7 ms·

Wildfires are destroying California's forest carbon credit reserves, study says

72 points by baobob 4y ago

atwood22 4y ago
Trees should not be considered offset carbon until buried in the ground.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- quarterdime 4y ago
  I agree that a living tree is not much of an offset. Trees are short term (and small) carbon stores when compared to fossil fuels. However I do not think that burying a tree solves the problem. Unless we find a way to prevent fungus from breaking down lignin, I am not sure that burying a tree is a viable long solution for carbon sequestration. It is outside of my area of expertise, but I can find at least one paper that suggests that coal deposits formed before the evolution of fungal species that could break down lignin (https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.1221748 https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.1221748). It is extremely difficult to turn CO2 back into coal. I am in favor of reducing forest loss (and ideally increasing forest area), but I am unconvinced that it will have any meaningful effect on atmospheric carbon in the near, mid, or long term.
  - alexose 4y ago
    There's some research that shows that burying logs super deep (beneath the biologically active layer) is an effective method of long-term sequestration: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35362755/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35362755/
    - asquabventured 4y ago
      Coal regeneration for the future generation!
    - vitiral 4y ago
      So deep strip mine a forest and bury the logs. Man, environmentalism sure has changed a lot over the decades...
      - revolvingocelot 4y ago
        Well, not a mature forest, but one of those "tree farms" of evenly spaced monoculture sounds like it'd be a great candidate. Of course, since those tree farms are explicitly for production and therefore owned by the owner class, who don't really want anything to do with this whole unprofitable "saving the planet" thing, the above scenario is more likely -- but all I meant to suggest is that it'd be possible to use this method and not destroy precious biodiversity at the same time.
alexose 4y ago
Here in Northern California there are huge swaths of firs that are dead or diseased as a result of drought. When they burn (which they will, at high intensity), they'll release their carbon back into the air. Seems to me that there's an opportunity for someone to sequester a lot of carbon by burying these trees (https://cbmjournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1750-0680-3-1 https://cbmjournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1750-0...) or by turning them into biochar/bio-oil.
- ErikVandeWater 4y ago
  Aren't there also invasive beetles that kill the trees?
  - alexose 4y ago
    The invasive beetles are the bullet, but climate change is the gun.
    - countvonbalzac 4y ago
      And humanity pulled the trigger
- rr808 4y ago
  Nice idea but surely all the chainsaws, loaders, trucks, diggers would burn so much diesel it isn't worth it?
  - alexose 4y ago
    That's a good point. Though, it might be possible to tack the sequestration step onto existing thinning and/or fuel reduction projects.
  - s1artibartfast 4y ago
    Unlikely. Compare the size/mass of the gas tank on a truck to the load of trees it is carrying. This approach gives a very rough estimate of the carbon used vs sequestered.
makotech221 4y ago
Carbon credits are a way for the capitalist class to white wash their climate crimes. I'm sure planting 10 trees will offset their daily personal jet flights...
ZeroGravitas 4y ago
I can't tell if these people are just being very picky or if this is yet another front in the constant war to prolong climate change: > A portion of those credits are put into a buffer account, an insurance mechanism tapped in the event that projects are lost to wildfire, disease, pests or financial risks such as bankruptcy. Those credits are meant to guarantee carbon stocks for at least 100 years. But that promise is falling short as climate change fuels intense wildfires, drought and disease, the researchers said. > Wildfires have depleted nearly one fifth of that buffer pool in less than a decade, the analysis found. So, they're generally giving the impression this is all a terrible scam, but the figures they quote suggest that there was planning for fire and diseas, and that the buffer is slightly more depleted than expected after a decade. And that if lots of trees die, this will "wipe out" the extra carbon credits put aside specifically to cover the eventuality that some trees might die.
- tedivm 4y ago
  Wiping out 20% of the buffer in 10% of the time it was meant to last is an issue, especially when the things wiping out the buffer are accelerating.
  - ZeroGravitas 4y ago
    I read the paper, they are mostly just being nitpicky. Which is good. They seem to specialise in data-based approaches to validating whether carbon offsets do what they say. They're not trying to discredit offsets in general, they're nerding out on subtle details of how these work. But the story amplifies the nitpicking to the level that other commenters can say "these are just outright fraud with made up numbers" and generally gives a false impression which feeds into the whole climate hoax thing. When, in reality there's a fairly complex system built-in with certification and incentives and insurance buffers. And that insurance might turn out to not be sufficient, but even if the insurance totally fails, it only then starts to eat away at the benefits. Note the insurance is pooled and as new projects get added, it spreads the risk further. Also the trees are spread across 29 states, which diversifies risk from fire and disease. https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/ffgc.2022.930426/full?utm_source=fweb&utm_medium=nblog&utm_campaign=ba-sci-ffgc-California-forest-carbon-offsets-buffer-pool-is-severely-undercapitalized https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/ffgc.2022.93042...
