Essay by Eric Worrall
Imagine harvesting millions, billions of tons of wood, and not even burning it, let alone using it for construction.
Scientists Think We Could Slow Climate Change by Sinking Trees in the Arctic Ocean
Purposefully sinking boreal trees could help lock away carbon for millennia or longer, but the audacious plan comes with risks of its own.
BY DARREN ORF PUBLISHED: JAN 28, 2026 8:30 AM EST
…
“There is now a forest that is sequestering lots of carbon, but now the next thing is how to store it in a way that won’t get burned,” Ulf Büntgen, the lead author of the study from the University of Cambridge, told New Scientist.
This is the basic idea behind a well-known carbon removal technique known as “wood vaulting,” which involves burying woody biomass in anaerobic (clay-rich) pits that essentially lock carbon underground. The authors note that while this method might be effective in theory, it’d likely rely on a 25 percent increase in logging and could negatively impact soil quality, mycorrhizal networks, and biodiversity loss—not to mention the increased emissions from deforestation, transportation, excavation, and vault construction. So, the authors looked for other, readily available anoxic environments with lower environmental impacts.
…
Last year, Büntgen took part in a study that found wood survived without rotting for 8,000 years in low-oxygen Alpine lakes, and the idea of similarly vaulting wood in the Arctic does come with a few advantages. For one, afforestation is reducing albedo. And for another, these forests can be far removed from human-occupied spaces, but close to major river systems for easy transportation. The authors highlight the Ob, Yenisey, Lena, Yukon, and Mackenzie rivers in Russia, Alaska, and Canada as having the potential to be boreal timber waterways for vaulting logs in the Arctic Ocean. According to New Scientist, if 30,000 square kilometers could be logged along these rivers each year and then replanted, one billion tonnes of CO2 could be stored.
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Read more: https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/environment/a70098782/sinking-1-billion-trees/
The abstract of the study;
No Long-Term Decay in α-Cellulose of Living and Relict Trees From the European Alps Over the Past 8,000 years
Tito Arosio, Ulf Büntgen, Matthias Saurer, Tatiana Bebchuk, Kurt Nicolussi, Agata Buchwal, Valentina Vitali, Markus Leuenberger
First published: 26 September 2025
https://doi.org/10.1029/2025PA005170Digital Object Identifier (DOI) VIEW METRICS
Abstract
Tree-ring α-cellulose stable isotopes of living trees and dead woods are increasingly used for high-resolution paleoclimate reconstructions spanning centuries to millennia. However, the potential effects of wood decay on α-cellulose content (CC) and the composition of tree-ring stable isotopes remain largely unexplored. Here, we present α-cellulose content measurements from relict and living trees in the European Alps spanning the past 8,000 years. This study addresses whether preservation context alters the isotopic integrity of α-cellulose. We assess the temporal stability of CC, its dependence on tree species, preservation conditions and wood type (subfossil, dry dead, living), as well as its relationship with α-cellulose stable carbon, oxygen, and hydrogen isotopes (δ13C, δ18O, δ2H). Our results show that α-cellulose remains stable over millennia under alpine conditions. Our results not only confirm the suitability of relict wood for tree-ring stable isotopic analysis and paleoclimate reconstructions, but also provide insights for the improvement of global carbon cycle models.
Read more: https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2025PA005170
Given emissions of around 35-40 gigatons of CO2 per year, 30,000 square kilometers x 40 = 1.2 million square kilometres of boreal forest would have to be harvested each year and sunk in the Arctic ocean.
Given the total area of Arctic boreal forest is only around 15-17 million square kilometers, and given boreal forests are not exactly fast growing, cancelling emissions would deplete all available boreal forest within 20 years.
Nutrient depletion in boreal regions from all the removed wood over time would turn the former forests into true ice deserts.
Of course, once they ran out of boreal forests, I mean you can’t shut down a green programme just because it wrecked the environment. They would then come for other forests.
Here’s a thought, instead of spending billions, maybe trillions of dollars per year chopping down the worlds’s forests, then pointlessly dumping all the trees in the Arctic Ocean, how about we just let the CO2 pile up in the atmosphere so it can fertilise our crops, and help keep our planet verdant and healthy?
This idea just affirms my theory of geo-engineering. No matter how crazy the latest geo-engineering proposal, there will always be someone who will come up with something even more nonsensical.
