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Comment by swebs | Hacker News Reader

>What surprised me is that I can cover double my two-car-owning European family's carbon footprint via planting trees in the UK at an annual cost of around $400. It'll cost half that to do the same in a developing country.

Then what happens when the trees are fully grown? Processing them for industry would just reintroduce the carbon back into the environment. Letting them stay in the forest is nice, but you would quickly run out of room. There needs to be some sort of way to bury the biomass in order to put that carbon out of the atmosphere for good.

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>Letting them stay in the forest is nice, but you would quickly run out of room.

No you wouldn't. There is massive deforestation all over the world. If we planted so many trees to offset carbon emissions that we accidentally solved that problem, that would be a huge environmental benefit on its own, and it would hold an enormous amount of carbon.

>There is massive deforestation all over the world.

And that deforestation is to make room for other things, mostly farms. As the world population continues to explode, the amount of land that can be allocated to forests quickly decreases.

Build housing out of them. There's a 14-story skyscraper going up in Portland, OR made of cross-laminated timber; basically no concrete.

those type of houses are mostly made of glue and plastic. There is a ridiculous amount of toxic glue in modern wood buildings.

At 1000 trees per year per person, that's a lot of building per person.

> There needs to be some sort of way to bury the biomass in order to put that carbon out of the atmosphere for good.

Biochar would be suitable [1]. However, wood is probably not the best feedstock, due to its slow growth compared to other plants.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biochar

> "Then what happens when the trees are fully grown? Processing them for industry would just reintroduce the carbon back into the environment."

A forest is only a significant carbon sink while it is growing. Harvesting and replanting a mature forest is the best thing to do with it.

Obviously you want to use the wood for construction, or other long-term applications. Well-constructed buildings can last for hundreds of years (and after that, the timber can be recycled). Long term carbon storage.

Adding a bit of iron to the ocean -- the same as is released by a large volcanic eruption -- could do the trick.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nextbigfuture.com/2018/07/r...

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