photochemsyn 4y ago
Forestry carbon credits have always been a bad joke, comparable to 'clean zero-emission coal plants' in terms of their effectiveness in slowing the rate of CO2 increase in the atmosphere. Such concepts are really borderline, if not actual, scientific fraud. The guilty parties here are politicians, bureaucrats and corporations who wanted to be seen as 'doing something' or selling 'responsible stewardship' to the public while actually doing nothing. I honestly have more respect for the outfits that didn't even bother with such bogus PR claims (ExxonMobil) vs the shady fraudsters who tried to greenwash their image this way (BP 'Beyond Petroleum', Chevron's 'sustainability program'). Politicians like Al Gore hyped these schemes as well, while not doing much that would actually decrease fossil fuel use (like a massive increase in solar/wind/storage technology R&D and manufacturing support). Countries like Canada used this nonsense to justify continuing with the dirtiest fossil fuel production system on the planet, i.e. Alberta tar sand mining, all while portraying themselves as green enviromentalists. Such opportunistic politicization of the issue has resulted in major problems ever since when it comes to explaining the science to skeptics, who understandably started to think it was all about politics. Even 30 years ago when these schemes were first trotted out as 'cap and trade' scientists knew they were bogus. Forests weren't capable of expanding to absorb fossil carbon being pumped into the atmosphere and predictions of continental drying (reduced growth rates), warmer winters (allowing insect infestations), and longer fire seasons (burning down the forests) all pointed to steady reductions in standing biomass, not increases.
- alexose 4y ago
  Note that most of the carbon offsets offered by airlines are forestry-related. Any time you see offsets for less than $50/ton, proceed with an abundance of caution. I do think the general state of offsets is improving. There are more high-quality offsets hitting the market every day. They're much too expensive, but I'd rather see "real" offsets at a high price than the complete make-believe we've had up until recently.
  - etrautmann 4y ago
    Can you provide links? I’m very curious to learn more about real offsets even if expensive.
anonporridge 4y ago
This is why I always laugh when people yell that we just need to plant more trees to solve climate change. I've even debated on twitter with published scientists on this issue. It's odd how susceptible to naturophilia even very well educated people can be, to the point of denying what seems like an obvious conclusion.
- briantakita 4y ago
  - anonporridge 4y ago
    Volcanoes emit a fraction of CO2 that humans do, https://www.climate.gov/news-features/climate-qa/which-emits-more-carbon-dioxide-volcanoes-or-human-activities https://www.climate.gov/news-features/climate-qa/which-emits... Even if you continued to believe that they did, you'd have to point to evidence that volcanic eruptions happen to have drastically increased at a smooth rate in line with global industrialization and fossil fuel burning. https://www.co2levels.org/ https://www.co2levels.org/
    - briantakita 4y ago
      - anonporridge 4y ago
        No one calls CO2 "devil's gas". That's just you trying to create a strawman because you're too weak to interact with reality. Grow up and learn to fight steelmen like an adult, https://www.lesswrong.com/tag/steelmanning https://www.lesswrong.com/tag/steelmanning.
        briantakita 4y ago
        I'll grow up as soon as you get out of the silly habit of treating CO2 as the silver bullet which is the control knob of the climate. You see, we have this thing called the Sun which is quite large compared to the Earth & emits quite large amounts of energy which fluctuates in large magnitudes in many different cycles, some of which last > 10000 years. In recorded history, we have a small sample of these cycles. Could CO2 be a lagging effect of rising temperature & not the cause of the rising temperature? The ocean contains CO2 & as the ocean heats up, CO2 is emitted. It's strange how much confirmation bias some people have with their silver bullet models. Weren't we supposed to not have any more glaciers by now according to some of the models by the esteemed institutions? Am I steelmanning? CO2 emitted from humans is blamed for drastically changing the climate of the Earth while that big orb in the sky which is now leaving it's "warm period" & has historically been the major cause of climate change is now disregarded by models which have proven unable to predict the future. I'm afraid that I am not steelmanning. I wish I was...Devil Gas is quite the appropriate term. If only we can we exterminate all of that Devil Gas, we can save the planet! We simply need a War on Devil Gas to show it that we mean bu$ine$$...or we simply need to block out the Sun. If you're not with me, you are against the planet. Yes, I know...I need to grow up and eat ze bugs in ze pod that I will live in because I will own nothing & be happy. Gaia cries everytime I drive my SUV with the AC on eating a juicy burger. The amount of cow farts & rainwatered grass that produced the burger is raising ze temperature causing much anger! I am ashamed. Pass me ze bugs.
twawaaay 4y ago
It is called "carbon cycle" for a reason. No amount of trees or other biomass can revert what we have done or even make a significant dent. Currently, all biomass on Earth equals about a decade of our emissions from carbon we dug out. Even doubling all biomass, which is impossible to do, would only be roughly equal to pausing our emissions for a decade. That is, assuming all that biomass does not revert into carbon through fires and other ways.
buscoquadnary 4y ago
I think the BOFH has a great article about Carbon Credits https://www.theregister.com/2008/02/01/bofh_episode_4/ https://www.theregister.com/2008/02/01/bofh_episode_4/
pvaldes 4y ago
Substitute "wildfires" with "environmental terrorism"
vanattab 4y ago
Can you destroy financial fiction with fire?

