Replies

>>I just checked. 160 trees will do this job for free.

I hate it when people post obviously incorrect data, and then all the response just accept it as fact and build their responses and opinion based on that.

A typical tree will capture in the order of a few dozen POUNDS of CO2 a year (~50lbs on average)

So in order to capture 4000 TONS, or 80,000,000 of CO2 you would not need 160 trees, you would need about 1,6000,000 trees, not 160 trees.

Please folks, don’t make us all look stupid by making up or posting completely wrong data.

>>In summary, it can be concluded that the annual CO2 offsetting rate varies from 21.77 kg CO2/tree to 31.5 kg CO2/tree. To compensate 1 tonne of CO2, 31 to 46 trees are needed. In Europe, there are 300 to 500 trees per hectare. For calculating the figures on the Encon website, we assume a rate of 24 kg CO2/tree and an average of 500 trees per hectare. This means that 1 hectare of forest: 500 trees x 24 kg CO2/tree = 12,000 kg of CO2 offsets, i.e. 12 tonnes CO2/hectare.

https://www.encon.be/en/calculation-co2-offsetting-trees

I forgot to carry the two, ok?

My point is that we aren’t making enough use of trees to shape our environments. Trees can go a long way to solving many of our environmental problems. We should be incorporating green infrastructure as much as we can.

In California, for example, get rid of the eucalyptus trees that are just tinder, and aren’t even native to California, and plant trees that can hold water.

So in order to capture 4000 TONS, or 80,000,000 of CO2 you would not need 160 trees, you would need about 1,6000,000 trees, not 160 trees.

That's 160,000 trees. (not 1,6000,000) An acre usually only accommodates 100 mature trees so that's 1600 acres to accomplish what that plant is doing. Visually that's a little less than 3 miles square. I would venture this plant and surrounding buildings takes up close to that much land and costs considerable more than allowing for a natural forest.

It doesn’t matter how many trees you plant they do not remove carbon from the biosphere nor surfacial carbon cycle. And they certainly do not store it for geological time scales. Trees when they grow turn CO2 into cellulose aka wood. When a tree does it falls to the forest floor where in a short time it decomposes back into CO2,water and minerals with a small portion becoming organic humus in the soil typically less than 5% of the original mass of the tree is turned to organic soil humus. Only burying the tree in an anoxic environment such as a swamp and then burying it under sediments does one sequester CO2 over geological time scales this is exactly how coal is made in the first place. No amount of forests can pull down CO2 over geological time scales only the oceans and the chemical weathering of igneous rocks also washed into the oceans via rivers can remove carbon from the biosphere and atmospheric carbon cycles.

This is freshmen geology 1301 level stuff people should know this. I happen to teach geology at the undergraduate level from time to time it’s one of the key points of the geological carbon cycle.

You can’t grow enough trees to make up for burning trees(now coal) and marine algae(now oil) that accumulated over millions of years when you burn that accumulated carbon mass in less than 200 years the rate of carbon out vs rate ocean sequestering carbon in is out of balance by a factor of nearly a million. That’s well proven we know how much fossil fuel humans burn every year and the ocean takes up a given amount at the current ppm of the air above it. It’s never been in debate the CO2 levels are rising we can measure it and do with great precision in Hawaii and Russia and European Union. The question for humans is do we adapt to the higher temps and sea levels that are coming when not if we go from 400-ppm to 1000 or 1200+ the planet will be a lot wetter and greener but sea levels will rise and people will have to adapt to that over the next century.