This discovery could be big green energy news

Janx said:

So what can we all actually do?

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As individuals, our options are limited. Many of the tings we are asked to do as individuals are not particularly effective, or efficient, and at best serve as "marketing" for the overall effort. This is akin to early home-recycling programs, which were actually more wasteful than just hauling materials to a landfill. But, once homeowners were doing it, there was pressure for it to happen on corporate scales, and that led to economy of scale and advances in process to make recycling at least marginally worth the effort. "Plant a tree in your yard," would be similar to early recycling, in that sense, more about publc relations than effective carbon sequestration.

As a culture - prioritize the conversion of our energy generation. We are, thank the powers that be, finally at the point where solar and wind energy are competitive with fossil fuel energy in terms of cost per KWH. That means we can convert without necessarily tanking the economy in the process. Continuing to push on that, and on development of other new energy technologies, is our best bet, imho.

There will be some hard issues - you can't to *anything* on this large a scale without having impacts. Solar installations need space. Wind farms take space, and have a tendency to kill birds flying into them, or have impact on shipping if put offshore. And some folks think they are ugly, and noisy.

I can't afford solar panels (gonna be paying off them windows for years).

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There are still experiments going on with different business models for home-solar power generation, including some in which, rather than you buying panels and installing them, a company actually leases your roof space from you, paying you in electricity. It is yet to be seen which of these are viable, but whichever model comes out on top, as the market grows, the price of panels drops. It might be worth looking at, for example, the next time you have to put a new roof on your home. There are solar shingle technologies that may catch up for you!

TANSTAAFL, as Larry Niven put it.

That said, baby steps in the right direction are still in the right direction. And eventually, with Miyagi-like wisdom, we learn to run.

We've gone from recycling a few bags of aluminum cans a month to recycling @1/3 of our weekly refuse output.

Our current house's roof has a nice, unobstructed exposure to the sun from noon on, so we're looking hard at adding some solar panels. We do have to find a company whose product meets our HOA's aesthetic regs- NIMBY concerns & all that.

When the family house is fully mine, I plan on doing more xeriscaping and/or replanting with more native species.

We've even changed how we buy, prep & store food, which has led to a reduction in our food waste. For example, spending a day chopping veggies & spices- and some meats- and freezing them greatly reduces waste due to spoilage, and means:

1) I only wash my knife & cutting board a few times a month as opposed to every time I cook. That means cleaning & food prep time saved AND fewer detergents used.

2) my freezer is usually pretty packed, which means it's running near peak efficiency.

lol I live in CA. Don't try to tell me what we can or can't do here.

For one thing, Californians are already wasting huge amounts of water on lawns that don't do anyone any good. Trees are more effective air cleaners (not just carbon sinks, but all manner of other gases), but are also great at reducing energy consumption requirements in hot places like most of inland CA, by the simple expedient of shade. If you don't beleive me, try living in the Central Valley with, and then without, shade trees on your property. It's a difference of hundreds of dollars per year. On some properties, it's well over 100$ a month difference.
Energy consumption that for at least the next few decades will continue to require fossil fuels, and thus carbon emissions. Home solar is great, and should also be expanded exponentially, but ppl also absolutely need to ditch lawns in favor of trees and, lifestyle allowing, food plants.

Also note that as i as I pointed out earlier in the thread, trees make farming many crops more ecologically sound in hot, dry places. Less fertilizer, better yields, often less total water usage compared to what's required to make non desert friendly crops survive the desert sun. This isn't theory, it's history and science, and it's being proven (again) in the southern Sahara right now.

And of course we have to plant more trees than "suburbanites" can do in their homes. Obviously. But:
1)cities need more trees for many reasons. They also need solar covered parking lots, rooftops, and even roadways where feasible. You know cities are significantly hotter than the surrounding land due to the amount of asphalt and concrete sitting in the sun all day, right? And increased parks only does so much. Like...trees are literally the cheapest and easiest part of the solution, and here you are acting like I'm saying that they're the whole solution.

2) I don't know where you live, but every city I know has grass lawns everywhere. Not at all just in the suburbs.

3) urban afforestation has benefits outside of carbon sinking. Like making urban air more breathable, and helping keep cities cool. Which helps cities use less energy. And of course, we could plant large shade giving desert trees, but the folks lose it over planting foreign species.

Obviously we have to also rethink farming techniques, improve water reclaimation/recycling/other infrastructure, and turn more rural land back into forests. We literally have to do those things. There is no choice in the matter. We have done two things that are going to kill us.
exponentially increased carbon output, and dramatically decreased the ability of the environment to "eat" atmospheric carbon. Both have to be reversed.

