- Monoculture farming leading to large amounts of petroleum based fertilizer being needed to fertilize crops, killing soil microorganisms, speeding soil erosion, and algae blooms in waterways
- Loss of soil microorganism diversity has harmed fungal-plant symbiosis for nutrient exchange, leading to ~40% reduction in nutritional density of the produce we eat over our lifetimes. These vegetables don't taste as good, leading more humans to have poor diets high in processed food.
- Monoculture has led to worse pest infestations with more devastating results.
How is living carbon going to implement this plan in a way that creates a diverse ecosystem of trees (and symbiotic plants, fungi and bacteria) rather than a monoculture?
Are there seedlings all clones? How many genotypes will go into a single tree farm? (I predict cost of developing unique genotypes will lead to them only putting 1 or <10 distinct genotypes into their initial treefarms, so genetic diversity will be low)
How will the intended rot resistance effect fungal biodiversity in forests where these trees grow? Does it last 1 year, 10 years, or 100? How long will a forest of dry twigs be able to avoid a fire (and release all of its carbon regardless)?
Climate change appears to be the most urgent path to apocalypse, but its not the only path. If these trees end up in our national forests, outcompete the existing trees and kill off the soil biodiversity, then a pest kills off all of these inbred trees - we could end up worse off than we started.
There are absolutely failure modes to be concerned about, and their planned Jurassic Park style reproduction controls makes me worried there could be Jurassic Park style outcomes.
> How will the intended rot resistance effect fungal biodiversity in forests where these trees grow? Does it last 1 year, 10 years, or 100? How long will a forest of dry twigs be able to avoid a fire (and release all of its carbon regardless)?
Given the parallel efforts being made for bioengineered mycoremediation (which is far more likely to "escape"), I suspect that the rot-resistance effect will be fairly temporary, and the long term net effect will just be enhanced long-term biosequestration of metals in the soil that will benefit the ecosystem.
It would be pretty important not to engineer trees that are significant food sources for anything too high up the food chain, or at least somehow ensure that the metal accumulation only happens in the relatively inedible parts (like wood), but otherwise at first glance this seems a viable stopgap to damp the carbon release feedback loops that are staring us in the face.
I'm wondering if rot resistance (perhaps of other sorts than metal accumulation) can be useful in other contexts.
For example, here in New Mexico we're experiencing a decimation of the piñon pine trees that provide pine nuts (commercially) and ecological niches for a variety of birds. The warmer winters aren't killing off the bark beetles as they used to so the beetles are killing off the trees, especially when they're stressed from drought, and the alternatives seem to be somehow making the trees less appetizing to the beetles, introducing something to eat the beetles, or else just migrating the forests north into Colorado.
- Monoculture farming leading to large amounts of petroleum based fertilizer being needed to fertilize crops, killing soil microorganisms, speeding soil erosion, and algae blooms in waterways
- Loss of soil microorganism diversity has harmed fungal-plant symbiosis for nutrient exchange, leading to ~40% reduction in nutritional density of the produce we eat over our lifetimes. These vegetables don't taste as good, leading more humans to have poor diets high in processed food.
- Monoculture has led to worse pest infestations with more devastating results.
How is living carbon going to implement this plan in a way that creates a diverse ecosystem of trees (and symbiotic plants, fungi and bacteria) rather than a monoculture?
Are there seedlings all clones? How many genotypes will go into a single tree farm? (I predict cost of developing unique genotypes will lead to them only putting 1 or <10 distinct genotypes into their initial treefarms, so genetic diversity will be low)
How will the intended rot resistance effect fungal biodiversity in forests where these trees grow? Does it last 1 year, 10 years, or 100? How long will a forest of dry twigs be able to avoid a fire (and release all of its carbon regardless)?
Climate change appears to be the most urgent path to apocalypse, but its not the only path. If these trees end up in our national forests, outcompete the existing trees and kill off the soil biodiversity, then a pest kills off all of these inbred trees - we could end up worse off than we started.
There are absolutely failure modes to be concerned about, and their planned Jurassic Park style reproduction controls makes me worried there could be Jurassic Park style outcomes.