Earlier quoted context omitted.
Such as? Unless the tree gets subducted or interred (aka turned to Coal or similar), it’s still part of the cycle, and its carbon will still eventually return to the atmosphere. And with the evolution of lignin eating fungi (white rot fungi being particularly efficient) many millions of years ago, good luck with that. Capacitors are useful, but they aren’t sinks.
ok, so far.. there appear to be at least two angles.. One is the factual measure of the role of carbon in various forests over time; the second is as a target for collective action. Deforestation and forest fire are certainly significant sources of carbon emissions. Not all carbon goes into the atmosphere, however. Given current conditions and human practices, acting now to prevent deforestation and catastrophic fore…
And frankly, it’s obvious. Carbon in any form takes up space. If a forest continually sequestered carbon in solid form (in excess of its wood content, which is easy to measure and plateaus VERY quickly!), every forest that was more than a couple decades old would be sitting on top of a layer of carbon hundreds or thousands of feet deep. It would have to be.
Even the healthiest forests are lucky to have a dozen feet of soil with meaningful carbon content, and most of them it’s a couple feet.
There is nowhere else for that carbon to go except the atmosphere.
And eventually - in hundred, or a few cases a thousand or so years - all those trees die due to climate changes or fires, and they’re gone. Back into the atmosphere.