Toward customizable timber, grown in a lab | Hacker News Reader

Toward customizable timber, grown in a lab

news.mit.edu

85 pointsChuckMcM65 comments

The opening to that article is wild. While there is deforestation in some places in the world, at least in the US, there are more trees today than there were 100 years ago. Forest harvest followed by replanting is not deforestation.

I also find that most of these articles discount the value of using the sun. Most lab-grown resources require other forms of energy, almost all of which are decidedly worse for the environment.

If somebody invented a machine that used the sun and rainwater to remove carbon dioxide from the air and produce renewable building products, they'd be hailed as some kind of genius/savior. Enter, the lowly tree.

> at least in the US, there are more trees today than there were 100 years ago.

Perhaps so, but is 100 years the best metric? By 1922 a huge portion of the forests in the states had already been ravaged by harvesting, with most of the old-growth forests gone by the turn of the century.

Your dates are off. Mechanized logging didn’t even commence until the 1940s — I think the first cat was like 1945. See the graphic on page 7 of the linked article showing historic harvest in Oregon (with which I’m most familiar). The east coast was harvested before then (a lot by Gifford Pinchot’s family) but I think the point stands that the trend in the states is toward reforestation, and the article’s calculation of losing the world’s forests is preposterous.

https://www.oregon.gov/odf/Documents/workingforests/oregonst...

When gold was discovered in northwest California in 1850, speculators crowded the remote redwood region in search of riches and new lives, and companies harvested the trees for booming development.

Mechanized logging was widespread there by the early 1900s, such as with steam winches and steam trains, and gang saws and rotary saws.

Before the Gold Rush, estimates are redwood forest covered more than 2,000,000 acres of the California coast; today, the area has only 133,000 acres.

Yes, steam-powered logging was earlier, and yes there was substantial harvest in northern California prior to 1900. But to say that "most of the old-growth forests gone by the turn of the century" is simply untrue. In Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Montana, Colorado, and most of the rest of the West, it had only just begun by that time. The big boom came with the world wars and the introduction of diesel powered machinery.

Not all trees are equal. One must consider ecology and ecosystem health, not gross quantifiers like "number of trees" (really "number of trunks").

> there are more trees today than there were 100 years ago. Forest harvest followed by replanting is not deforestation.

That depends on the biomass levels.

Seems like in the 90s we all had the impression that paper bags came from chopping down rainforests, and we should use the "recyclable" plastic bags. Turns out we just swallowed the oil industries BS, and we should just be supporting responsible forest management and using paper.

I'm pretty sure manufacturing paperbags causes more GHGs than manufacturing plastic ones. I think reusing bags would probably be best.

Agreed. I wonder whether that stat is per-bag though, because you end up with three times as many plastic bags

I am surprised that the article did not hire any teenager or man or lady in their 20s.

> Forest harvest followed by replanting is not deforestation.

Nitpick on this point - economically, perhaps, but not environmentally when considering the biodiversity and volume of undergrowth destroyed in the harvesting process. Some of it may come back quickly but millennia of niche/microclimate adaptation is easily lost.

Stand replacement events are natural too, driven principally by fire, wind, and landslides. The mistake many make, I think, is to presume there is some static “natural” state —- some mythic Eden —- in which, absent man’s influence, everything persists in perfect harmony. To the contrary, these are dynamic systems attuned to periodic violent change over time. Industrial forest harvest may not perfectly replicate nature, but that’s not the end of the inquiry. The question, I think, is whether the trade-offs are worth it given society’s profound need for homes, and given the relative impact of alternatives. Particularly given modern forest practices, I am highly skeptical lab-grown wood would scale with lesser impacts than utilizing the forests we already have, many of which are on their third or fourth harvest rotation. But all of that is beside the point I made above. In the US, forests of all age classes are trending up, not down. Much of this is driven by our radical curtailment of federal land harvest in the nineties (which came at the profound cost of sacrificing many rural communities).

