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I don't know that getting more trees than you lost is a useful or effective measure against climate change. It's a good thing, certainly, but I imagine the amo
by SketchySeaBeast 2y ago
I don't know that getting more trees than you lost is a useful or effective measure against climate change. It's a good thing, certainly, but I imagine the amount of carbon we're pumping into the atmosphere requires more than a steady state of trees. I wonder how much of the world we'd need to cover with trees in order to offset our carbon production, certainly more than we've had during modern civilization.
- tomrod 2y agoDepends on where the carbon goes. Into a home? Locked up for a long time. Under a cooking stove? Released.
- SketchySeaBeast 2y agoBut does it help worrying about where we're putting logs while we're burning fossil fuels? We need to plant enough trees to offset all the trees we're burning, but also all the gasoline, oil, and natural gas we're burning as well as all the concrete we're producing. The math seems like it'll never balance.
- argiopetech 2y agoI did the back of the napkin math below: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42697255 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42697255 Barring mistakes, it balances if we had avoided reducing the planet's vegetation by 20% since 1900. So much for that. That's obviously not "the" solution, but it seems like reducing fuel burn while increasing forestation would benefit us beyond what is commonly expected.
- SketchySeaBeast 2y agoInteresting math, so it is mathematically possible. Important to note, 1 billion hectares is just over the size of all of the United States.
- baq 2y agoBasically we need to grow trees as fast as possible, cut them down and bury them deep, exactly the opposite of what we’re doing when mining fossil fuels. No wonder there’s exactly zero people doing that.
- maxwell 2y agohttps://charmindustrial.com https://charmindustrial.com
- pfdietz 2y agoThere's been a proposal to bury them not-so-deep, but saturated with salt to prevent decomposition. It's not necessary to sequester the carbon forever, just on a time scale for natural absorption of the CO2 into oceans and then into carbonates (which is something like 100,000 years, IIRC).
- ieidkeheb 2y agoSo that someone in the future can discover these reserves and use it as fuel?!?!!?!
- vixen99 2y agoNo, by then it's at least conceivable that cold fusion will by then be a reality. If an individual cracks this problem maybe they'll offer a paper ending with a comment akin to Watson & Cricks 1953 paper on DNA. "It has not escaped our attention that ..." Or words to that effect. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PGgovWTBoWY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PGgovWTBoWY (Hossenfelder) https://lenr-canr.org/ https://lenr-canr.org/ (Library)
- internet_points 2y agohttps://climate.mit.edu/ask-mit/how-many-new-trees-would-we-need-offset-our-carbon-emissions https://climate.mit.edu/ask-mit/how-many-new-trees-would-we-... says a new forest the size of New Mexico might offset the US's emissions. Or not. It depends. But first thing to do would be not to cut down the existing ones.
- SketchySeaBeast 2y agoThey say it would take a forest the size of New Mexico "to account for one year of American emissions" - given that trees both process CO2 during respiration and act as sinks when they grow, I can't tell if they'd be able to offset those emissions the next year as well or if we'd need a new forest.
- nfw2 2y agoTrees produce CO2 during respiration and intake it during photosynthesis. The carbon captured during photosynthesis will be offset to some degree by the tree's own need to consume glucose.
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- thfuran 2y agoWe need to be building a mountain range out of diamonds.
- SketchySeaBeast 2y agoCan you imagine the extraterrestrial archaeologist trying to explain that?
- bluGill 2y agoNo - stupid slow speed of light stops so many interesting science fiction imaginations.
- SketchySeaBeast 2y agoReality is very much a bummer.
- goatlover 2y agoSome of those interesting scifi scenarios would not be so good for us.
- lupusreal 2y agoIt's true that the speed of light prevents it from actually happening, but you should still be able to imagine it.
- internet_points 2y agoThe nice thing about making diamonds as opposed to coal or bio-oil is that it's quite hard to burn the diamond, so less chance of someone getting tempted into using these enormous reserves that are just sitting there, depreciating, to fuel the helicopter of their bitcoin-mining luxury cruise ship or create an ultra-fast pizza delivery service using rocket launchers