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roland comments on Crazy Global Warming Solution Ideas - Less Wrong
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Comments (41)
Plant trees. I wonder why this is not incentivized more, would be the ideal low-tech way to sequester CO2 and at the same time improve the landscape.
Most sources I've read suggest that planting even very large numbers of trees would not do much to offset global warming, as mature forests have very little net CO2 sequestration effect. I've also read that the heating caused by the increased albedo of tree leaves offsets even the small gains from this one-time absorption.
Intuitively, it's fairly easy to see why any scheme for removing CO2 from the atmosphere is doomed to failure -- the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere is fairly low and you're working against entropy to remove it. This leads to very high energy consumption per unit mass of CO2 (far, far higher than the energy extracted from burning the fuel which created the CO2) which pretty much offsets any gains that you obtained by removing the CO2. The key is not to put CO2 there in the first place.
I'd love to be proven wrong about the argument to plant trees, as I'd personally love to see more trees around.
Here's a crazy thought: plant parks, collect leaves in the fall, bioleach metals like germanium and gallium from them using chemolithotrophic bacteria (maybe after burning them and using the heat for energy, and the CO2 from burning can go to liquid cultures producing methane or something).
Sphagnum bogs trap CO2, we just need a way to keep mosquitoes from breeding there:)
Planting trees in forests won't make much difference. Planting trees in barren lands probably will make a difference, no?
[In Kyiv] the relevant authorities seem to find it more profitable to plant trees yearly than to nurture them into growth, and other people just see trees die and shrug thinking, so they don't grow.