Yes, disaster happens. But usually not all at once. I discovered that all of the places I have lived so far were clearcut in the late 1800's/early 1900's. When I say clearcut, I'm not talking about the size of a neighborhood or city, I mean areas that are geographically significant - areas you can see from space, which encapsulated hundreds or thousands of distinct ecosystems. That's a much less frequent disaster and one that is very difficult if not impossible for an ecosystem to fully recover from.

And homes could be built much more efficiently than they are (dense mixed use multifamily over single family residences), and at least in the US the claims of a housing shortage may not be entirely accurate. There are 140M housing units in the US and 120M families, according to the 2020 census. There's a difference between a lack of homes and lack of homes in places people want to live.

I tend to agree that industrial production of lab-grown timber is not viable today. Hard to compete with the cost of soil and sun when relying on processed nutrients and energy for lighting and climate control. But it's an exciting development toward something that could someday be better than plastic.

I don't actually think I disagree with any of that. I would note, though, that the pre-European burn scars could have definitely been viewed from space.[1] And today, at least in the PNW, clearcuts are limited in size (e.g., in Oregon and Washington, they're limited to 120 acres, and are on average much smaller).

[1]http://www.nwmapsco.com/ZybachB/Presentations/2010-2015/2012...

The ecology of a primary forest, and a tree farm, are not the same. Besides material use, forests also provide a number of benefits. There are a number of floods which have occured recently in over logged areas which highlight this. Saplings and young trees will not provide resilience to these kinds of natural disasters without being left to mature. Clean water provided by watersheds would be another example of a benefit provided by a healthy primary forest. It is true that natural events also impact forests, but in different ways then logging or damage created by industry. That is why many foresters implement controlled burns. Controlled burns leave nutrients that are required by plants in the understory to mature. Some species of plants actually require the heat to realse their seeds. Forests are also more then trees, they are a system with a number of symbiotic relationships, and modern research is revealing those relationships are more complex then once thought.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Un2yBgIAxYs

I do understand that as a material timber has a number of uses. I just don't know if I agree that the way way industry manages forests is sustainable, at least in Canada. The best mills I worked with were aware of this and were making efforts to find sustainable ways to manage their resources, so they could continue to both keep their natural resources healthy, and their businesses. One of the issues has been the demand for timber often outpaces the amount of time it takes to grow new mature trees, for either ecological or industrial use.

Just as some background regarding my experience within the industry, I have provided a presentation below which is based on the presenters book. The presenter was involved with colleagues I worked with. People within the company I worked with were also involved changing how trees are planted in Canada.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=bu-FbqFaFAQ&t=78s

You mentioned you were also involved in the industry. If you feel comfortable talking about it, could your provide some information about your experiences. I am open to other perspectives.

I am general counsel for a large PNW landowner and lumber manufacturer. I will watch your presentation. Thank you for sharing it.

Hopefully it is of some interest. I didn't mean to include the time marker to skip ahead. The other link I included expands on the research by Suzanne Simardis that is mentioned. In Suzanne Simardis talk she also provides some practical information in regards to practices for creating healthier forests.

Where did you find this information? In most places modern technology has only increased the rate it is possible log, which has allowed for large scale clear cutting to occur. Although many trees are successfully planted each year, very little old growth forest remains. Most people are not aware of how much logging has actually occurred, because it is done away from the road.

Secondary forests are also often monocultures, and planted essentially as bumper crops. Which means that they can not support the same biodiversity as the original trees that are being replaced.

My experience with this comes from working in the Canadian Silviculture industry as a tree planter for several years. If it is possible to create timber in a lab faster then it is possible to grow a tree, this could be really exciting.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old-growth_forest

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secondary_forest

What information? The fact that there are more trees today than 100 years ago? Lots of sources on that. [1][2][3] As for the rest, I think the magic of trees is self-evident, and though I work in the industry, I don't think the utility of trees is terribly controversial. Also, relative to your arguments around old growth, that strikes me as moving the goal posts (and not terribly relevant as there's very little old growth harvest ongoing in the US -- what's left has almost all been protected). But as for the article's argument that "At that rate, some scientists predict the world’s forests could disappear in 100 to 200 years." -- that's simply preposterous.

