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Comment by foldor | Hacker News Reader

Just to play devil's advocate. What about the amount of greenhouse gases released by the fires? We're clearly not succeeding in reducing our greenhouse gases, so why not reduce it where we can?

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Compared to the CO2 that has been "permanently" sequestered in the Earth's crust through coal and oil, the trees involved in the fires contain a relatively trivial amount of CO2.

In the US, we are succeeding in reducing the rate of growth in CO2 emission. We're not yet succeeding in reducing total gases. We'd be a lot more successful if we stopped subsidizing the production and consumption of oil and coal. In 2013, the IEA estimates US$548 billion (annually) of global subsidy to fossil fuel. And the IMF calculates that including external costs (pollution), US$5.3 trillion of subsidy in 2015.

You mean the greenhouse gasses that were originally sequestered by the forest into a cellulose matrix and which were inevitably going to be re-released when the tree died and the wood rotted? Yeah, I don't think the process works the way you think it does.

Most of the time when wood rots, it still sequesters CO2. If it didn't, you wouldn't be able to create soil through the accumulation of biomass. All the dirt would be mineral only, and no black soil would exist anywhere. The blackness of black soil is due primarily to carbon. Which isn't floating around in the air.

Seems like the difference in timescale between soil creation and wood decomposition would argue against sequestration occurring "most of the time." Soil biomass might represent only 1% or so of decomposition products. But I haven't seen any actual figures...

Trees are big and take up a lot of room, but there's way way way more dirt than trees. Good soil is actually upwards of 5% organic matter which is non-trivial. 5% of all the good dirt left in the world is a very big number and probably dominates the weight of trees on the planet.

Forest fires are a cyclic phenomenon complemented by forest growth. Best to let nature find its own equilibria and change human processes to be sustainable.

Also a good idea if you live in the woods to trim back from the house & wet things down when a fire's comin your way...

Interestingly, far more wood smoke is released into the air during winter than during peak fire season. If the stated aim is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions then from a cost/benefit perspective moving away from burning wood for heat to a cleaner form of energy makes far more sense than fighting fires.

That logic is really weird

Logical faculties of the brain are the first to be impaired when one listens to conspiracy theories peddled by the Elite through the media.

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