They are suggesting scam like levels of profit: https://worldtree.info/investment/
25k -> 355k in 10 years is at least 29% year over year return. That seems... improbable.
Empress trees absorb about 103 tons of carbon a year per acre
91–100 of 201 posts
Re: Empress trees absorb about 103 tons of carbon a year per acre
#92Not sure planting a "highly invasive tree" is the solution: http://www.ecosystemgardening.com/paulownia-princess-tree-on...
The hybrid Empress Splendor tree is not invasive.
Re: Empress trees absorb about 103 tons of carbon a year per acre
#93Earlier quoted context omitted.
>A lot of people hate them though, for the same reason outlined in the article: you can't kill them. Many consider them weeds. I reread the article and I see no mention of it?
They mention it’s “easy to regrow from the stump” what that means is cutting it down doesn’t kill it. Additionally many trees that easily regrow from a cut stump also regrow/produce new tree from their roots. Seems like a recipe for an invasive plant (much like those awful pear trees the were used for landscaping)
It also seems handy for growing timber.
There seems to be a growing market for it too.
https://thisnzlife.co.nz/how-a-small-waikato-farm-harnesses-...
Re: Empress trees absorb about 103 tons of carbon a year per acre
#94Not sure planting a "highly invasive tree" is the solution: http://www.ecosystemgardening.com/paulownia-princess-tree-on...
My question here, is, if this tree proposed a possible slice of solution to carbon capture, is it a "bad" thing if we let it spread over the world which would otherwise be hit by possibly run-away global warming?
From my perspective, and quoting interstellar "There's no time for caution"
I would go over and say that maybe even doing genetic altering of the tree, so it could fit our purposes better might be a good idea. Be it making it extremely vulnerable to specific herbicide or make it grow/capture carbon even faster
Re: Empress trees absorb about 103 tons of carbon a year per acre
#95i can't figure this out: https://worldtree.info/investment/ this seems far too good to be true. Back of the napkin calculations show they're saying the returns could be 28% a year compounded. That's better than buffet level returns. Surely this is a scam right?
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Re: Empress trees absorb about 103 tons of carbon a year per acre
#96> Empress trees (...) absorb about 103 tons of carbon a year per acre. In 2016, U.S. GHG emissions were 20.15 metric tons CO2-equivalent per person[1]. So basically each american would have to cultivate about 0.196 acre of empress trees (792 sq meters, or 8522 sq foot) to become carbon neutral. [1] http://css.umich.edu/factsheets/us-environmental-footprint-f...
Empress trees certainly have some impressive specs, but no one plant is going to be the silver bullet. Can we eventually take per capita carbon footprint down to a fraction of what it was in 2016? I think so, if the people can be convinced to elect sane leaders in the US and elsewhere. Can vast regions in the USA and other countries be re-forested? Yes, if the willpower is there. Is it worthwhile to develop artificia…
It might be done quite quickly with a proper carbon pricing regime. The UK carbon price is about £35/ton. Times 104 tons/acre is about £3500/acre which is probably enough to make a profit. Then just get VC funding for your carbon startup and off it goes.
There are political and practical difficulties doing that but there are also difficulties with wrecking the climate that might outweigh those.
Re: Empress trees absorb about 103 tons of carbon a year per acre
#97Earlier quoted context omitted.
Presumably you don’t have to harvest and replant them every year though. I’m guessing it takes them several years to get to the point that they’re full grown.
Sure, but there's also got to be some sort of diminishing return.
Definitely. We’d have to do something with all the trees every few years or whatever.
Re: Empress trees absorb about 103 tons of carbon a year per acre
#98Not sure planting a "highly invasive tree" is the solution: http://www.ecosystemgardening.com/paulownia-princess-tree-on...
The hybrid Empress Splendor tree is not invasive. https://worldtree.info/empress-tree/
Quoting the website:
>Is the tree invasive?
>The short answer is: No, the Empress Splendor tree is not invasive.
>The Empress Splendor tree belongs to the genus Paulownia. There are many different species of Paulownia and only one is classified as invasive, the Paulownia tomentosa (http://www.invasivespeciesinfo.gov/plants/printree.shtml). We do not use this variety, choosing instead non-invasive species such as the Paulownia fortuneii.
>The Rainforest Alliance has chosen Paulownia as an ecologically sound tree for the purposes of reforestation and carbon sequestration (View the Rainforest Alliance Report).
>The Rainforest Alliance is internationally recognized as a certification program for sustainable forestry and best practices for tree planting and agroforestry.
