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Tree planting: Where can I do it and which type is best?

bbc.co.uk

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Re: Tree planting: Where can I do it and which type is best?

#151

Post by markdown »

jerkstate wrote: post #7

I did a rough spreadsheet some time back based on this 1998 EPA carbon sequestration worksheet [1] and found that an average person from a high carbon output country needs about 600-1000 trees to offset their carbon output. There are about 3 trillion trees for a population of 7 billion people for an average of 428 trees per person, so that means you have to make up the delta of about 172 to 572 trees over the course…

Sounds like a business opportunity.

You get customers to pay for the planting of 500 trees at $X/tree. This is treated as a long-term investment. 30 years later the trees are harvested and the "investors" get back X% of the value of the trees.

So they get to say they live a carbon-neutral life, and as a bonus, get to make some money.

Re: Tree planting: Where can I do it and which type is best?

#152

Post by quixoticelixer- »

aresant wrote: post #36
jerkstate wrote: post #7

I did a rough spreadsheet some time back based on this 1998 EPA carbon sequestration worksheet [1] and found that an average person from a high carbon output country needs about 600-1000 trees to offset their carbon output. There are about 3 trillion trees for a population of 7 billion people for an average of 428 trees per person, so that means you have to make up the delta of about 172 to 572 trees over the course…

No easy way to plot this - planting trees to sequester CO2 may or may not have a net positive impact at scale for a variety of reasons: 1) The timescale is very long - a single tree to drive carbon neutrality is MOST optimistically pegged at 40 - 100 years depending on species. With expanding populations planning or guaranteeing execution on that time scale is limited. AKA it's very unlikely that most efforts, unless…

Farmed forest can be very effective in the short term for CO2 sequestration how ever, although the net CO2 sequestration over 200 years or so may be lower the sequestration in the short term can be very high. This gives you time to reduce the amount of emissions that are being made in the first place. Planting trees is not a long term solution in and off itself but it is an important tool in reducing emissions

Re: Tree planting: Where can I do it and which type is best?

#154

Post by quixoticelixer- »

pmontra wrote: post #17
jerkstate wrote: post #7

I did a rough spreadsheet some time back based on this 1998 EPA carbon sequestration worksheet [1] and found that an average person from a high carbon output country needs about 600-1000 trees to offset their carbon output. There are about 3 trillion trees for a population of 7 billion people for an average of 428 trees per person, so that means you have to make up the delta of about 172 to 572 trees over the course…

There is one thing that I don't understand. I plant 1000 trees, I sequester the CO2 I create by driving, heating my home and all the activities done by third parties to keep me alive (food, hospitals, etc). But that CO2 is still under the sky and most of it will be released when the trees die. It's not like we're pumping it back into oil fields or coal mines and never see it again. So this 1T trees initiative is a st…

It is a stop gap, but it's at worst a 50 year stop gap and we can go a long way in reducing our gross emissions in that time.

Re: Tree planting: Where can I do it and which type is best?

#155

Post by ALittleLight »

fovc wrote: post #99
jerkstate wrote: post #7

I did a rough spreadsheet some time back based on this 1998 EPA carbon sequestration worksheet [1] and found that an average person from a high carbon output country needs about 600-1000 trees to offset their carbon output. There are about 3 trillion trees for a population of 7 billion people for an average of 428 trees per person, so that means you have to make up the delta of about 172 to 572 trees over the course…

So for a one time $600 donation ($1/tree [1]) I can be a carbon neutral person for life? Seems like a bargain. Am I missing something? [1] https://www.nationalforests.org/get-involved/tree-planting-p...

From my experience planting trees, most of the trees planted at such a rate will die. You may need to do a few multiples to be safe.

Re: Tree planting: Where can I do it and which type is best?

#156

Post by Skunkleton »

fovc wrote: post #126
Skunkleton wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not an expert (even an armchair expert), but I have to imagine it couldn't be that simple. When the trees die, they need to either be replaced, or self-replace. That means the land they are planted on needs to be protected. Further, when the trees die, they will release a portion of the sequestered CO2 back into the atmosphere. I wonder what percentage is re-released? Does this imply that we need an ever-growing…

I think the tree survival rate is baked into the numbers, and most of these trees will outlive me anyway, so year-over-year CO2 I think would be fine. The EOL question is discussed in sibling comments and seems to be the crux of the issue. It seems like it mostly hinges on whether permanently increase the % of land that's covered by forest, or whether it reverts to something else once the trees die. Based on wikipedi…

Even at $1/per tree, that is still extremely expensive when you consider that developing countries will need trees to offset their emissions as well. As an American ~$600-$3000 isn't a huge deal, but that outstrips the gdp per capita of many countries.

We should plant lots of trees, but we should also do everything else in our power in parallel.

