undefined | Better HN

0 pointsloeg5y ago0 comments

The problem with trees-as-carbon capture is:

1. They are only a net store of carbon while they're alive.

2. Because of that, you need to dedicate land to carbon-capture forest, indefinitely.

3. Burning fossil fuels for energy releases more and more carbon into the atmosphere.

Like, you get N tons of carbon captured out of a given land area. It's constant per area. So you would need to continually grow the amount of forested land just to follow the amount of carbon released by burning fossil fuels.

But: land is finite. The actual worldwide trend has been to deforest land, either for lumber, or slash-and-burn for subsistence farming in poor countries, or just to allow for population growth, or the large land area needed for wind and solar farms. We don't have a huge surplus of not-yet-forest land — can't grow trees in deserts.

0 comments

Chris20485y ago

> They are only a net store of carbon while they're alive.

Is wood not a carbon store?

Dma54rhs5y ago

When or a tree dies, or burns, during the decomposition process it releases the carbon back to atmosphere. Maybe you could bury them somewhere where decomposition it's slower or more difficult but hard to imagine doing it at scale.

Chris20484y ago

Surely lumber, treated cellulose, contains a high % of the original carbon content (minus water)?

2 more replies

loegOP5y ago

Only until it decomposes, which is usually relatively quickly after it dies.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse