While I appreciate the sentiment, this is straight from grandma’s facebook feed.
Slap a cackling minion in the corner for maximum effect.
Broken clock, etc.
that’s all OP posts anyway. FB meme “humour “
Grass does that too. And probably better.
*Grass does not equal lawns. Go to the prairies, friends.
You need actual biomass to physically exist, only then is carbon actually bound. Trees have much denser cellulose and stay around for longer. Ultimately, though, the answer is both. And bushes and shrubs. Just build up a whole forest. The denser you can make it, the better.
Almost every plant is carbon neutral in its life cycle, it’s a great sentiment, but it doesn’t work in the end.
I wonder how carbon-negatove a bamboo forest would be if you harvest it, turn it into charcoal (or bury in a bog or something?), rinse and repeat. Afaik charcoal sinks carbon fairly effectively (???), unless you burn it obviously.
Just make it your kids problem, sure that’s worked so far.
You keep acting like trees are harming humans. Personally I haven’t been harmed by a tree before and I’m happy everytime I see one. They’re much nicer to look at, less noisy, require less roads and provide more shade than cars. Also they don’t burn fossils.
Following your logic, since trees are carbon neutral and presumably only create problems for future generations, we’d have to go and remove all trees that exist on Earth. Sounds like something the woodcutting lobby would say.
I think they’re saying that since there’s are neutral, focusing on them to fix or climate is a distraction from what we really need to do.
Namely stop putting CO2 into the atmosphere.
We’re still more forest, but it’s going to be hard to get that off the climate is too far gone to safely sustain one, like how so much of Canada is burning at the moment (and does now pretty much every summer).
They’re already doing that with trees. Just bury the wood deep enough it doesn’t decompose. Boom. You’ve locked up carbon for millennia.
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This is what I was going by. I’ve heard similar said before.
Literally from people selling you it though lol. It’s possible, but I think the greater insect life more diverse lawns facilitate is a better net overall for the world.
Grass lands are not lawns.
Ok good point.
Trees burn though. When grass burns it grows back in a heartbeat because it’s biomass is underground
And peat bogs!
People don’t know prairie plant root systems can go more than a dozen feet below ground
Not a lot of people on this site touch grass, let alone think about it.
Trees are great and all but there’s much better carbon sinks, algae is a big one.
You mean the stuff that grows in what we use as global garbage sink?
“Aaaahhh, the ocean… the toilet of the world!”
- Homer Simpson
yep, and a lot more places too! Pretty much anywhere that has some level of moisture has algae
Doing some back of the envelope calculations we have put about 1.6 trillion tons of CO2 into the atmosphere since the industrial revolution. Latest estimates put the number of trees on earth at around 3 trillion. Looking at how much CO2 a tree takes up puts the average around 600lbs over the first twenty years. So combing all this if we want to plant enough trees to take up all the excess CO2 we would need about 5.3 trillion more trees, or almost double the total number of trees on the planet.
This is simply not achievable in a fast enough time span to make a difference. Nevermind that I was being super optimistic with all my calculations and the real number needed is likely much higher still.
It is simply a necessity to develop better methods to pull CO2 directly from the air and to do it on the same scale that we have been releasing CO2.
It is simply a necessity to develop better methods to pull CO2 directly from the air and to do it on the same scale that we have been releasing CO2.
Instead of wasting energy and effort trying to remove existing CO2 from the air, people should instead spend effort on not releasing more carbon dioxide into the air. It’s similar to things like plastic waste where it’s better not to create any waste than to recycle plastic, or the same as private transport where it’s better to not have or drive a private car or private jet than to drive or fly energy efficient.
There’s about 0.05% CO2 in the air. So pulling CO2 from the air is as inefficient as it gets. It’s somewhere between moving to Antarctica to bathe in the sun and using the full moon for solar panels.
The theoretical best place to sun bathe is, unsurprisingly, on the sun! Similarly it’s best to scrub CO2 at the source, meaning the exhausts! Filter it at motors, kilns, chimneys, etc.
We have to do both. If today our emissions went to zero we would still see more warming because of all that CO2 we’ve already released. First priority is to get to net zero so we can stop making the problem worse, then we have to remove all the CO2 we released. We have the technology now to do step one it’s just a matter of scaling it up. While we work on step one we need to do the research on the best way to do step two so when we get to that point we have something ready to go. Pulling CO2 out of the air is going to be inefficient no matter what just from the physics of the problem but it still needs to be done and the energy to do so has to come from renewables.