If you’re going to “Vault” trees to sink carbon the nest way is to plant and harvest fast growing trees like Poplar which grow relatively straight for stacking reach maturity in 10 years. Just harvest and replant every decade without harvesting existing forests. No biodiversity affects as they’re nonexistent forests to begin with. Then stack them in exhausted Coal Pit Mines keeping them constantly covered by 2′ of water to retain aerobic conditions. Even the Leaf Litter could be placed between the layers and included in the sink pit. Then, in a few millennia future generations would benefit from the new “Fossil Fuel” source.
Just a noob question:
There are bamboos that grow very fast( up to 4 feet a day).
Wouldn’t they be best suited for that kind of idea?
Yes, bamboo is a really aggressive invasive species. My wife and I were touring an ancient Roman quarry site a few years ago, and as we hiked the trail leading to the main cave, our guide told us a story. A couple of years earlier, a friend of his approached him and asked if there would be any problem with him bringing in two little bamboo plants, and planting them in the open field surrounding the quarry. With a little inquiry, permission was granted. Just as he was finishing the story, we reached the edge of a huge bamboo forest. “This wasn’t here five years ago,” he said. I believe it. Our property in Northern Virginia, which is entirely deciduous forest, was almost taken over by bamboo until we and one of our neighbors combined forces to eliminate it.
A single bamboo that we planted in our garden started growing up through our neighbour’s patio. When we removed it, we found the roots ran horizontally for nearly 20 feet!
I have no idea why anyone let alone three people gave you likes for that.
Sequestering Carbon in order to “Save the Planet” is an idea entirely without merit.
I’m just saying, if they want to do it, there are better ways than removing existing forest habitat.
Yeah, there has never been a good reason established for sequestering CO2, in the first place. Climate Alarmists are getting a little ahead of themselves.
To date, there is no evidence showing CO2 is anything other than a benign gas, essential for life on Earth.
It should be established that it is necessary to remove CO2, before CO2 is removed, and this has never been done in the last 50 years of trying.
These Climate Alarmist fools are operating on pure speculation about CO2.
It’s pure insanity. These people need to see a Shrink.
Good idea. Probably are trembling aspens in the southern edge of the boreal forest, certainly are in the Peace River area.
(‘Poplar’ is a family of trees, a common variety is trembling aspen, cottonwood is less common as it tends to want to be on the edge of water.
Birch trees grow in that area but are related to beech trees, as are the ‘alder’ of SW BC, Like aspen alder are early-in-early out.
Trembling aspen leaves are apple-shaped with narrow stem thus they flutter in wind, cottonwood leaves are quite different.)
Lets walk into the forests with mules and cut the trees down with axes to save even more CO2.
Bingo! Takes a lot of diesel to harvest trees, drag them out, truck them somewhere- not to mention labor costs. Mules ain’t so bad, the Russians are using them in their invasion of Ukraine. 🙂
and drug dealers, too…
First you’ll have to overcome PETA as they would not let you use the mule.
Then you must fight off the treehuggers as they would not let you cut down the trees,
and after that you’ll realise that they have banned axes.
Which is why First Planting the trees you intend to harvest makes more sense.
Send in these researchers with the axes. It would keep them busy and not waste funding that could be used for actual research. The mules could supervise them.
Many years ago the USAs propensity for wood frame construction in residential housing was a major carbon sink was a topic of discussion.
Standards went from 2x4s to 2x6s (before planing). Next?
For a remodel, I now have some walls (2x6s) giving 5.5 inches for insulation. I suppose someone has used 2x8s. Don’t know.
Can I get a subsidy for being a carbon sink?
Make 2×12 walls , insulate to R33 to R40.R60 roofs.
Save a lot on heating costs .
.
Save a lot of “carbon”.
😉
Somewhat but not as much as it might seem because a tree cut for sawlogs to produce framing lumber- much of that tree doesn’t end up in boards but as sawdust and slabs and chips. And we’d need to determine how much vegetation was destroyed to create the housing site. Of course as a forester for 50 years, I’m all for intense forest mgt. Doing it right means you get it all- healthy, nice looking forests doing all the eco stuff while producing valuable wood products. I don’t like even hearing about carbon sinks because we don’t need them. We could use a bit more CO2 so we should break up some carbon sinks (like that black rock in the ground) – it’s dam subzero here in Wokeachusetts- for several days now. My garage built under part of the house- been here 20 years and always watch the temperature- it has never gotten below freezing until this week – right now it’s 22 F.
When Luten Plunder from Captain Planet was doing mass deforestation, he at least used the wood to build something.
