Purchase a hole. A big hole.
Posted by TheSagelyOne@reddit | CrazyIdeas | View on Reddit | 112 comments
An abandoned mineshaft would work beautifully. Now purchase several acres of flat-ish land around it.
Now here's the trick... Plant trees, or any convenient woody plant, on the land. Maximize the amount of wood that land produces as much as can be reasonably done. Then, harvest the wood, break it into the smallest convenient chunks, and chuck it into the hole. Repeat until the hole is filled, and then for your last planting re-wild the area with native plants.
This passively pulls carbon out of the air and then actively puts it back into the earth, effectively reversing the greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuels.
Terrible-Growth1652@reddit
Why not use the wood to build houses?
TheSagelyOne@reddit (OP)
Because then the hole would be pointless, silly.
Okay, but seriously, you could. Anything where the wood doesn't decompose would work. But then you have to factor in things like transportation (burning carbon) and construction (burning carbon) and the fact that whoever lives in that house will likely want electricity and gas (burning carbon.) |
Add to this that houses are on the surface of the earth, whereas holes are underground. So any wood that rots or burns would just put carbon right back into the atmosphere.
Chucking the wood into a hole is cheaper and more effective in the long run. It's basically how we got oil and coal in the first place. From the ground it came, and to the ground it shall go.
Dysan27@reddit
We got coal and oil because the microbes that decompose wood hadn't evolved yet.
The wood in the hole is going to decompose. Probably faster then if you built a houe from it.
TheSagelyOne@reddit (OP)
The wood decomposing is not a problem. This is neither a wood warehouse nor a petroleum farm.
The carbon released by decomposition is primarily co2 and methane. Both of those gases are heavier than air. This, the majority of the carbon released by decomposition will sink to the bottom of the hole. In the absence of winds or convection currents or other disturbances, the gases will remain largely within the earth for a good, long time.
Still, if escaping gases are a concern, you could always cap the hole with dirt or sand and plant on top of it as part of the re-wilding phase.
EfficiencyArtistic@reddit
As it decomposes, in addition to creating methane, it will also heat itself. So eventually you'd have a huge uncontainable fire burning in your abandoned mineshaft.
TheSagelyOne@reddit (OP)
Not if the CO2 (or methane, for that matter) levels are high enough, because they'll push out the oxygen. For a little additional cost and complexity, you could put something like iron chips into the hole to consume oxygen through rusting. You could also use water or nitrogen.
Although I don't think we'd need these measures - wood decomposes very slowly, after all - they're options.
pkobayashi@reddit
Or how about just pile it into a mountain? What’s the limit for how big you could make the pile—before it like, self-combusts from the weight? Sounds like a question for XKCD?
TheSagelyOne@reddit (OP)
The idea is pull the carbon out of the carbon cycle, which largely occurs at the earth's surface. So putting the wood in a hole is meant to isolate it rather than to simply store it.
Besides, piling something upwards fights against gravity, requiring a lot more energy than simply having something into a worthless pit.
Terrible-Growth1652@reddit
Once a pile of organic material starts decomposing it gets very hot inside and and can spontaneously combust. And once that happens it will keep burning until the whole pile is ash.
WitsBlitz@reddit
Lumber mills keep log piles damp to reduce the combustion risk - a mountain of wood would certainly ignite
Movisiozo@reddit
Downward, into the hole, like upside-down apartments. And call it muinimodnoc, as inverse-condominium
wardamneagle@reddit
Yeah homeboy just described the lumber industry without the usefulness part.
Spartan656@reddit
It's called biomass burial and it is a viable technique, you just have to make sure the plant matter doesn't decompose and release methane which would be worse than just burning it. Me personally, I'm turning my biomass into biochar, reduced carbon content, but it's more stable over time and can help improve the soil.
TheSagelyOne@reddit (OP)
Fair enough. Wood doesn't decompose very fast, and having a lot of it bunched together doesn't leave a lot of surface area so it's probably fine? How is it usually done?
I suppose the gases can be further isolated be sealing the hole (bulldozer if vertical, dynamite if horizontal) with dirt and stuff.