One proposed solution is using the excess energy production during peak hours for renewables to sequester carbon which would help but likely only be a small initial step in the right direction.
I think that’d be too little “bang for your buck” to be worth it. Investments might make matters even worse. After all, at some point building more and more energy generators for less and less efficient things will have severe drawbacks. Those energy generators aren’t built for free, nor are the machines necessary to build them, let alone the inefficient machines used to scrub co2 from the air.
I believe an active push towards carbon dioxide removal can be a double edged sword and even dangerous, especially if it relies on electricity (as opposed to actions which provide other benefits and help nature recover, like restoring forests, marshes/wetlands, etc.). As long as people want to do it with electricity, the demand for fossile fuels for electricity is bound to increase one way or another. Even if one country wants to do it 100% clean and could produce enough energy for direct air capture and all of its inhabitants are trustworthy, they’re still going to be in competition with other countries - and if country A happens to own all the materials to build things like batteries or wind turbines, then country B will struggle and instead rely on gas or coal plants.
Some lobbyists might tell you otherwise, but there’s definitely many many more important than things to invest time/effort/money into. Social care, social injustice, public transportation, energy storage/stability, natural disasters, peace, climate refugees, etc.
I wonder how many years of carbon accumulation we have burned so far. The oil we have burned is 800 million years of algae? That’s just a wild guess. Extinction is a normal natural process. Most of the species that have existed have gone extinct, we should start trying to come to terms with knowing that it is our turn to join them. Collectively, we have been and will remain unwilling to do what it takes to save ourselves.
we should start trying to come to terms with knowing that it is our turn to join them
That’s just called “death”. Everything that lives today is descended from an organism that existed before it. The idea that humans would just… stop existing, rather than producing variants that were more acclimated to the subsequent iteration of earth’s biome seems unlikely, particularly given how rapidly we’ve learned to adapt to changing ecological conditions.
Given that humans - as a species - survived the Ice Age, they’ll likely survive the Heat Age in some form or another.
Or we live with it and just stop producing more.
It is simply a necessity to develop better methods to pull CO2 directly from the air and to do it on the same scale that we have been releasing CO2.
Exactly this. The oil we burn today needs to be re-made tomorrow and put back into the hole it was pumped out of.
It is simply a necessity to develop better methods to pull CO2 directly from the air and to do it on the same scale that we have been releasing CO2.
No it’s not. In fact, it’s impossible. Turning C02 into other stuff takes energy. There’s no perpetual motion machine you can use to burn carbon, turn the carbon back into oil, and gain energy. It’s impossible. The only solution is to reduce our demand for fossil fuels, and increase our excess energy generation enough that we can begin undoing the past 100 years of damage through capture after we’ve already prevented worsening of the problem.
Nowhere did I say or imply that capturing CO2 is a net positive of energy. It is in fact a huge energy sink. If you aren’t using renewables to power CO2 capture then you’re just making the problem worse.
How do we get these “trees” into a decentralized block chain with integrated AI? Only then will we get people to carelessly throw money at them.
Its capitalism, no one will invest in technology that can not be patented.
We all die to preserve the market.
Oops, it turns out mass extinction event really hurts the market.
It’s going to be so dumb when that is the actual argument that wins over corporate America.
Yeah you fucking idiots, ruling the ashes defeats the purpose.
“Imagine if trees gave off Wifi signals, we would be planting so many trees and we’d probably save the planet too. Too bad they only produce the oxygen we breathe.”
– Tarun Sarathe
I’m saddened by the deforestation I’ve seen in my hometown. A lot of kids would go to hang out and play in the forests, but it looks like only the designated protected areas some distance off will be left in the future. Having wildlife in one’s back yard will be reduced to a novelty.
Trees only store CO² for a limited time. Then you need to somehow store it in the holes we got the oil out from. I prefer algae.
Algae or hemp. Hemp stores 85% of the carbon in its roots, so you can use the rest of the plant. Just collect the roots and compress them to a density that will NOT float and dump the root cubes into the Mariana Trench. That carbon will be trapped for a few tens to hundreds of millions of years. Also one acre of hemp pulls 10 times more carbon out of the air that one acre of trees does per harvest, and you can harvest the hemp 4 times a year as opposed to once every 60 years.
Just collect the roots and compress them to a density that will NOT float and dump the root cubes into the Mariana Trench.
Or throw them into a strip mine or oil well seal it up. Not like we don’t have a ton of giant holes in our ground after a century of fossil fuel extraction.
