3 ms·

What matters is whether you put new carbon (which was not part of the carbon cycle) into the atmosphere.

WalterBright 4y ago
I understand what you're saying, but it makes no sense. You can take the plant and bury it instead of converting it to jet fuel, and you have a FAR cheaper method of achieving exactly the same atmospheric CO2 result. CO2 is CO2, regardless of whether it came from a new plant or a fossilized plant.
- nosianu 4y ago
  > CO2 is CO2, regardless of whether it came from a new plant or a fossilized plant. There is a carbon cycle above ground, what we did is inject more and more carbon back into it that had been removed from it by slow natural processes over long periods of time long ago. No. The problem we have is that we added all that carbon that was long ago buried deep back into the above ground carbon cycle. If we had only ever used carbon that already is in the above ground cycle we would not have a problem, we would not have increased atmospheric CO2 by much even if we temporarily - and it would always be just that - turned some more carbon lying around above ground into CO2. By using buried carbon we increased the amounts of carbon in the above ground cycle by a gigantic amount. In addition we burnet most of it directly too, but just that it is above ground, available to various processes including natural ones, would have increased CO2 even if we had not burnt it right away. (disregarding that buried carbon does not only come from buried plants for this sentence) The problem is not that forests burn, it's that ancient long-buried forests burn.
  - WalterBright 4y ago
    Um, but you're burying the same amount of carbon that you're burning in the ordinary jet fuel, which achieves the same CO2 result. Without having to generate synthetic fuels at all.
- avgcorrection 4y ago
  But those two things are not the same. They are aiming to sustain flight while not putting more carbon into the atmosphere. Burying plants will maybe put carbon out of the Cycle but it won’t help you fly.
  - WalterBright 4y ago
    Yes, they are exactly the same. The exact same amount of CO2 is emitted into the atmosphere. The exact same amount of CO2 is in the ground.
    - sokoloff 4y ago
      People are evidently reading your original post far too quickly and skipping right over the “Bury plants with an equivalent amount of C.” step.
      - avgcorrection 4y ago
        No, we saw that non sequitur.
        sokoloff 4y ago
        How is it a non-sequitur? Take summer 2022 CO2 into plants and bury them in an anaerobic environment. Burn Jet-A in carbon-equal amounts. I don’t see an obvious way that that’s not carbon-neutral.
        ZeroGravitas 4y ago
        Ironically, I'm a big fan of this concept of "offsetting" carbon emissions. It's a really useful, market based mechanism for tackling climate change, like carbon taxes. Like every other thing that would make it easy to phase out fossil fuels, it's been relentlessly attacked though, and so people generally have been trained to hate it. Of course, burying plants isn't the cheapest or best way to offset carbon emissions. And if airlines used cheaper, more effective offsets, they'd be attacked as "not really helping". And they do, and they have been. So basically, you can't win, fossil fuel propaganda just has too much money behind it for us to do the obvious and easy stuff, and instead we'll have to slowly crawl towards a solution, pointlessly wasting money and killing people all along the way.
- kemiller 4y ago
  I think you’re underestimating how hard it would be to ensure that the buried carbon in the trees stays buried. Not to mention the colossal job of finding and managing these burial sites. There’s an argument that we should be using way more (farmed) timber for building than we do since putting wood into a structure tends to ensure that it won’t all rot and release all that carbon.

I understand what you're saying, but it makes no sense. You can take the plant and bury it instead of converting it to jet fuel, and you have a FAR cheaper method of achieving exactly the same atmospheric CO2 result. CO2 is CO2, regardless of whether it came from a new plant or a fossilized plant.

nosianu 4y ago
> CO2 is CO2, regardless of whether it came from a new plant or a fossilized plant. There is a carbon cycle above ground, what we did is inject more and more carbon back into it that had been removed from it by slow natural processes over long periods of time long ago. No. The problem we have is that we added all that carbon that was long ago buried deep back into the above ground carbon cycle. If we had only ever used carbon that already is in the above ground cycle we would not have a problem, we would not have increased atmospheric CO2 by much even if we temporarily - and it would always be just that - turned some more carbon lying around above ground into CO2. By using buried carbon we increased the amounts of carbon in the above ground cycle by a gigantic amount. In addition we burnet most of it directly too, but just that it is above ground, available to various processes including natural ones, would have increased CO2 even if we had not burnt it right away. (disregarding that buried carbon does not only come from buried plants for this sentence) The problem is not that forests burn, it's that ancient long-buried forests burn.
- WalterBright 4y ago
  Um, but you're burying the same amount of carbon that you're burning in the ordinary jet fuel, which achieves the same CO2 result. Without having to generate synthetic fuels at all.
avgcorrection 4y ago
But those two things are not the same. They are aiming to sustain flight while not putting more carbon into the atmosphere. Burying plants will maybe put carbon out of the Cycle but it won’t help you fly.
- WalterBright 4y ago
  Yes, they are exactly the same. The exact same amount of CO2 is emitted into the atmosphere. The exact same amount of CO2 is in the ground.
  - sokoloff 4y ago
    People are evidently reading your original post far too quickly and skipping right over the “Bury plants with an equivalent amount of C.” step.
    - avgcorrection 4y ago
      No, we saw that non sequitur.
      - sokoloff 4y ago
        How is it a non-sequitur? Take summer 2022 CO2 into plants and bury them in an anaerobic environment. Burn Jet-A in carbon-equal amounts. I don’t see an obvious way that that’s not carbon-neutral.
        ZeroGravitas 4y ago
        Ironically, I'm a big fan of this concept of "offsetting" carbon emissions. It's a really useful, market based mechanism for tackling climate change, like carbon taxes. Like every other thing that would make it easy to phase out fossil fuels, it's been relentlessly attacked though, and so people generally have been trained to hate it. Of course, burying plants isn't the cheapest or best way to offset carbon emissions. And if airlines used cheaper, more effective offsets, they'd be attacked as "not really helping". And they do, and they have been. So basically, you can't win, fossil fuel propaganda just has too much money behind it for us to do the obvious and easy stuff, and instead we'll have to slowly crawl towards a solution, pointlessly wasting money and killing people all along the way.
kemiller 4y ago
I think you’re underestimating how hard it would be to ensure that the buried carbon in the trees stays buried. Not to mention the colossal job of finding and managing these burial sites. There’s an argument that we should be using way more (farmed) timber for building than we do since putting wood into a structure tends to ensure that it won’t all rot and release all that carbon.