Nature didn't give us a safe and friendly environment we made unsafe, it gave us a hostile and dangerous environment we have made safe by using technology to impact the planet to better suit us.
All impacts have externalities but I take those any day over just waiting for some catastrophe to happen whether meteors, super vulcanos or any other real threat that is out there lurking.
Technology is the sole reason we are 8 billion people on this planet and still are most better fed than 2 billion people were 150 years ago.
Living on this planet IS life in space and we are luckily constantly improving our ability to cope.
All solutions create new problems but these problems are better problems to have.
Wiping out the rest of the planet to give us a safe habitat may have been a giant mistake, monocultures tend to end bad.
Right. Let's say we're not going to agree on this and leave it at that.
It's not that clear-cut: https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2018/08/planet-earth-has-more...
And that's before we get into the hardwood vs softwood differences in growth speed.
Poplar/Maple/Oak/Pine are all good options, with the slow growers storing the carbon for the longest time, and even when not harvested they won't rot nearly as fast (rot is best looked at as slow burning in this context).
And then not to harvest them until they die of 'natural causes', hopefully not a forest fire.
If it is in a forest long term (same trees), sequestration flat lines after awhile no? I'm not saying I don't like trees - far from it, I own 90 acres of timberland! I'm pointing out that pulling carbon from the atmosphere as fast as possible vs a pretty piece of old growth timber are two different goals with different tradeoffs.
I thought forests tended to be pretty much neutral once they get old enough for trees to start dying and decomposing.
If you take some fast growing trees, harvest them just as the curve starts to slow, put that wood to use somewhere it won't rot, and plant new trees that also fast grow - seems like you'd pull out more in aggregate?
Personally I'm more of a fan of the geo-weathering type sequestration plans, but if if we have a target, might as well optimize for it?
Technology can help to sustain life in space, I'm sure it will enable us to sustain life here on earth. But for how many, and with what quality of life?