4 ms·

Wood captures carbon within it and has minimal energy cost compared to steel, glass and brick. Lumber can also be regrown. So highly sustainable from a global

by Tarq0n 3y ago

Wood captures carbon within it and has minimal energy cost compared to steel, glass and brick. Lumber can also be regrown. So highly sustainable from a global warming perspective at least.

eru 3y ago
Steel can be recycled. And we are sitting on a giant ball of matter, so making more bricks or glass is easy. (Glass can be recycled, but it's not really worth it.) You are right that wood captures carbon. But you have to think about the opportunity costs: the same land that you use to slowly grow your wood could be used to eg run wind turbines or solar panels to replace fossil fuels. (You could also stick a nuclear power plant on that land to replace even more fossil fuels. But on the margin, nuclear isn't really limited by the available land but by red tape and permissions. So adding a bit more land won't make the nuclear industry produce more energy.) You'd have to run the numbers, it's not obvious to me which effect dominates. Probably also depends on how well wood grows in your climate, and how sunny and windy it is. And what else you could grow on that land. Speculation: I suspect that emissions during construction will be relatively small fry, compared to the impact of density. Eg re-inforced concrete allows denser living (by building taller than wood, and by allowing single-stairs to be still firesafe, etc), and density tends to lower per capita CO2. Of course, rural settings won't make use of the possibility of density. So for them it's just about the first order effects.
- rootusrootus 3y ago
  > You'd have to run the numbers, it's not obvious to me which effect dominates Perhaps this is a perspective thing? Take one state in the western US that happens to have farmed timber, PV, and turbines: Oregon. Slightly larger than the United Kingdom, 6% of the population. There's not even a tiny amount of opportunity cost being lost by farming timber.
  - eru 3y ago
    > There's not even a tiny amount of opportunity cost being lost by farming timber. Does that mean you can buy land for 0 dollars per squaremeter in Oregon? Wow.

by Tarq0n 3y ago

Wood captures carbon within it and has minimal energy cost compared to steel, glass and brick. Lumber can also be regrown. So highly sustainable from a global warming perspective at least.

eru 3y ago

Steel can be recycled. And we are sitting on a giant ball of matter, so making more bricks or glass is easy. (Glass can be recycled, but it's not really worth it.) You are right that wood captures carbon. But you have to think about the opportunity costs: the same land that you use to slowly grow your wood could be used to eg run wind turbines or solar panels to replace fossil fuels. (You could also stick a nuclear power plant on that land to replace even more fossil fuels. But on the margin, nuclear isn't really limited by the available land but by red tape and permissions. So adding a bit more land won't make the nuclear industry produce more energy.) You'd have to run the numbers, it's not obvious to me which effect dominates. Probably also depends on how well wood grows in your climate, and how sunny and windy it is. And what else you could grow on that land. Speculation: I suspect that emissions during construction will be relatively small fry, compared to the impact of density. Eg re-inforced concrete allows denser living (by building taller than wood, and by allowing single-stairs to be still firesafe, etc), and density tends to lower per capita CO2. Of course, rural settings won't make use of the possibility of density. So for them it's just about the first order effects.

rootusrootus 3y ago
> You'd have to run the numbers, it's not obvious to me which effect dominates Perhaps this is a perspective thing? Take one state in the western US that happens to have farmed timber, PV, and turbines: Oregon. Slightly larger than the United Kingdom, 6% of the population. There's not even a tiny amount of opportunity cost being lost by farming timber.
- eru 3y ago
  > There's not even a tiny amount of opportunity cost being lost by farming timber. Does that mean you can buy land for 0 dollars per squaremeter in Oregon? Wow.