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Wildfires are destroying California's forest carbon credit reserves, study says

reuters.com

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Re: Wildfires are destroying California's forest carbon credit reserves, study says

#11

Post by quarterdime »

atwood22 wrote: post #2

Trees should not be considered offset carbon until buried in the ground.

I agree that a living tree is not much of an offset. Trees are short term (and small) carbon stores when compared to fossil fuels. However I do not think that burying a tree solves the problem. Unless we find a way to prevent fungus from breaking down lignin, I am not sure that burying a tree is a viable long solution for carbon sequestration. It is outside of my area of expertise, but I can find at least one paper that suggests that coal deposits formed before the evolution of fungal species that could break down lignin (https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.1221748). It is extremely difficult to turn CO2 back into coal. I am in favor of reducing forest loss (and ideally increasing forest area), but I am unconvinced that it will have any meaningful effect on atmospheric carbon in the near, mid, or long term.

Re: Wildfires are destroying California's forest carbon credit reserves, study says

#12

Post by ceeplusplus »

hedora wrote: post #7
alexose wrote: post #3

Here in Northern California there are huge swaths of firs that are dead or diseased as a result of drought. When they burn (which they will, at high intensity), they'll release their carbon back into the air. Seems to me that there's an opportunity for someone to sequester a lot of carbon by burying these trees ( https://cbmjournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1750-0... ) or by turning them into biochar/bio-oil…

In the SF area, the redwoods are dying off from heat/drought. The pines and oaks are being hit with disease. On balance, the oaks seem to be replacing the redwood forests, but everything is thinning out. The mountain forests in Southern California (near Yosemite, etc) have been burnt out hellscapes for years. Of course, this is all rounding error vs. the loss of 90% of the kelp forest, which many people didn't notice…

> steeper EV subsidies

It will be at least a decade before used EVs with >200mi range trickle down to the $10-15k used market. Saying we should tax gas when poor people can't even afford it as is is a gross misunderstanding of the financial situation of poor people today. You can't even buy a >200mi EV for less than 40k today.

> establish nonprofit solar/wind farms

Who's going to pay for them? And who's paying for the storage?

> also boost the economy

Boosting the price of fuel would have hugely inflationary effects while everyone is still stuck on ICEs. We saw this in the 70s, we're seeing it now.

Re: Wildfires are destroying California's forest carbon credit reserves, study says

#13

Post by alexose »

hedora wrote: post #7
alexose wrote: post #3

Here in Northern California there are huge swaths of firs that are dead or diseased as a result of drought. When they burn (which they will, at high intensity), they'll release their carbon back into the air. Seems to me that there's an opportunity for someone to sequester a lot of carbon by burying these trees ( https://cbmjournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1750-0... ) or by turning them into biochar/bio-oil…

In the SF area, the redwoods are dying off from heat/drought. The pines and oaks are being hit with disease. On balance, the oaks seem to be replacing the redwood forests, but everything is thinning out. The mountain forests in Southern California (near Yosemite, etc) have been burnt out hellscapes for years. Of course, this is all rounding error vs. the loss of 90% of the kelp forest, which many people didn't notice…

I'm with you! I'm a big proponent of DAC. I believe it'll be the key that unlocks a circular carbon economy. But, we're still a long ways from scaling it to a level where we can offset the carbon from burning fuel.

We should be pursuing every possible avenue, especially those that might have side benefits. Sequestering dead trees could help with fuels reduction and potentially improve soil health.

(If anyone reading this wants to help scale DAC, consider joining me in OpenAir collective discord! https://openair.cc/)

Re: Wildfires are destroying California's forest carbon credit reserves, study says

#14

Post by antonymy »

mistrial9 wrote: post #10
alexose wrote: post #3

Here in Northern California there are huge swaths of firs that are dead or diseased as a result of drought. When they burn (which they will, at high intensity), they'll release their carbon back into the air. Seems to me that there's an opportunity for someone to sequester a lot of carbon by burying these trees ( https://cbmjournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1750-0... ) or by turning them into biochar/bio-oil…

surveying the actual forests is ongoing, with certain old-fat-bureaucracies trying to control the budgets, with over-caffeinated do-gooders on their backs. However some good news is that an individual researcher got a Nature publication credit for a drone+machine learning method to detect dead trees, a few years ago. The majority of pine-beetle related deaths are in the southern range of the Sierras, south of Yosemit…

What's the scoop on the US Forest Service? Obstruction, grift, or waste?

