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Comment by zamazingo | Hacker News Reader

That means a global / multinational movement against governments cutting trees (eg for lucrative construction deals) is needed.

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Massive reforestation would eventually reduce cost of wood construction, allowing harvesting and replanting to sequester even more carbon.

If carbon offsets are properly modeled, planting and cutting (profit/cost) would work itself out.

I think of how the acid rain stuff seemed to have worked out: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acid_Rain_Program

Cutting for wood doesn't hurt since the carbon is still trapped in the wood. In fact it helps since they regrow new trees that sequester carbon faster in their early years than mature trees.

That is the superficial thinking but unfortunately it is not true. First when they cut trees, they do not haul in the branches and the leaves. There is no money in that. The branches and the leaves are all cut out and left in place with just the main trunk being hauled to the sawmill. The branches and the leaves then dry out and rot releasing their carbon. This means that big part of the trees mass (probably at least 50%) does not get its carbon sequestered. (For a similar reason freshly logged forests are a much bigger fire danger than forests that have not been logged at all).

Secondly unfortunately, in general loggers mostly do not regrow the areas they cut down. Although they do talk about regrowing whenever they are talking to the media, in reality the areas regrown are far less than the areas cut down and thus the earth is losing a lot of tree cover every year.

Dunno what kind of tree it is, but I do see tree plantations where each was clearly planted at the same time in a grid, and in a race to the sky, the trees don’t bother with outward branches much, just the ever rising canopy.

> since they regrow new trees that sequester carbon faster in their early years than mature trees

Is that actually the case? Wouldn't a larger tree's volume mean it consumes a ton more Carbon than a smaller tree, even if the smaller tree is rapidly growing?

Turns out it's not so simple:

Young trees sequester carbon faster: https://psmag.com/environment/young-trees-suck-up-more-carbo...

Old trees sequester carbon faster: https://theconversation.com/big-old-trees-grow-faster-making...

Though when you consider forestry has the goal of producing sequestered carbon (wood), you would think they'd find a fast way to do that. In my country, commercial forestry is done with non-native species that are planted by the forest owners and obviously must be replanted for them to keep operating. They harvest them after about 20 years of growth. I guess that's the age when further growth would be too slow to be economical.

There's been studies showing the rate of sequestration increases as the tree gets older. So there's a disadvantage when young.

We should find a way to discourage cutting mature forest and rainforest as well as planting new.

Buy a little property and plant some trees, doesnt have to be that expensive. Thats what i did.

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