this post was submitted on 24 Jul 2024
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Climate - truthful information about climate, related activism and politics.

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Discussion of climate, how it is changing, activism around that, the politics, and the energy systems change we need in order to stabilize things.

As a starting point, the burning of fossil fuels, and to a lesser extent deforestation and release of methane are responsible for the warming in recent decades: Graph of temperature as observed with significant warming, and simulated without added greenhouse gases and other anthropogentic changes, which shows no significant warming

How much each change to the atmosphere has warmed the world: IPCC AR6 Figure 2 - Thee bar charts: first chart: how much each gas has warmed the world.  About 1C of total warming.  Second chart:  about 1.5C of total warming from well-mixed greenhouse gases, offset by 0.4C of cooling from aerosols and negligible influence from changes to solar output, volcanoes, and internal variability.  Third chart: about 1.25C of warming from CO2, 0.5C from methane, and a bunch more in small quantities from other gases.  About 0.5C of cooling with large error bars from SO2.

Recommended actions to cut greenhouse gas emissions in the near future:

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago

Seems like biochar would be a better solution.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Good lord, what bullshit. On top of the fact that it'll get broken down anyway, you'll just burn a few tons of carbon excavating and filling a hole.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago

There are several major problems this solves. The forests are overstocked, which is part of what leads to larger and more severe wildfire. These are live trees, and won't break down, but need to be thinned. And if the forest does burn, that dead wood needs to be removed to prevent it from burning again. This wood could break down eventually, but it makes it riskier to replant (for both the people planting, and the new seedlings).

Both of these activities are incredibly expensive, and burying the trees in a vault on site could provide a way to manage all of the wood, and pay for it.

Should wood vaults be the only solution? Probably not. And we should definitely remain skeptical as they are proven out. But proper forest management is challenging, expensive, and is often neglected (at least in the US), and I think it's overall beneficial to explore novel solutions like this.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 months ago (2 children)

They should be investing their energy into finding a way to make better use of these small logs instead of wasting them like this.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago

How is this wasting the wood? The wood is directly available to insects and fungus once it's buried

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago

Hopefully one where they are not burned or decomposed. Still, I think when applied to otherwise decomposing wood, the approach is interesting, as a transitional measure anyway.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 months ago (1 children)

100s or 1000s of years of store CO2? I'm not a soil engineer but, this sounds dubious to me.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 months ago

In much of the western US, subterranean termites will eat buried wood.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Why not just stack the wood in arid places though?

[–] [email protected] 7 points 3 months ago (2 children)
[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (2 children)

Sink it in the deep ocean then, let's see it burn there!!! Wait, what do you mean wood floats? Bah, details!

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago

You have to first carve the wood into wooden ducks. Since wood and ducks both float, this cancels out their buoyancy.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago

Rocks are plentiful. Strap rocks to the logs.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago

Yea that makes sense

[–] [email protected] 8 points 3 months ago

And did they consult the mushrooms ? Seems in medium term, may help feed a lot of bugs and birds, which is good for biodiversity, but to store carbon, needs to be fungi-proof.