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> In simple terms, here’s what really happens: During the lifetime of a tree, it drops seeds. These seeds take root and become new, younger trees. When the old
by legitster 3y ago
> In simple terms, here’s what really happens: During the lifetime of a tree, it drops seeds. These seeds take root and become new, younger trees. When the old tree dies, it decomposes slowly over a period of years, releasing the carbon it stored. But all of the new, younger trees seeded by the old tree are there to take up all that carbon and then some. So carbon that’s released from dead trees is recaptured fairly quickly by its children.
Okay, here's where it loses me. So even by their own admission, a forest's carbon sync potential basically caps off once the trees are mature.
So even the basic math doesn't work out - even if you rewilded as much land as there was pre-civilization, you are more or less just returning to a stable amount of carbon. But you are not accounting for all of the "new" carbon in our system pulled out from fossil fuels.
In my mind, foresting is only a valid carbon solution if you harvest it. If a mature tree has taken up as much carbon as it can, it seems to make the most sense to cut it down, and either turn it into durable products (mass timber construction) or landfill it.
- karmakaze 3y agoWhere I get lost is where it seems to use "carbon" and "carbon dioxide" interchangeably. Carbon from a dead tree doesn't spontaneously become CO2.
- WheelsAtLarge 3y agoAll life is based on carbon. The carbon that life needs can be traced to the CO2 in the atmosphere. It's a chain but it's definitely connected. It's a slow process and that's where the problem lies. We don't have the time needed for the process to be the only solution to climate change.
- RetroTechie 3y agoa) Article talks about REforestation: re-growing a forest where there once was one, but currently not. Obviously, growing a new forest means carbon storage. b) A good % of carbon gets stored in the soil in various ways. Some of that for a long time (if not permanent). c) People have cut down a lot of forest over time. So restoring that would equate to a massive amount of carbon taken out of the atmosphere & stored in plant matter. Regardless of where it came from. More plant matter = less CO2 in atmosphere. Selectively harvesting trees may improve upon that. But it's optional.
- legitster 3y agoHow can that possibly be true? If forests were around for thousands or millions of years before humans started chopping them down, wouldn't the effective rate of carbon in the air be near 0? Clearly carbon was getting back into the air somehow or there is only a limited amount of carbon forests could ever have stored on the face of the earth.