Hacker News Reader

Comment by faichai | Hacker News Reader

It will eventually rot and release its captured carbon.

All trees, even those which are not cut down for constructing a sailing ship, also eventually rot and release most of their captured carbon. Only those which are burned efficiently in a high-oxygen environment turn completely into CO2.

In a natural forest, it's true that a tiny fraction of this biomass derived from atmospheric CO2 rots incompletely on the forest floor and is turned into a small amount of carbon-rich soil, but this process is glacially slow. [1] suggests single-digit grams per square meter per year. Rotting on the seafloor may or may not be any better or worse.

Relatedly, carbon sequestration projects have biological carbon intake as one option. Instead of using industrial-scale chemical or electrical reactions to pull carbon from the atmosphere, use photosynthesis. Grow some trees, process them into ethanol and graphite, and bury the carbon-rich waste forever.

[1]: DOI:10.1007/978-3-540-92706-8_11 https://www.researchgate.net/publication/225314103_Soil_Carb...

Tree contains X Co2 => Tree gets cut down without replacement => ship gets made and rots => X Co2 releases into atmosphere. Net Co2 = +X

Tree contains X Co2 => Tree dies => New tree grows in opened up space. Net Co2 = 0

Why do you assume the tree would not be replaced, we plant more trees than we cut down nowadays for example. The only reason to not replant the tree is if the land was being used for something but then the tree would have been cut down anyway ship or not.

The original quote at the top of this thread says that ships were build from trees that were felled _and not replaced_. The discussion started from that assumption.

Anyone interested in a fair comparison should point out the error of that comparison. Using wood in a managed forest it’s not a bad thing. It’s greatly preferable to extracting coal and oil.

So what? That’s part of the natural CO2 cycle. The problem isn’t carbon dioxide. The problem is adding CO2 from fossil fuels. As long as there is a net growth forest there is no problem. Just make sure you replant trees cut down. It is more important that we start extracting coal and oil.

A human-managed forest and a naturally evolved forest are very different things. When we plant trees, it's basically another farm, rather than the rich ecosystem that was originally there and destroyed by us. They also have very different carbon dynamics. The only way to recapture that same level of carbon that the original forest had, is to "rewild" the land and allow a full, old-growth style forest to grow back, which takes a lot longer than just planting some fast-growing trees in straight lines.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com