Modeling a forest like a spring is a better model than a petrochemical reservoir. (Though a water reservoir is not a terrible analogy if forest fires == a dam breaking! And overflows or evaporation == rotting.)
The (very common) thinking that forests are ‘sinks’ (aka it goes in one way and stays) or like a petrochemical reservoir (we can put it in, or take it out - but it stays there once in, or out) are a big part of the confusion.
On a geological timescale, carbon being stored in a forest is a temporary and rather rare circumstance. Some global percentage will always be in vegetation (see carbon cycle), but any given atom will move around a lot.
Harvesting forests and burning them, takes carbon that was in the atmosphere, then in wood, then puts it back in the atmosphere. Total carbon in the atmosphere was only temporarily out of it in this situation.
If we wanted to permanently take it out of the atmosphere, we’d need to bury all those trees (deep enough where they won’t decompose and/or the decomposition products won’t make it into the atmosphere!). Turning it into furniture or building products is a more useful, but shorter term solution.
One idea-logically most pure solution would be to puree them and inject them into old depleted oil fields, eh?
Because otherwise those trees will just burn, die and decompose, etc. - it’s inevitable.
Ideally they would be replaced in a shortish timeframe by new trees or growth, roughly locking up the same amount of carbon. But that doesn’t always happen.
And people aren’t allowed to clear cut forests in the US (generally) anymore. Most (all?) US timberland is multi-generational new growth now at this point, and is harvested using as realistically healthy a process as possible. If we had battery powered industrial equipment, it would be even better.
I’ve read the papers, and I’ve done the math many times.
The amount of carbon being released by burning the trees, is roughly the same amount as was taken out by them growing. That’s the nature of it. When they regrow,they’ll take more out.
That is the nature of being renewable. Unlike fossil fuels, where chances are no more will replace it naturally.
Complaining about someone cutting down the trees, specifically from a ‘renewable’/‘total carbon’ perspective is silly in this context. The carbon released isn’t even fossil carbon, and will be back in the trees soon enough - less than a lifetime!
And I’ve done the math - even if we turned all of the arable land in North America into forests, based on the USDA data from National Forests, it would take 4-10ish years worth of growth to temporary store 1 years worth of fossil carbon being released just by the US right now.
Every year.
And to even try that, we’d all starve, because we turned all our crop land into forests too.
Worry about the massive quantities of fossil carbon still getting sucked out of the ground. That is what is feeding the impending disaster.
Unless people are salting the earth and stopping further growth (which generally is already forbidden in the US!), cutting down and burning a forest is a temporary nudge in the accounting that will self correct.
Generally most of it will get used in lumber though, which means it should net decrease atmospheric carbon until it rots or burns in a fire. If landfilled, it could go thousands of years.
In summary - the math doesn’t actually check out when you look at it over realistic timescales, and this is more an ideological thing than an actual real thing. I love trees. But they aren’t going to save us from this mess, no matter how hard core we go.