# What biological life forms are as good if not better at absorbing CO2 than trees **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [July 30, 2019, 1:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-biological-life-forms-are-as-good-if-not-better-at-absorbing-co2-than-trees/837849 "2019-07-30T01:36:42Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 4\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Blue\_Blistering\_Barnacle](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/blue_blistering_barnacle/32/3386_2.png) [@Blue\_Blistering\_Barnacle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Blue_Blistering_Barnacle)\ **Post date:** [August 4, 2019, 2:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-biological-life-forms-are-as-good-if-not-better-at-absorbing-co2-than-trees/837849/21 "2019-08-04T14:26:19Z")
> [@HMS\_Irruncible](#): > > That’s what sounds intuitive to me. Maybe a genetically engineered kelp that forms large carbonate nodules that drop to the bottom of the sea. Or some kind of insanely fast-growing coral. > > I guess first we need to figure out how to de-acidify the ocean though. How do we do that? Oh, that’s simple- just get all that excess carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and oceans. ---
**Author:** ![Ruken](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/f475e1/32.png) [@Ruken](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ruken)\ **Post date:** [August 4, 2019, 3:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-biological-life-forms-are-as-good-if-not-better-at-absorbing-co2-than-trees/837849/22 "2019-08-04T15:30:38Z")
> [@beowulff](#): > > Actually, most wood decomposes in under 100 years, and the CO2 is returned to the atmosphere. That depends entirely on the conditions the wood experiences. If you leave it on the forest floor, it may be gone in ten years. Stick it in a municipal landfill, and it’s effectively permanently sequestered on any timescale we care about. Of course any time we’re talking about biomass, it’s distributed nature needs to be addressed. E.g. biomass-burning power plants are restricted to smaller, less efficient sizes due to feedstock transportation. So if you want to just bury trees in forest trenches, you’ll be somewhere between now and forever. But delaying decomposition does decrease net flux. Locking up biomass also means locking up nutrients, limiting this as a long-term strategy. ---
**Author:** ![beowulff](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/beowulff/32/542_2.png) [@beowulff](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/beowulff)\ **Post date:** [August 4, 2019, 5:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-biological-life-forms-are-as-good-if-not-better-at-absorbing-co2-than-trees/837849/23 "2019-08-04T17:12:22Z")
> [@Ruken](#): > > That depends entirely on the conditions the wood experiences. If you leave it on the forest floor, it may be gone in ten years. Stick it in a municipal landfill, and it’s effectively permanently sequestered on any timescale we care about. > \ I don’t want beat this horse to death, but in the general case, this isn’t correct. It all depends on how damp the environment is. Wood in a landfill in Phoenix might last many hundreds of years. In a less arid environment, the wood will decay in decades. ---
**Author:** ![Ruken](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/f475e1/32.png) [@Ruken](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ruken)\ **Post date:** [August 4, 2019, 7:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-biological-life-forms-are-as-good-if-not-better-at-absorbing-co2-than-trees/837849/24 "2019-08-04T19:52:15Z")
> [@beowulff](#): > > I don’t want beat this horse to death, but in the general case, this isn’t correct. > It all depends on how damp the environment is. Wood in a landfill in Phoenix might last many hundreds of years. In a less arid environment, the wood will decay in decades. Oxygen, not water. Buried wood in anaerobic wetlands, about as wet as you can get, is pretty inert. Lignin decomposition is almost if not entirely an oxidative process, which gets shut down in a standard landfill. And lignin renders a good chunk of the cellulosic material inaccessible. That’s not to say water is unimportant. The EPA WARM has dimensional lumber’s landfill decay rate at 0.007/yr for a dry landfill and 0.03 for wet (compared to say grass at 0.15 and 0.60/yr, respectively) Relevant literature includes (DOIs): 10.1016/S0964-8305(97)83389-6 10.1016/j.wasman.2013.07.009 Issues with processing and transport: 10.1007/s11027-010-9267-5 Of course another option is pyrolysis (+ power generation) and burying the char, which is even more inert than wood. But again that runs into mass transport problems. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-biological-life-forms-are-as-good-if-not-better-at-absorbing-co2-than-trees/837849.md?page=1)