[1] "Forest growth nationally has exceeded harvest since the 1940s. By 1997 forest growth exceeded harvest by 42 percent and the volume of forest growth was 380 percent greater than it had been in 1920." https://www.fao.org/3/x4995e/x4995e.htm [2] https://www.treehugger.com/more-trees-than-there-were-years-... [3] "The acreage of all private and public forests have remained the same over the last half-century. The area of productive unreserved forest and (timberland) has remained stable for the last 50 years. The reserved (timberlands where cutting is not allowed) are actually increasing." https://www.thoughtco.com/us-forest-facts-on-forestland-1343...

1920 is a convenient date since peak deforestation was in the 1910’s. You can only go up from rock bottom, no?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deforestation_in_the_United_...

> 1920 is a convenient date since peak deforestation was in the 1910’s. You can only go up from rock bottom, no?

Measuring from historic highs will make a positive trend look like a negative one. Which is why if you want to work out whether trees are increasing or decreasing you measure from the recent minimum.

It could be correct that the number of trees total is increasing in America, and that would be excellent if true, but healthy forests require trees that are left to become mature. It also means a complex forest ecology made up of more then a few select species of vegetation. Most of the trees that are planted each year in Canada, are planted as crops, to be logged for industrial use, before being able to reach full maturity. Although there are some companies which are making efforts to log, and manage forests, in a sustainable way. This research is interesting to me, because if we were able produce organic materials such as wood fibre in a lab, it could reduce our dependency on harvesting natural resources, and the impact it has on forests.

Although I don't agree with the sentiment that "At that rate, some scientists predict the world’s forests could disappear in 100 to 200 years.", I would argue there is a distinction between a primary forest, a secondary forest, and a crop.

https://www.globalforestwatch.org/blog/data-and-research/pri...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forest_degradation

"Since 1990, it is estimated that some 420 million hectares of forest have been lost through conversion to other land uses, although the rate of deforestation has decreased over the past three decades. Between 2015 and 2020, the rate of deforestation was estimated at 10 million hectares per year, down from 16 million hectares per year in the 1990s. The area of primary forest worldwide has decreased by over 80 million hectares since 1990. More than 100 million hectares of forests are adversely affected by forest fires, pests, diseases, invasive species, drought and adverse weather events.[3]"

I think the 'utility of trees' may not be controversial, but people may have different perspectives on what they view as the 'utility of trees'.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/nov/16/canada-floods-...

https://www.esri.com/about/newsroom/blog/map-reveals-british...

https://veridianecological.files.wordpress.com/2020/05/bcs-o...

Although this research is interesting, the use of drones for reforestation may be more immediately applicable. Treeplanting is normally a process which is done by hand. Through the 70's there were a number of innovations in the process, planting via drones may provide further possibilities. Not to mention the application of drones in sites surveys.

There are more Forrests in the US now than there were in 1922. Technically, yes we have more trees now than the historic minimum... As per the Wikipedia[1]:

The US reached its historic minimal forrest coverage around 1920 with ~720 M acres. We are currently at ~760 M acres a century later, down from a pre-European high of ~1020 M acres. So yes we are on a gradual path toward replacement, but also Wisconsin is still a lawn compared to what it once was. There are also broader ecological considerations in forrest management than the number of trees, but none of this is really relevant to the main article which is probably not going to change America's forestry in the slightest.

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

Forests regrown after deforestation have greatly reduced biodiversity. Because solar power is inconsistent production processes making use of it have incentive to collect solar power and store it in batteries instead of only using solar power directly. The customization potential of this production process means that we may be able to duplicate the characteristics of rare and highly desirable trees that only grow in specific environmental conditions.

Maybe this is an interesting scientific development, but to pitch it as aiding deforestation is a massive stretch. Three quarters of deforestation is due to agriculture: https://ourworldindata.org/what-are-drivers-deforestation. So cultured meats would probably have a much bigger impact on deforestation than cultured trees.

