Restoring natural forests is the best way to remove atmospheric carbon
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Re: Restoring natural forests is the best way to remove atmospheric carbon
#2> The regular harvesting and clearing of plantations releases stored CO2 back into the atmosphere every 10–20 years. By contrast, natural forests continue to sequester carbon for many decades4.
I'm not sure I understand... To me, the only question is, how much CO2 we store per km2 (which might be a higher number for a natural forest). The plantation being cut down and then regrown has 0 net impact, just like trees dying and new trees growing in a forest. The plantation being cut down and not regrown has the same negative (+CO2) impact as the forest eventually being burned/cut down.
Re: Restoring natural forests is the best way to remove atmospheric carbon
#3What about the Sahara? Is that too time / labor / cost intensive to adapt?
An aggressive reclamation project of desert could both work towards progress in carbon recapture and add valuable natural resources to poor countries.
Re: Restoring natural forests is the best way to remove atmospheric carbon
#4[deleted]
Re: Restoring natural forests is the best way to remove atmospheric carbon
#5Before we worry about removing atmospheric carbon, the easiest and simplest thing we can do is to emit less of it.
It's cheaper to not emit 1T of CO2, then to pull 1T of CO2 out of the air.
Re: Restoring natural forests is the best way to remove atmospheric carbon
#6> The regular harvesting and clearing of plantations releases stored CO2 back into the atmosphere every 10–20 years. By contrast, natural forests continue to sequester carbon for many decades4. I'm not sure I understand... To me, the only question is, how much CO2 we store per km2 (which might be a higher number for a natural forest). The plantation being cut down and then regrown has 0 net impact, just like trees dy…
Well, what if you cut it down, use it as a long term building material, and then regrow it?
Seems a lot like that would turn atmospheric carbon into a building material.
Re: Restoring natural forests is the best way to remove atmospheric carbon
#7Before we worry about removing atmospheric carbon, the easiest and simplest thing we can do is to emit less of it. It's cheaper to not emit 1T of CO2, then to pull 1T of CO2 out of the air.
I agree with you - I think it's unappealing to many people who come up with outlandish solutions because simply using less resources is unprofitable.
You can't stop entropy - but you slow it down.
Re: Restoring natural forests is the best way to remove atmospheric carbon
#8> The regular harvesting and clearing of plantations releases stored CO2 back into the atmosphere every 10–20 years. By contrast, natural forests continue to sequester carbon for many decades4. I'm not sure I understand... To me, the only question is, how much CO2 we store per km2 (which might be a higher number for a natural forest). The plantation being cut down and then regrown has 0 net impact, just like trees dy…
Well, what if you cut it down, use it as a long term building material, and then regrow it? Seems a lot like that would turn atmospheric carbon into a building material.
My understanding is that a lot of the carbon is still released as the sap is dried out and so on.
Re: Restoring natural forests is the best way to remove atmospheric carbon
#9I think part of this, at least, it eating meat much more sparingly. From what I understand huge swaths of the Amazon are slashed and burned to make room for cattle which do the opposite of sequestering carbon by converting any it finds into methane (and meat).
So basically we need to eat less meat to give plants more room. And we will need lots of room since we need to not only sequester the carbon of the trees we've previously destroyed (assuming they were burned and not converted into buildings), but all the millions (billions?) (trillions?) of pounds of hydrocarbons we've pumped out of the ground.
To sequester that much carbon we need trillions of pounds more life on earth than we currently have which means we need to let the oceans fill up with carbon-based mass (algae, fish, etc), let the rain forests and other carbon-high forests grow to their geographic boundaries.
I don't think it's the silver bullet, but it's definitely a great start and technologically easier than turning CO2 into graphene or diamonds or whatever.
Re: Restoring natural forests is the best way to remove atmospheric carbon
#10Before we worry about removing atmospheric carbon, the easiest and simplest thing we can do is to emit less of it. It's cheaper to not emit 1T of CO2, then to pull 1T of CO2 out of the air.
Why not both?