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Planting 1.2T Trees Could Cancel Out a Decade of CO2 Emissions

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Re: Planting 1.2T Trees Could Cancel Out a Decade of CO2 Emissions

#301

Post by AnthonyMouse »

strainer wrote: post #269
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No offense but if you can't see how Chernobyl or Fukushima could have turned out worse, or that unexpected accidents in other locations could happen and could be worse, you don't understand nuclear power. I can't help but notice the lack of specific examples or explanations of any kind. > Water resource is consumed, sure it rains again - often far away and into the sea. Fresh water resources are scarce and under pr…

"I can't help but notice the lack of specific examples or explanations of any kind" Because its so simple as saying, "the wind COULD have blown the fukushima fallout southwards over Tokyo instead of relatively promptly into the Pacific." A nuclear accident COULD deliver fallout to a highly populated area that cant be evacuated in time. A nuclear accident COULD generate much more fallout than Fukushima or Chernobyl. H…

> Because its so simple as saying, "the wind COULD have blown the fukushima fallout southwards over Tokyo instead of relatively promptly into the Pacific." A nuclear accident COULD deliver fallout to a highly populated area that cant be evacuated in time.

So the thing that actually happened with Chernobyl then, not something significantly worse than that.

> re: desalination - fine then, add the cost of desalinating salt water to replace the increasingly scarce resource that nuclear plants evaporate, to their already uncompetitive cost.

Evaporating the water is how you desalinate it. It starts as seawater, it evaporates, you recondense it as fresh water. The equipment needed to do that costs less than the value of the water; the major expense is generating the heat which you're already doing for power generation. So I guess we could subtract the net profits from producing that valuable side product from the cost of the power generation, sure.

Do we then get to add the costs of climate change to the cost of burning coal, or are we only attempting accurate accounting for nuclear and not anything else?

Re: Planting 1.2T Trees Could Cancel Out a Decade of CO2 Emissions

#302

Post by Johnny555 »

strainer wrote: post #182
iamphilrae wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here’s a source from Nasa: https://climate.nasa.gov/news/903/coal-and-gas-are-far-more-... And a quote: “Using historical electricity production data and mortality and emission factors from the peer-reviewed scientific literature, we found that despite the three major nuclear accidents the world has experienced, nuclear power prevented an average of over 1.8 million net deaths worldwide between 1971-2009 (see Fig. 1)…

That's just comparing them with coal to sound great. The three major nuclear accidents do not represent the worst which nuclear plants are capable of. For example we have yet to see what can happen if a nuclear plant is sabotaged - that's not FUD its a real vulnerably of the technology and is a reason why they incur constant exceptional security as well as safety costs. They consume alot of water resource as well, fo…

Thankfully its an academic debate now anyway, because solar and wind prices are already much cheaper with no end to their continued improvement in sight.

Has large scale energy storage been solved? I know there are a number of ways to do grid-scale storage, but are any of them scalable enough to power the entire country from solar and wind? Especially if another "storm of the century" (which seem to be happening more frequently now) reduces solar/wind output from a significant portion of the country so you need to draw deep into storage reserves.

Re: Planting 1.2T Trees Could Cancel Out a Decade of CO2 Emissions

#303

Post by paraschopra »

Even though planting trees seems like an overall good idea (and I certainly believe so), I recall a recent article where scientists debated whether planting trees will have any impact.

From https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-00122-z

> Several analyses in the past few years suggest that these warming effects from forests could partially or fully offset their cooling ability.

What's consoling is that at least planting trees is unlikely to harm (although rapid tree plantation will certainly send ripples in the complex, inter-connected ecological chains).

Re: Planting 1.2T Trees Could Cancel Out a Decade of CO2 Emissions

#304

Post by Invictus0 »

lyxsus1 wrote: post #228
14 wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I dislike the US prison system but perhaps we could use prisoners to do it. They could plant hundreds If not thousands within a sentence and one day return to visit the forest they planted.

I like how we instinctively turn to slavery when there's a grand project that becomes vital.

Inmates already volunteer to do forestry work including firefighting. This has been going on for decades and isn't all that controversial. Expanding to planting trees shouldn't be too difficult.

https://www.npr.org/2018/11/18/669088658/serving-time-and-fi...