I would be worried about seepage into and out of those holes, but I suppose it is unlikely to turn into something toxic…
Yeah, algae has problems with sensibility to temp and bacteria and so on. And my duvet cover out of hemp thermo-regulates itself, no sweat.
This. Also, they’re kinda slow. Unfortunately, we’re in need of solutions that (in addition to using plants) work much, much faster.
Actually, they’re starting to do just that. It’s called wood vaulting. Can’t tell if the lack of decomposition is a pro or a con, though.
You don’t have to go THAT far, you can bury it over time through regenerative agriculture. Also, crazy I know, you can build durable structures with them. That said, the substantial majority of carbon sequestered by forests is in the soil as part of the lifecycle of the forest, therefore preserving trees, especially forests is extremely vital much more so than planting new trees. Restoring forests and wetlands is also vital but It takes a long time for a forest ecosystem to develop, and if you’re trying to just convert land to rapidly sequester CO2, bamboo plantations and algae farms are faster.
Nah, buildings and hummus are only just a bit longer term than trees. Still short term in the long run tho.
Hummus is never long term the way I eat it
Why did they have to name it the same like we do dirt.
Wetlands wetlands wetlands wetlands wetlands!
but does it make the line go up tho
Does it make line go up faster than last year?
If you cut it down
There’s a tiny creature that consumes much more CO2, cyanobacteria. Trees provide windbreaks, shade, and habitats, but cyanobacteria are the OG carbon sequesters.
What can we do with what the bacteria produce?
Cut it down and build with it too. I wonder if this community dislikes that thought.
I was surprised to not see this until the very bottom. There’s usually a panel about it in a lot of the environment and conservation conferences I go to for work. Storing the carbon in tree trunks and the using that wood in to build the housing that’s required is a long term carbon sink.
Sure it just makes it someone else’s problem, wood like almost all other materials has a finite period where it’s safe to use. Eventually all of it will decay and become co2 again.
But when it decays you could replace it with more wood, and then if more housing is ever needed you pull more carbon out of the air to make the wood for that. Not that it’s the end all solution but actually replanting forests and increasing the amount of wood in structures, and replacing plastic furniture with wood, it all could help. Every lever matters
Buildings made today really should last for a long friggin time. I really don’t see why any modern house ever needs to be torn down.
You can use chemicals to preserve the wood, but there’s environmental issues with that, it also increases the cost, it’s not safe to inhale while cutting, requires post treatment, etc.
Yes they should last 3-5 decades and some could last a century, just like some existing wood buildings have. But modern homes are weird, they are meant for efficiency over being “structurally sound”. By that I mean they’ve figured out essentially the bare minimum needed to build and have the right safety margins. So yeah build with 2x8s, they’ll last longer than 2x4s, but it’s also not environmentally “conscious” at the same time. So rock hard place.
We still have homes from a century ago. The ones built today should last wayyy beyond that. And century homes are being torn down not because of the wood, but because they are way too small. I have a really hard time thinking that modern homes are going to be seen as too small in 100 years. Likewise I think you’re out to lunch thinking modern homes are going to structurally fail.
Survivorship bias, yes some last, most do not.
I’m not saying they’re going to fail, that’s why they have a life span that they last before they require replacement, or you could find an engineer to continually sign off every x years to deem it safe.
There codes, laws and regulations for a reason, I guess you could argue against the communal knowledge of every industry if you want. But houses built nowadays aren’t overbuilt like they used to be, that’s just how code have adopted to be as efficient as possible, instead of here, wood aplenty. More wood also requires a stronger foundation since it weighs more and requires more support. So it’s all snowballing in that regard. You can’t just put a 2x8 wall on foundation meant for 2x4, that requires double the size of foundation, just like that.
Survivorship bias from a hundred years ago. We build things a lot better now.
You think I’m arguing against the communal knowledge of every industry? I’m arguing with the communal knowledge of every industry. We have way more knowledge, have better materials, know how to build things better, and we do build things better than before. I don’t think we’re going to agree, so I’m out.
It’s only temporary storage, wood, like almost all other materials has an expected life expectancy. Some will last, but most will decay and require replacement.
All solutions that involve plants are temporary, it’s just delaying it for further generations, doesn’t solve anything.
Can you not turn it into charcoal and bury it? I think that has a very long lifetime.