Agreed - and deforestation for lumber tends to be ery specialized woods in less developed parts of the world, not something this approach is going to target. In NA and Europe we do a pretty decent job of harvesting wood grown specifically for lumber and wood products, with multi-generation plantings pretty common - efficient, without the lab and science angle.

Untrue! There are labs and science, but the labs are all outdoors! There's some really cool test forests you can visit: https://www.uvm.edu/rsenr/jericho_research_forest_and_conser... is an example.

Science doesn't just happen indoors - and that's really cool!

It's pretty clear from context the gp means "cleanroom lab". And even an outdoor lab has a degree of control that incurs costs that aren't the same as a stand of forestry trees, you don't linearly scale up forestry experiments for harvesting.

Other than for meat, growing plants for burning uses up a lot of space: wood for burning, biogas, bioethanol and biomethanol. Around 13% of agricultural land is used in Germany for producing biogas for instance. Photovoltaics uses 1/30th of the land.

No new research is needed for this, one would simply need to phase out mandates and subsidies. The money is better used by putting them into the alternatives: Wind and PV for electricity production, heat pumps and electric vehicles for consumption.

Biomass only makes sense if you're using waste products or if you need the carbon like in the chemical industry.

Is there anything preventing wind power from being above forests? Every wind farm I've seen has been on empty fields but it doesn't seem impossible that you could use the land for crops or even trees.

Efficiency of wind turbines increases with height above 'ground'. I expect for this purpose the top of the tree canopy would be the ground, so turbines would have to be higher by the amount of the forest canopy height, at least. I expect there are more issues with wind flow over tree canopy vs a crop field, but I suspect the height issue alone is enough to make the economics pretty bad.

Not only that, but the trees would provide habitat for all manner of birds which, to not put too fine a point on it, would end up diced by the turbine blades.

The land owner would make more money 1) cutting the trees and selling the lumber, 2) turning the land into farm land or grazing land, and then finally 3) erecting a wind farm than just doing #3 by itself.

Better to situate land-based wind turbines on hills, which usually don't have many trees.

Wait is 3% of Germany covered with photovoltaics?!

Photovoltaic uses around 1/30th of the land to produce the same energy as with energy crops.

3% of Germany covered would already be a lot. A hectare gets you around 500 MWh/a, so a square kilometer gets you around 50 GWh/a. 3% of Germany is around 10000 square kilometers, so you would get 500 TWh/a, which is around the electricity used in Germany in a year.

As a comparison agricultural land is 49%, biofuels are 6.6% of all land in Germany.

Cultured meats would not change the amount of deforestation. Deforestation happens when a landowner owns a forest, and wants to put it to productive use, and they find from available crops that perhaps the meat industry is the most profitable for them. Absent a meat industry, these landowners aren't just going to give up and pay taxes on useless land, they will find some other industry that will make use of the land they purchased for the sole purpose of exploitation, not conservation.

The issue with deforestation is in a lack of protections for forests, not because of any one industry.

Cultured meats are a competitor to the meat industry, which is a major contributor (but sure, not the sole contributor) to deforestation.

Technologies that financially out-compete those industries until the land is most valuable as a forest are each one step in a permanent, game-theory stable protection for forests. Once you've pulled something superior out of Pandora's box, there's no putting it back in, and no need to use regulation to force consumers to chose that more efficient option.

A regulatory approach is only as strong as the social capital and government enforcement that you can muster to put those protections into law, it does nothing to eliminate the old selfish incentives to exploit those natural resources. The instant that you look away, that the regime changes, or you run out of social momentum, deforestation will resume.

What I'm trying to get at is deforestation will always happen if forests are allowed to be sold. There will always be some use to be had if the land is allowed for private sale, because few people want to just sit on land and pay expenses. Many landowners of large tracts would like for some of that land to work for them. The meat industry is the major contributor today, yes, but if it was gone, there would be another industry as the major contributor. Then another and another, like snakes on Medusa's head.

