HN Theater @HNTheaterMonth

Related, for comparison: apparently planting 20B trees/year requires only $80M/year (!) and would pull down a trillion tons of carbon over 50 years (!): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QyQvfaW54NU&t=14m53s

⬐ denton-scratch

Most trees are planted in order to be harvested as timber. Most of that timber turns back into CO2 in 100 years or so. Tree-planting is not a long-term solution to excess atmospheric carbon. Combined with carbon-trading, tree-planting is a rather obvious channel for greenwashing.

⬐ dataflow

> Most of that timber turns back into CO2 in 100 years or so. Tree-planting is not a long-term solution to excess atmospheric carbon.

Do you have links to more reading on that? This is the first time I've heard of this particular reason why it might not work.

⬐ ohgodplsno

Wooden things rarely last more than 50 years and end up being thrown in fire, or catching fire as a result of natural events. Additionally, decaying wood releases CO2.

⬐ kiliantics

It depends on how you use that wood. In old cities around the world, there are plentiful examples of wooden structures that have been around for up to 1000 years or more.

⬐ ohgodplsno

Does our current world really look like we're building thousand year long buildings ?

⬐ kiliantics

Well I believe we should be moving in that direction if we want to have any chance of sustaining society. Just like we need to kill fast fashion, we should kill "fast construction" too.

⬐ denton-scratch

No I don't. But if wood lasted more than a couple of hundred years on average, then we would be neck-deep in old lumber. We're constantly cutting down trees, and yet the amount of wood in the lived environment isn't increasing noticeably.

Conclusion: all that old wood is either buried, or it's busy turning into CO2.

So I'm not impressed by claims of "carbon offsetting". On the contrary, I take such claims as evidence that the organisation in question is part of the problem.

Incidentally, how are you supposed to recycle chipboard? Like, for example a chipboard kitchen counter? For several decades, I had in my home a pair of oak side tables, that were made by my grandfather from the remains of a large oak dining table. You can't do that nowadays with chipboard.

⬐ dataflow

I can't say I follow your logic at all unfortunately.

But regardless, I also don't get where you see a discussion of "carbon offsetting". This isn't about "offsetting" emissions or impressing you, this is about repaying "debt" that's already incurred. Pulling down old carbon is something we have to do regardless of what we do with our current emissions, even if we drive them to 0, because the current carbon in the atmosphere is already too much. Whether we do it with trees or machines or something else, it needs to happen.

⬐ cjameskeller

But they would decay, unless something is done to sequester enough of the wood, and release much of it back into atmosphere, right?

⬐ dataflow

> unless something is done to sequester enough of the wood

I think that was the idea. He's viewing it as a mass transfer problem. You "harvest" CO2 with trees, then put it back in the ground.

I think the hard part is not hurting ecosystems in the process, but at this point honestly this might still be the best solution we have available.

⬐ blueflow

"then put it back in the ground" - throw it into a lake. Or artificial bogs. When its submerged, the lack of o2 causes the carbon to stay as it is. This is basically how coal comes into existence.

⬐ denton-scratch

Unfortunately, the people that plant trees have economic incentives to not put it back in the ground. Timber has considerable economic value, as fuel, or contruction materials or whatever. It's hard to imagine foresters cutting down valuable trees, and then discarding them in some lake.

⬐ ummonk

I don't know what kind of construction materials your house is made of, but most wood construction doesn't just vaporize into the atmosphere as CO2 unless it's burnt down, which is considered an undesirable outcome to be prevented.

⬐ dataflow

I imagine it would need to be government funded, not for private enterprise. If the order of magnitude of the costs they mention are to be taken at face value ($80M/year), for the entire world, it would be absolutely trivial for the government to fund, so I don't think expect any commercial enterprise would necessarily be forced to align this with its mission.

⬐ denton-scratch

> For the entire world, it would be absolutely trivial for the government to fund

Which government? Is that some hypothesised World Government?

The UK Government runs a lot of the forestry in this country. It is run as a commercial timber operation. The Brazilian and Indonesian governments appear to be committed to commercial exploitation of enormous amounts of old-growth rainforest timber. The Polish and Hungarian governments are also committed to logging old-growth.

There's no time left for this kind of dreaming.

⬐ dataflow

> Which government? Is that some hypothesised World Government?

I meant the US government. But you can insert lots of other governments in there, including the UK like you mentioned.

> There's no time left for this kind of dreaming.

Nobody's dreaming. I'm just talking about the feasibility, not claiming anything about the likelihood.

⬐ jrockway

The whole lumber shortage thing makes me think that people are willing to sequester wood in their homes. (I know, I know, it was sawmill capacity or something. But still...)

⬐ mocheeze

Cross-laminated timber comes to the rescue. Plus the added benefit of being able to replace concrete, which is a huge bonus for decreasing emissions. And it's already in use.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cross-laminated_timber

Yes, even if we completely eliminate carbon emissions, our current carbon debt is around 1 trillion tons [1]. We'll need to remove that much carbon from the atmosphere within 50 years or so, given we stop all of our emissions today.

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QyQvfaW54NU

Related: see GoogleX co-founder Tom Chi's video on climate change, sustainable agriculture, etc.: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QyQvfaW54NU

It looks like that article is 10 years old. Has anyone done this at scale? A more recent (this year) talk advocating for similar, but using drones https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QyQvfaW54NU

⬐ moneytide1

For sure drones would be a great method to use for this effort. They would probably cause fewer emissions than huge C-130's dropping all the trees.

⬐ kyriakos

Unless the area is very remote and hard to get to I think it would cost less and have a higher chance of success if they are planted the traditional way manually

Related: GoogleX co-founder Tom Chi gave a fantastic talk on carbon debt (with a rather depressing 238 views at the moment; I hope more people watch...):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QyQvfaW54NU

⬐ symplee

Agreed, this is an excellent talk.

Main takeaway is to view the problem as debt which has to be paid off. Simply stopping new purchases will not pay off the debt.

Above point summarized here, timestamp 22:15 - https://youtu.be/QyQvfaW54NU?t=1335

We currently have a one trillion ton carbon debt. As a though experiment, for a starting solution to iterate upon, this can be "paid off" with 20 billion trees / year, for 50 years. It would take 9000 drones, 450 staff, $80 mil/year. And a total land area half the size of Brazil. Using current technology. Compare this with alternative approaches being thrown around with price tags of 1 trillion+.

⬐ mehrdadn

Man I'd hate people to just read this summary and not actually watch the talk. There's just so many important points in it and it's laid out so well that it just doesn't do it justice to summarize it here. Like just to give an example, here's another one:

> Even if we emitted no more carbon from this point on, the planet would continue to warm on average and destabilize for about another 500-800 years.

Please go watch it. It's just 30 minutes of your time and it's very unlikely you already know everything he's about to mention.

⬐ vicarrion

Great talk. I was expecting him to be working on some of the areas mentioned in the video but seems like he's just doing seminars now... https://www.prototypethinking.live/