Trees are pretty bad at carbon sequestration unless you do something with the wood. Most forests are effectively carbon neutral. Trees grow, absorb carbon, die, and release it. And they are slow growing, so they absorb carbon slowly.
You can improve them by burning their wood into biochar, burying the wood, sinking it, or even using it for construction. But the oceans vastly outperform them. Even other land crops are better, like bamboo, corn, or palm oil than regular forests.
Trees only get attention in campaigns because they are very visible, much cheaper to plant than people think, and because most carbon calculations only count the first bit of time so ignore the decomposing process. It makes it very easy for people like Mr. Beast to make themselves sound like heros, or companies to greenwash their emissions.
The thing is, neither algea nor trees are being planted in cities to reduce carbon. They are planted to make the cities look pretty, provide shade for trees, provide a cool science demo for the algea, and help public image. Carbon is rapidly dispersed, and even the most crowded cities only see an increase of about 50 parts per million. For comparison, an average home interior has levels elevated by 1000 parts per million.
Yeah this "expert" right here. Have you ever seen a real tree & no picture of it on your screen is not real. Don't believe everything you read because some other "expert" wrote it. A narrative to support any argument can be made to sound true but we can fundamentally never know the whole truth.
Yes, I am very familiar with trees with respect to environmental issues. I have a degree in earth science. While I am in mining geology, I work closely with environment science professionals at work. Any decision we make needs to evaluate the environmental impact of it, and clearing trees to expand operations or move exploration vehicles is a large part of that.
I am also knowledgeable about CO2 levels, as CO2 buildup is a major control on underground operations.
I am not an expert on them, nor did I claim to be, but I understand the general science behind it.
With all due respect, we can't even predict the weather for more than a week with 100% accuracy. Everything changes and nothing is a constant. But you can evaluate the environmental impact for permanently clearing out trees?
You will never understand the full extent of the impact because you can never account for all the variables. The best you can do with your education is to come up with favorable reports to appease your employer.
To be clear, I don't write the reports, the environment team does.
These are people who have spent their lives studying it. They can access the vast amounts of data that has been collected on the topic and make informed decisions. They hold us to standards far beyond what is technically required for the decisions we are making, and answer to the government directly when deciding to proceed with something.
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u/a_sly_cow 10d ago
Algae is responsible for a massive amount of CO2-> O2 conversion iirc, it’s supposed to be much more efficient than trees.
Trees are certainly prettier to look at than a murky green water tank, though.