Is there any ongoing research to create genetically modified trees that grow fast and absorb more carbon...

Is there any ongoing research to create genetically modified trees that grow fast and absorb more carbon? I would think that this would be a worldwide research agreement, considering how extreme the governments and their scientists consider climate change to be.

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I've seen some papers around on the increased growth rate on some plants under some electricity/static el.field, don't remember details though. Looked interesting enough.

Anycase we'd probably need a fuckton of trees to stop the trend we have now.

The more a plant grows and has mass the more carbon it captures. They are by their very nature carbon capturing devices. Increasing that rate merely means increasing their growth rate.

In South America they are planting GMO eucalyptus trees for the paper industry. Since they need more paper at a faster rate that also means the trees must grow faster and capture more carbon at the same time. While these trees are not being used for bettering the environment through carbon capturing, their initial reason does the same thing.

If the wood is good for building purposes then it can be stored and used for housing and such. That is the only real way to slow down the release of the carbon back into the environment.

Do ancient forests absorb less carbon than a young, growing forest then?

Y3s of course but every time we get close the trees become sentient and kill the scientists.

fun fact: the forests of the pacific northwest are experiencing unprecedented growth due to higher CO2 concetrations in the air. the timber industry literally can't keep up and the USDA is authorizing companies to harvest early.

Yes, because in a new forest there is far less deadfall than in a mature/ancient forest. The deadfall is constantly releasing carbon back into the environment.

We would need to grow a forest, cut it down, store the logs, replant, repeat. So long as the logs never rot, they will never release their stored carbon.

The reason we have more carbon than normal cycling through the environment is because we are digging up ancient trees (oil/coal) and releasing their carbon stores. This is like we have found a whole other forest and are burning it. The world has to cycle 2 sets of forest, the current growing one and the ancient one we are burning.

>a new forest has far less deadfall

Fixed, must have hit the paste button on my mouse.

I swear to god all these who are at front line yelling for gene modification have never kept even an acre of land growing.

You could grow 10'000 km^2 of forest

From each generation plant only seeds from trees with largest rate of carbon capture

And do this for 100 000 years

And you wouldn't make a DENT. Their capture wouldn't increase even by ONE PERCENT.

Doing all that work would require more work than any benefit derived from those trees.

GMO eucalyptus trees are on a 7 year grow-cut cycle. Meaning those in the pic here are only 7 years old. The company that does this is developing them so they will have a 5 year turnaround. In 100k years that's 14,285 forests for the 7-year cycle and 20,000 forests for the 5-year cycle. (I was looking for weight of the logs per hectare, but not finding good enough info to calculate how much that would be for an accurate carbon count.)

Regardless, it can make a massive dent, but only if the transit of those logs are done in the most efficient means either by massive cargo ship or by train.

>270 tons of CO2 per hectare in each 7-year cycle
futuragene.com/Infografico-ingles-FINAL.PDF

>10'000 km^2 of forest

10k km/sq = 1m ha/sq
1m ha/sq x 270 tons of CO2 per hectare = 270m tons of C02
270m tons of C02 x 14,285 forests (7-year cycle for 100k years) = 3,856,950,000,000 tons of CO2

3,856,950,000,000 tons of CO2

>year 2011
>38.2 billion tons of CO2 produced world wide

That's a forest 9,903,600 km/sq in size to balance this out where about 1.4m km/sq of it was being cut down and replanted each year to stay with the 7-year cycle.

The largest forest in the world is in Russia and it is 7,762,602 km/sq in size. You'd need to have this 9.9m km/sq forest spread out all over the word for it to be effective.

This is actually doable, but these numbers do not take into account the small amount of CO2 produced during the farming and transporting. You also need to be able to store them as logs without processing them. That's 100k years/141,472,926,000 km/sq worth of logs. (3 billion to 6 billion trees are cut down per year already.)

It isn't a 7-year cycle. It is a 5.5 year cycle for the current GMOs. Meaning a 22% reduction in the size of the forest needed.

Go back to /pol/

Might sound retarded but what if we were to grow a new forest, cut it, replant, and store the wood deep underground? In other words recreate what happened to prehistoric trees that were burrowed deep underground in order to reduce our carbon footprint.

seems like a waste, I say we use those trees to make charcoal.

Who would think that the solution to the carbon problem would be to cut down more trees, huh?

It isn't necessary to remove all excess co2 production on the planet from just trees. I'm sure planktons and algaes could aid in the process as well.

And use it or store it?

Also I just realised how retarded my idea was considering it would most likely be impossible to dig a deep enough hole.

>Might sound retarded but what if we were to grow a new forest, cut it, replant, and store the wood deep underground? In other words recreate what happened to prehistoric trees that were burrowed deep underground in order to reduce our carbon footprint.

