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173 points rbanffy | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0s | source
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bitwize ◴[] No.42127852[source]
My wife actually has established a cheap, energy-efficient facility for converting CO2 into useful materials right in our yard.

She planted a garden.

I was thinking about that the other day, how our beautiful trees, flowers, and bushes draw a few minerals from the soil, but are really mainly knitted together from the components of water and CO2.

Yes, yes, I know, planting more trees won't do much about the greenhouse gas problem at scale, but the only thing that will are the three P's: powerdown, permaculture, population control. I do not expect industry to solve the problem industry created in a way that doesn't create more problems.

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zelphirkalt ◴[] No.42128001[source]
> Yes, yes, I know, planting more trees won't do much about the greenhouse gas problem at scale, but the only thing that will are the three P's: powerdown, permaculture, population control. I do not expect industry to solve the problem industry created in a way that doesn't create more problems.

But I am always wondering: Couldn't we have planted forests, from which we take the grown trees and put them back down under the earth, in some old mining facilities or dig some tunnels that lead deep down and put that stuff there? Or perhaps build lots of long term use furniture from the trees? Anything, except burning them or letting them rod? Then we would use nature's mechanism for capturing and prevent releasing, by putting it deep down, or making meaningful long term use of it.

And couldn't this be done on a bigger scale as well?

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1. jjmarr ◴[] No.42128247[source]
> Couldn't we have planted forests, from which we take the grown trees and put them back down under the earth, in some old mining facilities or dig some tunnels that lead deep down and put that stuff there?

This is basically how coal was created in the first place.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal_forest

Assuming carbon in = carbon out, we'd have to plant trees for millions of years on virtually all arable land and bury them underground to undo our burning of coal, since that's how the coal (which is almost pure carbon) was originally created.