72 points by baobob 4y ago

atwood22 4y ago

Trees should not be considered offset carbon until buried in the ground.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
quarterdime 4y ago
I agree that a living tree is not much of an offset. Trees are short term (and small) carbon stores when compared to fossil fuels. However I do not think that burying a tree solves the problem. Unless we find a way to prevent fungus from breaking down lignin, I am not sure that burying a tree is a viable long solution for carbon sequestration. It is outside of my area of expertise, but I can find at least one paper that suggests that coal deposits formed before the evolution of fungal species that could break down lignin (https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.1221748 https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.1221748). It is extremely difficult to turn CO2 back into coal. I am in favor of reducing forest loss (and ideally increasing forest area), but I am unconvinced that it will have any meaningful effect on atmospheric carbon in the near, mid, or long term.
- alexose 4y ago
  There's some research that shows that burying logs super deep (beneath the biologically active layer) is an effective method of long-term sequestration: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35362755/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35362755/
  - asquabventured 4y ago
    Coal regeneration for the future generation!
  - vitiral 4y ago
    So deep strip mine a forest and bury the logs. Man, environmentalism sure has changed a lot over the decades...
    - revolvingocelot 4y ago
      Well, not a mature forest, but one of those "tree farms" of evenly spaced monoculture sounds like it'd be a great candidate. Of course, since those tree farms are explicitly for production and therefore owned by the owner class, who don't really want anything to do with this whole unprofitable "saving the planet" thing, the above scenario is more likely -- but all I meant to suggest is that it'd be possible to use this method and not destroy precious biodiversity at the same time.

alexose 4y ago

Here in Northern California there are huge swaths of firs that are dead or diseased as a result of drought. When they burn (which they will, at high intensity), they'll release their carbon back into the air. Seems to me that there's an opportunity for someone to sequester a lot of carbon by burying these trees (https://cbmjournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1750-0680-3-1 https://cbmjournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1750-0...) or by turning them into biochar/bio-oil.

