Essay by Eric Worrall
I’m sure there was a time greens wanted to protect forests from bulldozers.
OCTOBER 16, 2025
5 MIN READ
Can We Bury Enough Wood to Slow Climate Change?
Wood vaulting, a simple, low-tech approach to storing carbon, has the potential to remove 12 billion tons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere every year—and some companies are already trying it.
BY SYRIS VALENTINE EDITED BY ANDREA THOMPSON
Humanity has only so much time to limit global warming and minimize the severity of future climate disasters. And with mostly tepid attempts to slash greenhouse gas emissions, researchers are scrambling for realistic ways to pull carbon out of the atmosphere. Flashy, high-tech proposals that promise to vacuum pollutants out of the sky, or to scrub them from smokestacks before they hit the atmosphere, have attracted attention and investment—but are falling far short of expectations. Now a growing number of scientists and entrepreneurs are trying a vastly simpler approach: collecting truckloads of logs, branches, wood chips and sawdust—and burying them.
…
“If we want to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere,” says the study’s lead author Yiqi Luo, a Cornell University ecosystem ecologist, “we basically need to create new reservoirs in land, ocean or geological structures.”
Read more: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-wood-vaulting-could-help-slow-climate-change/
…
The abstract of the study;
- Analysis
- Published: 25 June 2025
Large CO2 removal potential of woody debris preservation in managed forests
- Yiqi Luo,
- Ning Wei,
- Xingjie Lu,
- Yu Zhou,
- Feng Tao,
- Quan Quan,
- Cuijuan Liao,
- Lifen Jiang,
- Jianyang Xia,
- Yuanyuan Huang,
- Shuli Niu,
- Xiangtao Xu,
- Ying Sun,
- Ning Zeng,
- Charles Koven,
- Liqing Peng,
- Steve Davis,
- Pete Smith,
- Fengqi You,
- Yu Jiang,
- Lailiang Cheng &
- Benjamin Houlton
Nature Geoscience volume 18, pages 675–681 (2025)
Abstract
Limiting climate warming to 1.5 °C requires reductions in greenhouse gas emissions and CO2removal. While various CO2 removal strategies have been explored to achieve global net-zero greenhouse gas emissions and account for legacy emissions, additional exploration is warranted to examine more durable, scalable and sustainable approaches to achieve climate targets. Here we show that preserving woody debris in managed forests can remove gigatonnes of CO2 from the atmosphere sustainably based on a carbon cycle analysis using three Earth system models. Woody debris is produced from logging, sawmill wastes and abandoned woody products, and can be preserved in deep soil to lengthen its residence time (a measure of durability) by thousands of years. Preserving annual woody debris production in managed forests has the capacity to remove 769–937 GtCO2 from the atmosphere cumulatively (10.1–12.4 GtCO2 yr−1 on average) from 2025 to 2100, if its residence time is lengthened for 100–2,000 years and after 5% CO2 removal is discounted to account for CO2emission due to machine operation for wood debris preservation. This translates to a reduction in global temperatures of 0.35–0.42 °C. Given the large potential, relatively low cost and long durability, future efforts should be focused on establishing large-scale demonstration projects for this technology in a variety of contexts, with rigorous monitoring of CO2 removal, its co-benefits and side-effects.
Read more: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41561-025-01731-2
Imagine bulldozing up to 12 billion tons of forest every year, just to bury it.
At least the biomass people want to use the wood, to produce ridiculously expensive power. But this idea is obscene – destroying vast tracts of nature, just to bury the wood.
How did we end up in a world where anyone could genuinely believe this is a good idea?
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The stupidity. It burns…
Clown show.
If the “green” lunatics practiced what they preached, since they exhale CO2 continuously, they would commit mass suicide immediately.
Would certainly raise the average IQ of the world’s population !!
If greens really believed they would adopt their own carbon zero. Being that they are roughly 1/2 the population it would become clear rapidly that they are correct and then we would have a real discussion. Not likely that would every happen.
They could seal their orifices with epoxy if they were really serious about emissions.
You are assuming these creatures are a part of the carbon cycle. Evidently, they don’t.
Bury plant matter under anaerobic conditions, cook for millions of years, and voila – hydrocarbon fuels. These people are forward looking futurists – planning for a multi-million year ahead future.
Maroon billions of wooden sailboats on antarctica. Done.
Not Even Wrong
I had to get the correct version, here from DDG Search Assist:
The phrase “not even wrong” was famously used by physicist Wolfgang Pauli to describe arguments or theories that are so flawed they cannot be tested or evaluated scientifically. It indicates that such ideas are worse than simply being incorrect, as they lack the necessary criteria to be considered scientific at all.