Re: Empress trees absorb about 103 tons of carbon a year per acre
#99> Empress trees (...) absorb about 103 tons of carbon a year per acre. In 2016, U.S. GHG emissions were 20.15 metric tons CO2-equivalent per person[1]. So basically each american would have to cultivate about 0.196 acre of empress trees (792 sq meters, or 8522 sq foot) to become carbon neutral. [1] http://css.umich.edu/factsheets/us-environmental-footprint-f...
Empress trees certainly have some impressive specs, but no one plant is going to be the silver bullet. Can we eventually take per capita carbon footprint down to a fraction of what it was in 2016? I think so, if the people can be convinced to elect sane leaders in the US and elsewhere. Can vast regions in the USA and other countries be re-forested? Yes, if the willpower is there. Is it worthwhile to develop artificia…
> elect sane leaders in the US and elsewhere.
honest question: can you point me to any US politician that has stood up to a corporation or corporate interest with laws that effectively say, "No, you can't have what you want, the people need instead." and - most importantly - got those laws passed? I can't think of one. I think obamacare came close (which became one of the most hardfought wins ever), and yet the health insurance lobby still came out ahead. I dare say that no congress shall ever pass a law that harms a corporation (a de facto constitutional amendment).
What does that have to do with carbon control ? ICE auto industry, coal industry, oil and gas, etc, would all be "harmed" if US lawmakers passed anything that had a material impact on CO2 emissions. It would require multiple layers of alternative realities for that to ever happen, in my (admittedly cynical) opinion. I'm sorry if this sounds like I'm saying we should give up/not try. I _want_ us to solve global warming. I just can't picture it happening (at least for the redress method I listed above).
Re: Empress trees absorb about 103 tons of carbon a year per acre
#100Earlier quoted context omitted.
I also did a similar back-of-the-envelop calculation the moment I saw this 103 tons per acre figures. Global CO2 emissions: ~40GT/year Area required: ~600K square miles This is approximately the size of the entire state of Alaska. Every year.
Not every year. Given the article's assertion of the 103 tons per acre per year, your Alaska of Empress trees would do it until they all die and presumably those forests will be maintained into perpetuity.
The carbon stored in a tree is proportional to its weight, about half its dry weight is carbon [https://scied.ucar.edu/sites/default/files/images/long-conte...].
Also in all those discussions of processes(!) I find people even here seem to be looking at points in time only, and usually at the start of the process. That also includes the issue of looking at just one tree instead of a forest. When you look at the whole system individual tree life cycle doesn't matter any more. Some trees grow old and die or are harvested (what happens?), others grow in their place, overall the forest remains at a pretty stable and fixed weight. Unless you find trees that keep growing for miles and miles higher for thousands of years.
Look at total biomass, not at tree life cycles! The equations at that point of a mature forest are balanced. The whole forest stores a fixed amount and that's it. As long as we keep bringing carbon from very ancient forests back out of the earth, it does not matter how many forests there are. You will only get a temporary dip.
This whole thing is ridiculous: Even if we decided to bury grown trees deep underground to remove their carbon from the surface forever - why not save the huge effort (and the energy that process needs which again has to be fed somehow - with even more fossil fuels for quite some time to come) and simply leave the ancient forests where they are (deep underground)?
You can plant trees as much as you like, as long as we continue to bring up carbon from underground it is useless - apart from a temporary (small) dip. The above-ground forests will never be big enough to compensate for the below-ground forests being brought back up.
A quick search shows links and links of opinion and "studies" all about "we can store carbon underground!" Well, wait, what?? I don't get it. - it's already (down) there!! Earth did just that a long time ago! Just stop bringing it up, then you don't need to find ways to get it back down, which according to the laws of physics is a net-negative process. For the same amount somehow stored underground we need far more for the energy to do so, as long as we rely on carbon for energy (which won't change any time soon at scale across the world). And if we don't need the carbon for energy we won't bring it up any more (about three quarters of oil is used for energy or heating, an even higher share of natural gas and coal).
I really don't understand the discussion at all. It seems like a great distraction, all those studies and headlines and discussions about storing CO2 underground? For the reason mentioned. After you get it out and burn it (i.e. turned it into CO2), you will need even more of it to get the energy to get it back down where it already was to begin with. Even if we would have 100% solar/wind, the whole scenario does not sound very useful to me at the imagined scale. Even using it as temporary energy store/source for energy demand when wind/solar are not available should be done with what already is above ground, or if it involves a blow-ground cycle it should be one far smaller than the current extraction and the imagined reburying.
Having more forests is wonderful for many reasons (even though at this point vast areas are removed - https://www.livescience.com/27692-deforestation.html). However, the attention it gets as some sort of "solution" for global CO2 levels amazes me (in combination with the fact I just linked even more - stopping what we are doing would be soooo much more impactful, both destruction of current and previous forests above as well as underground).