Sinking trees in Arctic Ocean could remove 1 billion tonnes of CO2

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2510920-sinking-trees-in-arctic-ocean-could-remove-1-billion-tonnes-of-co2/

23 Comments

  1. kvlt_ov_personality on

    For comparison, humans add 36 to 40 billion tons of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere each year

  2. And how much CO2 will it cost to drag trees to the Arctic Ocean? Because they don’t grow there.

    Why don’t we just stop burning fossil fuels like Carl Sagan and David Attenboro and Michael Mann warned us about 30 years ago?

  3. Let me guess, is BP behind the article? Or maybe Exxon? 

    We produce like 40 billion tons each year, it’s meaningless 

  4. The most ridiculous fix I have ever heard of. Covering the sky with fabric to block out the sun as proposed by some corporation is even more absurd!

    Technological fixes pour money into the bank accounts of the undeserving.

  5. Hi, I’m a logging industry representative, and I can assure you we had nothing to do with this study *wink wink nudge nudge*

  6. So is this measurement based on removing the capacity of the sunken trees releasing co2 in the event of a forest fire? What about the lost capacity for said trees to *filter out co2* from the atmosphere? Even if replanted that’s still a net loss.

  7. The trees already stored the carbon. Moving them to the ocean means they will decay into methane… Which is worse.

  8. just wait till the permafrost thaws and all that methane starts farting into the atmosphere.

  9. Yeah, this isn’t a good idea. Trees aren’t usually local to the Arctic Ocean, so they’ll need to be shipped in – at a weight of over 1 ton (because conservation of mass). When you rip these trees out of the ground, they stop absorbing carbon from the air, so we reduce our sink. Trees’ rate of carbon absorption isn’t linear with age, so planting replacement trees will take decades before they get back to net zero.

    Also, while the ocean is a co2 sink, it’s not exactly a closed system. That wood is going to decompose and the carbon is going to remain in the ecosystem.

    You’re just spending a buttload of energy to move carbon from one ecosystem to another, and reducing our ability to remove co2 from the atmosphere in the meantime.

    Far better to leave the fuckin’ trees in the goddamn ground and stop half-assing “solutions.”

  10. Sinking trees? You mean the floaty things?

    I’m sure there are much smarter ways to achieve carbon sequestration, without destroying not just one but two ecosystems.

  11. Sequester, not remove. Now if we launched them into orbit, it would be removed, but we’d also be slowly reducing the total mass of Earth.

  12. You know what else has carbon? Plastic. It makes more sense to bury plastic rubbish rather than trees, or any other stupid oil-funded nonsense like “plastic-eating bacteria”.

    Or better yet build more nuclear plants and stop burning so much fossils.

  13. dAnKsFourTheMemes on

    Okay so basically this only serves to hide the carbon under the ocean so wildfires don’t release it into the atmosphere again?

    I guess that makes sense. Why does it have to be the arctic ocean though? What’s stopping these trees from just ending up on beaches like other deadfall?

    I feel like this solves the co2 problem but doesn’t really address any steps after the trees are cut down and down the river.

    Also, how do we know the trees are just going to go downstream and never get stuck anywhere?

  14. Cool, but first of all we should stop using fossil fuels for transportation and energy as soon as possible. Stop oil, coal and gas except for some fringe uses like hard to replace special plastics.

  15. Yeah, if it works that might be useful after we cease all main commercial oil, coal and gas usage! Let’s hurry up that by the way!

  16. Same results can be achieved by making house or furniture items. But the better option to remove CO2 is to reduce the consumption of coal and fossil fuels in shipping, transportation, electricity production and urea nitrogen(fertilizer industry).

  17. This seems like it would be harder and more costly than just burying them on land, which has the added benefit of not destroying the fragile arctic ecosystem.