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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

#71

Post by shagie »

kokojie wrote: post #19
Klapaucius wrote: post #16

Sequestring CO2 is a huge scale problem, and all solutions have significant flaws. Forests require vasts amounts of land, and storage is only assured as long as nobody decides to chop down the forest for other more pressing purposes (looking at you, Brazil). Storing CO2 in oceans (either in the form of "ocean fertilization" or by directly dissolving CO2 in seawater) could have huge and unknown consequences for marine…

Is it possible to vent the CO2 into space?

The earth is constantly 'venting' gas to space. This is known as atmospheric escape. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmospheric_escape

The earth is currently losing 3kg/s hydrogen and 50g/s of helium because that's what is in the upper atmosphere where a molecule can gain sufficient velocity to escape the orbit.

The issue with CO2 is that it is a heavier gas and so takes more energy to escape and is also more likely to fall. Left on its own over a sufficiently long time period, you'll end up with an atmosphere that is mostly rarefied carbon dioxide (see Mars).

Ejecting CO2 from ground level to the upper atmosphere and beyond in the quantities that are talked about when dealing with carbon sequestration (tons - not kilograms or grams) would be very energy intensive and using current technologies (we don't have surplus non-carbon based energy) would mean that we are adding to the total amount of carbon instead of reducing it.

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

#72

Post by TEP_Kim_Il_Sung »

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.

Look into permaculture; It is all about restoring natural forest floors!

Geoff Lawton and Sepp Holzer are good people to look into.

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

#74

Post by worldsayshi »

fatherzine wrote: post #41
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…

"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.

Unless we quickly get much better at this at some point not long from now we are going to end up in a situation where such reckless solutions might be the only options we have left.

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

#75

Post by jokoon »

I wonder if there are plants/trees that grow fast and capture a lot of CO2, that you could just cut early, bury, plant another and repeat.

Maybe a GMO kind of tree that just grows fast? I've read that it's the young trees that capture a lot of CO2.

I guess one could imagine large areas dedicated for this kind of operation, but it's really difficult to know if it would really be effective, and those plants could become invasive.

The best solution is still to stop using cars and airplanes, ban plastics, force companies to make durable and repairable products, degrowing the economy and enforce sobriety everywhere.

I know most americans refuse to listen to de-growth, but they need to change their mind quickly.

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

#76

Post by vkou »

simple10 wrote: post #73

Trees need to be cut and buried to effectively sequester carbon. Here's a detailed article on the technique https://cbmjournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1750-0...

Won't this result in soil depletion, as you bury vital non-carbon nutrients?

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

#77

Post by vkou »

tlb wrote: post #66
oliwary wrote: post #39

I recently looked up the difference in CO2 emissions between burning 1kg wood vs 1kg petrol. Surprisingly, the values are relatively close: Burning 1kg wood releases 1.65 - 1.8 kg of CO2. [0] Burning 1kg of crude oil releases 3.16 kg of CO2. [1][2] I would have expected the carbon density of oil to be much higher! To me, this suggests that a very naïve approach of growing trees and storing them in the places where we…

Oil doesn’t come from huge caverns that we could drop trees into. Oil is often deep underground, soaked into porous rock. So wood would have to be liquified before attempting to pump it into oil wells, and it ruins the well for future use. Wood is valuable and other plant material is similar carbon/kg, so the low-hanging fruit is to take agricultural waste (currently burned or left to rot) and bury it. Hauling all th…

> so the low-hanging fruit is to take agricultural waste (currently burned or left to rot) and bury it.

Which would, as in the case with 'cut and bury trees' deplete the soil of non-carbon nutrients. There's a reason farmers leave that waste 'to rot'.

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

#78

Post by OJFord »

mountaintimefrm wrote: post #40

So having read the article summary, then the research paper, then reading the article summary again... it seems that the summary isn't at all an accurate summary of the research paper, but rather a narrow focus on the suboptimal cases where tree growing isn't super effective at sequestering carbon. It sort of completely ignores the cases where they observed enhanced carbon sequestration, increases in soil organic car…

Regarding nitrogen fixing, my understanding is that 'green manure' & cover crops take from the air, leave in the soil - but microorganisms sounds like it's more in the context of composting, where whatever waste material is 'broken down'. So not 'soil' in the sense of 'it was already there anyway', but rather.. 'in the ground but needing to be made smaller and more available'.

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

#79

Post by ehnto »

fatherzine wrote: post #35
Klapaucius wrote: post #16

Sequestring CO2 is a huge scale problem, and all solutions have significant flaws. Forests require vasts amounts of land, and storage is only assured as long as nobody decides to chop down the forest for other more pressing purposes (looking at you, Brazil). Storing CO2 in oceans (either in the form of "ocean fertilization" or by directly dissolving CO2 in seawater) could have huge and unknown consequences for marine…

"storage is only assured as long as nobody decides to chop down the forest" In 2020 "the Lionshead Fire [...] have almost completely engulfed the largest forest dedicated to sequestering carbon dioxide in the state [of Oregon]". Turns out that Nature may also decide to destroy a forest. Biomass comes and goes. As you stated, geostorage is the only solution that makes sense from a first principles perspective. https:/…

Wildfire is a natural part of many forest ecosystems, so it is definitely worth factoring that into plans for CO2 capture. Perhaps we can lean more heavily on high carbon capturing forests for construction and furniture again.

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

#80

Post by knoebber »

TEP_Kim_Il_Sung wrote: post #70
knoebber wrote: post #59

A redwood tree can live for more than 2000 years. That seems plenty long for carbon sequestration. We should pay the logging companies to save a certain number of trees instead of cutting them every 30 or so years.

Giant Sequoias need forrest fires to reproduce. Their pine cones won't open without sufficient heat. This makes sense, if you consider the dense forests these trees create.

Older / larger redwoods can survive intense fires. Their bark is fire resistant.
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