this post was submitted on 17 Nov 2023
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The carbon in the trees is part of the living carbon cycle. It's normal and natural. "Solutions" like this one interfere with the natural cycles of the environment for little benefit. The carbon we need to be worried about has been sequestered for millions of years, not the carbon that has always been in active use by living ecosystems.
Again, carbon is carbon. It doesn’t not effect the gobal climate just becuse it came from a tree instead of a car. While the effect may be small, so are most sources of carbon on their own. Keeping it out of the air might very well make between earth having a few small sickly coral reefs, and none at all. We can’t afford to pump carbon into the air just becuse that’s the way we’ve allways done it and change might be scary.
If nothing else, modern forest fires aren’t natural. We made them by drying out and heating the forest, by changing wether patterns, and a thousand other local environmental factors. Modern forest fires are hotter, faster, and far larger than they were at any point in the ten thousand years.
Saying "carbon is carbon" doesn't make it true. It just gives a slogan to your ignorance.
If you could explain why co2 we produced by makeing more frequent forest fires doesn’t insulate the world in the way the same molecule does when it comes from cars i’d love to see it.
Fine. It's a matter of scale and a matter of homeostasis. The environment is stable without humans burning hydrocarbons. The carbon exists in a cycle where it is released by dying animals and plants, and by natural fire cycles. When humans dig up millions of years of sequestered carbon, then it throws off the balance of natural ecosystems. The carbon is all mixed up in the atmosphere, where it collects PCBs and other pollutants from industry. Some of that carbon is re-sequestered by growing plant life. Any human efforts at burning the carbon that's actively being used by ecosystems are purely masterbatory and distract resources from actual solutions like decreasing dependence on oil.
Except this doesn’t take significant resources from reducing oil use. By the same logic we should ignore cuting emissions from air travel becuse it’s purely masterbatory and distracts resources from actual solutions like cutting coal and natural gas power generation.
Air travel is burning petroleum, genius.
And forest fires are burning unnatural and massive quantities of wood.
No, forest fires have existed for as long as trees have existed. It's not unnatural quantities of wood being burned. It's the amount of wood that is normal and natural for the ecosystem to maintain homeostasis.
Don't message me again. We're just going in circles at this point.