400 million years from now they will not even be wrong. The model graphs it out. Glorious hockey stick of insanity.
Blockheads again.
“How did we end up in a world where anyone could genuinely believe this is a good idea?”
We are at this point because the original claim that incremental CO2 in the atmosphere must be expected to drive harmful “warming” has not yet been successfully refuted in the mind of the policymakers and research funders. But the modelers – and the atmospheric theoreticians before them – have known all along that there is no good physical reason for this belief. The radiative influence of rising pCO2 is demonstrated to be negligible in the proper context of dynamic energy conversion within the general circulation. The end result is a vanishingly weak maximum influence on any trend of any climate variable, from any of the non-condensing IR-active gases.
Skeptics of climate alarm, including very good organizations like the CO2 Coalition, CFACT, Heartland, and others, could do well to step up and make this case more firmly. I hope the EPA proceeds with the withdrawal of the 2009 Endangerment Finding. Finalized action will provide a good opportunity for elevating this issue of the unsoundness of the core claim on scientific grounds.
https://www.regulations.gov/comment/EPA-HQ-OAR-2025-0194-0305
Thank you for your attention to this matter.
As they say, I ain’t no expert on this but have enough experience with wood and soils to ask questions like acidic soils, carbon expenditure for burial only 5% of costs, soils with holes like karst, etc.
From the paper Large CO2 removal potential of woody debris preservation in managed forests– “The Paris Climate Agreement has spurred research and development of climate solutions to help hold global mean temperature rise to 2.0 °C or preferably 1.5 °C (refs. 1–3)…..Here we present a case study in which we used scientific knowledge gained from basic carbon cycle research to guide development and evaluation of CDR technology…..Woody debris can be preserved with many methods to lengthen its residence time, mostly involving extremely dry, cold and/or anoxic conditions16….” But give them a little credit except this requires lots of tests. “…As a consequence, reporting and verification can be reliably done with high creditability without sophisticated modelling…..” Oops, never mind the credit– “Biomass preservation in deep soil reduces wildfire risks, whereas its impacts on soil health, methane emission, nutrient dynamics and biodiversity are yet to be investigated.
They also claim it’s cheaper than other methods, get out the shovels.
My oldest daughter was invited to William and Mary experience for talented high school students in the 90s. One of the speakers was from International Paper and he was proposing a similar plan to gain carbon credits. Also on the panel was Greenpeace speaker from New Zealand. Her very heavy accent meant that no one could understand her.
They also had a program for parents focusing on ozone and global warming. The coordinator was asked at the last minute to lead the discussion. I as off my meds at the time and my insight was 20/10 and my inhibitions were nil.I kept correcting his points til he finally asked, Who the hell are you? At that point he yielded the floor to me and I answered or directed the discussion.
To support our claims, we created a computer model of the climate and proved exactly the premise that we programmed it to prove.
AI!
This is idea is down there with the plans to fill the preferred migratory paths and feeding areas of the endangered Northern Right Whale, and of other cetaceans, with industrial wind turbines.
Maroon billions of [dead Northern Right Whales] on Antarctica. Done.
Even if not bulldozing forests to bury them for this purpose, they note using things like branches and deadwood, but seem to discount the important role that dead woody material plays in the ecosystem. From direct substrate or shelter for various organisms (fungi, insects, plants, bird and mammal den sites, etc.), to nutrient cycling, moisture retention, and structural variation of the forest floor. At least 20% (as high as 40% by some estimates) of forest dwelling mammals in Eastern North America use dead wood for some part of their life cycle. One only needs to look at the history of IUCN red-listed species in Scandinavia from their past intensive practices to understand the likely outcome. Keeping common species common can be difficult when every scrap is taken out of the forest.
How will burying tons and tons of tree reduce emissions?
Haven’t they heard of termites? How will feeding them tons and tons of extra food reduce emissions?
Authors:
• Yiqi Luo,
• Ning Wei,
• Xingjie Lu,
• Yu Zhou,
• Feng Tao,
• Quan Quan,
• Cuijuan Liao,
• Lifen Jiang,
• Jianyang Xia,
• Yuanyuan Huang,
• Shuli Niu,
• Xiangtao Xu,
• Ying Sun,
• Ning Zeng,
• Charles Koven,
• Liqing Peng,
• Steve Davis,
• Pete Smith,
• Fengqi You,
• Yu Jiang,
• Lailiang Cheng &
• Benjamin Houlton
Clearly Communist China should exhibit leadership in this Great Leap Forward.
Communist China has form when it comes to ecological disaster. In the 1960’s Mao decreed that the people should eradicate the country’s sparrows, which, according to the Great Helmsman, were eating the grain. Most of the sparrow population was duly killed, with the result that the following year insect pests, their predators gone, multiplied out of control and consumed a huge proportion of the crops, leading to a nationwide famine.
