This is one of my favorite paths forward for long term CO2 reduction.
About 360 million years ago, there was something called the Carboniferous Period[1]. This was the 60 million year period after wood had evolved, but before anything had figured out how to eat it. Trees just piled up and piled up over the millennia sucking out a ton of carbon from the air and leaving an insanely high oxygen ratio, which lead to the evolution of large, high energy creatures with crazy high metabolisms that wouldn't be sustainable with modern oxygen ratios.
I love the idea of kicking off a second carboniferous period as we finally realize how to fully utilize the power of wood, and start treating it more like programmable diamond, sucking in the carbon from the air around it, and growing into incredibly strong shapes for any purpose.
Mine too. Interestingly, there's some suggestion that lack of lignin-degrading processes in nature at the time is more of a myth than anything. Instead, a unique combination of climate and tectonic activity drove the high rate of coal production at that time: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4780611/
IMO if we ever want to start taking sequestration via this method seriously it's trivial to start now - Grow fast trees(e.g. Maple, Pine). Log trees. Bury trees deep underground. Repeat. All the tech exists, is ubiquitous, and trivially easy to de-carbonize in itself. The major sticking point, I'd argue the solitary issue, is there's no money to be made in it.
About 360 million years ago, there was something called the Carboniferous Period[1]. This was the 60 million year period after wood had evolved, but before anything had figured out how to eat it. Trees just piled up and piled up over the millennia sucking out a ton of carbon from the air and leaving an insanely high oxygen ratio, which lead to the evolution of large, high energy creatures with crazy high metabolisms that wouldn't be sustainable with modern oxygen ratios.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carboniferous
I love the idea of kicking off a second carboniferous period as we finally realize how to fully utilize the power of wood, and start treating it more like programmable diamond, sucking in the carbon from the air around it, and growing into incredibly strong shapes for any purpose.