I appreciate the questions and retort. I somewhat agree, but I think when considering a larger context - it changes the equations.
> Why would you be skeptical of tree farming leading to less carbon sequestering?
Two primary reasons:
(1) Comparing a huge old-growth northwest tree that towers a hundred feet in the air, and comparing that to 30 smaller saplings. The amount of carbon stored in one ring of bark of a giant tree like that is immense. The amount of photosynthesis, the amount of total plant metabolism - is immense. This is an anecdotal perspective, but to consider a non-intuitive alternative, there really needs to be some good facts behind it.
(2) The Sinclair quote: “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.” There is a extremely strong financial interest for tree farming to be considered as ecologically friendly.
> The whole point of farming timber is to harvest wood which is lignin and cellulose aka CARBON.
I agree.
> The green leaves on the tree are not what will store carbon.
While leaves are not the primary store of carbon, they are still largely made out of carbon. What's more, this is a bit to me like saying "your lungs don't store oxygen."
> The green will fall off and become forest duff which gets digested by fungi and bugs and the carbon released back to the atmosphere.
Forest floors do build up over time. This implies there is still a sequestration effect from this alone.
Bringing it back to my skepticism, the amount of carbon in one ring of an old tree, one that is 6 feet in diameter, the amount of carbon in that one ring is immense. The surface area of leaves is what powers all these other processes.
Say now compared to a group of saplings, where half don't make it and are then chopped down and put into a refuse pile. The saplings that do make it are not adding ring upon ring of bark for a couple hundred years, but only for decades, and in much lesser quantities.
> Goal of timber companies == make more timber timber == captured carbon
The goal of timber companies is to grow tree trunks & cut them down. Does that actually sequester carbon though?
Peer comments point out that building materials are not often recycled and wind up in the atmosphere anyways.
Regardless, the impact of going from a bunch of old and really tall trees that have healthy foliage throughout their entire vertical density - to then go to something like a grove of saplings or a grove of Q-tip like tree farm trees that are older - is an immense difference.
First, there is a huge difference in vertical density of foliage. Tree farm trees I call 'Q-tips' because they do not have much vertical density. It's like a grove of bushes that grow tall but never really gain more area for photosynthesis than that. Meanwhile a "natural" forest has trees that are healthy top to bottom. It's very akin to the micro-surfaces in the lungs or gut to drastically increase surface area. It's the difference of the surface area of a pine cone to that of a flat circle.
Then the other side of the coin too, groves of saplings are not fire resistant. Tree farms are not fire resistant. At some point the area can no longer withstand fires because it's all saplings and they all burn clean.
Then, yet another side of the coin, how much carbon is needed to cut down the trees and transport them? I don't think I've ever seen the "tree farming is carbon negative" argument actually take those additional footprint aspect into consideration. It's always a purely mathematical argument based on tree trunk size alone (which is what timber companies care about, they do not care about roots, branches, leaves, forest floor soil quality; and all of those aspects are not counted for in the theory of "it's best to grow trees to then bury them"). Which also comes back to the other point - building materials sequester carbon only for so long - while incurring a large cost (many of which seem to be unaccounted for).