Spartan656@reddit
Use higher lignin things like wood, bury it excluding moisture and oxygen. Some people use clay lined pits or inject it into geological formations.
TheSagelyOne@reddit (OP)
Ah-h-h. That makes sense. I suppose we could pour liquid nitrogen or something into the pits to push out the oxygen. That's relatively cheap and easy and safe enough of you're not in the hole with it. Or maybe something like iron chips that can bind the oxygen by rusting? That adds some cost, though, which puts it a little outside the design philosophy here.
guided-hgm@reddit
You’ve reinvented forestry, except they cut them down and store them in things people use, like houses and what not.
TheSagelyOne@reddit (OP)
And that's not a bad system.
But my design philosophy here was to be cheap and simple, so we've cut out a lot of the transportation, labor, and upkeep associated with building houses and furniture and stuff.
Recent_Strawberry456@reddit
What happens when the wood rots, what gasses are released?
TheSagelyOne@reddit (OP)
CO2, which sinks father down the hole, and methane, which rises. So it's not a 100% efficient system, I know, but the point is to be simple and cheap with existing and proven technology.
Square_Cat_6001@reddit
Would would rot and let out methane and co2 over time. Now.. if you grew a fast growing annual like like hemp and you would compost that and create soil out of it, you would have much stable storage.
TheSagelyOne@reddit (OP)
Co2 and methane are both heavier than air. I think they'd largely sink to the bottom of the hole. Once the hole is filled, you can always "cap" it with dirt or whatever for extra protection.
This isn't proposed as a perfect solution. It is intended to be a simple and cost-effective one using what we already have in abundance.
bocsika@reddit
Methane is much lighter than air (half in density).
TheSagelyOne@reddit (OP)
Is it? Huh... Guess I heard wrong.
Well, the co2, at least, would sink
SlickMcFav0rit3@reddit
So you'd need a New Mexico sized guest every year just for the USA.
Also, cutting down the trees releases co2
TheSagelyOne@reddit (OP)
Is that figure for living trees, or lumber? If living, is it for mature trees or saplings? With my plan, the trees (bamboo/hemp/whatever) would be harvested at such a time that we maximize the amount of growing that is happening. That way we would maximize the carbon per year that is being sequestered by putting it in a hole in the ground. The plan is to use this alongside other mitigation efforts like renewable energy, not as a standalone. It's supposed to be cheap and simple, not the perfect and ultimate solution. It is one of many things that ought to be done if we want to stop anthropogenic climate change.
SlickMcFav0rit3@reddit
It's an average, because (as you say) it varies depending on what type of forest it is.
Anyway, im all for mitigation of climate change. Obviously renewables, nuclear, etc need to get major investments (and trunk needs to stop cancelling wind farms because he hates windmills for whatever reason)
And yes, planting trees is great. But, honestly, we just can't plant enough to really make a significant dent. Partly it's just the scale of the problem, partly it's that most carbon fixation occurs in the oceans, not from trees.
Also, there just aren't New Mexico sized areas lying around that could easily be turned into forest that aren't already doing something else like being a farm or a city or a park.
https://climate.mit.edu/ask-mit/how-many-new-trees-would-we-need-offset-our-carbon-emissions
TheSagelyOne@reddit (OP)
The nice thing about a farm is that you get basically infinite amounts of crops occupying a finite space, as long as you're willing to sacrifice time. This is why I suggest cutting the trees down and chucking them in a hole - so that more trees can be planted, over and over again.
We both agree that a lot needs to be done to stop and eventually reverse climate change. This is one tool among many in our arsenal.
OTee_D@reddit
Put mud and big rocks on to and kust wait a few million years, BAM you get oil when nobody else has some.
TheSagelyOne@reddit (OP)
Profit!
Hopefully oil and coal will become very niche products in the near future, used only for research and the like.
CoderJoe1@reddit
Bamboo may be faster
TheSagelyOne@reddit (OP)
That is indeed a woody plant.
Ultimately what we want is high biomass per acre, minus the mass of the water it contains. I have no idea what the best plant for that is. I could probably find out, but *eh*
Square_Cat_6001@reddit
It's hemp. Woody, fast growing annual.
