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Comment on Elon Musk’s $100M Gigaton Scale Carbon Removal Prizeparent

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Would you not then need to wait until they were mature enough to have extracted a large enough quantity of Co2, and then chip them up and bury them back underground where all the oil came from in order to net extract Co2 before planting new trees in their place and going for another round.

Otherwise the Co2 will be returned to the atmosphere once the tree rots or is burned for fuel.

The right types of tree and forestry techniques make them net carbon sinks for a very long time, putting carbon in the soil.

Forests are self-sustaining, if you don't cut them down.

Individual trees die and decay, but their place is taken by their offspring and the total biomass of the forest does not decrease over time.

The amount of carbon stored in the forest is approximately proportional to that mass.

if you don't cut them down.

Forests that we don't cut down is called reservations.

In Sweden there is a law that states that any forest cut down must be replanted unless used for farming or new buildings. I also recall Norawy having the similar law. If we counted that as carbon removal, we would have a massive carbon net negative from this pretty old law.

The law is not a carbon removal strategy. It simply maintain current biomass over time.

That's right. If you want to sequester more carbon, you have to create more forest.

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