Reply #15: Bandaid. [View All]

[Igel]

The problem is that growing trees merely replaces carbon put into the atmosphere when the trees that were there were cut down. (At least some of that might have been sequestered as framing in houses.) You want trees to really sequester carbon from fossil fuels? Chop them down and store them where they won't rot.

Otherwise every ounce of carbon placed into the atmosphere from fossil fuels is carbon that cannot be made up, in the long run, by growing biomass. Even using biomass for fuels just banks that carbon in the atmosphere for withdrawal by plants to store radiant energy as carbohydrates.

It's the problem with the old '80s "the rainforest are the lungs of the planet." A stable rainforest has as much carbon-releasing decay as it has carbon-storing growth. Sure, X million tons are fixed in woody plants every year. But every year just about X million tons of woody plants die, and every year X million tons of woody plants rot.

You want carbon sequestered from the rainforest? My guitar is made from rosewood and ebony, my violin bow of pernambuco. Neither, if I have any say about it, is going to be releasing their carbon content into the air in the near future. My violin's sequestered its carbon for over two centuries now, my viola's carbon was removed from the ecosystem at large in the early '80s, my guitar's about 7 years ago--when their component parts had their mute life in the forest ended by a cruel axe, were carved, coated in partly cross-linked linseed oil, and strung up to sweetly (or not so sweetly) sing. (Duiffopruggar: Viva fui in Sylvis; sum dura occisa securi; Dum vixi, tacui, mortua dulce cano.)