Re: Wildfires are destroying California's forest carbon credit reserves, study says

#15

Post by alexose »

quarterdime wrote: post #11
atwood22 wrote: post #2

Trees should not be considered offset carbon until buried in the ground.

I agree that a living tree is not much of an offset. Trees are short term (and small) carbon stores when compared to fossil fuels. However I do not think that burying a tree solves the problem. Unless we find a way to prevent fungus from breaking down lignin, I am not sure that burying a tree is a viable long solution for carbon sequestration. It is outside of my area of expertise, but I can find at least one paper t…

There's some research that shows that burying logs super deep (beneath the biologically active layer) is an effective method of long-term sequestration: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35362755/

Re: Wildfires are destroying California's forest carbon credit reserves, study says

#16

Post by alexose »

ErikVandeWater wrote: post #8
alexose wrote: post #3

Here in Northern California there are huge swaths of firs that are dead or diseased as a result of drought. When they burn (which they will, at high intensity), they'll release their carbon back into the air. Seems to me that there's an opportunity for someone to sequester a lot of carbon by burying these trees ( https://cbmjournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1750-0... ) or by turning them into biochar/bio-oil…

Aren't there also invasive beetles that kill the trees?

The invasive beetles are the bullet, but climate change is the gun.

Re: Wildfires are destroying California's forest carbon credit reserves, study says

#17

Post by ZeroGravitas »

I can't tell if these people are just being very picky or if this is yet another front in the constant war to prolong climate change:

> A portion of those credits are put into a buffer account, an insurance mechanism tapped in the event that projects are lost to wildfire, disease, pests or financial risks such as bankruptcy. Those credits are meant to guarantee carbon stocks for at least 100 years. But that promise is falling short as climate change fuels intense wildfires, drought and disease, the researchers said.

> Wildfires have depleted nearly one fifth of that buffer pool in less than a decade, the analysis found.

So, they're generally giving the impression this is all a terrible scam, but the figures they quote suggest that there was planning for fire and diseas, and that the buffer is slightly more depleted than expected after a decade.

And that if lots of trees die, this will "wipe out" the extra carbon credits put aside specifically to cover the eventuality that some trees might die.

Re: Wildfires are destroying California's forest carbon credit reserves, study says

#18

Post by photochemsyn »

Forestry carbon credits have always been a bad joke, comparable to 'clean zero-emission coal plants' in terms of their effectiveness in slowing the rate of CO2 increase in the atmosphere. Such concepts are really borderline, if not actual, scientific fraud.

The guilty parties here are politicians, bureaucrats and corporations who wanted to be seen as 'doing something' or selling 'responsible stewardship' to the public while actually doing nothing. I honestly have more respect for the outfits that didn't even bother with such bogus PR claims (ExxonMobil) vs the shady fraudsters who tried to greenwash their image this way (BP 'Beyond Petroleum', Chevron's 'sustainability program'). Politicians like Al Gore hyped these schemes as well, while not doing much that would actually decrease fossil fuel use (like a massive increase in solar/wind/storage technology R&D and manufacturing support). Countries like Canada used this nonsense to justify continuing with the dirtiest fossil fuel production system on the planet, i.e. Alberta tar sand mining, all while portraying themselves as green enviromentalists.

Such opportunistic politicization of the issue has resulted in major problems ever since when it comes to explaining the science to skeptics, who understandably started to think it was all about politics.

Even 30 years ago when these schemes were first trotted out as 'cap and trade' scientists knew they were bogus. Forests weren't capable of expanding to absorb fossil carbon being pumped into the atmosphere and predictions of continental drying (reduced growth rates), warmer winters (allowing insect infestations), and longer fire seasons (burning down the forests) all pointed to steady reductions in standing biomass, not increases.

Re: Wildfires are destroying California's forest carbon credit reserves, study says

#19

Post by anonporridge »

This is why I always laugh when people yell that we just need to plant more trees to solve climate change.

I've even debated on twitter with published scientists on this issue. It's odd how susceptible to naturophilia even very well educated people can be, to the point of denying what seems like an obvious conclusion.

Re: Wildfires are destroying California's forest carbon credit reserves, study says

#20

Post by tedivm »

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #17

I can't tell if these people are just being very picky or if this is yet another front in the constant war to prolong climate change: > A portion of those credits are put into a buffer account, an insurance mechanism tapped in the event that projects are lost to wildfire, disease, pests or financial risks such as bankruptcy. Those credits are meant to guarantee carbon stocks for at least 100 years. But that promise i…

Wiping out 20% of the buffer in 10% of the time it was meant to last is an issue, especially when the things wiping out the buffer are accelerating.
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