We have shown its a lot faster to just set up a national park than it is to develop technology that eliminates the need for any industry at all to develop on empty land. Sure, governments demand public support in order for their ideas to be maintained, but you could just as easily come up with some hypothetical technology that isn't one of those industries affecting forest today, some new industry or technology, that now has to be stymied to protect the forests. This could happen any time in the future. It will probably happen multiple times, and require more innovation to work out its dependence on land for that one new technology. Now rinse and repeat infinitely into the future as long as you allow forests you intend to protect to be privately owned by individuals or corporations with profit motives.

if you decrease the profit of developing land then you reduce the amount of land that is developed. it's not inevitable that all lets gets developed even ignoring protected areas.

I would think on the grand scale it probably is inevitable that everything gets developed at some point. Look at Europe: there's probably not one square foot of flat land on that continent that didn't see some sort of human usage by now over history. Maybe the numbers don't pencil out today, but next week the world could change and now you are selling off parcels to people interested in improving the land.

> What I'm trying to get at is deforestation will always happen if forests are allowed to be sold

That's not really true. Most land in the world isn't developed. Just allowing it to be developed doesn't mean it will be in some manifest-destiny sort of way: there has to be some incentive to develop it. It might turn out that undeveloped, unstrategically located land simply has little economic value (and is more valuable as a carbon sink).

Making food, industry and dwelling more land efficient would push down the economic incentives to develop more land.

If this prevents one quarter of deforestation it would still be a massive help. Furthermore, the agriculture- lumber difference in deforestation is not that clear cut. When some disgusting criminal in Brazil cuts down a bunch of rainforest for pasture he is also taking into account the resulting lumber in his profit plans. In fact the lumber is probably a big part of the criminal enterprise because it provides an immediate profit whereas raising cows provides profit only after a couple of years. And I am sure our criminal needs the immediate cash flows to pay off Bolsonaro and other corrupt politicians and to hire thugs to chase away protesters and natives.

So having lab made wood on massive scale will definitely significantly help with deforestation even the so called agricultural one.

Cultured meats or even vegetarian meat substitutes would help as well, but one does not prevent the other and thus one should not be used as an argument against the other. Furthermore, cultured wood should be easier to make than cultured meats. Nobody has to eat the wood, so you do not have to get the taste of the wood right. You just need to get the correct mechanical properties right, which should be much easier.

Generally I am very puzzled by this type of arguments against environmental improvements: A is a bad idea because B would make a bigger difference. Well if A would make a significant difference, and A is not in conflict with B, than why not do both?

Hmm.

I wonder if this can be done under high pressures to 'grow' wood that has the properties of oldgrowth/ hardwoods.

Would also seem to me like you might have some control over the cellulose/ hemicellulose/ lignin configuration. This could be used to create some very interesting properties around grain.

Thinking of bone, perhaps stress/strain during growth could be applied as well.

FWIW, there are also videos around of growing fungi into forms (aka growing molds into molds?).

I'm happy to be corrected since I'm not an expert in this area, but I believe what's going on is that the logging industry (and its money) is completely in control of the Canadian government which has resulted in us turning ancient, virgin boreal forests in Canada into, for example, Bounty papel towels.

If this is indeed what's going on it's pretty sickening. It adds insult to injury that the corporations that damage the environment the most tend to have the strongest PR about "sustainability".

In short, I wish we had industrial scale solutions like the one in the post like, yesterday.

> turning ancient, virgin boreal forests in Canada into, for example, Bounty papel towels

As pointed out in other comments on this thread, wood and paper products are not the dominant factors in deforestation. The same is true in Canada and they have probably one of the more responsible countries in terms of forestry.

[0] "Canada's forest area decreased 0.3% from 3.483 million km2 in 1990 to 3.471 million km2 in 2015. Over this period, most forest converted to other land uses was used for agriculture (42%), mining, oil and gas (24%), built-up area (16%), hydro-electric infrastructure and reservoirs (13%) and forestry roads (6%)."

Land that is converted in to something else is the main deforestation, and you could say that last 6% is definitely driven by the forestry industry. Harvesting of timbers for wood products is generally controlled to the Annual Allowable Cut (AAC) which is the estimate of how much wood is growing [1]. In other words, only harvest as much wood as you estimate has grown.