Those conditions require a tremendous amount of time and pressures. Completely theoretically, yes, plants convert CO2 to lingin/cellulose. But this sequestration only works on the balance of keeping those living plants alive and in a functioning network with other lifeforms.

Currently, globally, forests are being destroyed worldwide on an accelerating basis. By something like the area of new york state every year last time I checked. It is happening in patches which destroys the integrity of the whole.

Most of it gets cleared by just burning it to create a poor-soil environment suitable for a few seasons of grazing for cattle. Todays hamburgers subsidized by future generations.

There is no solution to global warming / CO2 rise but stopping the destruction and the intensity of the conversion of natural capital to economic units. It means sacrifice- and sacrifice is something humans have a real problem doing. We have a base, mindless instinct to take any potential energy in a system and reduce it to its basal state. For no other reason than to get a cheap thrill. We are thermodynamic creatures, obsessed with burning stuff, using up, smashing things. Selfish, pretty stupid, too. We have every alternative, every option to not do it but we can't resist.

That will be executed top down by military action, in a desperate attempt to halt global climate change, most likely. There is no real bottom up effort- no changes in personal behavior that I can see. Humanity really does have no instinct to preserve itself, only a disgusting insect-level herd instinct. Like lemmings, over a cliff, praise Jesus.

The real problem is human beings - political systems, and personal beahvior.

>There is no solution to global warming
Just chemtrail the planet, that ought to do it.

I saw Snowpiercer, this doesn't work out.

>there is no solution to global warming

This is true and needs to be accepted. At this point we need to find out exactly how it is going to impact our lives and how we can make the most out of it. Unless scientists are able to make space elevators which also function as giant CO2 to O2 generators

That's pretty much what would need to be done. However, I'd rather just stop making so much CO2 in the first place.

>There is no solution to global warming

Part of the solution is to KYS. No joke.

>Currently, globally, forests are being destroyed worldwide on an accelerating basis

not in the US.

>There is no solution to global warming / CO2 rise

lol. we've had engineering solutions to global warming for almost 40 years. but when somebody talks about injecting chemicals into the atmosphere or using nuclear fueled sequestration machines dotted around the globe, the 97% who have "settled the science" rub the backs of their necks and reluctantly admit that its not THAT bad.

What stops private enterprise from doing those things?

You cannot genetically engineer plants to go from 7 year grow-cut cycles to 5 years. You can develop fertilizers, methods, monitoring, and statistics though. But you will NOT make the trees grow faster due to their genes. ZERO percent increase in growth speed. ZERO.

no, just plant a fuckload of trees and we switch back to a paper economy instead of plastic.

Growth speed of forests to capture carbon is not relevant. Total land surface of Earth being forest biomass is. It does not matter how fast your forest grows because when you cut it, the carbon will eventually be returned to atmosphere.

scale and international law. also there is no immediate return on investment.

if the ((((scientists)))) are correct, than a global carbon capture system is effectively a weather machine. which country gets to hold the keys? sure as shit isn't going to be a private corporation or a bunch of academic nerds.

Dead tree will give the carbon back to oxygen, because C-H is higher energy than C-O. You have to supply energy continuously to the system storing the tree, OR the carbon WILL end up with oxygen.

Example
>You store the tree underground, you coat the tree with surface that permits oxygen from reaching the tree, and you store it in inert atmosphere.
You need continuous supply of energy to keep the surface, and to keep the inert atmosphere. Oxygen will tunnel through your atmosphere and surface, will reach the tree and oxidize the carbon in it; although pretty slowly.

>which country gets to hold the keys?
Well it's not like controlling CO2 content gives us the power to direct tornadoes towards particular countries, so I see very little military value in this, if that's what you mean.

>so I see very little military value in this
it would make the owners unassailable and give them a large amount of leverage in negotiations. while it may not have a specific military application, its still a lever of power than any political entity would drool over.

Yeh, and we could justify the destruction of the American pine forrest while we're there.

Restoring peatbogs or whatever it is called in English would help too. And as someone studying ecology and conservation I don't understand what the obsession of conservationists with large mammals is. All they do is put methane in the air. Reforestation is happening already in numerous countries but conservationists want grassland and so on.

Though in Siberia large mammals are supposed to stop methane from getting in the air.

It has already been done. Check the pdf link in

>It does not matter how fast your forest grows because when you cut it, the carbon will eventually be returned to atmosphere.

Only if you don't protect it.

>let's just throw a bunch of genetically modified hyper trees into the wild based on bunk science

Here's a fun fact: rising CO2 levels will actually make C3 plants grow a fuckload faster.

Are you retarded?

>let's just throw a bunch of genetically modified hyper trees into the wild based on bunk science

Outside of the USA and Europe, GMO & CRISPR shit is out of control. It is like the wild west. I'm sure someone is going to make something really stupid and fuck us all.