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Empress trees absorb about 103 tons of carbon a year per acre

bloomberg.com

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Re: Empress trees absorb about 103 tons of carbon a year per acre

#171

Post by lucb1e »

avip wrote: post #152
lucb1e wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same here, I'm having a hard time telling which one will actually help. The one that seems most promising to me is Climeworks. I wrote a bit more about what they told me in another comment last week: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20544179

DAC definitely shows potential. But do note the numbers: climeworks, GlobalThermostat and CarbonEngineering combined sequester few thousand metric tons/year - less than the output of 500 Americans.

They claim they won't give out more certificates than they captured. Once they hit the limit, we'll know, and they'll have enough subscriber money and incentive to start expanding I should hope!

Re: Empress trees absorb about 103 tons of carbon a year per acre

#172

Post by kekeke »

avip wrote: post #140
zubspace wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would be interesting to know what you think of project Vesta [1]. Their approach involves weathering olivine on beaches to speed up the long-term carbon cycle. [1] https://projectvesta.org/

I would be interested in knowing who is coordinating the Vesta spam attack, and why. EW could hardly be called "a technology" as of today. http://www.geoengineeringmonitor.org/2018/05/enhanced-weathe...

How do you mean "spam attack". Is Vesta some kind of scam?

Re: Empress trees absorb about 103 tons of carbon a year per acre

#173

Post by [deleted] »

avip wrote: post #140
zubspace wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would be interesting to know what you think of project Vesta [1]. Their approach involves weathering olivine on beaches to speed up the long-term carbon cycle. [1] https://projectvesta.org/

I would be interested in knowing who is coordinating the Vesta spam attack, and why. EW could hardly be called "a technology" as of today. http://www.geoengineeringmonitor.org/2018/05/enhanced-weathe...

[deleted]

Re: Empress trees absorb about 103 tons of carbon a year per acre

#174

Post by markdown »

hef19898 wrote: post #107
tim333 wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Might be a worthwhile start-up idea... I'm wondering...

https://worldtree.info/paulownia-scam/

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-10-17/timber-investment-sch...

Re: Empress trees absorb about 103 tons of carbon a year per acre

#175

Post by olliej »

quixoticelixer- wrote: post #162
olliej wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No one is suggesting we cut down other trees though, there are large expanses of deforested land and the goal here would be rapid reforestation. Replacing a complete lack of tree with any other tree is an improvement.

Maybe not replacing lack of tree with exotic invasives trees

The principle reason for favoring this tree (not arguing whether it's good or bad) is the vastly superior rate of carbon sequestration. Most trees are (apparently, just according to the article) only capable of sequestering 1.1-9.5 tonnes of carbon per acre per year, this type can apparently take up more than 100 tonnes per acre per year.

Re: Empress trees absorb about 103 tons of carbon a year per acre

#176

Post by kennywinker »

xfactor973 wrote: post #79

i 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?

Yeah those numbers seem really good - $25,000 invested over 8-12 years results in $1,423,125 profits of which you get 25% ($355,781). If those kinds of returns were really there wouldn't people quickly saturate the market, devaluing the lumber and breaking the model?

Re: Empress trees absorb about 103 tons of carbon a year per acre

#177

Post by LeoPanthera »

tylerhou wrote: post #167
nashashmi wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then it will be great to constantly log them down and sell them as carbon credit.

To sell them as carbon credits, you’d have to bury the logs or something — otherwise they might burn, or their mass would be absorbed by other animals/fungi/bacteria which would eventually convert the carbon into CO2.

I beleive the traditional solution is to turn them into furniture. Or houses! Building with farmed wood is very eco friendly since it produces a negative amount of CO2.

Re: Empress trees absorb about 103 tons of carbon a year per acre

#178

Post by jacobolus »

JudgeWapner wrote: post #168
jacobolus wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are many different organizations within the US federal government (not to mention state governments) which deal in one way or another with regulation and enforcement. Many of the ones commonly considered to be “law enforcement agencies” per se are listed at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_law_enforcement_in_the... but there are many other federal agencies which might also be considered “law enforcement” u…

Even with cigarettes , a product that kills its consumer even when used exactly as designed , congress wont' ban them because that would negatively impact a corporation. But you seem to think that corporations don't need to abide by clear-cut rules. they need some kind of "bureau" so that there can be a constant back-and-forth, give-and-take, so that we don't impact that poor, tender corporation. Why is that required…

> corporations don't need to abide by clear-cut rules

This is a straw man. Nobody thinks this.

> but we don't need a "domestic violence bureau"

There are several federal institutions which deal with domestic violence (alongside additional state and local ones). For example the National Resource Center on Domestic Violence, which is part of the Department of Health and Human Services, and has the mandate to “understand, respond to, and prevent” domestic violence.

The FBI can also investigate specific domestic violence crimes, but my impression is that it is not their highest priority.

Domestic violence is a huge problem and is famously underreported, underinvestigated, and underprosecuted. Probably not the best example you might pick; arguably having additional government agencies with the power to do something about domestic violence might make a positive difference. (Disclaimer: I know very little about this subject.)

Re: Empress trees absorb about 103 tons of carbon a year per acre

#179

Post by [deleted] »

tcgv wrote: post #50

> 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...

[deleted]

Re: Empress trees absorb about 103 tons of carbon a year per acre

#180

Post by bufferoverflow »

LeoPanthera wrote: post #177
tylerhou wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To sell them as carbon credits, you’d have to bury the logs or something — otherwise they might burn, or their mass would be absorbed by other animals/fungi/bacteria which would eventually convert the carbon into CO2.

I beleive the traditional solution is to turn them into furniture. Or houses! Building with farmed wood is very eco friendly since it produces a negative amount of CO2.

That just delays the CO2 release. Furniture breaks. Houses get old and get demolished. Even if it takes 100 or 500 years, it will happen.

You need to store wood long-term somehow. Or burn it and store CO2 underground, turning it into rock.

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