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Comment by dangrossman | Hacker News Reader

What's wrong with killing trees that were grown specifically for paper? You're just taking CO2 out of the atmosphere, helping reduce global climate change.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said "In the long term, a sustainable forest management strategy aimed at maintaining or increasing forest carbon stocks, while producing an annual sustained yield of timber, fibre or energy from the forest, will generate the largest sustained mitigation benefit".

http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar4/wg3/ar4-wg3-cha...

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You've got a point there, but shipping that book to where I live halfway around the world in New Zealand isn't doing climate change any favours.

I think you're overthinking it. I'm pretty sure other people in NZ are buying the same book, the marginal impact of shipping one copy must be very close to zero.

I've got a Kindle but I wouldn't trade my hardcover GEB for an electronic version.

Killing trees takes CO2 out of the atmosphere? I think you've got this backwards.

Growing trees to make them into timber, pulp, etc. takes CO2 out of the atmosphere. As long as you're not growing them to burn them, it's one of the most effective CO2 sequestration methods we have.

77% of tree usage in the US is for timber and pulpwood. Fast-growing species are planted and harvested over a 10-20 year cycle so that as each section is cut down and replanted, another section is maturing. It's both sustainable business and an effective CO2 sink.

Thanks. That makes sense. My brain farted and I couldn't make the leap after "What's wrong with killing trees? You're just taking CO2 out of the atmosphere."

[citation needed]

It's really not. If you want a citation for "growing trees takes CO2 out of the atmosphere", a high school bio book will suffice -- the carbon mass of the tree is carbon extracted from the atmosphere (and dead plant mass in soil, but the carbon there came from the atmosphere too).

If you want a citation for growing trees for timber and pulp as an effective CO2 sink, the citation is right in the grandfather post (an international climate change study by the IPCC including researchers from over a dozen countries, how much more authoritative can we get?), or just look up the paper and timber industries on wikipedia.

I was more interested in the source for the specific number you gave. Should have been less snarky, sorry!

The US tree usage statistic originally came from TAPPI (the tree pulp, paper, packaging, and converting industry assocation).

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