Since most of the wood pellets are derived from newly harvested trees, the immediate impact on Earth’s climate is worse than coal.
The emission of carbon dioxide from the production of cement current accounts for about 5% of the total annual industrial emissions of CO2.
We can’t count on better management of soils to solve the climate crisis
Trees remove a lot of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere
Trees are the most efficient net-negative emissions technology that we know of.
The incidence of forest fire is likely to increase in a warmer, drier world.
Without carbon dioxide uptake by trees, its concentration in the atmosphere would be rising nearly twice as fast as we observe today.
Recent press coverage of soil carbon sequestration on farms creates the dangerous impression that we can easily store a significant fraction of CO2 from fossil fuel emissions through better soil management.
[We need] a report card that grades plant production, soil organic matter, biodiversity and nutrient balance against our best measures of what they would be in a world without humans.
Policies devoted to bioenergy should be redirected toward efforts to protect terrestrial carbon stocks and recarbonize the biosphere.
