Wood isn't the climate-friendly material you think it is
Wood isn't the climate-friendly material you think it is
A new study shows that cutting down trees for paper, furniture, and fuel emits about three times more carbon than flying.
A new study shows that cutting down trees for paper, furniture, and fuel emits three times more carbon than flying.
The paper is here
What's the point of comparing it to flying? That's completely meaningless. There's no possible building material that is "climate friendly" while we're still using fossil fuels for industry and construction. The only question of significance here is wether wood is more sustainable than other forms of building material. They make no attempt to make a comparison to the ecological impact of metal or concrete production.
I agree, that comparison is about as useful apples vs. lamp bulbs.
As a construction material, wood is almost certainly less taxing on the environment.
A lot of paper gets discarded sooner than a year after printing / writing, consumer goods may last a decade, but houses are built to last 50 years.
While a wooden house still stands, the land where its material grew may easily become re-forested, and the service life of houses can be prolonged - with maintenance, a house can last a century and there exist wooden houses many centuries old.
Right? I was thinking they would be comparing to plastic since those are the trade offs in grocery stores these days. The building materials you mentioned also make sense.
Flying, on the other hand....
I read the article and wtf. It's half between a pos article and useful info.
Logging generates a lot of carbon in the atmosphere, and after 75% of the article there is finally the reason : because we are burning it.
Wtf is this pos.
Yes burning wood emits carbon. Like any other burning thing.
But not directly for creating paper, furniture or building.
Tho there is some right in there, where yes wood can also be bad for the environment depending on how it is used, like burning a lot of paper in the trash. Incinerating furniture and other sources of waste...
Burning wood is still better than burning coal either way, since the carbon in wood originally came from the atmosphere.
And if that wood is something like a hybrid poplar, it's carbon within our lifespan (as opposed to old growth)
Kinda sorta. The conversion of forest land into commerical timberland on net moves carbon from the trees into the atmosphere. There's also a ton of fraud in that space around emissions claims.
Aka killing the environment is bad for the environment
