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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

#21

Post by alexose »

photochemsyn wrote: post #18

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 publi…

Note that most of the carbon offsets offered by airlines are forestry-related. Any time you see offsets for less than $50/ton, proceed with an abundance of caution.

I do think the general state of offsets is improving. There are more high-quality offsets hitting the market every day. They're much too expensive, but I'd rather see "real" offsets at a high price than the complete make-believe we've had up until recently.

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

#22

Post by vitiral »

alexose wrote: post #15
quarterdime wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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/

So deep strip mine a forest and bury the logs.

Man, environmentalism sure has changed a lot over the decades...

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

#23

Post by etrautmann »

alexose wrote: post #21
photochemsyn wrote: post #18

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 publi…

Note that most of the carbon offsets offered by airlines are forestry-related. Any time you see offsets for less than $50/ton, proceed with an abundance of caution. I do think the general state of offsets is improving. There are more high-quality offsets hitting the market every day. They're much too expensive, but I'd rather see "real" offsets at a high price than the complete make-believe we've had up until recentl…

Can you provide links? I’m very curious to learn more about real offsets even if expensive.

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

#24

Post by quarterdime »

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…

To add to others' comments about timber harvest: Logging operations in burned areas can greatly accelerate erosion. Dead trees have ecological value as habitat and food (woodpeckers are a textbook example). Dead trees have ecological value in the long term as they ultimately become soil (both the volume and contour). Check out Tom Wessels (example https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zcLQz-oR6sw)

I have not studied or worked with bio-oils, but on biochar: As a soil amendment, many soil types are incompatible with addition of biochar. Biochar tends to retain water, which is a problem if you add it to already poorly draining soils. Biochar also shifts soil pH. In some cases this is good, in other cases it is bad. I think it is the minority of soils that are actually improved by adding biochar. I am not aware of any studies that show that biochar is a suitable carbon storage scheme. The last time I reviewed the research, the behavior of carbon in soils is as yet poorly understood and appears to be quite complex. It may be a decade or more before we understand what biochar does when added to different soil types, and we might learn that the majority of it ends up as CO2 within a couple years.

Finally you mention burying trees: it may be that this accelerates the release of Carbon. Depending on climate, standing timber often lasts longer. Dead wood on the ground (or buried) is often wetter, which favors decomposition.

I am not trying to sound negative here. You bring up a lot of points that are being actively researched and worked on. But there are not any clear easy solutions. We need to work on this problem. I wish we (as a society) were putting a lot more into this effort.

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

#25

Post by asquabventured »

alexose wrote: post #15
quarterdime wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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/

Coal regeneration for the future generation!

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

#26

Post by alexose »

etrautmann wrote: post #23
alexose wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Note that most of the carbon offsets offered by airlines are forestry-related. Any time you see offsets for less than $50/ton, proceed with an abundance of caution. I do think the general state of offsets is improving. There are more high-quality offsets hitting the market every day. They're much too expensive, but I'd rather see "real" offsets at a high price than the complete make-believe we've had up until recentl…

Can you provide links? I’m very curious to learn more about real offsets even if expensive.

Sure! I usually point people at Carbonplan's CDR database: https://carbonplan.org/research/cdr-database

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

#27

Post by colpabar »

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…

>As far as I can tell, all these plans are deficit neutral and would also boost the economy.

The state of california should enact these plans so we can all see how it goes. If it works other states will follow suit. If it doesn't, more people will leave california.

>As I like to shout from the rooftops, gasoline could be made carbon negative with a ~ $1/gallon direct air carbon capture tax. (And similar for the other fossil fuels.). I recently saw $7.99 / gallon, so that's a bit over a 10% tax in some areas.

I know that gas prices are high because of putin's price hike (tm), but wasn't calfornia gas already much more expensive than other states because of state taxes? How is this one going to be different?

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

#28

Post by ZeroGravitas »

tedivm wrote: post #20
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.

I read the paper, they are mostly just being nitpicky.

Which is good. They seem to specialise in data-based approaches to validating whether carbon offsets do what they say.

They're not trying to discredit offsets in general, they're nerding out on subtle details of how these work.

But the story amplifies the nitpicking to the level that other commenters can say "these are just outright fraud with made up numbers" and generally gives a false impression which feeds into the whole climate hoax thing.

When, in reality there's a fairly complex system built-in with certification and incentives and insurance buffers. And that insurance might turn out to not be sufficient, but even if the insurance totally fails, it only then starts to eat away at the benefits.

Note the insurance is pooled and as new projects get added, it spreads the risk further.

Also the trees are spread across 29 states, which diversifies risk from fire and disease.

https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/ffgc.2022.93042...

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

#29

Post by twawaaay »

It is called "carbon cycle" for a reason.

No amount of trees or other biomass can revert what we have done or even make a significant dent.

Currently, all biomass on Earth equals about a decade of our emissions from carbon we dug out. Even doubling all biomass, which is impossible to do, would only be roughly equal to pausing our emissions for a decade.

That is, assuming all that biomass does not revert into carbon through fires and other ways.

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

#30

Post by alexose »

quarterdime wrote: post #24
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…

To add to others' comments about timber harvest: Logging operations in burned areas can greatly accelerate erosion. Dead trees have ecological value as habitat and food (woodpeckers are a textbook example). Dead trees have ecological value in the long term as they ultimately become soil (both the volume and contour). Check out Tom Wessels (example https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zcLQz-oR6sw ) I have not studied or wo…

No negativity taken. These are complex systems. Any solutions involving forestry should be heavily scrutinized.
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