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

bloomberg.com

191–200 of 201 posts

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

#191
post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good, so you can maybe know (and tell us) what is manufactured from the actual timber (i.e. to whom it is sold and for what use).

You can see here who they plan to market the lumber to: https://worldtree.info/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/World-Tree... Note that they are not harvesting until 2022 according to the plan, so it remains to be seen if they can effectively execute on their sales strategy.

Thank you, rather lenghty, but really interesting.

Even if it is - understandably in a prospect for investors - a tad bit (IMHO) scaring, this is the central issue:

>No Market for ES Lumber in North America

>A return on a Subscriber’s investment in the Company is dependent on the aggregate of board feet of ES Lumber that the Company is able to harvest from its ES Tree crops and the price per board foot for which it can sell its ES Lumber, both of which are subject to numerous external factors beyond the control of the Company and the Company.

>The market for ES Lumber in North America is unestablished.

>If the Company is unable to develop the market or if the market does not expand on its own or if the Company is unable to sell to the Asian market, the Company may not be able to sell its ES Lumber for a profit or at all, which may result in a loss of some or all of a Subscriber’s investment in the Company.

In a nutshell the issue is that there is not (yet) a market for the wood, and in order to create the market one needs to have substantial quantities of the material to offer.

The provided "Fender" example is typical (egg and chicken):

>WTT contracted with Fender Guitars in 2010 to supply ES Lumber for the building of Telecaster and Stratocaster Guitars. Fender was pleased with the results of their prototypes and requested thousands of board feet to build more guitars and speaker boxes. Due to limited availability of ES Lumber, WTT was unable to fulfil the demand at the time. However, the Company has recently located a source of 3 million board feet of ES Lumber and is currently negotiating the sale of the lumber to Fender and other buyers.

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

#192
post #2

I planted one of these trees a few years ago and I think it's absolutely gorgeous. I can't get over how absolutely huge the leaves get. A lot of people hate them though, for the same reason outlined in the article: you can't kill them. Many consider them weeds.

They are beautiful, grow absolutely huge at maturity, and produce lovely (enormous) bluish-purple flowers. The leaves are comically huge, and the seed casings form a sort of organic baby rattle. It's wild.

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

#194
Fascinating!

Anyone got a good source for the 103 tons per acre stat?

All I've found so far is the Bloomberg link, which I think is from the World Tree Website (the company spotlighted in the article). World Tree [1] says the source is The Environmental Resources Trust, but doesn't provide a link.

https://worldtree.info/carbon-offsets/

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

#195

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…

Federal agencies enforce crimes that cross state boundaries. With rate exceptions, domestic violence cases do not. Agencies exist to enforce the laws of Congress. That if their entire reason for existing.

OTOH, most corporate crimes do cross state boundaries and thus are within the jurisdiction of both state and federal authorities.

With respect to cigarettes, the product itself doesn't kill people. There are people that live for decades smoking multiple times a day. The secondary effects kill many people, but there isn't a sufficiently strong correlation to ban cigarettes outright.

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

#196
post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When the tree dies, it will release 99% of the stored carbon back to the atmosphere. Unless you bury the tree in an anaerobic environment or treat it in some other way, the tree is just a time-delayed release mechanism. New forest can store a buffer in perpetuity, e.g., a new trillion trees can store 133 Gt. But current emissions are > 40 Gt/year, so this is < 4 years worth of emissions.

Makes me wonder if in the future the solution will be to create synthetic crude and pump it back into the ground.

It definitely seems like the ideal solution is bacterial sequestration of carbon into some inert, non-toxic, storable chemical.

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

#197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

True. But if we could buy a couple hundred years, that would be amazing with the timescales we're looking at now.

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

#198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 would only cost about as much as the futile wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to implement Be/CCS solutions at scale to reduce CO2 to pre-industrial levels (280 ppm). The key is sequestration because without that, like the recent virtue-signaling in Africa, growing a bunch of trees in poor soil is pointless: it doesn't stop desertification, increased risk of forest fires and dying/burning trees above ground doesn't cap…

How much is it in comparison to the subsidies for drilling oil?

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

#199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>Can vast regions in the USA and other countries be re-forested? Yes, if the willpower is there. China and India already plant a lot of trees. US can sit back relax and dedicate that space to more research centers and get ahead while China/India are busy squeezing their population and putting up large pieces of land for reforestation. Not every country has to do it, not many in Europe will shell out for reforestation…

This is a very selfish view. Plus, I don't think it's even valid.

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

#200
post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Can vast regions in the USA and other countries be re-forested? Yes, if the willpower is there. China and India already plant a lot of trees. US can sit back relax and dedicate that space to more research centers and get ahead while China/India are busy squeezing their population and putting up large pieces of land for reforestation. Not every country has to do it, not many in Europe will shell out for reforestation…

Large part of Europe already did it. USA is backwater it seems...

Based on what?

https://education.seattlepi.com/rates-deforestation-reforest...

The US is more forested than it has been in the past.

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