TheSagelyOne@reddit (OP)
Well, there you go.
Narrow_Track9598@reddit
Grow marijuana in California, sell the bud for profit and use the stalk/stem to fill in. Win win win
TheSagelyOne@reddit (OP)
That's a way to monetize it for sure
Guy_Incognito97@reddit
When you harvest the wood it starts to break down and release the carbon. What you really need to do is blast the wood into space on a rocket.
TheSagelyOne@reddit (OP)
The wood breaks down primarily into C02 and methane, both of which are heavier than air. In a hole, in the absence of things like wind and convection currents, these heavier gases should sink towards the bottom, remaining isolated. Not 100% effective, of course, but likely more effective than nothing.
And if that's still a concern, bury the wood under dirt to cap it off.
Guy_Incognito97@reddit
Degrading wood creates heat though, and combining that with the higher density of the gases in the hole there will start to be an equalisation and the gases will escape. It has to be rockets.
TheSagelyOne@reddit (OP)
Some gases will escape, some will not. What does not escape is successfully sequestered.
But on the other hand, rockets are pretty cool...
TranslatorOne5089@reddit
Why not just turn the wood into housing and infrastructure
TheSagelyOne@reddit (OP)
Because that defeats the purpose. You're adding complexity, cost, and carbon footprint when this was supposed to be cheap, simple, and strongly carbon-negative.
I mean, you absolutely could, and people absolutely do. Tree farming is very much a thing. But it is not within the scope of purpose of my proposed crazy idea.
TranslatorOne5089@reddit
If your goal is to sequester carbon this idea sucks ass
TheSagelyOne@reddit (OP)
Why do you think that?
Evening-Tomatillo-47@reddit
🎵 I am a dwarf and I'm filling a hole
Filly filly hole
Filly filly hole 🎵
TheSagelyOne@reddit (OP)
Lmao
FengSushi@reddit
The only big hole I would purchase is yo mama.
TheSagelyOne@reddit (OP)
-shakes fist-
lasertitsnow@reddit
There are so many abandon mines in California the state will pay you to fill them up !
NeverInsightful@reddit
Will they really?
Just asking if I ever get sick of sitting at a desk. Or being in the US. Whichever comes first.
chattytrout@reddit
You might be disappointed to learn that California is part of the US.
xrelaht@reddit
What??
NeverInsightful@reddit
My bad, I read that and my brain turned California into Canada
TheSagelyOne@reddit (OP)
Win-win!
pavilionaire2022@reddit
You have to make sure the wood doesn't decompose. If it does, it will re-release the carbon dioxide. That can be achieved in various ways. The simplest is probably to keep the environment low-oxygen.
Essentially, you're creating your own peat bog and doing the reverse of burning peat.
TheSagelyOne@reddit (OP)
A low-oxygen environment would certainly make it better, although it would take a bit more engineering to do that to an existing hole.
Maybe cover said hole in dirt once it's filled?
SumOldGuy@reddit
I would think once you pile the mineshaft deep enough the deeper areas wouldnt be getting much oxygen anyway. You could supplement the piles with dirt and sand to help close up the gaps.
TheSagelyOne@reddit (OP)
I agree. Adding a bulldozer to shove dirt in or a few sticks of dynamite to collapse a tunnel wouldn't add to the complexity of cost too much, either.
Tobias11ize@reddit
What you’re looking for is a bog to shove you lumber into
TheSagelyOne@reddit (OP)
Bogs aren't as common as mine shafts and old wells and the like. Yes, they're probably better for sequestration. But my idea is to keep things simple and local by having the trees near the place where they're going to be sequestered. This, a hole will do where a bog is absent.
shaggs31@reddit
You would still be at all loss considering coal is far more dense then wood is. And with all the gas powered machinery you would need to cut the trees and drop them into the hole.
TheSagelyOne@reddit (OP)
Reducing our dependence on coal and oil are important, but outside the scope of this idea.
It's about sequestering carbon cheaply and simply. It won't do enough on its own to combat climate change, but it's something we can add to our arsenal.
