It would be better to create bio-char and use it to improve the soil for farmers to grow food. This would also help them with the changing climate, because bio-char assists with moisture retention.

To compensate for the US emissions of CO2 equivalent, you would need to create in the order of 4 cubic kilometers of charcoal every year. You could cover the whole of California with a layer of 1 centimeter (about half an inch) of charcoal every year.

So turning trees into charcoal scales up to a certain point, but not to the point that it "would even remotely make a difference for climate change", as OP said.

Yeah that sound about right given that we’ve burned enough coal already to lower whole regions by dozens of meters.

Plus it would take centuries to capture and put back as much CO2 as has been emitted. According to [0], in 2016 the world consumed 8.561.852.178 "short tons" (freedom tons, about 7.767.000.000 metric tons) per year.

Assuming that 1 kg of your proposed charcoal offsets 1 kg of mined coal, and based on [1] stating a roughly 7:1 ratio for wet wood -> charcoal, you'd need to grow more than 54.369.000.000 (54 billion) metric tons of wood per year, more to offset the harvesting, replanting, charcoaling and other processing of that wood.

I mean don't get me wrong, this is what I thought as well but it'd be a huge operation. I think you could also get away with just straight burying the wood / plant material, as long as it's anaerobic it shouldn't start rotting.

[0] https://www.worldometers.info/coal/

[1] https://forum.driveonwood.com/t/charcoal-production-rough-ru...

Turning it into charcoal has the slight benefit that you get a little energy out of it.

Suddenly Factorio is real life