Re timelines. Fast growing forests will capture most of the carbon in the first 10 years. That gives you the best return per dollar and per unit of land.
Slow growing forests may continue to capture over a longer period. But typically they arent used for tree carbon schemes because they are so slow.
But it’s hard to have any hope for this.
eta: But I can do it. I can have a little hope for it.
This would be a reforestation effort to bring back what’s been cut down over centuries. Billions of trees, possibly trillions. Obviously, this would be a huge undertaking and it would be just part of an overall even larger project. As hard as all that sounds, the hardest part is the politics, as always.
There isnt really a permanent way to store the carbon from trees. I.e. there isnt a “chop down the forest and bury it underground” process that anyone is talking about.
There is, it’s just one people don’t take seriously right now so I won’t say more about it here. Anyway, we don’t know for sure what will end up working out so it seems wise to explore speculative ideas as well as do as much as possible of what we know will work.
You need a LOT of land.
Yes. So do farming indoors; it’s more efficient. A huge percentage of land devoted to agriculture is for use by livestock (~80%). So change diets. It might not work out but put some effort into the development and production of cultured meat.
Move people to the cities. I don’t mean by force. Provide incentives. These are largely already there if we remove some barriers, including to immigration. Politics is the main deterrent.
The Israelis, who have pretty limited land, a lot of it arid, have nevertheless managed to do significant reforestation. The Chinese seem serious about it. There’s room in places in Europe. At least by comparison, there’s no shortage of land in the US. I think the problems are in our heads.
But you get what I mean about scale right? Like. If we do everything you say, in every continent, as fast as possible, with mass disruption to population and food systems, we just delay by an extra year or two?
this isn’t quite so simple. there are fast and slow growing species which we know through forestry and timber plantings, but the important measure is how much do they capture per year. like there’s a world of difference between conifers, deciduous, and woody grasses, and how they match the local climates.
burning trees for energy would be terrible. the problem would be you have to log them and transport it. in that industry, if there is no road, it’s not feasible.
one solution i read about is sinking plant matter in large lakes and the ocean, mostly in the context of kelp forest, not trees though. under 100m of water the carbon is essentially locked away for centuries or millennia. trees are sometimes sunk in lakes, but for the purposes of habitat creation for fish etc. which also sequesters carbon
i disagree on a year or two. no climate model talks about time ranges like that. at best it talks about decades. if we plant now, the 30s and 40s will be more comfortable by a fraction of a degree. we’ll still have to do all the other stuff to decarbonize, but that fraction is worth trillions of economic value just from disaster recovery alone.
but IMO the main reason to reforestation and rebuilding soil is actually that it will capture seasonal water like a sponge and recharge aquifers. which will become important when the snowpack is no longer there as a sufficient resource.
I’m not necessarily saying you’re wrong, but no, I don’t see that. I would hope for a significantly larger benefit. It’s been a while since I played around with models or read much. I’ll do a little review. Cite me some sources if you care to.
Burning trees (or biochar, etc) for energy with carbon capture is an absolutely essential part of the puzzle. We need to ongoing ways to take carbon out of the air and permanently store it underground.
Talking about a year or two is another way of saying what you’re saying.
We have glide paths over time. Glide down for emissions reductions needed, glide up for temperature. Mass tree planting can shift them both to the right by a couple of years.
Highly speculative but with sufficient clean energy you can produce it and just bury it. Don’t burn it. In a few hundred years, let Joe Manchin re-open his coal mine; hopefully it will be worthless by then.
First one I could find and I’ve just skimmed it.
Seems to be a review of literature with a lot of source links.
you absolutely don’t have to burn biochar to store C underground. you aren’t even getting much energy from it, and it’s more expensive than current cheap energy like solar, wind, and potentially nuclear (which is much more expensive than solar/wind) you are literally the only one i can think of who calls it essential.
overall your timelines sound off as well. 10 years isn’t a full grown tree.
we are talking about planting a forest for 100 years minimum. that’s much better than a year or two. which is what converting it to biochar and burning it would do.
TBF, forests also burn, so we will have to do controlled burns and release some of the carbon back periodically
It’s not just about storing C underground. It’s about negative emissions. If you burn coal then store the carbon. Its net zero.
If you burn biofuel and then store it. Its negative.
In addition. Solar and wind are great. But you need something for when the suns not shining and the winds not blowing. Which tech will solve this problem is still unknown. But biofuel is one solid option. As is pumped hydro.
“Better” depends on your criteria.
If you are looking for most carbon stored ever. Then slow growth, multi species forest is best.
If you want to capture the most carbon as fast as possible, its fast growing eucalyptus monoculture.
Currently. If you want to make money off it via carbon credits, it’s also largely the latter.
Regarding 10 years. Yeah. I may be off. I think maybe i read something about the annual carbon absorption peaks at about 10 years perhaps, for fast growing monoculture.
Most likely temps will just rise 4 or 5 deg C. And that’s with a fair percent of people trying.
it’s a rather simple paper napkin calculation, how much energy are you going to expend harvesting one square km of full grown timber (not biomass, that’s impossible, you are never going to pick up all the branches and extract all the roots) on converted farmland, converting it to biochar, then capturing the co2, even if you store the carbon.
it’s orders of magnitude higher than the energy you are going to extract. you are much better off simply letting it be trees for the next 100 years, until other negative technologies arrive
eucalyptus only grows in the tropics. it won’t do in a majority of the US. it’s also highly flammable as a plantation.
monocultures are basically a nonstarter for a lot of reasons, but the biggest being greater appreciation of biodiversity.
California is lousy with Eucalyptus.
Release the koalas.