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Restoring natural forests is the best way to remove atmospheric carbon

nature.com

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Re: Restoring natural forests is the best way to remove atmospheric carbon

#11

Post by peteradio »

ticviking wrote: post #8
sambroner wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Got any source on that? Carbon generally isn't released without burning or so I thought. Though, this article seems to suggest that composted wood releases it's carbon which is at odds with what I thought I knew.

Re: Restoring natural forests is the best way to remove atmospheric carbon

#12

Post by monetus »

AtlasBarfed wrote: post #3

What 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.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Green_Wall

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sahara_Forest_Project

Have you heard of the great green wall or the Sahara forest project?

Re: Restoring natural forests is the best way to remove atmospheric carbon

#13

Post by sushisushisushi »

justinator wrote: post #7
vkou wrote: post #5

Before 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.

Just minutes into this thread and people are already talking about turning the _Sahara_ into a forest or constructing continent-sized artificial islands in the ocean in order to plant forests, as if (1) either of these things are remotely possible currently (they are not) and (2) either of these things won't be tremendously energy-intensive to accomplish.

All when the obvious, immediate, and practical solution is to stop releasing so much carbon into the atmosphere.

Re: Restoring natural forests is the best way to remove atmospheric carbon

#14

Post by johnchristopher »

AtlasBarfed wrote: post #3

What 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.

Adapt Sahara ? It grew by 10% during last century and we can't stop its expansion (thing dunes, tall herbs and things like that to stop it) so I am pretty sure teraforming it isn't an option we have.

Re: Restoring natural forests is the best way to remove atmospheric carbon

#15

Post by ajross »

tomp wrote: post #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 dy…

> The plantation being cut down and then regrown has 0 net impact, just like trees dying and new trees growing in a forest.

That's logically equivalent to saying your car won't run out of gas because on balance there's always exactly as much fuel going in as being burned. It's missing the point.

The issue here is that a farm "stores" very little carbon, as most of it gets re-released at the end of the season when the crops are harvested and decomposed in some way back into atmospheric carbon. A forest, on the other hand, continues growing for decades as a net carbon sink. All the carbon it absorbs stays in the forsest as biomass (and metabiomass stuff like peat and logs and soil).

A mature forest, effectively, has a much larger "tank" for the carbon that doesn't involve storing it in the atmosphere, where we don't want it. Farms don't.

Re: Restoring natural forests is the best way to remove atmospheric carbon

#16

Post by ajross »

sambroner wrote: post #6
tomp wrote: post #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 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.

Indeed, logging is a measurable carbon sink. It's not a very good one though, as really we're harvesting about as many trees for lumber as we can turn into houses locally.

Re: Restoring natural forests is the best way to remove atmospheric carbon

#17

Post by tomatotomato37 »

sambroner wrote: post #6
tomp wrote: post #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 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.

A lot of it is used to make paper which degrades relatively fast. That being said it's still renewable, fairly recycable, and provides packaging that actually degrades instead of clogging the ocean, so we don't really want to mess around with that side of the equation if we can help it

Re: Restoring natural forests is the best way to remove atmospheric carbon

#19

Post by mchannon »

Nature is wrong.

Accelerated weathering is our first best hope of lowering CO2 in the atmosphere.

Weathering is the conversion of carbonates and CO2 to form bicarbonates.

Grinding and aerosolizing limestone and other similar minerals hasn’t been tried very much.

Unlike with anything plant-based, once CO2 goes through this reaction, it stays.

In a few billion years, it’ll cause the extinction of life on Earth, but that’s a problem we can take our time to figure out.

Re: Restoring natural forests is the best way to remove atmospheric carbon

#20

Post by chimprich »

vkou wrote: post #5

Before 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.

It's a good point. The more you look into the immense challenges of capturing a significant amount of CO2 from the atmosphere, the easier reducing our CO2 output looks.

There's a lot of (relatively) low-hanging fruit, like making transport more efficient and eating less meat.

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