how do we have enough trees?

1.08K viewsEngineeringOther

We use trees for paper, buildings, firewood, and so much more. How is there enough??

In: Engineering

9 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.1711842115

Measuring by carbon content, ~80% of Earth’s biomass is plants, and ~70% of that is wood. Which comes out to 56% of life on Earth being wood. Or roughly 315 billion tons of carbon. Humans account for 60 million tons of carbon. Which works out to a ratio of 5,250.

So for the average American, with a weight of 200 pounds (18.5% carbon), there is about 388,000 pounds of wood (50% carbon). That’s roughly 43,000 2x4s or 700,000 rolls of toilet paper.

Some statistics you maybe should worry about, for every pound of wild mammal, there are 10 pounds of human, and 20 pounds of livestock.

tl;dr there is *so much* wood. Wood for days. More than half of all living tissue is wood.

You are viewing 1 out of 9 answers, click here to view all answers.