ETH Zürich seems to disagree with that statement.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/aug/01/negati...
What does "in the long run" mean? Will it suck up carbon for the first 20 years while the tree is growing? 20 years would of borrowed time would be quite useful.
More offbeat approaches might include modern giant pyramids built of timber, perhaps in the Australian outback. As long as they could be secured from fire and decay.
Just throw it into the empty mining pits instead.
These sources are far from unbiased, but nevertheless:
http://www.greenspec.co.uk/building-design/crosslam-timber-f...
https://www.woodworks.org/wp-content/uploads/presentation_sl...
All good when things are in balance - but they're not.
To sequester the c02, you need to prevent rot.
And I'd go with radiation or heating for sterilization.
Even if not done, still think a living forest has to be much better than a plain or desert.
Maybe but it's relatively cheap, and it can't hurt so why not?
Seems like there are many reasons not to do a fix unless you know it works to some reasonable extent.
Why would they not do this is often a question I've been left with after talking to climate change nihilists. No, it won't fix global warming. But it doesn't cost very much, helps their population and economy, and makes a dent in global warming.
At least they're not turning off perfectly functional nuclear power plants like in so-sophisticated Germany. They're reforesting. Do what you can and try not to make things worse.
[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Silver_Bullet [1] https://a16z.com/2011/11/13/lead-bullets/
And they produce perfectly radioactive nuclear waste nobody knows what to do with right now...
Did I say something to the contrary?
Deforestation is definitely a big deal. We need to preserve nature's diversity and forests are extremely important part of that.
What I meant is to warn people against thinking that if we start planting trees en masse then we have somehow on the right track to solve the problem. We are not.
[1] https://cbmjournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1750-0...
There was this experiment with just dumping 12000 tonnes of orange peel a while ago that turned out to be a huge success: https://www.sciencealert.com/how-12-000-tonnes-of-dumped-ora...
Maybe something like this can also work with wood, although it might take a bit longer to compost.
Although, maybe you could use concentrated solar or even geothermal for the heating part. Hell, you could probably make it profitable selling the petrified wood for use in construction (mantles, counter tops, tile). If it retains a decent amount of the carbon.
https://www.withouthotair.com/
It's a little out of date on things like the advances made in renewables, but still very good. Also very readable.
The reason is because forest do not change CO2 levels noticeably, in the long run. The reason is because there is roughly constant amount of carbon in Earths biomass. Planting treas only increases the amonut of biomass by a little bit but has no lasting effect of scrubbing CO2 from atmosphere.
The real solution to climate change is undoing decades of constant addition of CO2 to atmosphere. This requires not only scrubbing CO2 from atmosphere but also sequestering the carbon somehow which means preventing it getting back to carbon cycle.
If you really wanted to make planting trees have an effect you would not only need to plant trees, you would need to regularly cut them (before they burn) and store them somewhere, maybe at the bottom of ocean, from where it will not be released (decomposed, burned, etc.)
Of course, planting trees have other beneficial effects like helping to keep rainwater. It is just important to make sure right kinds of trees (and large variety of them!) are planted to not repeat mistakes that were made in other places.