And no, there is no appeal to authority in saying, "I have to work all day, so don't expect a dissertation or bibliography".

Now, if you want links and stuff, you're still gonna have to wait because I'm seriously eating into my get ready for work time right now as it is, but at least for North America, it's mostly state water authority and national border red tape in the way of cross continental water infrastructure. Of course, it takes massive protests to stop similar infrastructure for moving oil from being built, because that puts tons of money in powerful people's pockets, but when it comes to water it's crickets. More immediately, CA has terrible water reclaimation and recycling infrastructure, in most places.

Dannyalcatraz said:

Their general usefulness as a carbon sink aside, the question would be what resources- water, nutrients, space, etc.- any given tree species requires vs others. A long lived tree that requires more water and space, or that grows slowly as compared to maples might not sequester as much carbon as a stand of short-lived maples.

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Just go for the fastest-growing tree that produces hardwood suitable for the lumber industry, total lifespan irrelevant. The carbon only gets back into the atmosphere if the tree burns or rots - if it's turned into logs and planks for the construction industry, it's sequestered for quite awhile.

MarkB said:

Just go for the fastest-growing tree that produces hardwood suitable for the lumber industry, total lifespan irrelevant. The carbon only gets back into the atmosphere if the tree burns or rots - if it's turned into logs and planks for the construction industry, it's sequestered for quite awhile.

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1) might not grow at all where you are
2) might not grow well where you are
3) might not be legal to grow it where you are
4) 1-3 being conquered, it could cause a glut of single kind of wood. That will lead to cutting down those trees in favor of more valuable crops (assuming these are not gov't owned groves that don't need to be profitable). That could fast-track said wood for firewood and/or cause it to rot in place.

Dannyalcatraz said:

1) might not grow at all where you are
2) might not grow well where you are

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Naturally, I meant "fastest growing" in the context of local conditions.

3) might not be legal to grow it where you are
4) 1-3 being conquered, it could cause a glut of single kind of wood. That will lead to cutting down those trees in favor of more valuable crops (assuming these are not gov't owned groves that don't need to be profitable). That could fast-track said wood for firewood and/or cause it to rot in place.

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True - this isn't something that would be practical to do on an individual basis. Ideally, it would need some form of integrated, long-term scheme which ensured that these trees were used in preference to deforesting natural old-growth woodlands where possible.

Yeah, monocultures can lead to forest devastation -- if not through fires, then through insects and diseases that mainly attack selected types of trees. We've had bark-beetle infestations that have killed whole pine forests here in Oregon. Those lands could be replanted with a diverse mix of trees if there were the will to do it--but the will to do it is in short supply.

Umbran mentioned not planting trees in the US Southwest. However, that's not all waste space. I Googled "southwest trees" and found some lists that include some drought-tolerant genera and species. Here are just a few:

Gardening-for-Wildlife mentions:
Arizona White Oak (Quercus arizonica) -- "can be found growing in hot sandy hillsides, dry rocky canyons, and up to 10,000 feet in the mountains"

Guzman's Garden Centers (New Mexico) mentions:
Desert Willow (Chilopsis linearis) -- "Very drought tolerant once established."
Chilean Mesquite (Prosopis chilensis) -- "Very drought tolerant tree."
Mimosa or Silk Tree (Albizia julibrissin) -- "can withstand droughts"
Idaho Locust (Robinia x ambigua) -- "tolerates summer heat and dryness"
Southwestern Chitalpa (Chitalpa tashkinensis) -- "very drought resistant"
California Christmas Tree (Cedrus deodara) -- "drought tolerant once established"

Sun Gardens Inc. mentions:
Hackberry (Celtis occidentalis) -- "Very drought and heat tolerant"
Osage orange (Maclura pomifera) -- described on another site as being ". . . able to adapt to be hardy over most of the contiguous United States, . . ."
Vitex (genus name: Vitex) -- "Very heat and drought tolerant."

Yes, those aren't the most commercially valuable trees; but those hardier trees could provide the shade to start reducing temperatures in microclimates; and any fallen leaves and twigs could help store water at ground level, which water would otherwise disappear locally as run-off; and the presence of such trees could make it easier for trees that don't like the desert as much to survive, and maybe even thrive. A succession of planting hardy trees at high elevations, and faster-growing trees (requiring more water) farther down-slope, might eventually serve to increase forestland to some extent, even in the arid southwest. The best time to start that project is fifty years ago, however, because successions of trees can take decades.