left of her.
- carapace 5y agoI don't think you would have to store the carbon as wood forever. We need to get it out of the atmosphere ASAP but it's still a valuable resource. Even if we don't wind up turning it into diamond and using it as a fundamental construction material or something (nod to "Diamond Age") and still want to keep it in organic form in the ecosystem at large, we have time to convert it into herds of mammoths and vast forests or whatever, once we get it out of the sky.
- kube-system 5y agoThe easiest place to store wood is alive in a forest, or in useful objects made out of it.
- lisper 5y agoYes, that’s true, but short-sighted. Trees don’t live forever. Wooden artifacts don’t last forever. Storing wood above ground requires constant maintenance.
- nosianu 5y agoWhat the OP is talking about is that we brought up a lot more forest back from below ground than we could possibly plant above. Below ground are many generations of forests, above we can only have one, unless we invent vertical stacking or create hundreds of meters tall trees (now I would be all for it Some real tree-houses like in fantasy movies!). The best storage is to leave what already is underground right there, until/unless there is plenty of energy to influence the carbon cycle above ground by putting it back deep below with technology without requiring the energy to be supplied by even more below-ground-carbon.