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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

#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.

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

#5
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?

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

#7
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, since it's underwater. The kelp biomass the has been lost in the last few years is equal to 100% of the redwood forests.

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.

Yes, poor people need gasoline too. We should tax new ICE vehicles at some astronomical rate and plow the money into steeper EV subsidies.

Alternatively, we could tax ICE new vehicles so (assuming they run for 250K miles) the purchaser pays 100% of the carbon recapture cost up front.

We could also allow for community net metering so poor high density areas could establish nonprofit solar/wind farms that lower their electricity bills.

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

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

#8
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…

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

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

#9
post #5
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?

That's a good point. Though, it might be possible to tack the sequestration step onto existing thinning and/or fuel reduction projects.

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

#10
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…

surveying the actual forests is ongoing, with certain old-fat-bureaucracies trying to control the budgets, with over-caffeinated do-gooders on their backs. However some good news is that an individual researcher got a Nature publication credit for a drone+machine learning method to detect dead trees, a few years ago.

The majority of pine-beetle related deaths are in the southern range of the Sierras, south of Yosemite, but it occurs well into the North, as mentioned. Even conservatives, cant-be-bothered people have noticed the huge stands of dead trees, because you see them when driving to Yosemite for vacation. Meanwhile greens have been flipping out amongst themselves for years.

The forest carbon studies executed on Azure cloud mentioned here, have agenda and suffer from ordinary capitalist-picked experts problems, but generally we should all support more quantitative, fact-based decision making.

The dunce cap here definitely goes to the US Forest Service, and cronies, who have for 100 years, exercised their extensive muscle to prove without a doubt that they are in fact, red-neck badge-wearing troglodytes from a Robin Hood movie, for the most part; dramatic exceptions within the ranks noted.

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