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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

#41

Post by s1artibartfast »

rr808 wrote: post #5
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…

Nice idea but surely all the chainsaws, loaders, trucks, diggers would burn so much diesel it isn't worth it?

Unlikely. Compare the size/mass of the gas tank on a truck to the load of trees it is carrying. This approach gives a very rough estimate of the carbon used vs sequestered.

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

#42

Post by BurningFrog »

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…

Burying trees seems like a huge effort.

Is there a fundamental reason you can't treat the wood to make it non flammable and non digestible, and just stack them in big piles somewhere?

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

#43

Post by s1artibartfast »

anonporridge wrote: post #19

This is why I always laugh when people yell that we just need to plant more trees to solve climate change. I've even debated on twitter with published scientists on this issue. It's odd how susceptible to naturophilia even very well educated people can be, to the point of denying what seems like an obvious conclusion.

I mean, even if the trees lock up carbon for 50 years, it would be a huge benefit.

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

#44

Post by BurningFrog »

anonporridge wrote: post #19

This is why I always laugh when people yell that we just need to plant more trees to solve climate change. I've even debated on twitter with published scientists on this issue. It's odd how susceptible to naturophilia even very well educated people can be, to the point of denying what seems like an obvious conclusion.

There is no one solution to climate change.

Growing forests is one of many things that can be part of fixing this.

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

#45

Post by mlyle »

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…

> Yes, poor people need gasoline too.

Just tax carbon. Use proceeds to subsidize situations where the hardship is too high (e.g. energy used by poor people).

Start small and phase in over time.

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

#46

Post by GloriousKoji »

BurningFrog wrote: post #44
anonporridge wrote: post #19

This is why I always laugh when people yell that we just need to plant more trees to solve climate change. I've even debated on twitter with published scientists on this issue. It's odd how susceptible to naturophilia even very well educated people can be, to the point of denying what seems like an obvious conclusion.

There is no one solution to climate change. Growing forests is one of many things that can be part of fixing this.

I was going to comment on how less people is the easiest unacceptable single solution to climate change but then I considered the possibility that even if half of the world population disappeared, there's a good chance people will end up using twice as much resources.

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

#47

Post by revolvingocelot »

vitiral wrote: post #22
alexose wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

Well, not a mature forest, but one of those "tree farms" of evenly spaced monoculture sounds like it'd be a great candidate.

Of course, since those tree farms are explicitly for production and therefore owned by the owner class, who don't really want anything to do with this whole unprofitable "saving the planet" thing, the above scenario is more likely -- but all I meant to suggest is that it'd be possible to use this method and not destroy precious biodiversity at the same time.

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

#48

Post by countvonbalzac »

alexose wrote: post #16
ErikVandeWater wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aren't there also invasive beetles that kill the trees?

The invasive beetles are the bullet, but climate change is the gun.

And humanity pulled the trigger

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

#49

Post by anonporridge »

briantakita wrote: post #39
anonporridge wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Volcanoes emit a fraction of CO2 that humans do, https://www.climate.gov/news-features/climate-qa/which-emits... Even if you continued to believe that they did, you'd have to point to evidence that volcanic eruptions happen to have drastically increased at a smooth rate in line with global industrialization and fossil fuel burning. https://www.co2levels.org/

Quoted post unavailable.

No one calls CO2 "devil's gas". That's just you trying to create a strawman because you're too weak to interact with reality. Grow up and learn to fight steelmen like an adult, https://www.lesswrong.com/tag/steelmanning.
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