Re: Tree planting: Where can I do it and which type is best?

#157

Post by reitzensteinm »

Jolter wrote: post #43
TeMPOraL wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had a stupid thought yesterday that I need to run numbers on, but I wonder if following would be possible: Allocate some large area of ground for planting fast-growing trees. Dig a large and deep hole in the middle; something like 20 meters in diameter x 500 meters in depth. Let the trees grow; when they're mature, cut them down, throw into the hole, and throw a bunch of dirt (from the mound you made by digging the…

No, because the buried wood would decompose. Decomposing wood releases its stored carbon as carbon dioxide, which will slowly evaporate through the covering dirt. One scheme that actually would work is to convert the wood to coal, then burying it. That could be done without adding any energy by using old-fashioned methods for charcoal burning. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charcoal_burner Because charcoal is chemic…

How slowly though? Intuitively, I would think that trees piled wide and 20m high and covered over would still be mostly there in my lifetime. Is this wrong? (genuine question)

500m high is another level. If it took, say, 1000 years for them to decompose fully and release their CO2 in to the atmosphere, that's still potentially useful even if its technically net zero.

We really only need to get past the next 100 years.

Re: Tree planting: Where can I do it and which type is best?

#158

Post by pvaldes »

pmoriarty wrote: post #70
aresant wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe sounds too much like spouting from the climate change denier camp? Which I am the opposite of. There are a lot of flower & daisy soft solutions to C02. Drive to the suburban forest in your SUV, plant 100 trees that will inevitably be cut down long before they have a carbon negative impact, come home and run your AC. You're still running 1000/1 in negative C02 balance. Vs finds ways to dramatically cut use, doub…

"Drive to the suburban forest in your SUV, plant 100 trees that will inevitably be cut down long before they have a carbon negative impact, come home and run your AC. You're still running 1000/1 in negative C02 balance." So do 1000 times that, and don't plant them in a suburban forest but one that will stay around longer. Or contribute money to tree planting initiatives who do it right.

Each apple, each year, for the last 40 years, that somebody grow in their garden, is an apple less that must be moved burning gasoline from Idaho or Colorado to a market near you, one piece of fruit less that must be waxed and wrapped in plastic and put in one-use wood boxes, before to be moved again to your house, probably burning a litte more gaz.

Trees provide more services than log production

Re: Tree planting: Where can I do it and which type is best?

#159

Post by Skunkleton »

gooseus wrote: post #123
Skunkleton wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This seems to involve feeding the exhaust of a power plant into a process which cools the exhaust to the point where CO2 dry ice (and other pollutants) desublimates out of the exhaust and is then extracted for various industrial/commercial applications. Based on what you said, the dry ice would sublimate and just re-release the carbon into the atmosphere. Or did you have a different place for this carbon to go? If…

The dry ice itself would be stored in well-insulated containers, and cold generated from these containers would be useful for refrigeration with the CO2 that does sublimate out as the containers heat up being feed-stock to enrich greenhouses, with the rest would being recycled into the pyrolysis exhaust, and thus back into the dry ice production. One of the things I'm curious about is the efficiency of the dry ice pr…

AFAIU most of our industrial CO2 (for dry ice, soft drinks, etc) comes from refining natural gas exhaust. From there, if you want to make a dry ice block, you have to take it through a very energy cooling process (similar to how air conditioning works) to create a liquid, and then through a second compression and cooling process to turn it into a solid. It is likely that the process of turning a given volume of CO2 into a solid would produce more emissions than it sequestered. You cannot assume that green energy will be used for this sequestration because if green energy were available at this scale, you wouldn't have the CO2 on your hands in the first place.

On the demand side we already collect as much CO2 as we need from e.g. natural gas power plants. We don't have a use for any more. It will just sublimate and be re-released into the atmosphere, or into some containing vessel.

Re: Tree planting: Where can I do it and which type is best?

#160

Post by OJFord »

aresant wrote: post #71
tunesmith wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We've gotta get past the argument pattern of "don't reduce consumption; sequester!" and "don't sequester; reduce consumption!" A lot of both are needed. I agree with the point that planting 100 trees should not leave anyone feeling they've done their part. Repeating the math until we're blue in the face is what helps there I guess.

Fair point. But convincing the entire population of the world to set their thermostat 1 degree higher during the summer months would have a 1000x multiple impact on a 40x shorter time scale than if every one of those people planted a tree. The spirit of my comment is that in general people LOVE the path of least resistance. Ask the average person about combatting climate change and their response is "plant more trees…

> But convincing the entire population of the world to set their thermostat 1 degree higher

This confused me for longer than I'd care to admit, but now that I get it, I'd just say that a much smaller proportion of 'the entire population of the world' - even the developed world - has AC than it might seem to an American perspective.

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