Pete and Benjamin are deeply offended.
You left out Steve and Charles.
Man has been sequestering timber for a very long time, it’s called building a house! The denser or harder the timber used the longer the house lasts, that’s why the govt. only allows use to use soft timbers like pine /sarc
Haven’t we reached Peak Stupid yet?
The UK is close, Canada isn’t far behind!
Elections have consequences.
It is an asymptotic curve wherein we never reach peak stupid. It’s just science doncha know.
SciAm: Can We Bulldoze Enough Forests to Prevent Climate Change?
Yes, we can.
100,000 Amazon Trees Chopped Down to Build Road for COP30 Climate Conference
https://iotwreport.com/100000-amazon-trees-chopped-down-to-build-road-for-cop30-climate-conference/
In British Columbia last year, 5 million tons of slash were burned. This practice has been used since logging began in BC in the19th century.
The slash piles are burned the fall after the end of fire season. The CO2 released used by the trees at the start growing season in the spring.
In Queensland, they burn the remains of sugar cane plants, after removing the sugar etc, in small power stations. It is not a huge amount of extra energy, but a great use of the biomass.
The left over fiber is called begasse. Much is used for steam production in the mill.
Pedantic point re ‘begasse'(sic):
Bagasse
Bagasse is the dry pulpy fibrous material that remains after crushing sugarcane or sorghum stalks to extract their juice.
In the Pacific Northwest the westside forests contain ~200 tons per acre of tree biomass. Burying 12 billion tons would thus entail burying 60 million acres, which is more than (twice) all the westside forests in BC, WA, and OR combined.
Perhaps the long list of experts who wrote this sack of stupid cannot do math. Or maybe they’re on acid. Or they just don’t care. Or they are con men faking their “expertise” like drag queens.
Or they are CCP stooges seeking to destroy the West in the name of Maoist communism. As if they are at war with us. As if they want us all dead. It’s hard to tell what their motivations really are.
This might work in the UK with ship loads of wood pellets arriving there weekly, instead of sending it up the chimney at Drax as tax incentives. We know they won’t dare undertake this with their own precious trees.
Standing trees are never used for production of wood pellets. Wood waste from a variety sources is used.
That is the Drax story line, but the added tax incentives on the other side of the pond go beyond “wood waste.”
“Standing trees are never used for production of wood pellets”.
Correct, they cut them down first & truck them to the processing plant & then turn them into pellets, & it’s well documented, even the greens are against it.
“We know they won’t dare undertake this with their own precious trees.”
But they will bulldoze thousands of trees to make way for wind turbines. !
This is buried wood for the god of publication mills.
The upcoming COP30 in November is apparently one example of giving this a try. By clearing the rainforest for hypocrites traveling to Belém, plus placing additional taxes on the people, the entire CO2 problem should be solved. :-0
Now hold on. Clearly, the Climate Crusaders have lofty goals. Because, not unlike Buzz Lightyear, they want to go “To infinite stupidity and beyond!”
Just when you think they have reached PEAK STUPID.. they turn around and prove you wrong !!
Hang on a cotton pickin’ minute
the tree once grown surely has sequestered the CO2 in it’s structure. If you then chop it down, it no longer has the ability to do that.
plus the “carbon cost” of the machinery to do that needs to be considered.
plant more trees is the way to go …not chop down more trees
In BC over 30 billion trees have been planted since 1930 for forest restoration after logging.
Unrelated to the utterly stupid topic but I love this quote at the bottom of the page:
“…flashy (apparently widely distributed)”– Michael E. Mann
Thanks for a brighter day.
The ‘i’ in SciAm is redundant.
LOL 🙂
I would say it’s silent, rather than redundant.
Pedant 😉
Killing raptors, bats and forests are a good thing for greenies.
They have to destroy the environment in order to save it.
I heard something similar to that back in the ’60s, about some ville in a jungle somewhere…sarc.
How did we end up in a world where anyone could genuinely believe this is a good idea?
How did we end up in a world where the leaders of the British Labour Party and the British Liberal Democrats genuinely believe that some women have penises?
How did we end up in a world where the British Prime Minister thought it reasonable and appropriate to kneel, along with his Deputy, in public because somewhere thousands of miles to the west, in a whole other country, the police had caused the death of a man caught shop lifting when they restrained him?
One could go on…. lockdown and Covid and throwing money around like it was confetti…. etc
We are living in the West in the Age of Hysteria. In the classic sense of Charcot and the early Freud: free floating emotion out of proportion to the object it has attached itself to.
Some women do have penises, but they’re attached to someone else.
I see what you did here….
Or fake…. made from rubber etc,