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Comment by cjameskeller | Hacker News Reader

But they would decay, unless something is done to sequester enough of the wood, and release much of it back into atmosphere, right?

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Cross-laminated timber comes to the rescue. Plus the added benefit of being able to replace concrete, which is a huge bonus for decreasing emissions. And it's already in use.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cross-laminated_timber

> unless something is done to sequester enough of the wood

I think that was the idea. He's viewing it as a mass transfer problem. You "harvest" CO2 with trees, then put it back in the ground.

I think the hard part is not hurting ecosystems in the process, but at this point honestly this might still be the best solution we have available.

"then put it back in the ground" - throw it into a lake. Or artificial bogs. When its submerged, the lack of o2 causes the carbon to stay as it is. This is basically how coal comes into existence.

Unfortunately, the people that plant trees have economic incentives to not put it back in the ground. Timber has considerable economic value, as fuel, or contruction materials or whatever. It's hard to imagine foresters cutting down valuable trees, and then discarding them in some lake.

I imagine it would need to be government funded, not for private enterprise. If the order of magnitude of the costs they mention are to be taken at face value ($80M/year), for the entire world, it would be absolutely trivial for the government to fund, so I don't think expect any commercial enterprise would necessarily be forced to align this with its mission.

> For the entire world, it would be absolutely trivial for the government to fund

Which government? Is that some hypothesised World Government?

The UK Government runs a lot of the forestry in this country. It is run as a commercial timber operation. The Brazilian and Indonesian governments appear to be committed to commercial exploitation of enormous amounts of old-growth rainforest timber. The Polish and Hungarian governments are also committed to logging old-growth.

There's no time left for this kind of dreaming.

> Which government? Is that some hypothesised World Government?

I meant the US government. But you can insert lots of other governments in there, including the UK like you mentioned.

> There's no time left for this kind of dreaming.

Nobody's dreaming. I'm just talking about the feasibility, not claiming anything about the likelihood.

I don't know what kind of construction materials your house is made of, but most wood construction doesn't just vaporize into the atmosphere as CO2 unless it's burnt down, which is considered an undesirable outcome to be prevented.

The whole lumber shortage thing makes me think that people are willing to sequester wood in their homes. (I know, I know, it was sawmill capacity or something. But still...)

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