How did I miss this? I had to searchup the reference. I found the name Looten. (He was voiced by either James Coburn or Ed Gilbert)
Bruce Dern in Silent Running was astronaut sent to space with the last trees from earth, then ordered to destroy them. The movie never said how this scenario came about, but this wood* help explain it.
I liked that movie! 🙂
Did they even try to calculate the transportation cost ?
Or the cost of swamp weights to hold the wood down ?
or maybe even the transportation cost of the swamp weights ?
They don’t care about the small,irrelevant stuff.
Once you are morally and intellectually so superior reality becomes a right wing conspiracy theory.
Then It’s only about best intentions and fighting right wing conspiracy theories.
Nah- they did none of that- but, you see, “progressives” think all they need to do is imagine a solution and have faith it’ll work. They don’t seem to learn by their failures.
That’s a good way to put it.
Lefties (I don’t like calling Leftwing fanatics “progressives”) live in a very delusional World. That’s why they are not fit to govern, and when they do govern, they screw things up royally, like they are doing now in many parts of the Western World.
So ……… floating logs which float in rivers could be floated out into the Arctic Ocean where they’d be floating … and then sunk … how exactly?? With what, lead weights? And what is the diesel-fueled ‘carbon footprint’ of herding ’em out to the Arctic and attaching one form or another of ultimately toxic weights to them, or encasing them in ‘mega carbon footprint’ concrete???
ClimaChange™ increasingly causes magazine headlines/articles to approach peak stupidity.
more like severe mental illness
Or that the German geographer lead author had overdosed on ‘bud’ that day.
You missed the best thing : many of those trees will resurface and float around and become a major pain for the shipping industry.
That’s why sinking them in old coal pit mines makes more sense
correct.
You could always paint the harvested tree log rafts white and increase Arctic Albedo.
Sinking the logs will displace water, causing the sea levels to rise. Rising sea levels allows the global warming/Climate change crowd to claim proof that they are right, thus demanding less CO2 producing fossil fuels, more trillions spent on “sustainable” wind mills and solar panels, keeping the grift going. /sarc
Errrr… doesn’t wood have a tendency to float?
I am guessing that they intend to leave them floating until they become waterlogged and eventually sink on their own.
Clearly they must be pushing for the Nobel Stupid Prize.
It truly takes advanced higher education degrees to become a complete idiot
That’s what the Ig Nobel Prizes are for. They’re supposed to “make you laugh, then think.” Laughter is guaranteed here. And the ensuing moment of reflection would focus on the usefulness of implementing dangerous and pointless procedures to resolve a supposed crisis that has been leading us for decades toward an imminent apocalypse.
I don’t know if you’re familiar with The Shadoks in the English-speaking world. They’re small, angular, and nasty creatures living on a planet made up of sharp angles, and they were the subject of a three-season series consisting of very short episodes (generally one to two minutes, one every night).
The Shadoks, besides being nasty, are downright stupid. One of their favorite activities is “pumping.” They pump and pump, even though they don’t know what or why. They figure it would probably be worse if they didn’t pump.
Here is a Shadock drawn by their creator, Jacques Rouxel, accompanied by one of their many mottos.
“S’il n’y a pas de solution, c’est qu’il n’y a pas de problème”,
In english :
“If there is no solution, it’s because there is no problem.”
“Shadock”
My new word des jour here on WUWT. I get a new one every day. 🙂
Trying to pour a drink from a Klein Bottle.
And they wonder why so many people are not taking “climate change” seriously !!
The Biden era Director of the Bureau of Land Management (the real BLM) was eco-terrorist Tracy Stone-Manning, who conspired to “spike” trees in a forest where protestors were attempting to stop forest harvesting.
Little is mentioned on the effects of spiking on tree health. Spikes are supposed to cause damage to equipment and injury or death to forest workers.
Now this equally ignorant fool wants to strip forest (not scientifically harvest) forests just for the purpose of dumping wood at sea, regardless of the effect on ocean or forest habitat.
There are no principles, here, just mindless argument.
Mindless, yes- but amazingly, many fools will believe such fantasies.
Some years ago a British boating magazine printed an article on bugs called Polyestermites which apparently attacked GRP structures. It was supposed to appear in the April edition but by mistake appeared in the March one which went onto the shelves of the shops in late February.
I take it that this paper should have appeared on 1st. April and has been issued early by mistake.
Why would you want to sequester plant food.?
Because they’re sadistic and deranged. Maybe it’s a disease caused by Covid vaccinations. 🙂
Good question.
Deranged, is the answer, as Joseph says.
