1. The average tree's lifespan is a lot longer than 5 years. It's more like 300-400 years. I've not seen any sources saying that half of all planted trees are dead within 5 years. Even if that is true, 5 years is enough time to keep replanting and maintaining the total number of trees much higher. People can tend to the trees they plant.

2. I got my number for CO2 capture per tree from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the Arbor Day Foundation, and the European Environment Agency.

3. I don't think the wildfires materially impact the calculus.

4. There is a lot of land available for reforesting. This is not the same as saying that we should take back land that is used for farming. I would say that agriculture is going to innovate too, with vertical farms and more efficient usage of land where land is still necessary. We can start with land that is already available for reforesting rather than starting with squabbling over land that is now already used as farmland. Making farmland more efficient and innovating with vertical farms will let markets take care of inefficient and unnecessary land usage.

5. Planting trees for CO2 capture is a temporary solution. Eventually machines will sequester CO2 far more efficiently. Planting trees in general is nice for many other benefits too, not just the carbon capture. But yes, planting more trees is not the only thing we need to do.

The amount of trees that could be planted would capture more than the airborne excess carbon, which means they would be capturing previous excess too. Since we're really close to peak global CO2 emissions, this means the new trees would be a carbon sink that keeps capturing excess carbon for at least decades, until far better capture solutions are created than long disruptive pipelines.

Silvopasture exists. We are becoming reacquainted with better farming practices. Homes, offices, and other kinds of buildings are built in forests all the time. Plenty of opportunities for recreation.

CO2 stored underground in the form of plants dying and rotting for the benefit and use of other plants is also "carbon capture".

There is already enough land available for enough new native trees to capture more CO2 than is emitted into the atmosphere each year. This is before considering recovery of additional brownfield sites, becoming more efficient with industrial and agricultural land usage, and setting more land aside for planting additional trees.

With the full potential unlocked, we'd be able to plant so many trees that they'd capture 2x or more of the total CO2 emissions (total emissions, not just the airborne excess) which means we'd start capturing the past excess emissions as well.

"There are no practical limits for how much CO2 you can store underground! "

Energy cost is the practical limit.

Yes it can. The number of trees that could be planted are enough to capture airborne excess CO2. I'm glad there's technology via pipeline but it needs to mature more. We need better solutions than really long and disruptive pipelines, and planting a lot of trees buys us a lot of runway.