• psud@aussie.zone
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      5 days ago

      Until the tree dies and rots or burns

      Specifically replanting all the forests we cut down during the age of sail is just capturing the carbon that was released when those sailing ships rotted

      If we wanted to keep the carbon captured which we captured with plants, we would have to store those plants where they are safe from rot or burn them in a (not yet invented) carbon capturing furnace

      • oo1@lemmings.world
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        4 days ago

        It’s not just ships. Before and after ships forests were/are cleared for farming. Net carbon sequestration of almost any forest is likely to be better than cropland and pasture - more so the old forests with well developed fungi and worms and stuff that fix and recycle some of it, not so much the timber forestry but i sustect theyre better than farms still.

        Steel ships did not really even slow deforestation much - globally. Though you could argue that the sail ships enabled Europeans to bring all their various shit to the Americas - so it is maybe linked to the farming thing.

        https://ourworldindata.org/world-lost-one-third-forests . FYI This graph is a bit misleading because time is warped on the vertical.

        We also drained and dried out wetlands and bogs which are quite good at trapping a high amount of rotting material, also to make farmland. I’m not sure if that is counted in those stats - that is possibly more of a European overpopulation thing than a global one anyway.

        I dont see how it will stop unles people start eating less, or more efficiently (I guess swap a lot of cow for cereals).

        I don’t think monocultures + fertilizer + pesticides is going to be all that sustainable at keeping high yields in the long run - but we shall see about that I guess. Gene techlogy does seem to create some advances.

      • ubergeek@lemmy.today
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        4 days ago

        Decomp still sequesters carbon… where do you think all the oil came from, to begin with?