ErikVandeWater 4y ago
Aren't there also invasive beetles that kill the trees?
- alexose 4y ago
  The invasive beetles are the bullet, but climate change is the gun.
  - countvonbalzac 4y ago
    And humanity pulled the trigger
rr808 4y ago
Nice idea but surely all the chainsaws, loaders, trucks, diggers would burn so much diesel it isn't worth it?
- alexose 4y ago
  That's a good point. Though, it might be possible to tack the sequestration step onto existing thinning and/or fuel reduction projects.
- s1artibartfast 4y ago
  Unlikely. Compare the size/mass of the gas tank on a truck to the load of trees it is carrying. This approach gives a very rough estimate of the carbon used vs sequestered.

makotech221 4y ago

Carbon credits are a way for the capitalist class to white wash their climate crimes. I'm sure planting 10 trees will offset their daily personal jet flights...

ZeroGravitas 4y ago

I can't tell if these people are just being very picky or if this is yet another front in the constant war to prolong climate change: > A portion of those credits are put into a buffer account, an insurance mechanism tapped in the event that projects are lost to wildfire, disease, pests or financial risks such as bankruptcy. Those credits are meant to guarantee carbon stocks for at least 100 years. But that promise is falling short as climate change fuels intense wildfires, drought and disease, the researchers said. > Wildfires have depleted nearly one fifth of that buffer pool in less than a decade, the analysis found. So, they're generally giving the impression this is all a terrible scam, but the figures they quote suggest that there was planning for fire and diseas, and that the buffer is slightly more depleted than expected after a decade. And that if lots of trees die, this will "wipe out" the extra carbon credits put aside specifically to cover the eventuality that some trees might die.

tedivm 4y ago
Wiping out 20% of the buffer in 10% of the time it was meant to last is an issue, especially when the things wiping out the buffer are accelerating.
- ZeroGravitas 4y ago
  I read the paper, they are mostly just being nitpicky. Which is good. They seem to specialise in data-based approaches to validating whether carbon offsets do what they say. They're not trying to discredit offsets in general, they're nerding out on subtle details of how these work. But the story amplifies the nitpicking to the level that other commenters can say "these are just outright fraud with made up numbers" and generally gives a false impression which feeds into the whole climate hoax thing. When, in reality there's a fairly complex system built-in with certification and incentives and insurance buffers. And that insurance might turn out to not be sufficient, but even if the insurance totally fails, it only then starts to eat away at the benefits. Note the insurance is pooled and as new projects get added, it spreads the risk further. Also the trees are spread across 29 states, which diversifies risk from fire and disease. https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/ffgc.2022.930426/full?utm_source=fweb&utm_medium=nblog&utm_campaign=ba-sci-ffgc-California-forest-carbon-offsets-buffer-pool-is-severely-undercapitalized https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/ffgc.2022.93042...

photochemsyn 4y ago

Forestry carbon credits have always been a bad joke, comparable to 'clean zero-emission coal plants' in terms of their effectiveness in slowing the rate of CO2 increase in the atmosphere. Such concepts are really borderline, if not actual, scientific fraud. The guilty parties here are politicians, bureaucrats and corporations who wanted to be seen as 'doing something' or selling 'responsible stewardship' to the public while actually doing nothing. I honestly have more respect for the outfits that didn't even bother with such bogus PR claims (ExxonMobil) vs the shady fraudsters who tried to greenwash their image this way (BP 'Beyond Petroleum', Chevron's 'sustainability program'). Politicians like Al Gore hyped these schemes as well, while not doing much that would actually decrease fossil fuel use (like a massive increase in solar/wind/storage technology R&D and manufacturing support). Countries like Canada used this nonsense to justify continuing with the dirtiest fossil fuel production system on the planet, i.e. Alberta tar sand mining, all while portraying themselves as green enviromentalists. Such opportunistic politicization of the issue has resulted in major problems ever since when it comes to explaining the science to skeptics, who understandably started to think it was all about politics. Even 30 years ago when these schemes were first trotted out as 'cap and trade' scientists knew they were bogus. Forests weren't capable of expanding to absorb fossil carbon being pumped into the atmosphere and predictions of continental drying (reduced growth rates), warmer winters (allowing insect infestations), and longer fire seasons (burning down the forests) all pointed to steady reductions in standing biomass, not increases.

