Hardened wood as a renewable alternative to steel and plastic

Post by danuker » Thu, Oct 21, 2021, 9:05 PM UTC

KorematsuFredt wrote: post #141

canadian_tired wrote: post #64

Wood is renewable when you can grow it, cut it up into useful shapes, then at the end of its useful life, compost it. As soon as you add a shit load of processing and plastic and other stuff it's not "wood" anymore than gasoline is a dead dinosaur. As for things like plywood that use glue for the laminations...glue is the most expensive and important part of the product. Not the wood so much. Replacing steel? I don't…

Why are people not considering just growing large trees to capture carbon cut down those trees and just coat them in plastic and throw them at the bottom of ocean/desert or some kind of storage where this carbon can stay trapped for thousands of years ? What am I missing ? I think growing trees is better than just capturing CO2 directly as growing a large forest might have other advantages and a lot of wood can be us…

Post by korantu » Thu, Oct 21, 2021, 9:09 PM UTC

mjh2539 wrote: post #17

We have, for all intents and purposes, an unlimited supply of carbon and iron. Assuming we one day get over our FUD of nuclear energy (which with the use of breeder reactors is considered a renewable form of energy), it follows that steel itself can be considered renewable.

Post by nl » Thu, Oct 21, 2021, 9:12 PM UTC

gnabgib wrote: post #135

xxs wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

magnesium is sort of a more expensive version of al.

In that it's one electron from it (like Silicon)? Magnesium is 2.2x stronger, 1.08x harder, and 2.05x more costly, 0.65x as thermally conductive and, 0.64x as dense. Think I'm missing your similarity metric

Post by agumonkey » Thu, Oct 21, 2021, 9:14 PM UTC

AdamN wrote: post #164

carlisle_ wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s something to be said for the fact that harvesting wood is much more environmentally friendly than petroleum. At the very least a “wood spill” doesn’t exist as far as I know.

Petroleum is definitely more environmentally friendly than the timber industry. You probably haven't driven around tree farms - monoculture that destroys the environment for hundreds of square miles. Even worse is when they pulp existing forest for things like toilet paper: https://www.rcinet.ca/en/2019/02/26/u-s-use-of-toilet-paper-...

Post by korantu » Thu, Oct 21, 2021, 9:23 PM UTC

account_b wrote: post #55

jnmandal wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is pretty clear to me too. We survive on stored energy borrowed from the past. Energy and growth are basically finite. We do need to cut down. We also need to develop tech (weather technique or technology) to reconstitute waste and refuse into the inputs for our food, buildings, transportation, etc.

> We survive on stored energy borrowed from the past. It's worse than that: We fully rely on borrowed time ! Natural geological cycles to restore surface phosphorus span many thousands of years. Our current agriculture (food production) critically depends on mineral phosphorus, which may be exhausted in just four or five decades. And we retain none of that, but flush our soils into the oceans (partially through the t…