Zestyclose-Turn-3576@reddit
Hmmm well if in a year you could do that for 1,000 tons of CO2 equivalent, then you'd almost match the amount that everyone else is putting into the atmosphere every second.
TheSagelyOne@reddit (OP)
You probably could. Holes are a dime-a-dozen and a literal ton of tree isn't a great many trees. Assuming that a tree is 500lbs when harvested, that's 4000 trees for 1000 tons of wood. And if we assume 90% of that is water, multiply by ten to get 40,000 trees per year. Spread out over the industrialized world, that's very doable.
Combine this with other mitigation techniques and we can definitely slow down, if not reverse, our runaway greenhouse effect.
Zestyclose-Turn-3576@reddit
I think you're out by a few factors here. A mature tree has got about a tonne of C02 locked up in it, so that's around 1,000 trees per second, so 3.6 million trees per hour, 86 million trees per day, 31 billion trees a year?
TheSagelyOne@reddit (OP)
You're right. I misread your original post.
31 billion trees is indeed a lot. But as I said, this isn't supposed to be the best or only thing we're trying. We, as a species, should absolutely continue our mitigation efforts (and, in fact, double- down on them) in addition to the sequestration. We need to do more than we are to stop and reverse anthropogenic climate change, and my idea is something more than we are doing.
Filteau04@reddit
Not an mycology expert, but I don't think depth is a good method of preventing wood rot fungus from acessing the wood. I know spores do a good job at getting around, and might already be dormant on the bark of the tree before its cut down.
TheSagelyOne@reddit (OP)
The point isn't to store the wood forever, but to keep the carbon away from things life wind and convection currents that could whisk it up into the atmosphere.
Yes, decomposing wood releases co2 and methane. But both of those gases are heavier than air, and should flow towards the bottom of the hole if undisturbed.
Tiss_E_Lur@reddit
Biochar makes a 1000x more sense, binding co2 and making soil better.
TheSagelyOne@reddit (OP)
Not necessarily. It adds complexity and cost. My "design philosophy" (as far as anything on this sub can be said to have one) is to do it cheaply and simply.
So yeah, you can do biochar if the price is right, but that's somewhat outside of what I'm proposing.
pablitorun@reddit
You have invented
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_sequestration
TheSagelyOne@reddit (OP)
Yes. Just an idea to make it simple and cheap, while also filling in unused holes.
No_Presence9915@reddit
Won’t work. The fungus will get in the hole and eat the wood
TheSagelyOne@reddit (OP)
The hole is for isolating carbon from the atmosphere, not for storing wood forever. The C02 and methane released, being heavier than air, will sink towards the bottom of the hole anyway.
It's not 100% effective, but I still think it will be very effective.
MooniniOA@reddit
You’d like the Ted Talk about I think seaweed. Same idea but having it sink thousands of meters to the ocean floor.
TheSagelyOne@reddit (OP)
Yes! Let's do both. Really make the most out of the available area.
DaisyWhiskerWings@reddit
Turning trees into underground carbon storage? I kinda love how simple it sounds, even if I'm sure the logistics are wild. Resetting the land after using it.
TheSagelyOne@reddit (OP)
It would be nice if it really were just this simple, huh?
richard0cs@reddit
What isn't simple is the scale. A big coal power station burns a million tons a month of almost pure carbon. Starting with a big enough hole and growing enough trees to offset that is going to be... problematic.
TheSagelyOne@reddit (OP)
Or use a bunch of smaller holes and tree farms. Really, anywhere you can isolate carbon helps. It's the total volume of wood that is attached away that counts. This is meant to be a simple and cheap solution, not a "perfect" one.
Cold-Jackfruit1076@reddit
It wouldn't work as beautifully as all that. Mineshafts are rarely just 'a hole'.
But I applaud the forward thinking!
TheSagelyOne@reddit (OP)
True... But they're existing holes that aren't natural (as, say, a canyon) and are all over the place, so at least they're cheap and convenient. And honestly, if you can only go a couple hundred feet in safely, you still have space for literal tons of carbon, so it's worth looking into, even if I oversimplify a bit.