Re: Planting 1.2T Trees Could Cancel Out a Decade of CO2 Emissions

#305

Post by mrpopo »

inflatableDodo wrote: post #283
ncmncm wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Transmission losses are not negligible, so power generation generally needs to be near people. If the power could be used to create and concentrate ammonia, much of needed generation could be shifted to farms. Of course farms have other uses for sunlight, so wind is a better choice there. Generating ammonia with wind power eliminates the problem of intermittent availability. You only produce ammonia when there is pow…

Making your transmission line a lot longer doesn't scale your losses by that much surprisingly. The main transmission losses are at the conversion points and in the utility voltage cabling at the end, having long distance interconnects really only loses a percent or two over having short ones.

That's just a very naive simplification of a huge branch of electrical engineering.

To have low power losses in long distances, you use high voltage. The higher the voltage, the bigger (and more expensive) the "conversion points" need to be. Power losses will also be bigger.

To simplify greatly, having low-loss transmission lines costs more money, more equipment, more investment, more time. That's why it makes more sense to build the power source closer instead.

Re: Planting 1.2T Trees Could Cancel Out a Decade of CO2 Emissions

#306

Post by ncmncm »

ip26 wrote: post #291
ncmncm wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Sahara desert is already being reclaimed at a remarkable rate by the people living at its edge, just to get more farmland for themselves. The more trees you have, the more precipition is collected. Many places we think of as ancient deserts were climax forests in historical times, such as Petra. It became desert when too many trees were cut.

Ahem, how about the Sonoran?

Couldn't say.

Re: Planting 1.2T Trees Could Cancel Out a Decade of CO2 Emissions

#307

Post by A2017U1 »

paulmd wrote: post #299
ChuckMcM wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cuts into my solar power generation through. So its a trade-off. Interestingly enough, from an energy production perspective the solar panels on the roof result in more reduction in CO2 than the trees do.

Shading your house will also cause the growth of moss and dump leaf litter everywhere, which will take off a significant chunk of your roof's lifespan (easily 5 years or more). So yeah you save $10/mo on your a/c bill and you spend that $20k to roof your house every 15 years instead of every 20 years. Let alone if you get a big storm and have some branches or a trunk come down and damage your house. Regardless of the…

While I agree with the sentiment of the GP, the reality is starkly different.

Most people I know go to great lengths to remove trees near their house. Some insurance companies lower premiums for it.

For any elevated property it adds a huge amount of value to kill a nice old established tree in the way of views.

Re: Planting 1.2T Trees Could Cancel Out a Decade of CO2 Emissions

#308

Post by cs02rm0 »

gilbetron wrote: post #223
Kiro wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where do you live where shade trees are a thing?

Where do you live where shade trees are not a thing? Genuinely curious. I've never known someone that didn't know what they were. I live in Michigan and have four large trees surrounding the house, although we let their branches hang over the house, so 3 or so hours around noon, the house gets no shade.

UK for me, never heard the term.

Re: Planting 1.2T Trees Could Cancel Out a Decade of CO2 Emissions

#309

Post by Haga »

So, to plant this many trees, you need Gene modification. The tree sapplings have to be toxic to sheep, heat & dry resistant, and they need to be non harvest able. You need to engieer a plant that is economically uninteresting for humans. Then distribute it via drones to the post human desolation.

Re: Planting 1.2T Trees Could Cancel Out a Decade of CO2 Emissions

#310

Post by lvs »

Haga wrote: post #309

So, to plant this many trees, you need Gene modification. The tree sapplings have to be toxic to sheep, heat & dry resistant, and they need to be non harvest able. You need to engieer a plant that is economically uninteresting for humans. Then distribute it via drones to the post human desolation.

You can't engineer anything to be immune to exploitation except for laws. Genetic modification is absolutely the wrong message to send for this purpose anyway, if you want to get it done fast. We only have a decade or two in which to do this. We go to war with the trees we have. Genetic modification for this purpose will make clonal populations that are more susceptible to disease, requires much more research and regulation, and makes many more problems than it solves.

Planting ecologically native trees back into their native land is the best way to minimize unintended consequences and just get this done.

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