alexose 4y ago
Note that most of the carbon offsets offered by airlines are forestry-related. Any time you see offsets for less than $50/ton, proceed with an abundance of caution. I do think the general state of offsets is improving. There are more high-quality offsets hitting the market every day. They're much too expensive, but I'd rather see "real" offsets at a high price than the complete make-believe we've had up until recently.
- etrautmann 4y ago
  Can you provide links? I’m very curious to learn more about real offsets even if expensive.

anonporridge 4y ago

This is why I always laugh when people yell that we just need to plant more trees to solve climate change. I've even debated on twitter with published scientists on this issue. It's odd how susceptible to naturophilia even very well educated people can be, to the point of denying what seems like an obvious conclusion.

briantakita 4y ago
- anonporridge 4y ago
  Volcanoes emit a fraction of CO2 that humans do, https://www.climate.gov/news-features/climate-qa/which-emits-more-carbon-dioxide-volcanoes-or-human-activities https://www.climate.gov/news-features/climate-qa/which-emits... Even if you continued to believe that they did, you'd have to point to evidence that volcanic eruptions happen to have drastically increased at a smooth rate in line with global industrialization and fossil fuel burning. https://www.co2levels.org/ https://www.co2levels.org/
  - briantakita 4y ago
    - anonporridge 4y ago
      No one calls CO2 "devil's gas". That's just you trying to create a strawman because you're too weak to interact with reality. Grow up and learn to fight steelmen like an adult, https://www.lesswrong.com/tag/steelmanning https://www.lesswrong.com/tag/steelmanning.
      - briantakita 4y ago
        I'll grow up as soon as you get out of the silly habit of treating CO2 as the silver bullet which is the control knob of the climate. You see, we have this thing called the Sun which is quite large compared to the Earth & emits quite large amounts of energy which fluctuates in large magnitudes in many different cycles, some of which last > 10000 years. In recorded history, we have a small sample of these cycles. Could CO2 be a lagging effect of rising temperature & not the cause of the rising temperature? The ocean contains CO2 & as the ocean heats up, CO2 is emitted. It's strange how much confirmation bias some people have with their silver bullet models. Weren't we supposed to not have any more glaciers by now according to some of the models by the esteemed institutions? Am I steelmanning? CO2 emitted from humans is blamed for drastically changing the climate of the Earth while that big orb in the sky which is now leaving it's "warm period" & has historically been the major cause of climate change is now disregarded by models which have proven unable to predict the future. I'm afraid that I am not steelmanning. I wish I was...Devil Gas is quite the appropriate term. If only we can we exterminate all of that Devil Gas, we can save the planet! We simply need a War on Devil Gas to show it that we mean bu$ine$$...or we simply need to block out the Sun. If you're not with me, you are against the planet. Yes, I know...I need to grow up and eat ze bugs in ze pod that I will live in because I will own nothing & be happy. Gaia cries everytime I drive my SUV with the AC on eating a juicy burger. The amount of cow farts & rainwatered grass that produced the burger is raising ze temperature causing much anger! I am ashamed. Pass me ze bugs.

twawaaay 4y ago

It is called "carbon cycle" for a reason. No amount of trees or other biomass can revert what we have done or even make a significant dent. Currently, all biomass on Earth equals about a decade of our emissions from carbon we dug out. Even doubling all biomass, which is impossible to do, would only be roughly equal to pausing our emissions for a decade. That is, assuming all that biomass does not revert into carbon through fires and other ways.

buscoquadnary 4y ago

I think the BOFH has a great article about Carbon Credits https://www.theregister.com/2008/02/01/bofh_episode_4/ https://www.theregister.com/2008/02/01/bofh_episode_4/

pvaldes 4y ago

Substitute "wildfires" with "environmental terrorism"

vanattab 4y ago

Can you destroy financial fiction with fire?