This isn't to say that deforestation isn't an issue and you shouldn't try and buy paper towels from recycled paper.

[0] https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/16-201-x/16-201-x2018001...

[1] https://www.alberta.ca/forest-harvest-operations.aspx

> Land that is converted in to something else is the main deforestation

Apparently you can log an old growth forest, and "replant it" and it doesn't count as deforestation. That's the core of the issue here. The question is: should old growth be logged or preserved? The question isn't: should old growth be logged and replaced with brand new trees, which will, apparently, "preserve" the forest land.

What I really hope someone invents is a way to 3D print something that feels like a street tree. I'm fine with it being a lot more expensive because we obviously wouldn't print forests full of them, but being able to put in an urban canopy without having to wait 30 or 40 years would be a game changer. Maybe you 3d print the trunk, and come up with some kind of artificial root system, and splice/graft regular tree limbs onto that substrate and it took 5 years for it to really fill out would be awesome.

Real trees play a role in improving air quality in cities:

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/12/211221102744.h...

This is great news. In the unlikely case these scientists are looking for some advice, I would say don't worry too much about cute futuristic "I grow my plants in the shape of furniture like an elf in dwarf fortress" use cases, but concentrate on making artificial lumber that is about the same quality as the commonly used lumber in the world.

If you provide a no-difference plug in replacement for commodity lumber products that is artificially made and cheaper, you can (1) make lots of money very quickly, and (2) make a very quick and positive difference in deforestation trends and (3) quickly decrease prices of housing and furniture.

Then you can worry about 3-d printing live furniture.

One step up from sheets or extruded shapes, perhaps grow hexagonal comb. Could have useful mechanical properties, and still be generically useful.

> concentrate on making artificial lumber that is about the same quality as the commonly used lumber in the world.

The idea seems to be to make better lumber. Specialty items such as synthetic slow-growth hardwoods with good properties such as not rotting. Something like teak. Making pine this way seems pointless.

Exactly. One of the things that holds back natural materials like wood vs. e.g. steel is the lack of consistency. Knots and gaps in wood are still a problem. Having a single, uniform, standardised, certified, homogenuous, large piece of wood would make it far more convenient for many applications.

This is one of those things I would think would have been tried earlier, but that they have some success is really intriguing. In particular the idea that you can "custom print" arbitrary shapes in wood has a real elf vibe to it.

A lot of hand waving around "wood like properties" which I suspect will be a bigger issue going into commercialization, however if they could produce decent pulp replacement then the paper market would be disrupted right away.

As far as growing speed, hopefully some work can be done to make this a relatively quick growing method:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4406943/

Would (pun unintended) this be better than growing hemp or bamboo on already clear cut land and making that into 2x4s, 4x4s and 4x8 plywood? Hemp can grow two crops per season and bamboo can grow feet per day. There are already companies making hemp wood.

I wonder much resin is needed to keep such plywood together.

Yes. I've been wondering this. Besides growing faster than trees, apparently hemp holds 60% more carbon than trees which would make for great carbon sequestration.

I see cardboard is "glued" together using cornstarch.

Three months is a long time to wait when building something. Seems like for even for specialty applications, it’s going to make sense for someone to grow them in standard shapes, keep inventory, and ship on demand, possibly cutting them to size. This will add expense, so the application better be worth it.

Compare with 3D printing where print times are usually less than typical shipping times.

I'm pretty sure David Jones had a DREADCO/Daedalus column on lab-grown trees, sometime last century, but my poor Google-fu is not turning it up...

Edit: "saccharostructive" turns up a hit, but not the one I had recalled; IIRC DREADCO had come up with a scheme (involving both rotation and tension?) to avoid the limited height of traditionally-grown trees.

I think maybe replacement of plastic bags could be given a higher priority like artificialize egg plant skin or lotus leaf.

When I was at a developing county college. We used the dried palm leaves mattress (without even bleach). It has some smell but nature like dried haystack. Not soft.

I for one welcome our 3d bioprinted plant material overlords.

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