Climate Alarmists have confused their imaginations with reality.
In reality, there is no evidence that CO2 is bad for humanity in any way, shape, or form.
“it’d likely rely on a 25 percent increase in logging”
OMG, what a horrible, horrible thing- logging! The rape of the forest! Slaughter those living, breathing, probably semi conscious creatures, the trees! /s
Which is why I stated at the top of the thread it would make far more sense to Farm the trees that will be harvested.
The greens are horrified- just horrified of global greening- proving their mental illness.
If you’re going to “Vault” trees to sink carbon the best way is to use them like Venice: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=77omYd0JOeA
None of the comments so far note the kiss of death for this scheme. Floating wood sunk to the abyss will cause SEA LEVEL RISE.
Don’t even have to sink them to raise the level.
Some ideas are so demented that you need to be a Cambridge intellectual to take them serious.
Before we go cutting down most of the world’s existing forests, shouldn’t we first determine that a rising atmospheric CO2 concentration level is a problem?
My understanding is that the current atmospheric CO2 level of around 430 ppmv is just fine, with Earth’s flora and fauna having previously experienced atmospheric CO2 levels from a low of about 180 ppmv to a high of around 5000 ppmv (maybe even higher!) without hitting any “tipping” point or suffering any catastrophe.
I further understand that even NASA and NOAA admit that Earth has experience beneficial “greening” (including increased yields of crops harvested for food for humans and animals) over the last 50 or so years as a result of a rising atmospheric CO2 concentration, all of which might be driven by natural events and not by mankind.
IMHO, the above article is best summarized as putting the cart before the horse.
“Before we go cutting down most of the world’s existing forests, shouldn’t we first determine that a rising atmospheric CO2 concentration level is a problem?”
Yes! Absolutely!
And this has Never been done after decades of studying the issue.
To this day, Climate Alarmists cannot tell us whether CO2 Net warms the atmosphere or net cools the atmosphere. The most basic thing that needs to be established before going forward on any measures to reduce CO2. First, you have to figure out if it is necessary or not.
Modern-day Alarmist Climate “science” is Pure Speculation and nothing more.
The biggest, most destructive science scam in human history.
Make your own coal. Why not? And your own oil, maybe?
What about other types of log?
The average person excretes approximately 4.6 kg of carbon per year in their poop.
We should compress all our sewage into blocks and use them to build houses or bury them in disused mines.
You know it makes sense.
The number seems a way too low.
You mean ‘Number 2’?
“4.6 kg per year” seemed too low to me also, then I thought it must be the “of carbon ” part that could make it true. I bet the Internet will verify it.
Google:
“On average, dried human feces are about 40–55% carbon by weight. Daily, an individual excretes roughly 20–25 grams of organic carbon in feces, which is a minor part of the body’s total carbon loss compared to the ~300g of carbon exhaled as CO2”
Number is too low. CG wins…Unless: It’s the “dried” part of the search result. The biggest constituent of poo by weight is water.
Edit 2: I can’t make the math work out for 4.6kg per year. We need a peer reviewed paper on this.
I love the way people try to analyse the facts of a silly joke. Have a word with Google AI if that’s your worry, I’m sure it’s not perfect.
Oh, whew. I quit looking after a few minutes.
Yet the truth is out there…
“The average person produces approximately 320 lbs. (145 kg) of poop per year.”
Plus
“Human feces typically contain 40–50% carbon by dry weight. Since feces consist of 75–80% water, the carbon percentage relative to total wet weight is much lower,”
Equals about:
145kg *.25(dry) *.5(carbon) = about 18 kg
Even if nobody else cares, it’s now here.
It is encouraging to see that the ideas promoted by the Alarmists are becoming more and more crazy as time goes by. The dangers of their ideas are becoming even more self-evident.
I’m sorry but I think some village let their idiot out
What can I say, more useless trash from our experts, professionals, academics, scientists and politicians. What a disgrace.
It *is* a disgrace!
Unfortunately, A lot of these people get paid good money to put out this trash.
Low tech CCS …indeed, stupid has become brilliant. sarc
Stupid, operating on an unsubstantiated assertion about CO2.
We had to cut down all the trees to save the forests!
These ideas are so stoopid, it has to be a joke. “These people” are just trolling us, the normal people with functioning brains.
Every time someone writes that it seems the climatistas can’t possibly get more moronic, they take it as a challenge…
Comedy can pay well.
“Some ideas are so stupid that only intellectuals believe them.”
-George Orwell