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Planting trees not always an effective way of binding carbon dioxide

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Re: Planting trees not always an effective way of binding carbon dioxide

#41

Post by fatherzine »

gonzo41 wrote: post #24
kokojie wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it possible to vent the CO2 into space?

Short answer is no. CO2 is sitting at about 400ppm( parts per million(. So take a million things, say golf balls, and paint 400 of them red. The rest white. Put them in a container, then search for the red balls. The goal is to get at least ~150 to 200 before you have to look at the next batch. There's not really a quick way to do that. Green house gas is such a hard problem because it's a dispersed problem. This is…

"start seriously considering a little bit of CRISPR"

We should consider taking a collective pause to think things through. Our extensive technology use is pushing ecosystems out of balance at planet scale. Perhaps the solution is NOT more technology, with inherently unknown longterm consequences.

Re: Planting trees not always an effective way of binding carbon dioxide

#42

Post by s1artibartfast »

thangalin wrote: post #26
_8j50 wrote: post #3

Why isn't there more focus on phytoplankton since it produces more O2? Maybe have a device that seeds/catalyzes their growth on every boat?

Stop killing whales. https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/fandd/issues/2019/12/nat... > When it comes to saving the planet, one whale is worth thousands of trees. > Marine biologists have recently discovered that whales—especially the great whales—play a significant role in capturing carbon from the atmosphere. > In recent years, scientists have discovered that whales have a multiplier effect of increasing phytoplankt…

Sending plankton is a lot more scaling and economical than saving whales directly. It may also have the added benefit of increasing whale populations.

Re: Planting trees not always an effective way of binding carbon dioxide

#43

Post by Knufferlbert »

criddell wrote: post #33
gonzo41 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Short answer is no. CO2 is sitting at about 400ppm( parts per million(. So take a million things, say golf balls, and paint 400 of them red. The rest white. Put them in a container, then search for the red balls. The goal is to get at least ~150 to 200 before you have to look at the next batch. There's not really a quick way to do that. Green house gas is such a hard problem because it's a dispersed problem. This is…

I don't think this is a great explanation. I could build a machine that would get rid of 200 red balls (out of a million) in 30 minutes. It's a linearly parallelizable problem, so with enough machines, I could make it go as quickly as you'd like.

Don't know, seems like a good explanation. We have a number of machines that can take CO2 out, the "enough machines" is the problem.

- they either require space (forests or whatever)

- are hard to produce in sufficient numbers (materials, production capabilities)

- are expensive to run (like energy input, maintenance), in particular don't generate new red balls while removing them.

- disposal cost (where the machine becomes the carbon, like trees, cutting them down and doing something with that)

Once we got it out, on a "pile of carbon", the problem becomes much easier.

Re: Planting trees not always an effective way of binding carbon dioxide

#44

Post by adolph »

colechristensen wrote: post #2

Yes you need to build ecosystems not just plant trees. Monoculture tree stands are often mostly empty of other life. You need to plant a variety of native species keeping track of keystone species and year round food production so that your forest supports other life.

From Ch 1, Seeing Like a State By James C. Scott:

The great simplification of the forest into a "one-commodity machine" was precisely the step that allowed German forestry science to become a rigorous technical and commercial discipline that could be codified and taught. A condition of its rigor was that it severely bracketed, or assumed to be constant, all variables except those bearing directly on the yield of the selected species and on the cost of growing and extracting them. As we shall see with urban planning, revolutionary theory, collectivization, and rural resettlement, a whole world lying "outside the brackets" returned to haunt this technical vision.

In the German case, the negative biological and ultimately commercial consequences of the stripped-down forest became painfully obvious only after the second rotation of conifers had been planted. "It took about one century for them [the negative consequences] to show up clearly. Many of the pure stands grew excellently in the first generation but already showed an amazing retrogression in the second generation. The reason for this is a very complex one and only a simplified explanation can be given.... Then the whole nutrient cycle got out of order and eventually was nearly stopped.... Anyway, the drop of one or two site classes [used for grading the quality of timber] during two or three generations of pure spruce is a well known and frequently observed fact. This represents a production loss of 20 to 30 percent."

A new term, Waldsterben (forest death), entered the German vocabulary to describe the worst cases. An exceptionally complex process involving soil building, nutrient uptake, and symbiotic relations among fungi, insects, mammals, and flora--which were, and still are, not entirely understood--was apparently disrupted, with serious consequences. Most of these consequences can be traced to the radical simplicity of the scientific forest.

https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/first/s/sc...

Azn link for HN Books: https://www.amazon.com/Seeing-like-State-Certain-Condition/d...

Re: Planting trees not always an effective way of binding carbon dioxide

#45

Post by baryphonic »

tluyben2 wrote: post #31

‘Not always’. Sure, trees are enduring, nice to look at, make things cooler and might help with carbon dioxide. Let’s plant them anyway.

I found the arguments in the article rather weak. One was that trees die. True enough. But if you plant 100 trees and 10 die within ten years, that's still quite a bit of CO2 converted into O2. It may not scale so well, sure. But as far as I can tell, neither do wind & solar. Doesn't mean we shouldn't try to make the best use of them.

Re: Planting trees not always an effective way of binding carbon dioxide

#46

Post by vanderZwan »

westurner wrote: post #4

"Hemp twice as effective at capturing carbon as trees, UK researcher says" (2021) https://hempindustrydaily.com/hemp-twice-as-effective-at-cap... : > “Industrial hemp absorbs between 8 to 15 tonnes of CO2 per hectare (3 to 6 tonnes per acre) of cultivation.” > Comparatively, forests capture 2 to 6 tonnes of carbon per hectare (0.8 to 2.4 tonnes per acre), depending on the region, number of years of growth, type of tr…

Do you know of any papers investigating how kelp or other seaweeds compare? I've heard some biologists informally claim that they would be even more effective because they can grow incredibly fast.

Re: Planting trees not always an effective way of binding carbon dioxide

#49

Post by [deleted] »

i5heu wrote: post #13
westurner wrote: post #4

"Hemp twice as effective at capturing carbon as trees, UK researcher says" (2021) https://hempindustrydaily.com/hemp-twice-as-effective-at-cap... : > “Industrial hemp absorbs between 8 to 15 tonnes of CO2 per hectare (3 to 6 tonnes per acre) of cultivation.” > Comparatively, forests capture 2 to 6 tonnes of carbon per hectare (0.8 to 2.4 tonnes per acre), depending on the region, number of years of growth, type of tr…

tonnes of carbon per hectare is not relevant. What you need is tonnes of carbon per hectare per year. We don't have enough space to let these plants be there, we need to convert them into coal and throw it back into the mines.

[deleted]

Re: Planting trees not always an effective way of binding carbon dioxide

#50

Post by Floegipoky »

> The researchers also warn that the actual planting of trees can have major negative effects. A heath or tundra-like land is a good carbon sink as it is. If machines roll in to prepare the soil for planting, there is a high risk that the carbon bound in the soil will be released into the atmosphere.

X is harmful if you go out of your way to do X in the most harmful way. How insightful! /s

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