AtticHelicopter@reddit
Do you want to be a billionaire? Because that's how you become a billionaire.
https://walkerind.com/our-story/
1: Dig hole, sell Rock
2: Get paid to fill hole with garbage
3: Recover valuable stuff out of garbage
4: Sell recovered valuable stuff
5: Sell filled hole to housing developer.
Mr_Style@reddit
This is how you make coal. Just add like a few million years. And throw some dinosaurs down the hole too… like any politician older than 80 but still in office :)
TheSagelyOne@reddit (OP)
That's the spirit!
Patsfan618@reddit
In my completely uninformed opinion, this is the only way out of global warming. You have to take the carbon out of the environment. That means shoving it underground, which is where it came from in the first place. Carbon capture is great, but you have to actually bury it or send it off into space.
heridfel37@reddit
Ocean may be better than mineshaft, but yeah, this is kind of how it will have to work
TheSagelyOne@reddit (OP)
It seemed the sensible way.
Sorry-Climate-7982@reddit
What would be your plans for all the CO2 that wood releases as it oxidizes slowly?
richard0cs@reddit
The good news is that air circulation in the hole is going to be very limited, which will prevent most of the wood from decomposing in the usual way. Essentially some wood will oxidise, use all the oxygen, and the rest either just sits there or decays anaerobicaly depending on temperature, moisture, etc.
Ubermidget2@reddit
Briquette the wood before chucking into hole
TheSagelyOne@reddit (OP)
CO2 is a heavy gas relative to the air above it. I imagine that most of it would sink into the gaps in the hole rather than escape into the atmosphere. If it's still a concern, you can always cover the hole in a layer of dirt or something.
Sorry-Climate-7982@reddit
So you'd really want an old missile silo instead of a more horizontal mine shaft.
And maybe take some of the rocks from the area and grind them up into fine powder. Use part as mineral supplements for the trees, and the other dump into the hole with the wood chips to absorb the CO2?
GrannyLow@reddit
Just a pet peeve of mine - a mine shaft is vertical. The horizontal part is a drift or an entry. Access that goes down but isn't vertical is a slope.
TheSagelyOne@reddit (OP)
Maybe.
A missile silo is indeed a hole that could be filled with tree bits. And it's probably cheaper to fill than a more horizontal one, since you can just transport stuff *to* the edge and just push it over.
So yes, old missile silos and other vertical holes are almost certainly superior, although perhaps rarer than mineshafts.
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Ornery_Day_6483@reddit
I’ve seen this seriously proposed as a carbon sink, but the trees are towed out to sea and left to waterlog and sink
TheSagelyOne@reddit (OP)
I guess the ocean does have some hole-like properties.
The idea of using an existing hole and land close to it was to minimize transportation cost (both monetarily and energetically) but that by no means rules out the ocean.
sublevelstreetpusher@reddit
You literally just described the current state of storm water management in the east coast
TheSagelyOne@reddit (OP)
Really? Cool!
How's it working carbon-wise?
sublevelstreetpusher@reddit
I'll let you know in a thousand years or so. Otherwise everyone hates them, but hey I make a decent living at it!
TheSagelyOne@reddit (OP)
That's the spirit!
Boomshank@reddit
They're pouring the excess down mineshafts?
sublevelstreetpusher@reddit
Not mine shafts per se, but every new house comes with a with a big hole in the yard we fill with the chipped up trees we had to take down to build the place. Then yes , there's an entire schedule of native plants and seed mixes applied.
wizardrous@reddit
This is your hole! It was made for you!
jaspersgroove@reddit
DRRR DRRR DDDDRRRRREE
HandToDikCombat@reddit
The trees in my yard already creak like that, so do they come out the other side sounding like people?
drinkdrinkshoesgone@reddit
Easy peasey. Ive got an extra 180 years to waste. Where do I start?
TheSagelyOne@reddit (OP)
Get you a hole, then fill it with carbon. Tree farms are fast and economical enough - just look at where most of our paper comes from - so we may as well use what works to fix what broke.
Disastrous_Ad1260@reddit
I thought you were going to make a gravity battery.
TheSagelyOne@reddit (OP)
You could do that too.
But *my* hole is the carbon sink hole first and foremost.