I kind of shit C sequestration in general, because I think a lot of the methods out there are pipe dreams, pushed by some C-suites.
To even have a hope in hell of dealing with climate change we need a full transition to renewables, whatever that looks like (I’m not fussy). It’s like trying to spend your way out of debt otherwise, or at the very best, taking on debt to invest, and hoping that the rate of return outpaces the rate of your loan interest.
Part of the reason I dislike the tree planting method for C offsets for a few reasons:
As you indicated, you can lose your progress to fire, which is becoming increasingly common due to climbing temperatures (loan interest goes brrrrrr…)
All C storage is temporary in biological systems. While some forms can be really, really recalcitrant (biochar: half lives of 800 years or more), eventually it all gets released. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, and is in fact how biological systems work, and must work to have balance, but we need to literally need to remove carbon in perpetuity from the system, as the source was geologically locked away til someone let some monkeys who were far too curious and good at running into the biology lab.
When numbers are the target, forest diversity suffers. Oh fab, you planted a gazillion short-lived Aspen. Thanks for that. The deer are gonna love it but a lot of other stuff is gonna wish it had niche space.
I’m totally with you on the deforestation/diversity part, but I think we are asking too much from trees, and for humans to not be lazy, shitty capitalists who can’t see past the end of their collective noses.
I’m not saying I have an answer to C storage; there are some geological storage methods (like storing in tailings) that look super cool, and would remove the C for much longer times, but I’m not holding my breath, for many of the reasons I’ve touched on. Don’t even get me started on CCS plants like Hieldelberg’s pet project.
Where I see C storage coming in, is a way to minimize the impact of future projects, in the way of scrubbers, or direct deposit methods rather than hoping to suck emission right out of the air, after the fact.
girlfreddy