4 ms·

Thank you, "God bless you" as they say in the Deep South where I grew up. Please consider making part of it a wetlands. Forests cover about 10 percent of the

Thank you, "God bless you" as they say in the Deep South where I grew up. Please consider making part of it a wetlands. Forests cover about 10 percent of the planet and store about 15 percent of stored carbon. Peatlands cover about 3 percent of the planet and store an estimated 25 or 30 percent of carbon. We've lost 85 of global wetlands since the 1700s. Restoring them could dramatically increase the amount of stored carbon.

oliwarner 3y ago
Peatland takes centuries to develop and store that carbon though. If we want to achieve this sort of thing, we'd need to manufacture peat and store that underwater. Possible but when we make more, we usually destroy the planet more too. I'm not sure we'd offset it.
- DoreenMichele 3y ago
  "The best time to plant a tree is twenty years ago. The second best is today." For the short-term, planting rice differently can reduce methane emissions substantially. In the short-term, methane is much worse. In the long run, methane breaks down to carbon which persists. If we want to reverse climate change, we need to restore nature's ability to sink that carbon. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37140831 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37140831 (My previous comment should say "85 percent". Oops.)
  - oliwarner 3y ago
    No argument that rice can be grown better, but going back to your call for increasing wetland, isn't it the wet that makes soil produce methane? In the same way that the flooding causes rice paddy soil to create methane, and drying it out (per your study) arrests the process. With 20-30% of atmospheric methane coming from wetlands, while they may ultimately sink more carbon into themselves, the process seems too inefficient, trading CO2 for some CH4. Forestry produces a much healthier mix of gasses. On its own it's not a quick sink but when you manage it, and extract timber and end up sinking tonnes of carbon into your buildings. The trees consume CO2 to photosynthesis and aerobic bacteria in open forests consume CH4. Seems like a win-win.
    - DoreenMichele 3y ago
      Peatlands cover 3 percent of the earth and hold 30 percent of stored carbon. As a quick and dirty guesstimate, if you multiply that by a 6.66 to replace the lost 85 percent, you get 20 percent of the surface and 200 percent of current carbon stores. It seems likely that a notable percentage of global warming is due to wetlands loss, not just industrialization. So far, I haven't managed to do a deeper analysis with hard numbers. Feel free to do a write up if you think you know enough about the topic. I'm sure I'm not the only one who would be interested.
      - oliwarner 3y ago
        I'm just trying to point out a couple of issues in your logic. You cannot multiply wetland. It takes a thousand years to get a 10m deep peat bog and every second of its wet, rotting existence creates CH4. Wetlands offer lots of benefits —nature, water management, etc— but greenhouse gasses really aren't one. More importantly you're only comparing standing volumes of carbon. We extract billions of m³ of lumber out of forests each year. Even the process of growing it, is far better. Methane is being consumed, not created. The overall picture is complex but if we're thinking about things in the short term, farming lumber (and using less concrete, brick) would do far more good than creating wetland.

oliwarner 3y ago

Peatland takes centuries to develop and store that carbon though. If we want to achieve this sort of thing, we'd need to manufacture peat and store that underwater. Possible but when we make more, we usually destroy the planet more too. I'm not sure we'd offset it.

DoreenMichele 3y ago
"The best time to plant a tree is twenty years ago. The second best is today." For the short-term, planting rice differently can reduce methane emissions substantially. In the short-term, methane is much worse. In the long run, methane breaks down to carbon which persists. If we want to reverse climate change, we need to restore nature's ability to sink that carbon. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37140831 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37140831 (My previous comment should say "85 percent". Oops.)
- oliwarner 3y ago
  No argument that rice can be grown better, but going back to your call for increasing wetland, isn't it the wet that makes soil produce methane? In the same way that the flooding causes rice paddy soil to create methane, and drying it out (per your study) arrests the process. With 20-30% of atmospheric methane coming from wetlands, while they may ultimately sink more carbon into themselves, the process seems too inefficient, trading CO2 for some CH4. Forestry produces a much healthier mix of gasses. On its own it's not a quick sink but when you manage it, and extract timber and end up sinking tonnes of carbon into your buildings. The trees consume CO2 to photosynthesis and aerobic bacteria in open forests consume CH4. Seems like a win-win.
  - DoreenMichele 3y ago
    Peatlands cover 3 percent of the earth and hold 30 percent of stored carbon. As a quick and dirty guesstimate, if you multiply that by a 6.66 to replace the lost 85 percent, you get 20 percent of the surface and 200 percent of current carbon stores. It seems likely that a notable percentage of global warming is due to wetlands loss, not just industrialization. So far, I haven't managed to do a deeper analysis with hard numbers. Feel free to do a write up if you think you know enough about the topic. I'm sure I'm not the only one who would be interested.
    - oliwarner 3y ago
      I'm just trying to point out a couple of issues in your logic. You cannot multiply wetland. It takes a thousand years to get a 10m deep peat bog and every second of its wet, rotting existence creates CH4. Wetlands offer lots of benefits —nature, water management, etc— but greenhouse gasses really aren't one. More importantly you're only comparing standing volumes of carbon. We extract billions of m³ of lumber out of forests each year. Even the process of growing it, is far better. Methane is being consumed, not created. The overall picture is complex but if we're thinking about things in the short term, farming lumber (and using less concrete, brick) would do far more good than creating wetland.