Just delays it more, it does eventually decay. I think the only solution I’ve come across that I haven’t seen the math against, would be to use it for rockets and eject the co2 essentially. But could that be carbon positive, I would love to know, but at the same time, we only just found metal particles in the atmosphere that are linked from space craft and re-entry.
So we’ve already done irreversible damage with rocket launches… so what don’t we know next?
If you really want carbon capture protect your wetlands. They’re truly the best.
A tree absorbs about 25 kg of CO2 per year. A human breathes out about 250 kg of CO2 per year.
Trees are great, but not all that efficient. To deal with the amount of CO2 humanity is currently producing, we’d need a whole lot more of them.
That’s just breathing.
A gallon of gas is nearly 9kg.
A ton is 1000kg. And it costs about $160 to capture it. So $1.44 per gallon to recapture it’s CO2.
Costs are USD.
Could you imagine a 40% tax on gasoline to pay for carbon capture?
We’re all fucked.
Not only can I imagine it, I think we should go for it. The goal ought to be one cylinder per person, a family of four gets driven around with a 1.6L naturally aspirated V4 engine.
Keep it balanced between simple and efficient.
Mormons eyeing up a W16 Bugatti as their next motor vehicle purchase…
Their church certainly appears to be able to afford it 🙄
Could you imagine a 40% tax on gasoline to pay for carbon capture?
Yes. Yes I can. Most of the world already pays more than that in tax on petrol anyway.
The UK currently pays 53p/litre in duty, and an extra 20% in VAT, meaning a 145p litre of petrol is currently charged 53% in tax.
Ramp the price up, watch use fall. People will use less. People will buy smaller cars, and travel less, and use public transport. Coddling motorists will fix precisely fuck all.
I think the problem here is that we are so accustomed to our relatively low price at the pump (compared to most of Europe) that cheap gas is almost essential to the survival of the lower and middle class. People who don’t have the option to buy a smaller car, or move closer to work (because rent and house costs near job centers are outrageous), or take public transit (because it’s non-existent outside the super expensive cities).
Even toying with the idea of a $1.40 tax (and probably more, if we accommodate for the untaxed dyed diesel we use for home heating) would be political suicide for one politician. No way in hell it’s getting signed off on by half.
The demand for public transport won’t grow if it’s cheaper to take two tonnes of your own metal to work every day.
You don’t need to introduce the tax all in one go, ramp it up over several years. Although as always the best time to start doing this was 20 years ago. I guess the second best time is still now though.
I can imagine a 40% tax on gasoline, and I’d love it. But, I think it would be nearly impossible to get it done in modern North America.
People making decisions decades before we were born were happy to create a world where car travel dominated. We were born into a world where it’s hard to get around in any other way. Young kids today may be willing to make the sacrifices necessary to save the world, but almost everybody else thinks it’s too inconvenient.
Yeah, we’re fucked. Or at least the generations who will have to live in this hellhole we created are.
Luckily for us it’s not just trees though of course. there’s like 400 something trees per person though and many other plants and organisms that also help as carbon sinks. Grasses and other plants cover the ground and sink tons of CO2. It’s pretty cool to look up how much CO2 capture per different organisms like an acre of grass etc.
Yeah, nature is great. If all it had to handle were billions of people breathing we’d have no issues.
The problem is that modern machines are extremely efficient at dumping CO2 into the atmosphere, but as great as trees are, they’re not all that efficient at removing it. So, if we want to keep CO2 at survivable levels, we either need fewer CO2-emitting machines (ideal) or a machine that takes CO2 out of the atmosphere (so far, impossible at scale). Simply relying on trees isn’t going to cut it.
Trees are great but part of a larger picture of ecosystems that do a great job of taking co2 out of air and building with it. Soil is a huge deal for how effective ecosystems are at scrubbing co2. All plants die off and decay but much of their carbon can get sequestered into the soil. Healthy soil has deeper microbes and insects breaking down and sequestering better, and improving future plants growth.
Basically stop lawnmowing and industrial farming.
We burned millions of years of plant growth within a few hundred years. Trees alone won’t make a dent within the time frame that’s necessary to stave off that 2 degrees increase. Even if we covered every square meter on the planet with trees. We need to start using every solution we can think of to slow down climate change within a few generations. This includes natural solutions like trees, plants and algae and man made solution like sequestering, direct air capture and even geo engineering.
I’m pretty sure if we figured out how to cover every square inch of the planet with trees it would fix the problem.
But we’d also need sci-fi tech to be able to grow trees in Antarctica
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