Anytime carbon capture comes up, the conversation devolves into commenters saying the entire idea is dumb and trees already exist. I’d like to know more about the full life cycle of a tree and if the carbon it captures is permanent.
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Yep. There’s no magic. When a plant grows it takes in carbon from the air and uses it as a building material. The plant is largely made of carbon. As long as the plant remains the carbon is bound there. It doesn’t vanish or teleport away it’s just part of the plant. So when the plant dissolves or burns, all the carbon it’s made up of is released.
That said, carbon capture by planting more trees and plants *does* work. It just depends on us keeping the forests around, but… that’s kind of the point *anyway*. It’s not like the individual tree needs to live forever. When it dies a new tree can grow in its place, so it still works in the long term. As long as the forest is there, it binds a bunch of carbon.
But this is true for any form of carbon capture. The carbon is still there. There’s no point in timer when we can say “ok, that’s all the carbon vanished. Now we no longer have to worry about that!”
If we pump it down into old oil wells the carbon is still there and we have to worry *forever* about whether it’ll leak out. If we bind it in trees and greenery we have to *keep* the planet green (oh, the horror). No matter what we do, we have to *keep* doing it.
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